Newport West and Islwyn
Newport West and Islwyn has 22 MW of renewables running, enough for 10,000 homes over a year, and nothing large waiting in the planning queue. 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 43,137 homes.
Ranks 528 of 650 for clean power approved and not built.
What is stuck, and why
| Project and developer | Tech | Size | Why it is stuck |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mynydd Llanhilleth - Wind FarmPennant Walters | Onshore wind | 34 MW30,000 homes | Waiting 14 months for a planning decisionWho can move it: the Welsh Government (it decides big energy projects) · planning ref CAS-03540-M8J8M5 |
| Upper Pant-Ysgawen Farm, Maes-Yr-Haf Lane - Battery Energy Storage SystemVoltwise Power Holdings Limited | Battery | 28 MW | Waiting 13 months for a planning decisionWho can move it: Caerphilly Council · planning ref 25/0472/FULL |
| Trecelyn Wind FarmPennant Walters Limited | Onshore wind | 20 MW17,000 homes | Waiting 2.1 years for a planning decisionWho can move it: the Welsh Government (it decides big energy projects) · planning ref DNS CAS-02114-J9X4S6 |
Compared with its neighbours
| Constituency | Approved, not built | Running | Paid to switch off |
|---|---|---|---|
| Newport West and Islwyn | 0.3 MW | 22 MW | not visible |
| Cardiff East | 0.4 MW | 13 MW | not visible |
| Cardiff North | 0.7 MW | 0 MW | not visible |
| Newport East | 4.2 MW | 103 MW | not visible |
| Caerphilly | 20 MW | 32 MW | not visible |
| Torfaen | 3.5 MW | 10 MW | not visible |
Caerphilly next door has 20 MW waiting, more than Newport West and Islwyn's 0.3 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.