00:00:00 – Catherine Cleary

Hello and welcome to Roadnight Taylor’s podcast on top 10 tips for getting connected. So, I’m Catherine Cleary and I’m delighted to be joined by all of the Connectologists®. So, we’ve got Philip, Nikki, Kyle and Pete this morning and we are going to go through now – you’ve each been tasked with some homework, I understand, to come up with a sort of top five tips for getting any kind of project connected to the grid.

And I’m going to go to Philip first because you’re sitting next to me. So, do you want to go through your top five and we are going to debate them and then hopefully come out with a top ten that we can share with everyone?

00:00:44 – Philip Bale

Okay fair enough, from a distribution perspective to start with, but it also works for transmission also; my first top tip is start with a really good G99 or G98 form in terms of going through. Well thought out, right number of install capacities, fault levels, design assumptions are sensible, the right red line boundaries, all of those things, if you don’t do them right to start with, always come back and bite you at a later stage and add stress, risk, all of the headaches – if you start with a really good form, life is so much easier. So that’s my first top tip in terms of going through.

Second top tip engage with the DNOs early – so one of the things that we can see is people wait, they get planning and then, immediately they say I want to build it, and the DNO comes back and says, well, I’ve just reconducted that line and had we have known, we would have modified a tower for you, or now we’re doing this piece of work and now you can’t do what you want to do for another three, or five, or even seven years, in terms of coming through in some way. So trying to have that engagement early, understand what’s going on, things that you can influence as well at the same time, can reduce cost and can reduce risk.

Next one for me is don’t always take no for an answer. The amount of time that we’ve been told no and it’s not a case of arguing for the sake of arguing, but where you genuinely think they haven’t reached the right answer where you think there’s wiggle room, where you think there’s a better way of doing stuff, going through, exploring it fully, trying to change a no into a maybe and maybe into a yes, and trying to get to the best solution for the network.

One of the other ones for me is a real bugbear. It’s around doing the initial design work early, making sure you’ve done your design submission before you’ve ordered your switchgear, making sure that you understand your risk for things like compliance, harmonics, step change; that then means that you can buy and design the right equipment, which then means when you start coming to commissioning, you’re not trying to find ways of fixing things, which takes more time and cost, and leaves you with a project that can be hamstrung.

And my last one, which is something that I think Nikki will also agree with me on, is around keeping good records. So whenever you have a meeting with someone, whenever you have a chat with someone, people change things, change, back it up in writing, making sure it’s there, making sure everyone knows where something is with the project, so that you’ve got that history and that it’s up to date where they’re on. Over to you, Nikki.

00:03:29 – Catherine Cleary

So, thoughts on Philips Top Five? Are we going to do thoughts on Philips Top Five first, and then perhaps we’ll hold over.

I mean, I think the one that resonates with me is don’t take no for an answer, I think that’s you know, and perhaps that’s something that maybe people don’t hear very much. You know but actually sort of you know that there actually there is often maybe technical alternatives that may have just not been considered – so I think that’s a really strong point that stands out for me.

00:03:52 – Pete Aston

Yeah, and if you don’t know Philip, that’s a very Philip thing.

But yeah, I think it’s true. You’ve got to push back sometimes, and you can push back and you get a no, you push back again and you might get a – oh okay, yeah, okay, we can do that now, and things do change.

04:13:11 – Catherine Cleary

Yeah, and I think I think in discussions earlier you raised the point in some ways, by challenging that, you know you’re professionally, politely, you know, with courtesy, actually you’re often doing other customers a favour because, you’re potentially just helping push a bit of an innovative practice or something through – that’s a really nice kind of way of framing it.

04:31:08 – Philip Bale

Yeah, a good example of that was 132kV tower connections in a particular licence area, every solution was coming with two new terminal towers coming in for a looped connection, not using a three-armed DJT tower, and it’s just a lot of extra expense, effort, material that needs to go into those sites and understanding the reasons why the DNO didn’t want to do it and then going, but you can design those out with these solutions. They did a piece of work, ended up coming back, that’s now a solution in those areas for 95% of solutions and for connections, which is a really good outcome of making sure the right thing has been done, and still complies with safety.

05:12:00 – Kyle Murchie

And I really like the G99 form point and, I suppose, combined with that engagement with the DNO, because I think that early phase kind of strategy knowing what you want, getting it in the form and then engaging with the DNO and having that flowing into your initial early programme is so important. As you say, it then leads into the whole design phase and people then start ordering switch gear before they’ve actually had the design approval, and everything then starts to fall out of step and before you know it everything starts to unravel.

00:05:43 – Catherine Cleary

And they’re having to resubmit applications because they need to add inverters.

00:05:48 – Kyle Murchie

And there will be some variations, and yeah.

And sometimes variations will happen, even on a very good project, you could still get a very good reason for having a variation kind of early on. But actually getting it done early on is a real positive, rather than not putting all the effort into the G99 form, not having that conversation with the DNO.

00:06:05 – Pete Aston

And I think as well, the DNOs know what a good application looks like as well. So, if you’re putting in a good application, you’re already getting off on the right foot with the DNO – it’s already helping to smooth the path for an ongoing relationship.

00:06:21- Kyle Murchie

Yeah, it definitely opens up more conversation because there’s more to talk about. You’ve put more information in, so they want to ask those questions. You know, those engineers sitting there go right, I’ve got more information in front of me, they have greater questions, brilliant, that starts the engagement, whereas if it just, if they don’t have that at all, or they’ve got very little information, then there’s nothing to really lead on.

00:06:40 – Philip Bale

And I’ve definitely seen projects which have started off with being a particular size and have had to reduce the size of the project and then the financial returns for the project because they haven’t put the right installed capacity in or the fault levels and there’s restrictions in those networks, that means that the DNOs can’t do anything without it becoming a material change. So that’s the reason of then, of making projects be as good as they could be, rather than being smaller and less efficient at a later stage.

