No.388 of 650 · approved, not built MP: Martin McCluskey (Labour) Scotland

Inverclyde and Renfrewshire West

Inverclyde and Renfrewshire West has 1.3 MW of clean power (all solar) approved and still not built: enough to supply a year's electricity to 500 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, £3.9m across the constituency's 42,329 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.
1.3 MW
of clean power — all solar — approved and still not built, enough to supply a year's electricity to 500 homes. Approved at least two years ago; waiting on the grid, not on planning. That is 0.1× the renewable capacity actually running here.
5 projects · planning database (REPD), July 2026 · how we worked this out
£3.9m
is what the grid gap costs this constituency's 42,329 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

5 of 5 waiting projects · years since approval
King Street - Photovoltaic Panels
4.2 YRS
Faulds Park Road- Solar PV Panlels 0.3 MW
4.0 YRS
Greenock Headworks, Eldon Street - Solar Panels 0.2 MW
3.7 YRS
Overton Water Treatment Works, Old Largs Road By Overton - Solar Panels 0.6 MW
3.5 YRS
Finlaystone House, Estate Greenock Road - Solar Panels 0.1 MW
2.2 YRS

Every approved, unbuilt project

approved 24+ months ago, still not generating · planning database, July 2026
SiteTechnologyEnough forCapacityApprovedWaiting
Overton Water Treatment Works, Old Largs Road By Overton - Solar PanelsSolar Photovoltaics200 homes0.6 MW2023-013.5 yrs
Faulds Park Road- Solar PV PanlelsSolar Photovoltaics100 homes0.3 MW2022-074.0 yrs
Greenock Headworks, Eldon Street - Solar PanelsSolar Photovoltaics100 homes0.2 MW2022-123.7 yrs
Finlaystone House, Estate Greenock Road - Solar PanelsSolar Photovoltaics100 homes0.1 MW2024-052.2 yrs
King Street - Photovoltaic PanelsSolar Photovoltaics— MW2022-064.2 yrs

Plus 3 more approved within the last two years.

Batteries

projects of 10 MW and above · planning database, July 2026 · what batteries do →
SiteSizeStatusWhile discharging
Auchentiber Road - Battery Energy Storage System700 MWapproved, not built 2024could supply ≈2,453,000 homes
Flatterton Farm, Flatterton Road - Battery Storage50 MWapproved, not built 2024could supply ≈175,000 homes
Dougliehill Water Treatment Works, Dougliehill Road - Battery Storage49 MWapproved, not built 2025could supply ≈172,000 homes
Houston Solar PV Farm & Energy Storage Facility25 MWapproved, not built 2026could supply ≈88,000 homes
Knockair, Dougliehill Road - Battery Storage Facility24 MWcould supply ≈84,000 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 Martin McCluskey said about the grid in Parliament? Search Hansard →

See the full league table Data (JSON)