No.486 of 650 · approved, not built MP: Sorcha Eastwood (Alliance) Northern Ireland

Lagan Valley

Lagan Valley has 76 MW of renewables running, enough for 28,000 homes over a year, and nothing large waiting in the planning queue. 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.

Not visible
here

No big wind farm on the national grid is mapped to this constituency, so no switch-off payments show here in national data. Smaller wind farms on the local grid can still be paid to switch off — invisibly. The £ figure for this seat is a floor, not a zero.

how we worked this out

0.5 MW

of clean power — all onshore wind — approved and still not built, enough to supply a year's electricity to 400 homes. Approved at least two years ago; waiting on the grid, not on planning.

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

Different
grid

Northern Ireland is part of the all-Ireland Single Electricity Market, not the GB grid, so the GB grid-gap bill does not apply here.

how we worked this out

The waiting list

3 of 3 waiting projects · years since approval

Ballinderry Road 0.3 MW

5.7 YRS

Lagangreen Road 0.2 MW

2.5 YRS

Garvaghy Road Replacement Turbine

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
Ballinderry Road	Wind Onshore	300 homes	0.3 MW	2020-11	5.7 yrs
Lagangreen Road	Wind Onshore	200 homes	0.2 MW	2024-02	2.5 yrs
Garvaghy Road Replacement Turbine	Wind Onshore	—	— MW	2024-06	2.1 yrs

Plus 2 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
Battery Storage System Development in Lisburn	150 MW	approved, not built 2026	could supply ≈526,000 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 Sorcha Eastwood said about the grid in Parliament? Search Hansard →

See the full league table Data (JSON)