00:07:06 – Catherine Cleary

What do we think about the kind of early engagement piece, because I mean, your advice wasn’t specifically apply early, but I guess that’s kind of sort of inferred a little bit. But there’s a bit of different advice potentially coming out from network operators now, really sort of saying we want to raise the bar on applications, we don’t want projects to apply until they’ve done the design for their solar farm, and almost asking projects to be a lot further down the line before they knock on the door of the DNO, or potentially under Connections Reform and Gate 2, under the TO, to say I’m ready to connect. Do you think that’s good advice to developers yet, or do you think that’s kind of just where we want to be in future?

00:07:46 – Philip Bale

Yeah, frankly, no. I mean for most developers that will go through, they’ll look at network. There are so many different things that can prevent a project from coming to fruition, and there is a reason why people try and get their place in the queue because you are securing your circuit capacity, your network complexity, capacity point of view. So, if you go ahead and develop a project with absolutely no idea whether there will be thermal headroom, voltage rise headroom, fault level headroom, network complexity headroom on a circuit, you are then effectively wasting time and effort and money for those sites. So, I very much agree with the sentiment that they want people to come with good, well-worked-out projects, but there is a balance as to when you make that application and as to and when you have that engagement with people.

00:08:36 – Pete Aston

And I’ve had some really great conversations, even fairly recently, with some DNOs, prior to applications going in, you know we sat down and talked through – I know this network’s difficult, so what can you tell me about what’s going on? What do you think you could do in this situation with a particularly complex project? So, I think the DNOs appreciate that as well.

00:08:59 – Nikki Pillinger

Yeah, definitely.

00:08:59 – Kyle Murchie

Coming in with really thought-out questions, if you come in and just say, can I connect here – that’s different from saying, I know that the network is complex, but what is the capacity of this particular line? We think it should be this, and having that conversation really, really helps.

00:09:16 – Nikki Pillinger

It’s also quite sort of irresponsible in a way, of a company to come to a DNO with a project and say, oh, I’ve got planning for this project and I’ve done all this, and as an organisation you wouldn’t spend all that money on something that you had absolutely no certainty on that you could connect. So I think it’s a bit of a myth that the DNO would ever have a project come to them that was ready to connect – it’s not particularly realistic.

00:09:44 – Philip Bale

I think we see projects, I see projects, where it’s fully consented, it’s ready to go, but the outage risk on it is horrific, to the point it’s non-financially viable. Or projects that have caveats in their offers, such as it’s subject to a restringing of this line, someone has a survey done and all of a sudden, they’re on the hook for millions of pounds of extra reinforcement – that then sinks their projects.

There’s always a balance as to how much someone pays to de-risk a project and what steps you do them in, and there’s no right answer for that. But I think there is a level of developers not fully seeing some of the risks that now, as people have got more developed projects, they have projects that are consented that effectively aren’t going to go anywhere because of DNO related elements that are clearly caveated in the offer which aren’t there. Also, some of the offers were put out in a hurry and therefore people have gone through assuming that the offer was accurate and then people come back later on when they said I’m ready to build, please connect me, and they go – actually, you definitely need to have this in there and you’ve not done that, and so making sure you understand where you sit with your project and what technical requirements and complexities there are, I just think it’s really important.

00:10:58 – Catherine Cleary

So, we’ve got, don’t take no for an answer – did we think that was that that one possibly making it into the top 10? And you know a really good, solid, detailed G99 application, you know maybe balancing that point about when you apply.

And then, Nikki, do you want to, got some to add to that to your top five?

00:11:18 – Nikki Pillinger

Yes. So, as Philip said, we sort of overlap on that kind of the early de-risking I suppose, I think quite a lot of these points are going to overlap, but the one that we had that was definitely in common was sort of keeping good records, so you know from a project management perspective. It is absolutely essential for me that I know who is doing what at what time, what the plan is and also just records of what’s been discussed, what’s already been done, so you’re not double counting on tasks, or you’re not sort of asking things that have already been decided. So yeah, very much overlap with you on that one.

Also, on the de-risking early points, so DNO offers have a great deal of caveats, you know that’s almost a misconception sometimes that just because you have a grid offer, that you have a grid connection – you don’t. You have to do a huge amount of work, but both through the DNO design phase and the ICP design phase, because they can both change significantly from what you had initially. In terms of looking at sort of early de-risking opportunities, so looking at your sort of comms protection connection design, any caveats that you’ve got in terms of work that might need doing, or might not need doing on a wider network.

Also understanding liabilities, so this is a little less certain now, sort of going into Connection Reform in terms of what liabilities and securities are going to look like. But often these aren’t very transparent, so we need to make sure that we actually have the correct documentation, and you know DNOs absolutely don’t send S-curves as standard if you have any sort of attributable liability, so make sure you’re requesting an S-curve so you know what those costs might go up to. Make sure you’ve got up-to-date MM statements, and also interrogate those MM statements as well, because often those calculations that sit behind those amounts are not particularly, yeah, well, interrogated.

I’ve also got a couple of overlaps with Kyle, so we’ll sort of let him go into a bit more detail on them. But one of them would be sort of collaboration and coordination, sort of that organisational piece – make sure that you know who’s responsible for what, make sure that you know who the person is and, where possible, make sure that you have direct lines of communication wherever possible to sort of cut out sort of middle person-ing, and also sort of keeping up to date as well. We have a god at the moment, like we’ve definitely seen, keeping up to date. UKPN was saying to me that they need to put not only dates on slides but times as well – with what’s happening with Connections Reform!

