Podcast: Connections Reform from a NGET perspective with John Twomey, NGET

00:01:05 – 00:01:16 – Pete Aston

Hello and welcome to another podcast from Roadnight Taylor. I’m Pete Aston, one of the engineers here at Roadnight Taylor, and I am very excited to be joined by John Twomey, who’s director of Customer and Network Development at National Grid. So, welcome John.

00:01:17 – 00:01:19 – John Twomey

Thank you very much, delighted to be here.

00:01:19 – 00:01:27 – Pete Aston

We are going to talk about all things grid connections and stuff like that, which is, you know, slightly high profile at the moment.

00:01:27 – 00:01:28 – John Twomey

It is.

00:01:29 – 00:01:35 – Pete Aston

So, before we get into that, John, can you sort of just tell us, you know, who you are, job role within National Grid, that sort of thing?

00:01:36 – 00:02:14 – John Twomey

Yeah, no, and big thanks for, for having me today. So yeah, John Twomey, so Director of Customer and Network Development in National Grid. So, I’m part of the transmission business in National Grid; so essentially that means that I have accountability for customer. So, all parts of the customer life cycle, for both existing and new customers looking to connect and be operational on our network.

And my team also play a really important role in terms of the front-loading decisions that we need to make around design a network and architecture decisions for the network as well. So, it’s a really, really important and brilliant role, and one where we work really, really closely with customers and stakeholders.

00:02:15 – 00:02:25 – Pete Aston

Yeah. So, in terms of the composition of your team, do you just do the sort of the customer facing role or have you got sort of design elements and, and construction elements within your team as well?

00:02:26 – 00:03:25 – John Twomey

Yeah, so if I sort of bring to life, so sort of how it, how the structure works within National Grid, I think that’d be really helpful for people to understand.

So essentially, you’ve got kind of my team that is the front and forward-facing interface point for customers. So, we have teams of relationship managers and account managers that are structured, along the lines of our big customers looking to connect to our network and those that are operational.

We then got development teams, essentially kind of develop the infrastructure that’s required off the back of connections, but also more broadly for infrastructure that’s required because of just load flows from Scotland coming down into England, and there’s big teams that kind of do that both on substations and overhead lines.

And then essentially there is a, another part of the transmission business, which is essentially is the capital execution part. So essentially, teams of people who are project managers in terms of delivering the physical construction and infrastructure base work at substations and overhead lines onto the network.

00:03:26 – 00:03:28 – Pete Aston

That’s a big team; there’s a lot going on.

00:03:29 – 00:04:12 – John Twomey

It is, I mean it’s obviously networks is obviously a big and important thing for customers as we go forward a huge amount, huge amount of people across those teams that all work really, really closely together. On top of that, you’ve got big growth ambitions in the organization, onboarding lots of new people.

As the kind of the demands of hitting Clean Power 30, how we kind of support strategic demand projects, obviously, begin to kind of mature. So yeah, there is loads going on and undoubtedly, we have a huge and really responsible role in terms of what we need to do to obviously facilitate for the needs of customers and stakeholders.

00:04:13 – 00:04:39 – Pete Aston

Yeah, so I guess every, everyone who’s listening knows that we’re like at a crucial turning point, like maybe one of that sort of most important turning points has been for at least a decade or more, isn’t it? So, what, you know, what’s the sort of main message that you would like listeners to take away in terms of what, what National Grid are doing to try and, you know, take everyone along on this journey of, of Clean Power and grid upgrades and so on?

00:04:40 – 00:07:40 – John Twomey

Yeah, I mean, I’ll start with Connection Reform, I guess, which is kind of, sort of front and center, I guess for many customers right now. The first thing I’d probably say is that I guess for everyone the progress that has been made has been really disappointing today. Obviously, the complexity of the industry program has meant that customers have had to wait a prolonged period of time in terms of understanding whether they’re at Gate 2 and when they are at Gate 2, what phase they’re in a Gate 2, and that’s taken too long for different reasons. I guess importantly, what that has now enabled is that we’re now at the engineering part of the process, and that’s where National Grid electricity transmission obviously starts to become quite a lead role in terms of the key decisions that need to be made on that.

So, we are very much in kind of doing an execution mode now, beginning of this year meant that we can now start to undertake the work around kind of system studies to work out both kind of decisions around sort of substation designs, but also the works that are required for customers.

