Maldon
Maldon has 139 MW of clean power (all solar) approved and still not built: enough to supply a year's electricity to 50,000 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, £3.8m across the constituency's 41,803 homes. There is also 58 MW of wind running here on the local network. If that gets switched off, no national record shows it. A 100 MW battery was refused planning here in 2022; while discharging it could have supplied about 350,000 homes.
here
The waiting list
Every approved, unbuilt project
| Site | Technology | Enough for | Capacity | Approved | Waiting |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Canon Barns Road - Solar Photovoltaic Arrays & Battery Storage | Solar Photovoltaics | 18,000 homes | 49.9 MW | 2023-02 | 3.5 yrs |
| Hill Farm Solar Park & Battery Storage (Hanningfield Green) | Solar Photovoltaics | 13,000 homes | 36.7 MW | 2022-07 | 4.1 yrs |
| St Cleres Hall Pit Solar Array | Solar Photovoltaics | 9,100 homes | 25.0 MW | 2021-10 | 4.8 yrs |
| Dengie - Solar PV array | Solar Photovoltaics | 6,900 homes | 19.0 MW | 2024-05 | 2.2 yrs |
| Canon Barns Road Solar Park | Solar Photovoltaics | 2,900 homes | 8.0 MW | 2022-01 | 4.5 yrs |
| Sub Zero And Wolf Limited, The Street - Solar Panels | Solar Photovoltaics | 100 homes | 0.2 MW | 2022-10 | 3.8 yrs |
Plus 3 more approved within the last two years.
Batteries
| Site | Size | Status | While discharging |
|---|---|---|---|
| Battlesbridge Bypass, Rettendon - Battery Storage | 100 MW | refused 2022 | could supply ≈350,000 homes |
| Southlands Solar Farm & Battery Storage | 57 MW | approved, not built 2024 | could supply ≈200,000 homes |
| Maldon Hall | 40 MW | approved, not built 2019 | could supply ≈140,000 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 Sir John Whittingdale said about the grid in Parliament? Search Hansard →