UK Energy Project Pipeline Monitor

Track renewable-energy, battery-storage and grid-connection projects across the United Kingdom using official REPD and optional NESO data.

The Actor turns the quarterly government planning database and NESO's twice-weekly Transmission Entry Capacity register into clean, filterable project records and a repeatable change feed. The first successful run creates a complete baseline for your filters. Schedule the same input and later runs return only projects that are newly seen, materially changed or removed from the latest filtered snapshot.

What you can monitor

• Battery storage, solar, onshore and offshore wind, hydrogen, hydro, anaerobic digestion and other REPD technologies
• Planning, awaiting-construction, construction, operational, refused, withdrawn and expired statuses
• Countries, regions and planning authorities
• Minimum installed capacity
• Projects whose official record changed after a chosen date
• Contracted transmission projects by plant type, project status and host transmission owner
• Connection site, contracted connection date, connected MW, capacity change and Gate 1/2 when NESO reports them
• Each operator's project count and total MW across the full selected official source
• Cautious possible matches between NESO connections and REPD planning projects

Each record includes the project, operator/applicant, capacity, status, location, planning authority, planning reference and key milestone dates. Change events include the fields and previous values that changed.

Every event also has a signalPriority and plain-English signalSummary. High-priority signals include planning or construction milestones, grid dates, connection Gate changes and connected-capacity changes. Treat these as research leads and verify them against the linked official source.

For English REPD projects with a planning reference, planningDataLookupUrl links to the official Planning Data API. Coverage varies by planning authority because the national planning-application dataset is still developing.

Common uses

Find battery projects entering construction

Use this to identify potential demand for civil works, equipment, security, recruitment, grid services or professional advice.

{
  "technologyTypes": ["Battery"],
  "developmentStatuses": ["Under Construction"],
  "regions": [],
  "countries": ["England", "Scotland", "Wales"],
  "minCapacityMW": 20,
  "maxRecords": 1000
}

Monitor submitted solar and storage applications

{
  "technologyTypes": ["Solar Photovoltaics", "Battery"],
  "developmentStatuses": ["Application Submitted"],
  "regions": ["South East", "Eastern"],
  "minCapacityMW": 5,
  "maxRecords": 2000
}

Watch one planning area

Planning-authority filters are case-insensitive fragments.

{
  "technologyTypes": [],
  "developmentStatuses": [],
  "regions": [],
  "planningAuthorities": ["Manchester"],
  "minCapacityMW": 0,
  "maxRecords": 1000
}

Monitor high-capacity battery connections twice weekly

NESO uses “Energy Storage System” in its register; the friendly Battery filter is translated automatically. REPD location filters do not apply to NESO because the TEC register does not contain UK regions.

{
  "technologyTypes": ["Battery"],
  "developmentStatuses": ["Under Construction"],
  "regions": ["North West"],
  "includeNesoConnections": true,
  "gridPlantTypes": ["Battery"],
  "gridStatuses": ["Awaiting Consents"],
  "gridHostOperators": ["NGET"],
  "minCapacityMW": 100,
  "maxRecords": 500
}

Change detection

Comparison state is saved separately for every unique set of filters. Fields such as operator, capacity, status, planning reference, location and milestone dates are tracked.

• baseline: present during the first complete run
• newly_seen: absent from the previous complete filtered snapshot
• changed: one or more tracked fields changed
• removed_from_source: no longer present in the latest complete filtered snapshot

These labels describe observations in REPD. They do not, by themselves, prove that a project was announced, cancelled or acquired. Check the official source and planning authority before making a commercial or investment decision.

If the source download or schema is incomplete, the run fails before replacing the saved comparison state. If your filters exceed maxRecords, the Actor also fails rather than silently returning a partial pipeline.

Output example

{
  "projectId": "9404",
  "projectName": "Fiddlers Ferry Power Station - Battery storage",
  "operator": "SSE Enterprise (SSE PLC)",
  "technologyType": "Battery",
  "capacityMW": 150,
  "developmentStatus": "Under Construction",
  "region": "North West",
  "country": "England",
  "planningAuthority": "Warrington",
  "underConstruction": "2024-03-28",
  "changeType": "baseline",
  "changedFields": [],
  "previousValues": {},
  "observedAt": "2026-09-09T10:00:00.000Z"
}

Scheduling and integrations

Run the Actor on a schedule using the same input. Use weekly or monthly runs for REPD-only monitoring. When NESO connections are enabled, run after the Tuesday and Friday register updates. Send the dataset to a webhook, Make, Zapier, Google Sheets, a CRM or your own application through the Apify API. An empty dataset on a repeat run means no tracked change was found; the SUMMARY output still records a successful scan and recommends the appropriate cadence.

Webhook payload example

Configure an Apify run-succeeded webhook to call your automation. Fetch resource.defaultDatasetId from the run payload and read that dataset's items. Process records where signalPriority is high, then route them to email, Slack, a CRM or a sheet. This keeps empty or low-value runs quiet.

Data source and licence

Sources:

• UK Government Renewable Energy Planning Database, normally quarterly, under the Open Government Licence v3.0
• NESO Transmission Entry Capacity register, normally updated twice weekly, under the NESO Open Data Licence
• Planning Data API, used only to create planning-application lookup links for England

The REPD tracks UK renewable electricity projects over 150 kW through planning, construction, operation and decommissioning. The NESO TEC register contains contracted transmission-entry projects and warns that aggregate capacities can create duplicate-looking rows. Possible cross-source matches use names and capacities and are deliberately labelled as candidates; they are not authoritative joins.

Pricing

This Actor uses pay per event:

• baseline-project: $0.002 for each project returned when a new comparison baseline is created ($2 per 1,000)
• project-change: $0.02 for each newly seen, changed or removed project on a later run ($20 per 1,000)
• apify-actor-start: $0.00005 when a run starts

The default example returned 14 baseline projects in the final hosted test, costing approximately $0.02805 in total. The count can change with each official release. Repeat runs with no changes produce no paid project records and cost only the $0.00005 start event. Platform usage is included in these prices.

Enabling NESO can add hundreds of records. maxRecords is both a completeness guard and a cost guard: 500 baseline records cost about $1.00005, while 1,000 cost about $2.00005. Resetting a baseline charges those baseline records again, so check the limit and Apify's maximum run cost before a reset.