Big, big kind of number of things for me that’s really, really important, particularly over the next six months. So first and foremost, this process needs to feel really transparent for customers. I think it has felt, you know, if I talk to many customers, like it’s been a bit of a black hole and it hasn’t been the level of transparency and visibility and that, and that gives a lot of concern and kind of tension into the process.

So, there’s lots of work ongoing, particularly like with government and NESO, around how we build more transparency, both at a project level. But equally at kind of a program level in terms of progress that’s being made. So, what does that look like week to week? What are the types of activities that we’re going to undertake? What have we done that week? What does next week look like? Kind of getting down to kind of that level of detail to give kind of confidence and trust in the forward-looking set of activities that need to happen. The other two things that I will kind of talk about is that this process and the success of this process is about customers feeling that they get from it what they need. So really understanding the customer needs in the process. What do customers want? What do the projects need, both in terms of timeframes, connection points, are there levels of risks that certain customers will want to be prepared to take on? How do we understand risk approach?

So, a lot of work going on with customers behind the scenes in terms of really understanding what that means for them and their organizations and also their portfolios. Making sure that intelligence is really, really at the center of engineering decisions over the coming weeks and months. And then the third, key part of all of this is obviously making that the outcome is delivered both in the timescales that’s been set by the industry plan, but also that the quality of the contracts coming out is at the standard that customers expect, and to kind of, my big expectation with all of this is that we’ve had the right conversations at the right time. So, when those contracts go out the door, customers know exactly what they’re going to kind of look and feel like.

00:07:41 – 00:08:25 – Pete Aston

Yeah. So those three things I think are going to, you know, resonate well with, with developers, you know, so if I play that back, I guess it was transparency, customer centric and sort of quality in terms of the offers.

So, all those, you know, sound great and definitely sound like, the things that developers are going to be one thing for NGET to focus on before we get into some more sort of detail around some of the processes about, you know, how you do the designs and so on for, the Gate 2 offers, could you just very quickly talk us over that, the sort of interface between National Grid and NESO, because it’s not always apparent, you know, who’s doing what in the process.

So yeah, it’d be good to just sort of see where there’s that sort of in the handoff points as I guess.

00:08:26 – 00:09:20 – John Twomey

Yeah, I can cover that. So, I’ll keep this quite high level, but hopefully it will, it will cover the kind of main points that need to be made. So, in terms of National Grid Electricity Transmission, we are the owner of the asset base for the transmission network across England, Wales.

So that essentially means that we own and maintain, and we also build the assets at, at predominantly 275 and 400kV for both substations and overhead lines. That is obviously a really important part, particularly with connections about making sure that we are designing and building and facilitating the timeframes for kind of what customers expect.

We work really, really closely with NESO, in connections. So, we essentially have a contract between NGET, so National Grid electricity transmission, and the NESO. Which essentially will set out things like what we need to build the program for, how we’re going to build it, the cost of building it, and sort of technical considerations.

00:09:21 – 00:09:22 – Pete Aston

Is that the TOCO?

00:09:23 – 00:09:24 – John Twomey

That is the TOCO, yeah.

00:09:25 – 00:09:26 – Pete Aston

That’s the Transmission Owner Connection Offer. Is that what?

00:09:27 – 00:10:14 – John Twomey

That’s right. Yeah, so it’s essentially a contract that forms exactly what the contract between NESO and customer will have. So, NESO and customer, you know, will be split predominantly with the bilateral connection agreement and then the construction agreement. Our contract is just a single contract that essentially does us both things; we’ve got back-to-back contracts with customers. Obviously, NESO’s role is that they are the contractual interface with customers, and they are I guess accountable for the management of customers and their needs, but we work really, really closely with them because you know, the strong feedback that we get from customers, and I completely agree with this is that we’ve got to be a really close and tight partnership because actually it needs both organizations to collectively be aligned and working really, really well to deliver on the need for our customers.

00:10:15 – 00:10:45 – Pete Aston

And so, in the Connections Reform process, you know, this is obviously a one-off process, a bit unusual, but essentially NESO has formed the queue, haven’t they based on the whole sort of application process and the Gate 2 readiness and all that sort of business, and then they provide you with the queue and they go, here’s, here’s the queue order; here’s everyone that’s in the queue. And then, and then you, your job is then to sort of design each connection, sort of in turn, and that’s what then forms the basis of the offers?

