Preparing for a faster, more efficient electricity connections process

An excerpt from a blog by Jack Presley Abbott - Deputy Director of Energy Systems Management & Security

Read the full blog here - Preparing for a faster, more efficient electricity connections process | Ofgem

Just last week, we saw National Grid Electricity System Operator (ESO) predict that electricity demand in Great Britain will grow by 64% by 2035 as more sectors such as transport and heating switch to electricity.?

This rapid electrification is necessary to meet Government Net Zero targets?to decarbonise all sectors of the UK economy by 2050 and the power system by 2035. To achieve this, we need a huge expansion of electricity infrastructure – new generation, storage, wires and pylons – to transport electricity to our homes and businesses.

Electricity connections?

The assets that either generate, store or use electricity (for example,?wind farms, batteries and households) are connected via the electricity grid. If a project developer wants to connect a new project to the grid, they may need to wait for new wires and pylons to be built first and they will likely have to wait in a queue behind others also wishing to connect. The connections queue now stands at 701 Gigawatts (GW) with estimate this could rise to 800GW by the end of 2024, an amount of electricity generation that is over four times more than what is predicted we’ll need by 2050 (modelled by ESO:?Future Energy Scenarios).

For context, 1GW is roughly equivalent to the amount of electricity generated by 3 million solar panels or the amount of electricity used by 500,000 homes.

All this means that project developers seeking to connect to the electricity grid are now experiencing significant delays, with some customers being offered connection dates in the late 2030s.

Ofgem, Government and the companies that own and operate the grid (ESO and network companies) are working together to speed up this connections process.?

As chair of a new oversight board (the Connections Delivery Board), I’ll be blogging about what we, across industry, are doing to improve the electricity connections process by sharing my takeaways from the monthly meetings of the Board. I welcomed the feedback to provide more transparency about the discussions in these meetings to sit alongside the?formal Board minutes?published after each meeting.?

Read the full blog here - Preparing for a faster, more efficient electricity connections process | Ofgem