Livingston
Livingston has 118 MW of clean power (mostly onshore wind) approved and still not built: enough to supply a year's electricity to 91,000 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. 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 44,193 homes. There is also 64 MW of wind running here on the local network. If that gets switched off, no national record shows it.
here
The waiting list
Every approved, unbuilt project
| Site | Technology | Enough for | Capacity | Approved | Waiting |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Longhill Burn Wind Farm | Wind Onshore | 40,000 homes | 45.6 MW | 2020-04 | 6.3 yrs |
| Camilty Plantation - Wind Farm | Wind Onshore | 23,000 homes | 25.8 MW | 2021-10 | 4.8 yrs |
| Selms Muir - Solar Farm | Solar Photovoltaics | 6,500 homes | 18.0 MW | 2022-09 | 3.9 yrs |
| Pearie Law 2 - Wind turbines | Wind Onshore | 13,000 homes | 14.4 MW | 2021-12 | 4.6 yrs |
| Tormywheel Wind Farm Extension | Wind Onshore | 4,400 homes | 5.0 MW | 2020-03 | 6.4 yrs |
| Harburnhead Windfarm - Wind Turbine | Wind Onshore | 3,500 homes | 4.0 MW | 2023-01 | 3.5 yrs |
| Nettlehill Road - Solar Panels | Solar Photovoltaics | 1,000 homes | 2.8 MW | 2024-02 | 2.4 yrs |
| The Wyman Gordon Facility, Nettlehill Road- Solar Farm | Solar Photovoltaics | 700 homes | 2.0 MW | 2023-01 | 3.6 yrs |
| Uphall Business Park, Uphall - Solar PV Panels | Solar Photovoltaics | 100 homes | 0.3 MW | 2022-03 | 4.4 yrs |
| Maxwell Square, Brucefield - Solar Panels | Solar Photovoltaics | 100 homes | 0.2 MW | 2023-07 | 3.0 yrs |
Plus 3 more approved within the last two years.
Batteries
| Site | Size | Status | While discharging |
|---|---|---|---|
| Learielaw Farm, Learielaw - Battery Energy Storage | 100 MW | approved, not built 2025 | could supply ≈350,000 homes |
| Drumshoreland Road Battery Storage Facility | 50 MW | approved, not built 2022 | could supply ≈175,000 homes |
| Drumcross Battery Storage | 30 MW | approved, not built 2018 | could supply ≈105,000 homes |
| Broxburn | 20 MW | 2017 | could supply ≈70,000 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 Gregor Poynton said about the grid in Parliament? Search Hansard →