Neath and Swansea East
Neath and Swansea East has 27 MW of clean power (mostly onshore wind) approved and still not built: enough to supply a year's electricity to 19,000 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, £4.0m across the constituency's 43,355 homes. There is also 28 MW of wind running here on the local network. If that gets switched off, no national record shows it.
Ranks 177 of 650 for clean power approved and not built.
What is stuck, and why
| Project and developer | Tech | Size | Why it is stuck |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pencaerlan Solar FarmGreentech Projects Holding UK Limited | Solar | 25 MW9,100 homes | Waiting 15 months for a planning decisionWho can move it: the Welsh Government (it decides big energy projects) · planning ref DNS/3272424 |
| John Green Frog Power Compound, John North Road - Battery SystemGreen Frog Power Limited | Battery | 20 MW | Approved 4 years ago — nothing has happened sinceWho can move it: the developer and the network company · planning ref 2022/2356/FUL |
| Craig Y Perchych, Glais - Solar farmWindel Energy | Solar | 20 MW7,300 homes | Approved a year ago — nothing has happened sinceWho can move it: the developer and the network company · planning ref DNS/3279676 |
| Melin CourtMuirhall Energy (formerly Infinis) | Onshore wind | 18 MW16,000 homes | Approved 8 years ago — nothing has happened sinceWho can move it: the developer and the network company · planning ref P2014/0883 |
| Carn Nicholas FarmSuncredit UK | Solar | 5 MW1,800 homes | Under constructionWho can move it: the developer · earliest connection 2027 (in construction) · planning ref 2015/1546 |
Plus 2 smaller projects — see the full seat page.
Compared with its neighbours
| Constituency | Approved, not built | Running | Paid to switch off |
|---|---|---|---|
| Neath and Swansea East | 27 MW | 58 MW | not visible |
| Aberafan Maesteg | 37 MW | 313 MW | £470k |
| Swansea West | 0 MW | 0 MW | not visible |
| Gower | 0 MW | 62 MW | not visible |
| Rhondda and Ogmore | 81 MW | 114 MW | not visible |
| Merthyr Tydfil and Aberdare | 10 MW | 31 MW | not visible |
Rhondda and Ogmore next door has 81 MW waiting, more than Neath and Swansea East's 27 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.