What we said we'd do

We have many customers who want to connect to and use our electricity transmission network.

We provide them with network connections, services related to the connection, and ongoing services once they’re connected. We aim to achieve this by becoming a more customer-centric business.

This stakeholder priority is about making it easier for customers to connect to and use the network.

  • We will connect 15.3GW of customer capacity, providing the UK with clean power, flexible storage and access to clean and cheaper power from Europe.
  • We will invest in additional transformer units to provide more network capacity for our demand-side customers.
  • We will provide an agile service tailored to suit the needs of our rapidly changing customer base. We will do this by investing in our customer relationships and support systems.
  • We are proposing output delivery incentives (ODIs) to manage outages better and deliver faster connections.
     

What we have done and what we’re going to do

This reporting year has been important as the UK moves towards Net Zero. The electricity System Operator published its latest Network Options Assessment along with a report called ‘Holistic Network Design’ as part of its ‘Pathway to 2030’. These publications signalled the need to move quickly to strengthen and develop our network. This work will facilitate the connection of low carbon generation (such as offshore wind, new nuclear and interconnectors with Europe), and to respond to changing patterns of demand. Our wider East Coast strategy supports the Government’s ambitious target of 50GW of new wind connections by 2030. Significant network investment will be required to achieve this, and we expect to make numerous submissions to Ofgem as these individual projects develop over the coming years. We will need to work closely with you in the communities affected by these works and will spend significant time helping you understand the need for this new infrastructure and allow you to shape our proposed solutions.
 

Quality of Connections

This new incentive for RIIO-T2 replaces the Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) measure from RIIO-T1 and covers the customer experience throughout the connections journey. In the first year, we exceeded the target (7.7) and achieved a score of 7.8. We have worked hard to deliver this outcome, with customers recognising we understand and resolve issues.

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Timeliness of connections 

We must send our customers an offer to connect within an agreed timescale. Highest ever number of customer offer requests made in 2021/2022 (408 in total) with all but 13 sent within the required timescales. This led to a £300k penalty in the incentive.

Generation and demand

We connected 5.3GW of Generation in 2021/2022 and our current forecast for the RIIO-T2 period indicates a connection volume of 13.4GW compared to a baseline of 13.6GW. We also delivered 4 demand connections in 2021/2022, connecting 1,020MVA to the network. Our current forecast for the RIIO-T2 period shows that we will exceed our baseline by 2,168MVA. For both these types of customer connections, we met all customer requirements to connect to the transmission network during 2021/2022.