Newton Aycliffe and Spennymoor
Newton Aycliffe and Spennymoor has 47 MW of clean power (all solar) approved and still not built: enough to supply a year's electricity to 17,000 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 43,513 homes. There is also 45 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| West House Farm, Fishburn - Solar Farm | Solar Photovoltaics | 15,000 homes | 41.4 MW | 2024-04 | 2.3 yrs |
| Amazon UK Services - Photovoltaic System | Solar Photovoltaics | 1,300 homes | 3.5 MW | 2022-04 | 4.3 yrs |
| Thorn Lighting, Butchers Race - Solar Panels | Solar Photovoltaics | 600 homes | 1.7 MW | 2024-08 | 2.0 yrs |
| The Neville Hamlin Building, Thomas Wright Way - Solar Panels | Solar Photovoltaics | 100 homes | 0.2 MW | 2023-07 | 3.0 yrs |
| Roman Factory, Whitworth Avenue - Solar PV Panels | Solar Photovoltaics | 100 homes | 0.2 MW | 2023-12 | 2.6 yrs |
| York Road - Solar PV panels | Solar Photovoltaics | 100 homes | 0.1 MW | 2022-05 | 4.2 yrs |
Plus 2 more approved within the last two years.
Batteries
| Site | Size | Status | While discharging |
|---|---|---|---|
| Spennymoor Greener Grid Park | 200 MW | approved, not built 2025 | could supply ≈701,000 homes |
| South Thinford Lane, Thinford - Energy Storage | 100 MW | approved, not built 2022 | could supply ≈350,000 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 Alan Strickland said about the grid in Parliament? Search Hansard →