00:10:46 – 00:11:27 – John Twomey

Yeah, exactly that. So, kind of big part of the process on the Connection Reform today has been to kind of form that queue. So, who’s protected, who’s in phase one and who’s in phase two; that will cover all different types of technologies, that have come through Gate 2; that background is provided to us, and then that sets the basis for us doing these engineering studies. So, what we essentially will do is we’ll do a lot of different technical studies, both on a national and regional basis, to then work out what are the right design choices and what are the works required. Obviously against the backdrop that there are existing connection agreements that exist today because yeah, all of these customers have something signed as part of this Connection Reform process as well.

00:11:28 – 00:12:06 – Pete Aston

Yeah, I think that’s really helpful overview.

So, getting into a bit of detail now, so what’s national grid’s approach to connection dates? So all the Gate 2 offers that come out are going to have a, you know, have a connection date or maybe it’s staged or whatever, but is your approach to connection dates going to be, you know, like, you know, if everything goes really, really well, you can connect in 2029 or something, but realistically it would be 2031 or you know, so how’d you get, do you go really ambitious or really optimist or, or really sort of cautious, you know, I’m just in interested to how you, how you gauge that because it’s quite difficult.

00:12:07 – 00:14:13 – John Twomey

Yeah. And it’s obviously been a huge topic of conversation kind of more broadly as part of this process.

I think as part of part of answering the question, it’s probably, useful for me to set out what our process looks like and, and to kind of bring to life kind of the steps and such like, so there’s kind of two parts to this that we’ll be undertaken when we provide offers out to customers. So, one part is essentially looking at the kind of critical path for that specific project.

And as part of it, you kind of need to look at what is the infrastructure that needs to be built? So, if it a new substation, is it extension to an existing substation? Are you in a world where actually you’ve got a substation with a spare bay? And if you have like brilliant; in that, we’ll have runways and those runways will give us guidance around what has been, both historic time for deliver those types of connections, but equally, when you’re baking things like land and policy changes, what do you expect to see in terms of kind of betterment?

The important thing with all of this is it’s not just, it’s not just a pure project level equation. You also, we need to be looking at like the portfolio level. So, what that essentially means is – what’s also the system access windows that you are working within in that region? How many connections and other works do you have? What system access windows do you kind of need to kind of deliver within? What I would say is you bring all of that together and it is the ambition that these offers are ambitious in terms of dates, but they also need to be deliverable. And we also need to understand, as I kind of outlined earlier, what customers are looking for, what they value in terms of clarity about risk and how we kind of manage risk because there are different levers that you could pull in terms of being more risk or less risky.

I think it’s important to kind of understand that on a, on a customer level. But, you know, we are very, very clear that the dates need to be ambitious. They need to kind of ladder back to what customers are looking for, and equally, you know, we are here to deliver the macro level, policy outcomes in terms of CP30 as well.

00:14:14 – 00:14:38 – Pete Aston

And is within this, you, you’ve talked already about sort of having those conversations with customers maybe prior to the Gate 2 offers sort of coming out, will customers be able to defer connection dates to a certain extent if, like, if, if you could deliver in 2030, say, but the customer might not be ready till 2031, is that, is that a conversation that could be had with a customer?

00:14:39 – 00:15:31 – John Twomey

Yeah, exactly. So that, that essentially is the process that we are currently running with customers to understand what they’re looking for. You know, in certain cases it could be that the infrastructure to deliver the connection is, is ready earlier than a customer might like for different reasons, you know, if that’s the case, then we’ll be talking about how we make sure that we can entertain the right landing point for the customer, kind of based on their feedback. Ultimately, success in this process looks around getting the right handshake in terms of what can be delivered physically from a network point of view and making sure that it’s in kind of aligned with what the customer’s looking for because you know, as we see like lots of different technology types looking to connect the networks, batteries can move really quickly or quicker than other technologies. Likes of things like nuclear and offshore wind, obviously have a larger and more complex on paper, kind of critical path that needs to be followed.

00:15:32 — 00:15:43 – [BREAK FOR MIDDLE SECTION]

00:15:43 – 00:16:10 – Pete Aston

And so, to, to talk about batteries then, you know, I think everyone who’s listening will know that the battery queues oversubscribed. So, what’s National Grid’s approach to, to issuing Gate 2 offers for batteries? Do you have to issue Gate 2 offers to every battery that’s got a Gate 2 offer even though you know that they’re probably not all going to build out, you know, it’s just trying to sort of gauge that, just general approach.

