No.217 of 650 · approved, not built MP: Sarah Smith (Labour) England

Hyndburn

Hyndburn has 12 MW of clean power (mostly onshore wind) approved and still not built: enough to supply a year's electricity to 8,600 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, £3.7m across the constituency's 39,738 homes. There is also 24 MW of wind running here on the local network. If that gets switched off, no national record shows it.

Not visible
here
24 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.
12 MW
of clean power — mostly onshore wind — approved and still not built, enough to supply a year's electricity to 8,600 homes. Approved at least two years ago; waiting on the grid, not on planning. That is 0.5× the renewable capacity actually running here.
9 projects · 8.2 MW onshore wind, 3.8 MW solar · planning database (REPD), July 2026 · how we worked this out
£3.7m
is what the grid gap costs this constituency's 39,738 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

6 of 9 waiting projects · years since approval
Hyndburn Wind Farm Extension 8.2 MW
11.1 YRS
Whitebirk Depot Solar Panels
5.5 YRS
Whinney Hill Road - Solar Photovoltaic Panels 0.2 MW
4.7 YRS
Altham - Solar PV 0.1 MW
4.5 YRS
St Christophers School, Queens Road - Solar Panels 0.4 MW
3.1 YRS
Accrington and Rossendale College, Sandy Lane - Solar PV Panels 0.4 MW
2.5 YRS

Every approved, unbuilt project

approved 24+ months ago, still not generating · planning database, July 2026
SiteTechnologyEnough forCapacityApprovedWaiting
Hyndburn Wind Farm ExtensionWind Onshore7,200 homes8.2 MW2015-0611.1 yrs
Coach Road Meadow - Solar FarmSolar Photovoltaics700 homes2.0 MW2024-062.1 yrs
Accrington and Rossendale College, Sandy Lane - Solar PV PanelsSolar Photovoltaics200 homes0.4 MW2024-022.5 yrs
St Christophers School, Queens Road - Solar PanelsSolar Photovoltaics100 homes0.4 MW2023-063.1 yrs
The Hollins, Hollins Lane - Solar PanelsSolar Photovoltaics100 homes0.3 MW2024-042.3 yrs
Senator International, Newhouse Road - Solar Photovoltaics PanelsSolar Photovoltaics100 homes0.3 MW2024-072.1 yrs
Whinney Hill Road - Solar Photovoltaic PanelsSolar Photovoltaics100 homes0.2 MW2021-124.7 yrs
Altham - Solar PVSolar Photovoltaics100 homes0.1 MW2022-014.5 yrs
Whitebirk Depot Solar PanelsSolar Photovoltaics— MW2021-015.5 yrs

Plus 4 more approved within the last two years.

Batteries

projects of 10 MW and above · planning database, July 2026 · what batteries do →
SiteSizeStatusWhile discharging
Knuzden Moss Farm, Oswaldtwistle - Battery Energy Storage System60 MWapproved, not built 2025could supply ≈210,000 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 Sarah Smith said about the grid in Parliament? Search Hansard →

See the full league table Data (JSON)