No.33 of 650 · approved, not built MP: Steve Witherden (Labour) Wales

Montgomeryshire and Glyndwr

Montgomeryshire and Glyndwr has 151 MW of clean power (almost all onshore wind) approved and still not built: enough to supply a year's electricity to 130,000 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, £4.0m across the constituency's 43,167 homes. There is also 168 MW of wind running here on the local network. If that gets switched off, no national record shows it.

Not visible
here
168 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.
151 MW
of clean power — almost all onshore wind — approved and still not built, enough to supply a year's electricity to 130,000 homes — 3 times every household in this constituency. Approved at least two years ago; waiting on the grid, not on planning. That is 0.8× the renewable capacity actually running here.
7 projects · 147 MW onshore wind, 3.7 MW solar · planning database (REPD), July 2026 · how we worked this out
£4.0m
is what the grid gap costs this constituency's 43,167 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

6 of 7 waiting projects · years since approval
Llandinam Windfarm Repowering and Extension 102 MW
10.9 YRS
Carno 3 45 MW
9.2 YRS
Glandulas Mawr Farm 0.3 MW
7.1 YRS
Buttington Old Hall, Buttington - Solar PV Arrays 0.2 MW
4.4 YRS
Coppice Farm, Pen-Rhos - Solar Array 1.1 MW
3.5 YRS
Rallt Carno - Solar Arrays 0.2 MW
3.3 YRS

Every approved, unbuilt project

approved 24+ months ago, still not generating · planning database, July 2026
SiteTechnologyEnough forCapacityApprovedWaiting
Llandinam Windfarm Repowering and ExtensionWind Onshore89,000 homes102.0 MW2015-0910.9 yrs
Carno 3Wind Onshore39,000 homes45.0 MW2017-059.2 yrs
The Gaer - Solar ArraySolar Photovoltaics700 homes1.9 MW2024-032.4 yrs
Coppice Farm, Pen-Rhos - Solar ArraySolar Photovoltaics400 homes1.1 MW2023-013.5 yrs
Glandulas Mawr FarmSolar Photovoltaics100 homes0.3 MW2019-067.1 yrs
Rallt Carno - Solar ArraysSolar Photovoltaics100 homes0.2 MW2023-043.3 yrs
Buttington Old Hall, Buttington - Solar PV ArraysSolar Photovoltaics100 homes0.2 MW2022-034.4 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
Bronwylfa Road, Rhostyllen - Energy Storage System400 MWcould supply ≈1,402,000 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 Steve Witherden said about the grid in Parliament? Search Hansard →

See the full league table Data (JSON)