7th birthday – our success in numbers

Crikey! Roadnight Taylor turns 7 years old today (29 October) which calls for a look back at where we’ve come from and what we have achieved.

We started Roadnight Taylor in 2013 after identifying a need for independent and expert advice to help rural and commercial land and property owners navigate the risks of traditional approaches from energy scheme developers. With a client once quoting, “I am so glad that Roadnight Taylor were introduced to me. If they hadn’t, I would have been ripped off left, right and centre by developers,” we knew we were meeting our initial aims!

However, as the energy industry has transformed at a pace, so have we. We’ve seen growth in our team, expertise, services and client sectors – including now providing the aforementioned developers with grid connection consultancy.

Here’s some of our 7–year highlights in figures:

1. Client successes: in our 7th year we secured grid capacity for 2GW of solar, storage, gensets and energy from waste (EfW) schemes, on around 6,000 acres on over 80 sites, representing a potential lifetime ground rent of more than £200 million.

2. Our clients and sectors: from our rural roots in 2013, our client base has grown and diversified. To name a few new client sectors, our grid connections team now extends its unrivalled technical, commercial and regulatory expertise to five of the largest and leading energy developers operating in the UK, we’re taking on more commercial and industrial clients, and are advising and supporting a number of local authorities.

3. Our team: we are incredibly proud of the talent and calibre of our fabulous team. We’ve grown from two to a team of 18, including a cluster of Oxbridge degrees (First Class and Masters), and a genuine rocket scientist! We can’t wait until we can all get back together to celebrate our successes – in the meantime, Reggie, our new Chief Happiness Officer keeps us entertained!

4. Cups of coffee: we outgrew our first office and moved into a larger office in Burford in July 2018. This called for the imperative investment in a ‘proper coffee’ machine, which has since churned out some 6,500 cups of americano, latte, cappuccino, espresso, fluffy milk or however you like to take it!

5. Events, presentations and webinars: from our very first days, Hugh was invited to talk to on how to safely approach getting an energy scheme on land. Richard joined us in 2018, and he’s presented on flexibility and behind the meter investments. This year, much has been on Zoom, Teams and other platforms, but over the seven years, we estimate we’ve presented at 70 events, to 4,000 people – which equates to more cups of coffee and breakfast bacon butties!

6. Expert panels and consultations: Hugh has been invited to sit on Connections Steering Groups for all six of the UK’s DNOs. On the week of our seventh Birthday, he was voted by Scottish and Southern Electricity Network’s Distributed (SSEN) Generation, C&I and Consultancies stakeholder communities to be their representative on SSEN’s Expert Panel. In the same week he was invited by UK Power Networks (UKPN) to join its own expert panel. His expertise is helping to steer the industry to better help both our clients and the energy transition itself.

7. Climate change influences: we estimate (very roughly!) that the schemes we’ve been involved with would produce over 60TWh of clean energy and offset 15 million tonnes of CO2. Combined with our switch to electric vehicles and our drive towards a paperless office environment, we’re proud of our contribution to the UK’s drive to net zero.

Thank you

We want to say a huge thank you to all our clients who have put their faith in us, our network of professional contacts who have supported us, and to our extraordinary team who constantly pull out all the stops to support our clients.

Huge thanks go to our support crew too, including Dom Knight at Oxfordshire Web Services for our website development and John Bellars and Rachel Foster at Wych Films who provide our photography and films – all have been with us from the very start of our journey. Also, Kamarin Computers Ltd for our IT support and the team at edge Urban Design who create our website illustrations, including our fabulous moving birthday blog image.