A message from John Twomey, Director of Customer and Network Development
Following the timeline update provided by National Energy System Operator (NESO) last week, I recognise that it’s more important than ever to keep you informed on how Connections Reform is progressing.
Through this series of newsletters, and through all our engagement, we will aim to provide clarity, maintain momentum, and support you through Reform implementation.
As you know, NESO issued the revised queue in December. This provides the first full view of how projects have been sequenced under the new ‘ready’ and ‘needed’ criteria.
What the revised queue means for the network
National Grid Electricity Transmission (NGET) has produced the graph below on what the updated queue looks like for our network. We note that this is subject to refinement as we work through final data reconciliation with NESO.
Firstly, I want to acknowledge the significance of this milestone. The revised queue shows that substantial volumes of speculative or non-progressing projects have been removed from the queue.
However, as the graph shows, we are still seeing significant oversubscription, particularly across battery and solar projects, with volumes exceeding what is needed for CP2030. The queue also includes ~70GW of directly-connected demand. We continue to work with NESO on ensuring a final consolidated view of the data.
This volume of projects matters for three reasons:
Firstly, because connecting these projects will require network resources, such as system access and supply chain capacity, which might otherwise be used for other projects.
Secondly, because we must design the network holistically, so we have to take into account projects post-2030 when designing the network pre-2030. We therefore expect implications for connections solutions for those in Phase 1.
And thirdly, because we must protect our existing and future customers from the costs of building more capacity than is needed, should this volume of projects reduce in the future.
We have raised the issue of oversubscription with NESO, other networks, Government and Ofgem, and we are working hard with all parties on potential practical technical, policy and process options to address these. For example, at a working session at the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) last week with a number of developers, the topic of bay sharing was raised, so we have committed to bringing back some more context on how we do this today, and options in the context of oversubscription.
Planning assumptions (CPAs) and delays to the Reform timeline
As we highlighted in our last newsletter issued in November, at NGET we were preparing extensively through the summer and autumn of 2025, holding workshops with our Distribution Network Operator (DNO) colleagues, and running regional engineering studies.
We highlighted the importance of the Construction Planning Assumptions (CPAs), which NESO provide to the Transmission Owners (TOs) to inform our engineering studies. These set out forecast volumes of generation and demand by region, and are used to identify which reinforcements are needed before connecting each customer.
As noted through our engineering work in the autumn, we surfaced that the CPAs were driving outcomes that would see customers’ connections dates go backwards and lead to higher costs. NESO has taken these insights into account and are reworking and reissuing the CPAs. This is a positive step forwards; however, it does mean that we will now need to re-run the engineering we carried out in 2025.
We understand that this will be frustrating news for customers and adds a further period of uncertainty regarding your projects, and we are committed to ensuring that quality offers are issued as soon as possible, providing you with the details and assurance you need to continue to progress your projects.
Advancement: why it hasn’t been offered and what might change
We know customers have questions about this topic and recognise that many of you are disappointed with the lack of project Advancement offered.
We required the reformed queue and the background study data (CPAs) from NESO in order to do the Advancement checks. With publication of the reformed queue being pushed back, and the CPAs not yet been finalised, the scope of what we could offer was significantly reduced.
While Advancement was a one-time process, we will continue to explore opportunities to accelerate projects as part of our assessments, once we receive the updated CPAs and can carry out our engineering studies.
What next?
We have received some draft CPAs from NESO, and expect to start receiving the final versions from late February. This will then kick start the next phase of Connections Reform for our teams here at NGET, as we use the CPAs to run the engineering studies needed to inform customers’ updated connections offers.
How we will engage with you during the next stage
Protected Offers are being issued to NESO, and will be shared with customers in the coming weeks.
Customers have told us that having early conversations was helpful, and we are now working on our approach for engagement on the next phase of projects. We appreciate the input that many of you have shared with us in terms of what’s most important for you, please do continue to share. We will use our next newsletter to bring that together into an overview of the approach we intend to take and timelines we are working to.
As always, thank you for your engagement and collaboration, we look forward to working closely with you all throughout this next phase of Connections Reform and beyond.
Warm regards,
John Twomey
Director of Customer & Network Development
For the latest information on Connections Reform, visit NESO’s dedicated page: www.neso.energy/industry-information/connections-reform
