No.437 of 650 · approved, not built MP: Luke Akehurst (Labour) England

North Durham

North Durham has 28 MW of renewables running, enough for 21,000 homes over a year, and nothing large waiting in the planning queue. 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 43,950 homes. There is also 21 MW of wind running here on the local network. If that gets switched off, no national record shows it.

Not visible
here

21 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.

how we worked this out

0.9 MW

of clean power — all solar — approved and still not built, enough to supply a year's electricity to 300 homes. Approved at least two years ago; waiting on the grid, not on planning.

1 project · planning database (REPD), July 2026 · how we worked this out

£4.0m

is what the grid gap costs this constituency's 43,950 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

1 of 1 waiting projects · years since approval

Harelaw Industrial Estate - Solar Panels 0.9 MW

2.8 YRS

Every approved, unbuilt project

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

Site	Technology	Enough for	Capacity	Approved	Waiting
Harelaw Industrial Estate - Solar Panels	Solar Photovoltaics	300 homes	0.9 MW	2023-10	2.8 yrs

Plus 2 more approved within the last two years.

Batteries

projects of 10 MW and above · planning database, July 2026 · what batteries do →

Site	Size	Status	While discharging
Edge Lane, Maiden Law - Solar Farm & Battery Storage	45 MW	approved, not built 2026	could supply ≈158,000 homes
Maiden, Annfield Plain - Energy Storage	38 MW	approved, not built 2021	could supply ≈133,000 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 Luke Akehurst said about the grid in Parliament? Search Hansard →

See the full league table Data (JSON)