No.39 of 650 · approved, not built MP: Greg Smith (Conservative) England

Mid Buckinghamshire

Mid Buckinghamshire has 136 MW of clean power (all solar) approved and still not built: enough to supply a year's electricity to 49,000 homes. No wind farm here is paid to switch off. Almost every pound of that money goes to wind farms in Scotland, where there is not enough wire capacity to carry the power south. The cost is shared across every bill in Britain, so households here pay too: about £92 a year per household, £3.6m across the constituency's 39,109 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

136 MW

of clean power — all solar — approved and still not built, enough to supply a year's electricity to 49,000 homes — about as many homes as this constituency has. Approved at least two years ago; waiting on the grid, not on planning. That is 17.5× the renewable capacity actually running here.

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

£3.6m

is what the grid gap costs this constituency's 39,109 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 5 waiting projects · years since approval

Bumpers Farm Phase 2 12 MW

10.8 YRS

Moat Farm - Solar Farm 24 MW

4.4 YRS

Whirlbush Farm, Kingsey - Solar Farm & Batte 50 MW

4.4 YRS

Callie's Solar Farm 50 MW

3.7 YRS

Every approved, unbuilt project

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

Site	Technology	Enough for	Capacity	Approved	Waiting
Whirlbush Farm, Kingsey - Solar Farm & Battery Storage	Solar Photovoltaics	18,000 homes	49.9 MW	2022-03	4.4 yrs
Callie's Solar Farm	Solar Photovoltaics	18,000 homes	49.9 MW	2022-11	3.7 yrs
Moat Farm - Solar Farm	Solar Photovoltaics	8,700 homes	24.1 MW	2022-02	4.4 yrs
Bumpers Farm Phase 2	Solar Photovoltaics	4,400 homes	12.0 MW	2015-10	10.8 yrs
Haddenham Garden Centre, Stanbridge Road - Solar Panels	Solar Photovoltaics	100 homes	0.4 MW	2023-02	3.4 yrs

Plus 5 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
East Claydon Substation, East Claydon Road - Energy Storage	500 MW	in planning	could supply ≈1,752,000 homes
Bumpers Lane Solar Farm	13 MW	operating	could supply ≈47,000 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 Greg Smith said about the grid in Parliament? Search Hansard →

See the full league table Data (JSON)