00:14:07 – Catherine Cleary

We did record a podcast yesterday afternoon, and then NESO published another letter yesterday evening. Yeah, you know, which was quite relevant – so yeah, I agree. I agree, Nikki do we need to be explicit this is going out on, recorded on the 11th of December at lunchtime.

00:14:21- Nikki Pillinger

Yeah, so and there are lots of opportunities to do that as well yeah, make sure that you’re not sort of going to DNO forums that you’re engaging with, you know, NESO, with Ofgem, with everybody, and make sure that you really are keeping up to date with those points – and I think that’s all of mine.

00:14:39 – Catherine Cleary

You got to five which was all you were allotted, I think we might hear later that Pete had a sneaky six – I might let that through on good behaviour.

Okay, Kyle, do you want to pick up on those shared points, and then then perhaps we can have a chat?

00:14:49 – Kyle Murchie

Yeah, I think the one I actually quite like there, kind of jumping out, was the data one, because I think about data and good records and everything else you know, a lot of my top five tips are kind of really focused on probably the latter stages of the connections process. But if you’re going through a joint commissioning panel, or those sorts of panel sessions, then absolutely data and having something written down becomes really important. So, I think getting into that practice much earlier on, as you say, helps with your development of your project, but also when you then get to the commissioning phase, normally when a lot of problems start actually on site with things going missing, or just even simple little things and getting outages booked etc, having all that written down becomes really, really vital – so I really like that one.

And on that collaboration piece I was kind of quite keen on, but again thinking kind of collaboration but thinking about the full duration of the project, so what’s your end goal? Your end goal is ultimately to get connected. So, once you’ve started to move through it’s, how does that change, that collaboration and engagement change? But also opening up and saying well, what other collaborations do I need to consider? You know, if your transmission connected, are you also needing a distribution connection from the supplier supply? Are there other assets that you’re crossing over, other services to engage with other third parties? And quite often that ends up being left quite late on. It’s certainly the projects that I’ve seen more recently, although very early engagement, but not to the level of detail that it needs to get to. So that collaboration, that coordination, is important now, but it’s going to become even more important, particularly if we get into shared base considerations going forward, that’s going to be the interesting one, you know offshore wind obviously collaborations there, but also potentially radio solutions in the short term and then more of a coordinated solution, kind of enduring, you know, lots more need for collaboration. Actually, on one of the other podcasts we did yesterday, we were exactly talking about collaboration and the growth of collaboration across the industry – so yeah, for me that was probably quite a key one.

00:17:04 – Catherine Cleary

I guess the keeping good records comes up quite a lot doesn’t it when we, at Roadnight Taylor, when we look at Due Diligence work for people, you know I think your point Nikki, about people move on, or sorry perhaps may have been yours as well Philip, but you know, people change on a project. That can be both DNO engineers, but it could also be the project owner, you know this might be being developed by someone who’s not going to build it out, someone else might own the end operational asset and I suppose every time there’s an acquisition process, you know, ultimately we really like the feeling of things being written down; you know here are some meeting minutes and I guess I always get slightly nervous, you know, when you get to a project which is sort of ready to build or even more worrying you know, in construction and someone says what DNO meeting minutes? Oh, no, no, no, the DNO doesn’t take any minutes, you know we’re a bit, you know they’re a bit sort of, you know, busy and I think, well, you know, maybe we should be taking some minutes and actually kind of driving that as a customer is perhaps something that customers learn as they go through this process more and more times – you know that actually it’s in their interests to document that if a network operator isn’t.

00:18:02 – Phillip Bale

And I think ultimately it doesn’t necessarily prevent bad things happening, but then at that point, if something does a fly in the ointment, the DNO are then significantly more invested, if they feel like they’ve misled you, to then try and find resolutions to things at that stage, and I think that’s kind of one of the other reasons is it’s not going to turn a definite hard no into a yes, but it’s then going to be of how do we resolve this shared problem as opposed to how do you resolve your problem.

00:18:30 – Catherine Cleary

And it can draw a line in the sand, you know where you might say there might be quite an important decision point, you know, regarding, or it might be something to do with the statement of work, so your transmission impact, or it might be to do with you know, is the connection now going to be an IDNO connection rather than, and you know just having that, you might have a meeting to discuss it, you come to an outcome and kind of drawing that line in the sand and saying this is what was agreed at this point in time, If subject, if that change is further down the line, you sort of know that didn’t change off the bat of a customer change, you know so again, I agree – I really like that one, I’d vote that one into the top ten.

00:19:01- Pete Aston

I really don’t think we should underestimate the keeping up to date point, because not only was it one of my points. But it was just, as we mentioned already, there’s so many changes that have been happening just in the last few weeks, let alone months. You know, at the moment that’s a really significant thing in the industry and it looks like changes are going to continue happening over the next three, six months, and maybe all of next year. So, yeah, we’ve just got to all keep up to date, the whole industry has to keep up to date and I think it’s showing its toll actually at the moment, I think people are sort of punch drunk from consultations and so on, but nevertheless, I think it’s going to be an ongoing requirement.

00:19:48 – Phillip Bale

I think there’s also recognition that in the energy industry it’s not just big developers who are involved with that; actually, a lot of the time the early-stage work is done by quite small niche people, but, as Nikki will work with quite a lot, it’s community groups, it’s local authorities that are trying to develop projects. In terms of coming through that’s not their full-time job being a developer and so therefore, sort of making sure those people are understanding the messages and making sure that the messages are coming out in an easily digestible way as opposed to just coming out in legal text, that then means you have to really be engaged, of wanting to go through and pick into what are the changes going to be and what impact does that have on our project.

