ENERGYMAP
No.5 OF 650 · APPROVED, NOT BUILT MP: Mrs Kemi Badenoch (Conservative) England

North West Essex

North West Essex has 623 MW of clean power (all solar) approved and still not built: enough to supply a year's electricity to 226,000 homes. No wind farm here is paid to switch off. Almost every pound of that money goes to wind farms in Scotland, held back by the crowded wires at the border. The cost is shared across every bill in Britain, so households here pay too: about £92 a year per household, £3.9m across the constituency's 42,575 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
623 MW
of clean power — all solar — approved and still not built, enough to supply a year's electricity to 226,000 homes — 5 times every household in this constituency. Approved at least two years ago; waiting on the grid, not on planning. That is 9.1× the renewable capacity actually running here.
8 projects · planning database (REPD), July 2026 · how we worked this out
£3.9m
is what the grid gap costs this constituency's 42,575 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 8 waiting projects · years since approval
Stanstead Solar Project 14 MW
3.9 YRS
Longfield 500 MW
3.1 YRS
Thaxted - Solar farm 40 MW
2.6 YRS
Berden Hall Solar Farm 56 MW
2.0 YRS

Every approved, unbuilt project

approved 24+ months ago, still not generating · planning database, July 2026
SiteTechnologyEnough forCapacityApprovedWaiting
LongfieldSolar Photovoltaics182,000 homes500.0 MW2023-063.1 yrs
Berden Hall Solar FarmSolar Photovoltaics20,000 homes56.0 MW2024-072.0 yrs
Thaxted - Solar farmSolar Photovoltaics15,000 homes40.0 MW2023-122.6 yrs
Stanstead Solar ProjectSolar Photovoltaics5,200 homes14.3 MW2022-083.9 yrs
Dunmow Solar Farm, Chelmsford Road - Solar FarmSolar Photovoltaics3,600 homes9.9 MW2024-072.1 yrs
Chesterford Park - Green Energy HubSolar Photovoltaics1,000 homes2.8 MW2022-123.6 yrs
St Marys School, Hampton Road - Solar panelsSolar Photovoltaics100 homes0.2 MW2023-083.0 yrs
Bridgemarsh Care Home, Main Road - Solar PanelsSolar Photovoltaics—— MW2023-043.3 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
Pelham49 MWoperatingcould supply ≈172,000 homes
Wickham Hall Estate - Battery Storage10 MWapproved, not built 2024could supply ≈35,000 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.

Read the full method, including everything we cannot see →

What has Mrs Kemi Badenoch said about the grid in Parliament? Search Hansard →

See the full league table Data (JSON)