No.270 of 650 · approved, not built MP: Rachel Hopkins (Labour) England

Luton South and South Bedfordshire

Luton South and South Bedfordshire has 4.5 MW of clean power (mostly solar) approved and still not built: enough to supply a year's electricity to 2,400 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 44,991 homes.

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

4.5 MW

of clean power — mostly solar — approved and still not built, enough to supply a year's electricity to 2,400 homes. Approved at least two years ago; waiting on the grid, not on planning. That is 0.3× the renewable capacity actually running here.

4 projects · 3 MW solar, 1.5 MW onshore wind · planning database (REPD), July 2026 · how we worked this out

£4.1m

is what the grid gap costs this constituency's 44,991 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

4 of 4 waiting projects · years since approval

Luton Airport, President Way - Solar PV Panels 0.5 MW

3.9 YRS

Percival Way - Solar Panels 0.5 MW

3.9 YRS

Astral Green - Wind Turbine, Solar Array & Battery Energy Storage System 2.1 MW

2.3 YRS

Astral Green - Wind Turbine, Solar Array & Battery Energy Storage System 1.5 MW

2.3 YRS

Every approved, unbuilt project

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

Site	Technology	Enough for	Capacity	Approved	Waiting
Astral Green - Wind Turbine, Solar Array & Battery Energy Storage System	Solar Photovoltaics	800 homes	2.1 MW	2024-04	2.3 yrs
Astral Green - Wind Turbine, Solar Array & Battery Energy Storage System	Wind Onshore	1,300 homes	1.5 MW	2024-04	2.3 yrs
Luton Airport, President Way - Solar PV Panels	Solar Photovoltaics	200 homes	0.5 MW	2022-08	3.9 yrs
Percival Way - Solar Panels	Solar Photovoltaics	200 homes	0.5 MW	2022-08	3.9 yrs

Plus 2 more approved within the last two years.

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 Rachel Hopkins said about the grid in Parliament? Search Hansard →

See the full league table Data (JSON)