00:20:31 – Kyle Murchie

Yeah. So, the other three that I had-one was around, I suppose kind of building on this talk about the G99 form or your application, your TO’s application form. It’s then thinking well, what’s my operational envelope going to be? What am I setting from day one, recognising that there’ll be elements that do change? Technology might have changed as well, you know, technology might have advanced in the time it’s going to take before you actually get the equipment. There’s quite a lot of changes that can happen and sometimes we see either projects that have really created quite a short envelope, or a very small envelope for themselves and they make it very difficult to operate within. Sure, some of the new rules coming out will alter, you know, that term ‘envelope’, we talked about in terms of red line boundary, for example, and what’s allowable within the red line boundary. So, I’m talking about physical and also specification of the envelope as well and just understanding what have you applied for, but then also what you’re getting back. So, fault level envelope, you know, what do you actually have to work with, and making sure that it’s then kind of coming onto Philip’s earlier point; is actually buildable or you ultimately setting yourself up for having to reduce your capabilities and ultimately have an impact on revenue.

Another would be around the early operational strategy and thinking about okay, what’s changed and what is changing, keeping an idea of what’s changed all the way throughout, so not necessarily just what’s changed in the industry, what’s changed for your project, because what you applied for and you’ve ultimately been offered, that might ultimately change as you go through. You get surveys completed, you know bat surveys or nesting birds, that can all then start to have an impact on what you can ultimately build, your changes to planning, they’re not all isolated; they can also have an impact on the connection itself and the technology.

And for me, probably my most important, which I feel as if I push all the time is compliance and commissioning strategy, and just doing that much much earlier than most people think about it. If it’s transmission connected, you should really have a strategy three years before your completion date, more would be better, but three years is a minimum and then you’re actively managing it two years before. If it’s DNO connected, maybe slightly shorter timelines, but again, you’re still talking a couple of years, and a lot of talk is at the moment around CP30 and getting connections before 2030. Well, where we’re sitting now, that’s really within a five-year window, so for a lot of transmission connections they really need to be getting on with thinking about strategies now, or within the next couple of years – so, for me that’s really kind of important one. Because, if you don’t get that right, you know, what I say about compliance and commissioning strategies, that’s getting your principal contractor all on board, getting them all set up, but it’s also thinking about outages, it’s thinking about third party interactions. It’s pulling all that together which, yeah, particularly at transmission level, it’s not necessarily a five-minute job.

00:23:40 – Catherine Cleary

Well, I mean, I think we’ve probably got a project which is six years out from connections, and we are already starting conversations about actually that compliance process, the way that the generator a very large generator will be commissioned, the impact it will have on the network, you know, and it’s nice, six years out is the great place to be, where you’re having the cosy, comfortable, you know, sort of quarterly check-ins and saying, you know, we’re thinking about this, you know, or well actually maybe we need some clarifications to grid code wordings and that all feels fine. You know, if you were having those conversations two years before you were energising, I’d be terrified, you know, thinking we don’t have time to do the level of change.

00:24:11- Kyle Murchie

I think three years for me is the minimum. If you don’t have three years, you’re almost definitely going to be impacting the project, or you’re going to have to take some sort of shortcut. So, there’s going to have to be some leeway that you are going to have to give within the project – it’s not going to be an ideal solution, in very few cases.

00:24:29 – Nikki Pillinger

Yeah, and I guess you’ve got to consider resource as well. You know there’s not, especially with transmission, there is not a lot of people who know how to commission and build transmission projects. You know, you really need to consider actually having that in place and making sure that you have a contractor allocated and they have time to do that and to dedicate to that.

00:24:48 – Pete Aston

And I was going to raise a very similar point, Nikki, that there’s quite a lot of developers out there who’ve got transmission projects, who’ve never developed a transmission project before, and so there’s lots of learning that they’ll need to do, and I’m sure they can do that; it’s just that you need quite a lot of time to learn these processes, which are highly complex, so you maybe need another year or two, to learn what you need to do before you then get to that three-year stage when you’re actually implementing the strategy.

00:25:18 – Philip Bale

But also on the flip side, from both the TO and the ESO perspective, but mainly of the TO there’s a lot of new people there as well and there haven’t been that many transmission connected projects that’s coming through and there’s been quite a significant churn of people who have now moved to sort of other companies and other areas. So, I think it’s very much trying to make sure that you’ve got the input from those parties, engaged parties and can demonstrate that you’re in a position to move forwards with that project, to help make sure that you get that input.

00:25:46 – Kyle Murchie

Yeah, importantly thinking about from a strategy point of view, and even on your really early strategy of what your team setup looks like, so you know we’re talking about resource, one size doesn’t fit all. You know it depends on what you’ve set up your business to have, if you have a good team, then great, but your good team might be really focused on the earlier stage of development and not specialising in commissioning and compliance. But you also don’t necessarily want to have a consultant doing, churning through every single step of a compliance process because a lot of it is very admin heavy. But you might need somebody to advise on what those specific high value ad items are. So, yeah, it really depends on your business is set up now, and where you want to go with that, and probably the size of your portfolio. But if you’re saying that’s going to take a lot of time in itself, you could spend a year doing that, getting yourself built up so you’re ready to then get into the kind of integrity. So, if you’re out there and you’ve got a connection before 2030, do it now! Get onto it right now, if you’ve not already started.

00:26:25 – Catherine Cleary

Excellent, excellent plug and excellent piece of advice.

So, I think we’ve added in the documentation, the kind of sort of that data point, and I think, Pete, you’ve voted in as well that sort of keeping up to date with industry changes. It sounds like we’re probably voting in compliance strategy, so you know that sort of lead into compliance.

00:27:07 – Kyle Murchie

Oh, you know I’m biased!

00:27:12 – Nikki Pillinger

That’s really important, like that end piece doesn’t get talked about enough.

