St Austell and Newquay
St Austell and Newquay has 11 MW of clean power (almost all onshore wind) approved and still not built: enough to supply a year's electricity to 8,900 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 43,478 homes.
here
The waiting list
Every approved, unbuilt project
| Site | Technology | Enough for | Capacity | Approved | Waiting |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Goonamarth Farm - Wind Turbine | Wind Onshore | 3,800 homes | 4.3 MW | 2024-05 | 2.3 yrs |
| Lower Longstones, St Mewan Wind Turbine | Wind Onshore | 3,600 homes | 4.1 MW | 2021-03 | 5.4 yrs |
| Wheal Martyn, Carthew - 1 Wind turbine | Wind Onshore | 1,100 homes | 1.3 MW | 2022-02 | 4.5 yrs |
| Cornwall Gateway Trunk Road, Service Area - Solar Farm | Solar Photovoltaics | 300 homes | 0.8 MW | 2024-06 | 2.1 yrs |
| Treloggan Road - Solar Panels | Solar Photovoltaics | 100 homes | 0.4 MW | 2022-04 | 4.3 yrs |
Plus 4 more approved within the last two years.
Batteries
| Site | Size | Status | While discharging |
|---|---|---|---|
| Indian Queens Sub station, Carne Hill - Battery Energy Storage | 50 MW | approved, not built 2023 | could supply ≈175,000 homes |
| Indian Queens National Grid Substation, Domelick Hill - Battery Storage | 50 MW | approved, not built 2024 | could supply ≈175,000 homes |
| Indian Queens Sub-Station - Battery Storage | 48 MW | approved, not built 2022 | could supply ≈166,000 homes |
| Mount Stamper Road, Treverbyn - Battery Energy Storage | 10 MW | approved, not built 2024 | could 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 →
What has Noah Law said about the grid in Parliament? Search Hansard →