Peterborough
Peterborough has 67 MW of clean power (all solar) approved and still not built: enough to supply a year's electricity to 24,000 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, £4.6m across the constituency's 49,765 homes. There is also 30 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nutsgrove Farm, Thorney - Solar Array | Solar Photovoltaics | 18,000 homes | 49.9 MW | 2024-06 | 2.1 yrs |
| Dogsthorpe, Welland Road - Solar Farm & Battery Storage | Solar Photovoltaics | 5,100 homes | 14.0 MW | 2024-06 | 2.1 yrs |
| Coningsby Business Park, Stirling Way - Solar Panels | Solar Photovoltaics | 500 homes | 1.3 MW | 2024-04 | 2.3 yrs |
| Perkins Engines, Fengate - Solar Farm | Solar Photovoltaics | 400 homes | 1.2 MW | 2022-03 | 4.4 yrs |
| Joice And Hill Poultry - Solar PV Farm | Solar Photovoltaics | 200 homes | 0.5 MW | 2022-04 | 4.3 yrs |
| F P Smith Motors, Sturrock Way - Solar PV System | Solar Photovoltaics | 100 homes | 0.2 MW | 2023-05 | 3.2 yrs |
| David Lloyd Clubs, Thorpe Wood - Solar Panels | Solar Photovoltaics | — | — MW | 2023-08 | 3.0 yrs |
Plus 5 more approved within the last two years.
Batteries
| Site | Size | Status | While discharging |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nutsgrove Farm, Thorney - Battery Energy Storage | 50 MW | approved, not built 2024 | could supply ≈175,000 homes |
| Third Drove, Fengate - Battery Storage | 50 MW | approved, not built 2023 | could supply ≈175,000 homes |
| Malice Farm, French Drove - BESS | 50 MW | approved, not built 2026 | could supply ≈175,000 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 Andrew Pakes said about the grid in Parliament? Search Hansard →