00:27:18 – Catherine Cleary

I love the design envelope point, Kyle, because I think that’s something that has perhaps come from more of a large scale transmission project, the concept that when you are applying you know if you are four, five, six, seven years before you’re going to build a project, it is a design envelope, realistically, and technology changes. And I suppose we’re very used to that when we’re talking about offshore wind turbines, you know you might be applying for a 25-megawatt wind turbine that doesn’t exist yet in the market. But I suppose at distribution you know that’s the forms, literally you know, say you know what specific make and model of inverter you know are you planning to connect? And it’s almost like the documentation is written not suggesting that this isn’t an envelope, this is specific set of parameters. So, I think that’s actually a really good learning point that maybe we can all share, because we probably do all think of it as an envelope, don’t we? We’re thinking well, let’s be smart, you know, let’s put in a fault level contribution that would let someone pick from a range of inverters, and so I really like that design envelope.

00:28:13 – Kyle Murchie

Yeah, because your DRC schedules at transmission level will change all the way throughout the project.

00:28:16 – Catherine Cleary

Yeah, and that’s recognised.

00:28:18 – Kyle Murchie

Yeah, that’s fine. As long as you’re not all of a sudden requiring restudies etc, then that’s fine. And as you said, accepted, but you’re right, DNO level, even just the way the forms are laid out, it doesn’t give that perception.

00:28:31 – Philip Bale

I’m still concerned that it’s in the past always been recognised that the envelope will change and what needs to be reset and what isn’t a transmission, because it’s always been the flexibility in the system to add more short circuit current into a network and, as we are at the moment, there’s significantly higher restrictions on the transmission network. Maybe CP30 will bring it back, maybe a view as to how all of this equipment needs to be studied in terms of constant current device and sort of current driven, rather than voltage source converters. So, I think there is there is an accepted way of how it’s done today and then potentially a concern around what it might look like in the future.

00:29:07 – Catherine Cleary

I mean, I suppose maybe to be clear about ‘envelope’ –  is the kind of the idea is that you’re capturing the maximum impact of a project and therefore the changes you might see going forwards would be iterations that would still keep you within that envelope, which I think the point you know, whereas someone who might just say, well, I’ve rerun, you know I hadn’t done any studies and now I’ve done some studies and, by the way, my fault levels doubled. Well, you’re not sticking within the envelope then. I think that’s a very good point yeah.

00:29:31- Kyle Murchie

Therefore, I think having a good enough envelope to begin with, doing quite a lot of thought about your application and what the envelope might need to be, to give you a lot of flexibility.

00:29:40 – Philip Bale

I also think it’s a trade-off as well of not asking for something that you definitely don’t need, and that’s the trade-off in terms of, because if everyone goes in with a fault level that allows you to do three times as much as what you theoretically could do, your banking headroom for it as well. So, I think it’s a level of trying to get something that is flexible and operational whilst also making sure it’s not triggering significant works in the future that might well cause problems, or even your project triggering works that it may not have needed if your envelope was more sensible. So, it’s a probabilistic worst case as opposed to an exact maximum.

00:30:16 – Catherine Cleary

Pete you’ve very patiently waited, so have you got any, I think you get a prize if you’ve got five things we haven’t already said yet.

00:30:23 – Pete Aston

I do because I had six to start with. I’ve had an extra one, I am cheating because I am giving myself extra possibility of having items in the top ten.

Okay, so the first one that we haven’t talked about yet is get good advice. Now that might be slightly.

00:30:41 – Catherine Cleary

You’re not biased there.

00:30:42 – Pete Aston

That might be slightly biased towards employee consultants like Roadnight Taylor, but genuinely I think obviously, as well as good grid connections advice, there’s all sorts of very specialist areas in all of the grid connection side of things, from planning to really technical studies and layout designs and everything. So, it’s very important to get good advice all the way through the project, and we quite openly sort of direct people, don’t we to other consultancies and places where we think that they can get better advice on all sorts of different things. So yeah, I think that’s the first one get good advice.

Second one was, I put, be realistic. So, here’s my tagline – bigger isn’t always better, smaller isn’t always smarter.

00:31:34 – Catherine Cleary

Coming to a DNO soon.

00:31:38 – Pete Aston

So, yeah, I think it can be sometimes tempting to just go bigger, and go bigger, and go bigger, but that doesn’t always help, and so sometimes it can be actually to go; if you can get just below a threshold and you’re not triggering some reinforcement or whatever, that can be good. But equally, if you’ve got a project that’s triggering a reinforcement, well maybe you just want to maximise what you’re getting from that reinforcement and go slightly bigger to actually get the best value from it. So, I think there’s some realism with connection size, but I think that’d be for demand and generation as to, and that probably comes back to the conversations you have with the DNO at the beginning to actually try and go well, what is the optimum size here for what we’re looking at?

Third point get ready to stop. So, I think that’s a really difficult one for a lot of developers, because the developers that I’ve met are always highly optimistic, and I think that’s really important for a developer to be.

00:32:43 – Catherine Cleary

Key survival traits.

00:32:44 – Pete Aston

I’d be a terrible developer because I just wouldn’t do anything, I’m at a high risk of this. But I think it’s important to get ready to stop, because there are obviously some things where there’s just a red flag to go – this is just going to be absolutely terrible, and if it’s very clear that something’s not going to work, just stop before you go and spend that extra bit of money and the extra bit of money. And I know that’s a really difficult one for a lot of developers to make that call, but I think that’s really important.

The fourth one I’ve got here is think about phased connections, and sometimes that can work both for demand and generation. So it may be that you can get something smaller now, and then something bigger later on, and it might be that that’s two separate applications, that you go in for a slightly smaller something up-front to get something connected, and then maybe give something bigger later. It’s not always going to work, but there’ll be certain circumstances when phase connections do have some applicability.

