Houghton and Sunderland South
Houghton and Sunderland South has 2.4 MW of clean power (all solar) approved and still not built: enough to supply a year's electricity to 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, £4.1m across the constituency's 44,873 homes.
Ranks 323 of 650 for clean power approved and not built.
What is stuck, and why
| Project and developer | Tech | Size | Why it is stuck |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hastings Hill Farm, Foxcover Road - Battery Energy StorageRoot Power (North) Limited | Battery | 38 MW | Approved a year ago — nothing has happened sinceWho can move it: the developer and the network company · planning ref 24/02111/FUL |
| Fox Cover Road - Battery Energy StorageNewton Energi Limited | Battery | 30 MW | Approved a year ago — nothing has happened sinceWho can move it: the developer and the network company · planning ref 23/01981/FUL |
| Calsonic Kansei - Solar ArraySNRG Limited | Solar | 2.1 MW800 homes | Approved 2 years ago — nothing has happened sinceWho can move it: the developer and the network company · planning ref 24/00715/PCZ |
Compared with its neighbours
| Constituency | Approved, not built | Running | Paid to switch off |
|---|---|---|---|
| Houghton and Sunderland South | 2.4 MW | 11 MW | not visible |
| City of Durham | 1.1 MW | 34 MW | not visible |
| Easington | 102 MW | 33 MW | not visible |
| North Durham | 0.9 MW | 28 MW | not visible |
| Sunderland Central | 1.1 MW | 0 MW | not visible |
| Washington and Gateshead South | 26 MW | 16 MW | not visible |
Easington next door has 102 MW waiting, more than Houghton and Sunderland South's 2.4 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
- 2 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.