No.291 of 650 · approved, not built MP: Sarah Coombes (Labour) England

West Bromwich

West Bromwich has 3.4 MW of clean power (all solar) approved and still not built: enough to supply a year's electricity to 1,200 homes. Britain's grid bottlenecks still add to bills here: about £92 a year per household, £3.9m across the constituency's 42,808 homes.

Not visible
here

No big wind farm on the national grid is mapped to this constituency, so no switch-off payments show here in national data. Smaller wind farms on the local grid can still be paid to switch off — invisibly. The £ figure for this seat is a floor, not a zero.

how we worked this out

3.4 MW

of clean power — all solar — approved and still not built, enough to supply a year's electricity to 1,200 homes. Approved at least two years ago; waiting on the grid, not on planning. That is 3.4× the renewable capacity actually running here.

4 projects · planning database (REPD), July 2026 · how we worked this out

£3.9m

is what the grid gap costs this constituency's 42,808 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

4 of 4 waiting projects · years since approval

Broadwell Road - Solar Panels 1 MW

3.8 YRS

Oldbury Road - Solar Panels 0.7 MW

3.6 YRS

Voestalpine Metsec, Broadwell Road - Solar Panels 0.7 MW

2.2 YRS

Emr Oldbury, Union Road - Solar Panels 1 MW

2.2 YRS

Every approved, unbuilt project

approved 24+ months ago, still not generating · planning database, July 2026

Site	Technology	Enough for	Capacity	Approved	Waiting
Broadwell Road - Solar Panels	Solar Photovoltaics	400 homes	1.0 MW	2022-10	3.8 yrs
Emr Oldbury, Union Road - Solar Panels	Solar Photovoltaics	400 homes	1.0 MW	2024-06	2.2 yrs
Oldbury Road - Solar Panels	Solar Photovoltaics	300 homes	0.7 MW	2022-12	3.6 yrs
Voestalpine Metsec, Broadwell Road - Solar Panels	Solar Photovoltaics	200 homes	0.7 MW	2024-05	2.2 yrs

Plus 1 more approved within the last two years.

Batteries

projects of 10 MW and above · planning database, July 2026 · what batteries do →

Site	Size	Status	While discharging
Edwin Richards Quarry, Portway Road - Battery Storage	100 MW	approved, not built 2025	could supply ≈350,000 homes
Bustleholme Substation	50 MW	operating 2021	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 →

Read the full method, including everything we cannot see →

What has Sarah Coombes said about the grid in Parliament? Search Hansard →

See the full league table Data (JSON)