Gridlock for UK Renewable Electricity
New renewable energy projects in Britain are facing a 10-YEAR wait to get their power onto the country’s national grid.
Incompetence at the top levels of National grid PLC and OFGEM, the state regulator, has led tot he bottleneck. As a result promises made by Britain at COP26 cannot be met and net zero targets are at risk due to delays “caused by poor planning and investment in infrastructure,” according to Bloomberg.
The UK recently set out ambitious new goals to more than double existing renewable generation capacity, adding 50 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030, 70GW of solar by 2035 and 24GW of nuclear by 2050.
But developers say they are being told that they will have to wait six to 10 years to connect to the regional distribution networks because of constraints on National Grid’s network.
“The majority of large developers are now seeing construction-ready projects being delayed as a result of long queues and excessive charges to get access to the transmission system,” said Catherine Cleary, specialist engineer at consultancy Roadnight Taylor, which advises companies including British Gas owner Centrica and solar developer Lightsource BP on their grid connections.
“Although there are proposals for new infrastructure, the lengthy timelines for this threaten to derail the net zero targets.”
The issue of who pays for improvements to the electricity distribution network is crucial given that it is privatised, with the FTSE 100 listed National Grid providing the bulk of the central transmission network across Great Britain and supplying the six regional monopolies whose pylons, poles, wires and cables carry electricity to end users.
The monopolies’ investments and how much they charge consumers are regulated via price controls set by watchdog Ofgem, which has been under pressure to get tough after being accused of allowing the companies to make excess profits. The regional distributors earn their revenues from a surcharge on customer bills, with up to a fifth of the typical household energy bill — or roughly £371 a year — going towards the cost of the distribution network.
National Grid says it has historically had 40-50 applications for connections a year but that this has risen to about 400 as renewables suppliers have proliferated. This is in addition to significant volumes of applications coming via the six regional distributors.
Roisin Quinn, director of customer connections at National Grid, said it was working with Ofgem and the industry to address the long queues, including by changing processes so that developers can no longer take network capacity before they have planning permission or have even started construction.
The company is proposing to upgrade the network on a project-by-project basis, building bigger substations and more overhead lines. “We are taking action at pace, along with the wider industry, to speed up the process for customers based in areas with longer waiting times,” she said.
However, the industry is concerned over the …
