No.28 of 650 · approved, not built MP: Sir Nicholas Dakin (Labour) England

Scunthorpe

Scunthorpe has 165 MW of clean power (all solar) approved and still not built: enough to supply a year's electricity to 60,000 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, £4.1m across the constituency's 45,034 homes. There is also 28 MW of wind running here on the local network. If that gets switched off, no national record shows it.

Not visible
here
28 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.
165 MW
of clean power — all solar — approved and still not built, enough to supply a year's electricity to 60,000 homes — about as many homes as this constituency has. Approved at least two years ago; waiting on the grid, not on planning. That is 2.3× the renewable capacity actually running here.
7 projects · planning database (REPD), July 2026 · how we worked this out
£4.1m
is what the grid gap costs this constituency's 45,034 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

6 of 7 waiting projects · years since approval
Winterton Landfill Site - Ground Mounted Solar PV Arrays 5 MW
5.1 YRS
Little Crow Solar Park 150 MW
4.3 YRS
WM Morrison Supermarkets - Solar Photovoltaics 0.6 MW
4.1 YRS
Frederick Gough School, Grange Lane South - Solar Panels 0.2 MW
3.7 YRS
John Leggott College, West Common Lane - Solar Panels 0.3 MW
3.1 YRS
Carr Lane - Solar Farm 9 MW
3.0 YRS

Every approved, unbuilt project

approved 24+ months ago, still not generating · planning database, July 2026
SiteTechnologyEnough forCapacityApprovedWaiting
Little Crow Solar ParkSolar Photovoltaics54,000 homes150.0 MW2022-044.3 yrs
Carr Lane - Solar FarmSolar Photovoltaics3,300 homes9.0 MW2023-083.0 yrs
Winterton Landfill Site - Ground Mounted Solar PV ArraysSolar Photovoltaics1,800 homes5.0 MW2021-075.1 yrs
WM Morrison Supermarkets - Solar PhotovoltaicsSolar Photovoltaics200 homes0.6 MW2022-064.1 yrs
John Leggott College, West Common Lane - Solar PanelsSolar Photovoltaics100 homes0.3 MW2023-063.1 yrs
Frederick Gough School, Grange Lane South - Solar PanelsSolar Photovoltaics100 homes0.2 MW2022-113.7 yrs
Baths Hall, Doncaster Road - Solar PV PanelsSolar Photovoltaics100 homes0.2 MW2023-112.7 yrs

Plus 8 more approved within the last two years.

Batteries

projects of 10 MW and above · planning database, July 2026 · what batteries do →
SiteSizeStatusWhile discharging
Scawby Brook, Brigg - Battery Storage99 MWapproved, not built 2021could supply ≈347,000 homes
Winterton Road - Battery Energy Storage95 MWapproved, not built 2022could supply ≈333,000 homes
Little Crow Solar Park90 MWapproved, not built 2022could supply ≈315,000 homes
North Lincolnshire Green Energy Park30 MWapproved, not built 2025could supply ≈105,000 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 Sir Nicholas Dakin said about the grid in Parliament? Search Hansard →

See the full league table Data (JSON)