No.323 of 650 · approved, not built MP: Bridget Phillipson (Labour) England

Houghton and Sunderland South

Houghton and Sunderland South has 2.4 MW of clean power (all solar) approved and still not built: enough to supply a year's electricity to 900 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. That cost is shared across every bill in Britain, so households here pay for it too: about £92 a year per household, £4.1m across the constituency's 44,873 homes.

Not visible
here

11 MW of wind is running in this constituency, but it sits on the local network rather than the national grid — so if it is paid to switch off, no national record shows it. That is why this seat has no figure here: not because nothing happens, but because nobody publishes it. The £ figure for this seat is a floor, not a zero.

how we worked this out

2.4 MW

of clean power — all solar — approved and still not built, enough to supply a year's electricity to 900 homes. Approved at least two years ago; waiting on the grid, not on planning. That is 0.2× the renewable capacity actually running here.

3 projects · planning database (REPD), July 2026 · how we worked this out

£4.1m

is what the grid gap costs this constituency's 44,873 households in a year between them — £92 each, about 51 days of one home's electricity.

The £92 per household is a national figure — identical in every GB seat. Only the seat total varies, with the number of households · NESO · how we worked this out

The waiting list

3 of 3 waiting projects · years since approval

Evolve Business Centre 0.3 MW

6.3 YRS

Sedgeletch Sewage Treatment Works

5.5 YRS

Calsonic Kansei - Solar Array 2.1 MW

2.1 YRS

Every approved, unbuilt project

approved 24+ months ago, still not generating · planning database, July 2026

Site	Technology	Enough for	Capacity	Approved	Waiting
Calsonic Kansei - Solar Array	Solar Photovoltaics	800 homes	2.1 MW	2024-06	2.1 yrs
Evolve Business Centre	Solar Photovoltaics	100 homes	0.3 MW	2020-05	6.3 yrs
Sedgeletch Sewage Treatment Works	Solar Photovoltaics	—	— MW	2021-01	5.5 yrs

Plus 1 more approved within the last two years.

Batteries

projects of 10 MW and above · planning database, July 2026 · what batteries do →

Site	Size	Status	While discharging
Hastings Hill Farm, Foxcover Road - Battery Energy Storage	38 MW	approved, not built 2025	could supply ≈133,000 homes
Fox Cover Road - Battery Energy Storage	30 MW	approved, not built 2024	could supply ≈105,000 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 →

Read the full method, including everything we cannot see →

What has Bridget Phillipson said about the grid in Parliament? Search Hansard →

See the full league table Data (JSON)