East Antrim
East Antrim has 17 MW of clean power (all onshore wind) approved and still not built: enough to supply a year's electricity to 15,000 homes. When the wires are too full to carry the power, Britain pays wind farms to switch off instead. No wind farm here is paid that way — almost all of it goes to wind farms in Scotland. Northern Ireland is on the all-Ireland grid, so Britain's grid bottlenecks do not reach bills here in the same way. There is also 56 MW of wind running here on the local network. If that gets switched off, no national record shows it.
here
grid
The waiting list
Every approved, unbuilt project
| Site | Technology | Enough for | Capacity | Approved | Waiting |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ballykeel Wind Farm | Wind Onshore | 14,000 homes | 16.1 MW | 2016-12 | 9.6 yrs |
| 402 metres NE of 45 Dickeystown Road | Wind Onshore | 300 homes | 0.3 MW | 2019-03 | 7.4 yrs |
| Larne Road | Wind Onshore | 300 homes | 0.3 MW | 2021-01 | 5.5 yrs |
| Woodside Road | Wind Onshore | 300 homes | 0.3 MW | 2020-10 | 5.8 yrs |
| Omerbane Road, Cloughmills Replacement | Wind Onshore | 200 homes | 0.2 MW | 2022-03 | 4.4 yrs |
| 58 Tullykiagh Road - Wind Turbine | Wind Onshore | — | — MW | 2023-07 | 3.1 yrs |
| Wind Turbine Development in Broughshane | Wind Onshore | — | — MW | 2024-02 | 2.5 yrs |
Plus 2 more approved within the last two years.
Batteries
| Site | Size | Status | While discharging |
|---|---|---|---|
| Power Generation Development in Islandmagee | 100 MW | in planning | could supply ≈350,000 homes |
| Quarterland Road, Islandmagee - Battery Storage | 75 MW | approved, not built 2024 | could supply ≈263,000 homes |
| AES Kilroot Station Battery Storage Array | 10 MW | could supply ≈35,000 homes |
What this page does not show
Smaller wind farms on the local grid are also switched off; national data does not show it, so the £ figure here is a floor, not a zero. Offshore wind is counted nationally, never per seat. The planning database can run a quarter behind reality.
Electricity does not travel from a particular project to particular houses. Everything generated goes into the national grid and everyone draws from that shared pool, so "enough for X homes" is a way of sizing the electricity — not a claim that these homes would be powered by this site. Battery storage is counted separately from generation: it moves power in time rather than making it.
Planning statuses come from the government's planning database (REPD), which records what was decided and when, but not why. Where a project was refused we say so and name the authority; for the reasons, look up the planning reference on that council's own register. How to check any figure on this page →
What has Sammy Wilson said about the grid in Parliament? Search Hansard →