Hitchin
Hitchin has 50 MW of clean power (all solar) approved and still not built: enough to supply a year's electricity to 18,000 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, £3.7m across the constituency's 40,758 homes. There is also 20 MW of wind running here on the local network. If that gets switched off, no national record shows it.
Ranks 135 of 650 for clean power approved and not built.
What is stuck, and why
| Project and developer | Tech | Size | Why it is stuck |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stevenage Road, Titmore Green - Battery Energy Storage SystemPivoted Power Llp | Battery | 57 MW | Waiting 14 months for a planning decisionWho can move it: North Hertfordshire Council · planning ref 25/01349/FP |
| Wymondley Solar Farm, Great WymondleyAGR Power Limited | Solar | 50 MW18,000 homes | Approved 2 years ago — nothing has happened sinceWho can move it: the developer and the network company · planning ref 21/03380/FP |
| Wandon End - Solar Farm & Battery StorageEPL 002 Limited | Solar | 50 MW18,000 homes | Approved a year ago — nothing has happened sinceWho can move it: the developer and the network company · planning ref 22/03231/FP |
| St Ippolyts - Solar Farm & Battery StorageBrockwell Storage & Solar Limited | Solar | 25 MW9,100 homes | Approved a year ago — nothing has happened sinceWho can move it: the developer and the network company · planning ref 24/02455/FP |
| St Ippolyts - Solar Farm & Battery StorageBrockwell Storage & Solar Limited | Battery | 12 MW | Approved a year ago — nothing has happened sinceWho can move it: the developer and the network company · planning ref 24/02455/FP |
Compared with its neighbours
| Constituency | Approved, not built | Running | Paid to switch off |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hitchin | 50 MW | 33 MW | not visible |
| Harpenden and Berkhamsted | 0.3 MW | 13 MW | not visible |
| Luton South and South Bedfordshire | 4.5 MW | 18 MW | not visible |
| Luton North | 0.7 MW | 0 MW | not visible |
| Mid Bedfordshire | 43 MW | 14 MW | not visible |
| North Bedfordshire | 74 MW | 97 MW | not visible |
North Bedfordshire next door has 74 MW waiting, more than Hitchin's 50 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
- 3 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.