And then the last one I’ve just got was just making best use of the charging rules. So, there was a significant code review that we’ve probably all forgotten about what happened, it was only last year, 18 months ago, on the distribution networks changing the charging rules. You know, are there ways that you can put an application in that actually make best use of those charging rules? And also, on the flip side, making sure that the DNOs are actually applying the charging rules correctly and not charging you for reinforcements that you shouldn’t be charged for.

So, yeah, they are my five additional tips.

00:34:24 – Catherine Cleary

Excellent.

00:34:26 – Philip Bale

So just to jump in there, so I think get good advice also comes into the be realistic and get ready to stop. Because potentially, if you have the right people helping you, supporting you, they’re the people that can throw in the challenges, that can say actually being smaller and doing two connections is better  or actually there’s a high risk you’re going to trigger this. So therefore, high-cost cap, go a bit bigger and make it work, and the developer has to be positive and try and see through things. But having someone with good advice of going that could cripple your project, that could cripple your project in terms of going through and understanding that early enough, also then links back into that of having someone of putting those challenges to them and then them trying to make the good decisions that works for their project.

00:35:12 – Catherine Cleary

So, they can be really optimistic, and Pete can be politely pessimistic.

00:35:14 – Philip Bale

Yes.

00:35:16 – Nikki Pillinger

I think that we’ve all had to be politely pessimistic sometimes, but …

00:35:19 – Catherine Cleary

Or politely realistic maybe, I don’t know.

00:35:21- Nikki Pillinger

But I think that get ready to stop point is really good because I think you can, you know you can have a portfolio of 50 projects, and there’s actually 30 that you shouldn’t put any more resource into, and you should just focus on 20. And that’s actually going to be a much better outcome because you’re not throwing sort of stress and resource into these 30 projects that actually just fundamentally aren’t working, or are too far down the queue, or have got fundamental issues that mean they won’t work, and you are focusing in on those projects that are going to go somewhere and that are worth spending time on.

00:35:56 – Pete Aston

It’s going to be interesting with Connections Reform and Clean Power 30, that actually that decision might be made for you.

00:36:04 – Catherine Cleary

Mmm, yeah.

00:36:05 – Pete Aston

That you might be effectively told that you can’t proceed, and maybe it’s better for you to have come to that conclusion before you get told. Although I know that’s rather difficult, you need a crystal ball, a little bit to work out.

00:36:19 –  Kyle Murchie

Yeah, but no, I was going to come on to the same sort of point. If you’ve got a portfolio and narrowing that portfolio down, you know, cutting off those projects that you know definitely will not meet the criteria, or you will not be able to get to gate two, for example, and are unlikely to fit within the CP30 criteria, is really quite important because you know, if you invest now and try and get these projects to move forward over the coming few months, you know you could be investing significant sums when you know, and also and diluting your input as well across all those projects. Whereas, if you can prioritise, right these the projects we think we can really get in there that are going to have the best chance. You’re noting that we don’t have a crystal ball, we don’t know everything, and you can still get a bit of a kind of prioritisation of those projects. So, yeah, I do really like that one being able to be quite clear cut and say, no, these projects aren’t going to be put to one side and not progress with. And maybe it’s even more important now, I suppose CP30 and Connections Reform was to drive some of that anyway. But if you’re a bit of a head of the curve and say, right, let’s do that internally over the next few months will hopefully put you, or your portfolio, in a much better place.

00:37:34 – Catherine Cleary

I guess there is always … sorry.

00:37:36 – Nikki Pillinger

Sorry, just a sort of you know, we’ve heard about this sort of braggawatts thing.

You know we’ve got a pipeline of however many megawatts or gigawatts, it’s like okay, but have you know, what work have you put into that? So, have you just got, you know, three gigawatts of grid offers? Or have you got three gigawatts of projects that have been through DNO and ICP design? That’s a really different thing. Or, you know, did you have three gigawatts and you then looked at it and thought, these 800 megawatts or something are actually worth focusing on and we’re going to get those to a really good position?

00:38:13 – Catherine Cleary

Yes, that kind of prioritisation within the developer, that sounds absolutely key. And I suppose in our experience, you can’t just keep projects alive; I’ve often heard that sort of you know, it’s almost as if they’re on a life support machine, you know poor, abandoned project. And I suppose that you know both from a Connections Reform perspective the rules are changing, and also from a resource perspective, Nikki, I think that seems a really valid point. You know it’s not, you can’t just sort of like leave these things in the bottom drawer and expect them to still be in an ‘okay’ condition when you come back to them. So, there’s no kind of quick, easy way to keep projects alive.

So how are we doing in our top ten? I think that we’ve possibly got, so I think we’ve got six until we got to Pete, and then I mean we could just cheat and put all of Pete’s in, that takes us to ten, but that might be a bit, a bit preferential. So we’re voting in from Pete’s list, we’re voting in the realism, or the knowing when to stop, or …?

00:39:07 – Philip Bale

I think the realistic is nice because I think that’s key of…

00:39:11 – Catherine Cleary

And it had a good tagline.

00:39:12 – Philip Bale

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think because that’s also being realistic to me, is around being smart at an early stage, not just going blunt tool – I apply for 50 megawatts, everywhere, it’s looking at something and going through. So, I think that’s valuable because we’ve seen a lot of people make mistakes. Fortunately, some of the DNOs have helped fix them for them, but they’re very much at the luck of having a good DNO engineer who says you apply for 50, but if you change it to 40, you could make it work, or not – so I like that one.

