South Leicestershire
South Leicestershire has 125 MW of clean power (all solar) approved and still not built: enough to supply a year's electricity to 45,000 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, £3.9m across the constituency's 42,391 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Desford Road, Thurlaston | Solar Photovoltaics | 15,000 homes | 40.0 MW | 2018-09 | 7.9 yrs |
| Hinckley Road - Solar Farm | Solar Photovoltaics | 15,000 homes | 40.0 MW | 2023-05 | 3.2 yrs |
| Lychgate Lane, Aston Flamville - Solar Farm | Solar Photovoltaics | 7,300 homes | 20.0 MW | 2024-04 | 2.3 yrs |
| Swinford Wind Farm | Solar Photovoltaics | 7,300 homes | 20.0 MW | 2021-12 | 4.6 yrs |
| Dorsey Way, Enderby - Solar Panels | Solar Photovoltaics | 700 homes | 1.8 MW | 2024-04 | 2.3 yrs |
| Dorsey Way, Enderby - Solar PV system | Solar Photovoltaics | 200 homes | 0.7 MW | 2024-04 | 2.3 yrs |
| Armstrong Logistics, Wellington Parkway - Solar panels | Solar Photovoltaics | 200 homes | 0.5 MW | 2023-11 | 2.7 yrs |
| Wellington Parkway - Solar panels | Solar Photovoltaics | 200 homes | 0.5 MW | 2022-05 | 4.2 yrs |
| Marlborough Drive, Fleckney - Solar Panels | Solar Photovoltaics | 100 homes | 0.4 MW | 2022-09 | 3.9 yrs |
| The Whittle Estate, Whetstone - Solar PV system | Solar Photovoltaics | 100 homes | 0.4 MW | 2021-10 | 4.8 yrs |
| Leicestershire Constabulary, St Johns - Solar Pv Array | Solar Photovoltaics | 100 homes | 0.2 MW | 2024-07 | 2.0 yrs |
| Austral House, Coventry Road - Solar Panels | Solar Photovoltaics | 100 homes | 0.1 MW | 2023-01 | 3.6 yrs |
Plus 6 more approved within the last two years.
Batteries
| Site | Size | Status | While discharging |
|---|---|---|---|
| Swinford Energy Park - Energy Park Facility & Battery Storage | 1,000 MW | in planning | could supply ≈3,504,000 homes |
| Normanton Energy Reserve - Battery Storage | 500 MW | approved, not built 2024 | could supply ≈1,752,000 homes |
| National Grid Enderby Substation | 57 MW | 2021 | could supply ≈200,000 homes |
| Enderby Storage, Redcomb Farm | 50 MW | 2018 | 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 Alberto Costa said about the grid in Parliament? Search Hansard →