CONSTITUENCY BRIEFING · ENERGYMAP.APP
South Down
South Down has no significant clean power approved and waiting to be built, and none running. 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. Northern Ireland is on the all-Ireland grid, so Britain's grid bottlenecks do not reach bills here in the same way.
Ranks 525 of 650 for clean power approved and not built.
What is stuck, and why
| Project and developer | Tech | Size | Why it is stuck |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gruggandoo Wind FarmABO Wind | Onshore wind | 40 MW35,000 homes | Waiting 11.3 years for a planning decisionWho can move it: Newry, Mourne and Down Council · planning ref P/2015/0218/F |
| Solar PV Energy Development in NewryHHT Management Limited | Solar | 2 MW700 homes | Approved less than a year ago — nothing has happened sinceWho can move it: the developer and the network company · planning ref LA07/2024/0589/F |
Compared with its neighbours
| Constituency | Approved, not built | Running | Paid to switch off |
|---|---|---|---|
| South Down | 0.3 MW | 0.2 MW | not visible |
| Newry and Armagh | 2.6 MW | 0 MW | not visible |
| Strangford | 0.3 MW | 6 MW | not visible |
| Upper Bann | 1.4 MW | 9.8 MW | not visible |
| Lagan Valley | 0.5 MW | 76 MW | not visible |
Newry and Armagh next door has 2.6 MW waiting, more than South Down's 0.3 MW.
The rest of the briefing
- Every approval each project still needs, and which of them the public can see
- What building them would mean here — community payments, business rates and construction work
- Drafted parliamentary questions and letters, filled in with this seat's figures
- 1 story angles for local reporting
- A two-page PDF, and a newsroom edition with the references and who to call
Everything above needs no account, and neither does the full seat page, the method or this constituency's raw data. The account covers the packaged briefing and its PDF, and nothing else.