00:39:41 – Nikki Pillinger

And I guess that’s the bringing in the good advice thing as well, when you’re actually looking at you know, you can’t expect just you know, a couple of people to actually have the breadth of knowledge to know if you should continue with a project or not. So, making sure that you have that input from others, it’s very important.

00:39:58 – Catherine Cleary

Yeah, I think, getting advice, well I would probably get told off by Hugh if we didn’t include it in the top 10 list. But I suppose also you made the point, Pete, it’s not just consultancy, is it like advice, in the sense of kind of taking advantage of all of the available information that’s out there, which might be like MISO, webinars, Ofgem blogs. There’s far more information out there, freely available in the public domain than there ever has been.

00:40:22 – Pete Aston

Talking to the DNO.

00:40:23 – Catherine Cleary

Yeah, picking up the phone.

00:40:24 – Kyle Murchie

So, I would also vote in actually the thinking about phased connections, but only if we twisted it slightly to include staged.

00:40:33 – Catherine Cleary

He’s getting his conditions.

00:40:36 – Kyle Murchie

Phased and staged, but mainly because …

00:40:37 – Catherine Cleary

Would you like to define the difference between phased and staged, Kyle?

00:40:38 – Kyle Murchie

Yes, I suppose with at transmission level in particular, if we’re thinking about a staged connection, you know you could potentially be sitting there with a staged connection at this moment in time where you are bringing on one technology, and you’re bringing on capacity at different times – so it is therefore in a sense phased development. But you could also eventually be in the same situation where you have a different technology coming on at a different time, under a different stage. Stages are quite broad in a transmission sense, and they’ve been used for lots of different reasons, so what you were talking more about was that kind of, thinking about a phased approach to your development, thinking about can you get something on quicker and to try to kind of maybe work around certain reinforcements and kind of limitations in the network. As with a stage connection I’m thinking about could have overlap in terms of definition, but you might be sitting there with a stage connection now and actually that’s been really important when you get to CP30 and Connections Reform – you don’t want to be in a situation where you could lose the whole project. I mean there are rules which are going to be brought in to allow you to remove a technology, for example, and reduce your tech, so you don’t have to go, it’s all bundled together, I’m going to lose the whole lot, but there are implications of course, of that as well, of just having it as one big bulk stage, or technology, and then having to reduce it down. So I think strategy and kind of thinking about what that means now in the world of Connections Reform and CP30, and just think about that going forward as well, are stage connections, a better stage and phased connections better to kind of think about much earlier in the project lifespan, and maybe become more frequent. I think there’s been a lot of projects, particularly newer applications, that will be coming through, more and more of them are likely to be staged in some way. So yeah, not a single answer, I think it’s quite a complicated area and there’s probably quite a lot to discuss on that, but for me it’s definitely one that should be considered.

00:42:45 – Catherine Cleary

Considered – phasing and staging.

00:42:46 – Kyle Murchie

Phasing and staging, and what it means for your project.

00:42:50 – Catherine Cleary

So, I think that brings us to nine – it’s going to be a memory test for me to recount them all at the end.

We’ve talked about like Connections Reform, in the sense of like needing to engage early, and also then that implication in terms of staging. Do we have a tip for regarding, because I suppose everything is potentially going to change next year really you know, that will impact customers, you know, T&D. Is there a you know, kind of Connections Reform proof project or consider the impact of Connections Reform, or is it just a fait accompli now, so maybe there’s not much we can do?

00:43:27 – Philip Bale

So, one for me that I’ve done which more recently when we first started thinking of this, was not clinging to every little piece of information that comes out. Because you hear people come out and then a piece of information comes out; the pot size is this, I have to tell people, the initial proposal that’s going to government has a pot size that has this in there, but it could change, and this is being spoken about in this way. So, I think it’s an element of people have to try and do the right thing for their project and push forwards and have a certain amount of faith and also try and steer the Connection Reform process to where they think it needs to go for the genuine reason for projects, but also not just immediately. I think one of the challenges that I’ve seen is that some of the things that comes out, everyone gets very invested around but then possibly miss the other bits, it will possibly be more detailed, one thing gets removed and everyone’s missed all the other things that sit slightly further down in the process that were also still really important so …

00:44:22 – Catherine Cleary

Suddenly feeling into like Philip, doesn’t take no for an answer.

00:44:25 – Philip Bale

Possible.

00:44:26 – Catherine Cleary

No, I think it’s a very good point. You know that, like the fact that it’s all in flux, right, you know, yeah.

00:44:32 – Nikki Pillinger

I think I would also probably encourage people to look at the specific conditions for their project. There’s a lot of sort of technical limits, projects, who, you know, people were being encouraged to get ready to connect and you know, to progress projects. But actually, technical limits in getting connected earlier won’t necessarily work at quite a lot of substations, and there’s also just an insurmountable amount of projects in the queue ahead. So, if you’re looking at Connections Reform, if you’re looking to see if you might get a better connection, don’t just plough ahead if there’s sort of three gigawatts ahead of you or something and, you know loads of them have got planning, actually look at that really specific scenario for your projects on that part of the network – don’t just plough ahead and develop everything.

00:45:23 – Catherine Cleary

Pete, do you want to come in?

00:45:25 – Pete Aston

Yeah, I was. I think I was just going to say that, going back to the point we made earlier about keeping up to date, I think, with Connections Reform, it’s still important. So, even though there’s a lot of the consultations have now closed, you know, from what we understand is, there’s a lot of the documents are being changed in the background while the consultation is still out. So, this is still changing quite rapidly, and I think there’s something that was going to be issued today by NESO or the government, and it’s going to keep going, isn’t it into the early new year. So you can’t quite take your foot off the gas yet in terms of keeping up to date with Connections Reform, but there will come a point at which, I guess, all of the methodologies and so on are agreed upon and published, and at that point maybe developers can then start to make more sort of reasoned decisions about what they do with their portfolios, once this state of flux has stopped and actually things have stood still for more than a day.

