No.516 of 650 · approved, not built MP: Mr Louie French (Conservative) England

Old Bexley and Sidcup

Old Bexley and Sidcup has no significant clean power approved and waiting to be built, and none running. Britain's grid bottlenecks still add to bills here: about £92 a year per household, £3.7m across the constituency's 39,715 homes. A 200 MW battery was refused planning here in 2025; while discharging it could have supplied about 701,000 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

0.3 MW

of clean power — all solar — approved and still not built, enough to supply a year's electricity to 100 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

£3.7m

is what the grid gap costs this constituency's 39,715 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

Maidstone Road - Solar Panels 0.3 MW

2.6 YRS

Every approved, unbuilt project

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

Site	Technology	Enough for	Capacity	Approved	Waiting
Maidstone Road - Solar Panels	Solar Photovoltaics	100 homes	0.3 MW	2023-12	2.6 yrs

Plus 1 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
Manor Farm, Dartford Road - Energy Storage System	212 MW	in planning	could supply ≈743,000 homes
North Cray Road - Battery Energy Storage System	200 MW	refused 2025	could supply ≈701,000 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 Mr Louie French said about the grid in Parliament? Search Hansard →

See the full league table Data (JSON)