No.106 of 650 · approved, not built MP: Sir Julian Smith (Conservative) England

Skipton and Ripon

Skipton and Ripon has 63 MW of clean power (all solar) approved and still not built: enough to supply a year's electricity to 23,000 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, £4.0m across the constituency's 43,731 homes.

Not visible
here
18 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.
63 MW
of clean power — all solar — approved and still not built, enough to supply a year's electricity to 23,000 homes. Approved at least two years ago; waiting on the grid, not on planning. That is 2.2× the renewable capacity actually running here.
10 projects · planning database (REPD), July 2026 · how we worked this out
£4.0m
is what the grid gap costs this constituency's 43,731 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 10 waiting projects · years since approval
Aygill Intake - Solar Panels & Wind Turbines
4.6 YRS
Aygill Intake - Solar Panels & Wind Turbines
4.6 YRS
Cayton Solar farm 50 MW
4.5 YRS
Dechra Pharmaceuticals Manufacturing, Building 3 - Solar Panels 1.6 MW
3.9 YRS
Oakwood Park Business Centre, Fountains Road - Solar PV Modules 0.2 MW
3.5 YRS
Duffield Wood Yard, Melmerby Green Lane - Solar Panels 0.2 MW
3.4 YRS

Every approved, unbuilt project

approved 24+ months ago, still not generating · planning database, July 2026
SiteTechnologyEnough forCapacityApprovedWaiting
Cayton Solar farmSolar Photovoltaics18,000 homes49.9 MW2022-014.5 yrs
Station Lane, South StainleySolar Photovoltaics3,600 homes10.0 MW2024-042.3 yrs
Dechra Pharmaceuticals Manufacturing, Building 3 - Solar PanelsSolar Photovoltaics600 homes1.6 MW2022-093.9 yrs
First Bus Hunslet Park Depot, Atkinson Street - Solar PanelsSolar Photovoltaics200 homes0.5 MW2023-043.3 yrs
Yorkshire Water Plc Sewage Works - Ground Mounted Solar PV DevelopmentSolar Photovoltaics100 homes0.4 MW2023-073.1 yrs
Riverside Caravan Park, Slaidburn Road - Solar PV ArraysSolar Photovoltaics100 homes0.3 MW2024-012.5 yrs
Duffield Wood Yard, Melmerby Green Lane - Solar PanelsSolar Photovoltaics100 homes0.2 MW2023-033.4 yrs
Oakwood Park Business Centre, Fountains Road - Solar PV ModulesSolar Photovoltaics100 homes0.2 MW2023-023.5 yrs
Aygill Intake - Solar Panels & Wind TurbinesSolar Photovoltaics— MW2021-124.6 yrs
Aygill Intake - Solar Panels & Wind TurbinesWind Onshore— MW2021-124.6 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
Kellingley Farm, Stocking Lane - Battery Energy Storage240 MWcould supply ≈841,000 homes
New Oaks, Station Road - Battery Energy Storage System50 MWcould supply ≈175,000 homes
Juniper Farm, Main Street - BESS10 MWcould 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.

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 Julian Smith said about the grid in Parliament? Search Hansard →

See the full league table Data (JSON)