A sad day caused by grid connection application scandal
This article was first published on Linkedin on 30 November 2017 and was picked up and republished by The Energyst.
I rang to say goodbye and good luck to a brilliant System Planner (an extra-high voltage network designer) who is leaving one of our favourite Distribution Network Operators yesterday. It was upsetting to hear he is leaving because of the huge volumes of grid applications he receives that don’t proceed. He believes that out of every 100 applications he processes, only five grid offers are accepted and only two offers see schemes built. In his words, he has better things to do with his time.
This is a scandal that the industry has been facing for too long, and its causes need to be addressed not only before we lose more talented individuals but before more landowners are hoodwinked by some of the practices listed below.
Reasons for the volume of unsuitable applications are threefold
There are three reasons for the large volumes of unsuitable applications hitting the system planners’ desks, all of which are created by developers and specious ‘grid consultants’.
- Some developers are spraying and praying. They are putting in multiple applications for multiple sites that they haven’t previously discussed with the system planners. We heard from a Network Operator last week which had received 41 connection applications from a single developer for a single site. The guilty developers don’t have the expertise or the inclination to have a 10-minute conversation to ask the right questions to the system planners to identify whether there is a viable opportunity, for what technology, and at what scale.
- Charlatan ‘grid consultants’ and land agents. We hear of cases where people are scamming land owners by charging £1,000 or more to submit boiler plate grid applications on sites that have absolutely no power scheme credentials from a grid perspective.
- The practice of multiple budget offers for different scales and capacities. We recently saw a case where a Chartered Surveyor representing a land owner had applied for budget offers from a Network Operator for nine different scales and capacities. This, again, abuses the Network Operator obligations to process every application.
Grid application fees may be on the way
As well as poor ethics, behind this plague is the fact that grid applications and offers are at no cost to the applicant. The Department for Business Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) has recently consulted on “assessment and design fees” which will allow Network Operators to recover the costs associated with providing grid connection offers. This is almost certain to enable Network Operators to begin charging for grid applications from April 2018.
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