00:46:30 – Kyle Murchie

I suppose on that, maybe one of the tips is actually to still stay engaged, because there has been a lot of consultations, even just in the connection space in the last six months. You know, we’re talking about 10 plus consultations, and that’s not to mention all the other consultations that many developers will be involved in around kind of market aspects and more broadly. So, there’s a lot of potential for fatigue there, but you’re staying on top of which are the best consultations to feed into directly, feeding in through the likes of us, for example, we’re quite often responding to consultations directly or through other organisations, and therefore being able to feed that advice back and staying involved because, although we’re hoping to get to a point where there’s a little bit of a stopping point, where we get to have a clear set of implementation rules, the likelihood is, and hopefully from a positive perspective is that there will be a point at which it will be reviewed, there will be a point where you will be considering what’s worked, what’s not. So, even through 2025, there should be other opportunities to feed in, and if you don’t think something’s working, then making sure your voice is heard, which even for really involved developers at the moment, I know it’s quite tough to consider that you’re still going to have to continue to do that for six months or beyond.

00:47:57 – Catherine Cleary

I guess maybe the positive spin on it is perhaps there’s never been a time when the network operators, the system operator, have been more in like listening, like prepared to receive those ideas and like what change quite, you know, from quite an agile perspective. There’s literally just been an open letter from NESO, you know, which, like you know, has responded to like some quite sort of specific concerns that developers had raised, and you know, I guess, that like agility of sort of you know, them putting something out two weeks later, people coming back saying we don’t like this or have we thought about this unintended consequence, and then a week later having a letter that says yeah, actually let’s address it this way. That’s unprecedented levels of response; so that’s quite encouraging to see, so I guess there’s a reward for staying engaged.

00:48:37 – Kyle Murchie

The feedback’s genuinely been taken on board, we’re seeing that every day – well it feels like every day, that is being actively taken on board. So yeah, you’re absolutely right, I may be making it a bit pessimistic, but yeah, certainly from an optimistic point of view, there’s definitely opportunity to influence.

00:48:54 – Catherine Cleary

Fantastic.

So you’re going to have to help me out because I didn’t have a notebook, but I think we have, starting with Philip and sort of starting at the beginning of the process, that really good G99 form, that kind of engages at the right point and has all of the right details, kind of considering like a compliant project that’s definitely made it into the top 10.

And don’t always take no for an answer. I think you know just that kind of like pushing the boundaries.

We had the importance of kind of documenting the decision processes. You know so, like meeting minutes and so on, but also kind of like the design decision processes, Nikki, I think that you raised keeping good records and the collaboration sense of kind of you know, just trying to actually like well, you sort of talked about engaging the DNO at the right time, you know to do those design pieces of work. So, I suppose it’s kind of both programming and collaboration. I probably summarised that badly, Nikki, do you want to rephrase?

00:49:53 – Nikki Pillinger

No, I think you’ve said it. I think the only thing I’d add, sort of, is like that, early de-risking and making sure that you’re paying attention to the risks to the project throughout the lifetime of it.

00:50:04 – Catherine Cleary

Absolutely okay, right, so early de-risking.

We had Kyle’s design envelope, sort of like the concept of sort of you know, setting these broad parameters which don’t change, you know you never exceed throughout the project.

And we definitely had compliance, compliance, compliance, compliance you know, and the run up to it.

And then, Pete, I think we got in your get good advice, you know not just from consultants but from all of the available sources.

We got in the be realistic – so what was the size?

00:50:40 – Pete Aston

Bigger isn’t always better. Smaller isn’t always smarter.

00:50:44 – Catherine Cleary

Excellent, I don’t know whether that was like size does matter, or size doesn’t matter, I don’t know.

And I think we were going to let Pete slip a third one in there, which was …

00:50:57 – Kyle Murchie

The phasing.

00:50:58 – Catherine Cleary

Phasing yes, phasing staging, phasing our staging.

00:51:01 – Nikki Pillinger

And keeping up to date as well, and I think that …

00:51:04 – Pete Aston

Didn’t we have that already?

00:51:05 – Catherine Cleary

Well, we kind of had keeping up to date.

00:51:07 – Philip Bale

We are on 10.

00:51:09 – Catherine Cleary

Yeah, wait is keeping up to date the 10^th?

00:51:10 – Philip Bale

No, phasing was the 10^th.

00:51:12 – Catherine Cleary

Phasing was the 10^th?

Oh, I’m glad Philip’s paying attention, well done. Ok, fantastic, so we will almost certainly write these I imagine I can see an explainer or something on our website coming in on, so I’m sure they will be written down much more eloquently than I managed to capture them there, but that was a really good debate.

00:51:28 – Pete Aston

That was great.

00:51:30 – Catherine Cleary

Thank you everyone.

00:51:30 – Nikki Pillinger

Thank you.

00:51:31 – Catherine Cleary

And yeah, we will leave people to maybe comment if they’ve got things they think we missed.

00:51:37 – Philip Bale

I think, looking at it, it’s nearly a tie – in terms of overlaps and everything else it’s three or four, not that it’s a competition.

00:51:43 – Catherine Cleary

We did wonder if Philip would get competitive about this.

00:51:45 – Philip Bale

It’s looking very tight.

00:51:48 – Catherine Cleary

Excellent.

00:51:50 – Kyle Murchie

But you still won.

00:51:50 – Catherine Cleary

Yeah, diplomatically put Kyle.

Okay well, thanks everybody.

00:51:56 – Nikki Pillinger

Thank you.

00:51:56 – Philip Bale

Cheers.

Thank you, bye all.