00:16:11 – 00:18:15 – John Twomey

Yeah. I think probably I’ll start first and foremost with, I guess Connection Reform and its policy and what it was looking to achieve. And then, and then we’ll kind of dive down into that.

So, you know, obviously it’s essentially at the top level, Connection Reform, was and is required because of the levels of oversubscription that we’ve seen in the market, prior to it coming. And we’ve obviously been a big supporter in terms of need for change, which has come through.

Specifically for batteries, we have seen quite material over subscription to what was envisaged. So, you know, just from our network, we need around 10 and a half gigawatts of battery connections by 2030. And that number actually remains the same, out to 2035 through Gate 2, we’ve got around 47 gigawatts of batteries at Gate 2, and quite a significant oversubscription, particularly in the kind of phase two, of that as well, that is problematic: I’m not going to try and, dial that down. I mean, it does mean that we will need to look at kind of design solutions across that 47 gigawatts of batteries that were obviously made it through.

It’s very clear that kind of the Gate 2 rules is around those that have made it through, obviously need to get an offer in line with the methodology that’s come through. And we will do that. And we are doing that and we’re kind of working with the customers to understand kind of their portfolio and the design choices that we need to make.

But undoubtedly, it is going to mean that it’s going to trigger many more connection points and substations that is required under the CP30 targets. And it is also going to mean that, you know, other technology type, are also going to have to have an interaction with that over subscription because they’ll all be vying for things like supply chain capacity, system access, and, and those other critical measures that are needed as well.

00:18:16 – 00:18:53 – Pete Aston

So, the first approach is to the battery over subscription is you have a duty to issue offers to everyone who, you know, effectively in the Gate 2 queue, even though it’s oversubscribed. So, everyone’s going to get the Gate 2 offer, but so I guess you were starting to pick up on this, the main impact then of sort of an oversubscribed BESS queue seems to be more on the sort of bay allocations and if, you know, there’s all the bays and existing substations are used up, then new substations in order to connect them. So, is that, is that the main issue or is there sort of the, an issue with wider network reinforcement, because of the batteries as well?

00:18:54 – 00:20:29 – John Twomey

Primarily an issue with substations and bays. So from a kind of a wider network perspective for batteries, if batteries are behaving in the market as you expect, then you know they won’t normally be driving the need for new overhead lines across the network, and you can do a lot of clever and fancy things with the modelling of the overhead lines and deep into networks constraint management, NESO being a big part of that.

What you obviously can’t do is you can’t attrition out a physical connection point. So, all of those 47 gigawatts of batteries will need a physical connection point into network. And essentially then we will kind of need to look at to what extent we will need to extend existing substations and build more substations within a region. And there are certain regions, I guess, which have a larger over subscription and hotspot to this.

So essentially it does come down to, it’s kind of will drive a level of different decision across kind of your network design and architecture decisions, and then the ongoing challenges that you’ll face around things like system access comes and supply chain and what you need to build.

But ultimately, yeah, those projects are at gate term. We need to be really, really clear about what our role is at that stage of the process, I know that there is work ongoing through government and Ofgem around looking at battery subscription as a, a specific topic that’s come out, a Connection Reform. But yeah, it obviously, the timeframes, Connection Reform means that it’s probably unlikely that any recommendations from that process are going to flow into what needs to happen over the coming months.

00:20:30 – 00:21:21 – Pete Aston

Yeah. So, given that the physical connection point’s probably the biggest issue for with battery over subscription, because I like what you’re saying to go, well, actually, in terms of wider networks, you can make a few more assumptions around how many might end up connecting and you can sort of flex that a little bit. So bay sharing has become a bit of a sort of hot topic in recent months, and, you know, does that form well, maybe firstly you could sort of talk us through what you think we mean by bay sharing? And because NESO did issue, a some sort of guidance policy on a, a year or so ago, but yeah, if you could talk us through what you think we mean by bay sharing and then like how that might help with some of the sort of designs that you are doing for, for all these battery connections.

00:21:22 – 00:22:19 – John Twomey

Yeah. So yeah, first and foremost, I think bay sharing is really important part of the output of Connection Reform. And, you know, on paper has the ability to be a real win-win. Yeah, it has the ability that, a number of customers can connect into a bay that feels like a good thing in terms of expediating time and the level of infrastructure that’s required. And the second part of it is that we can then be really fine-tuned in terms of like what the architecture decisions for substations will look like.

Yeah, a high level, you know, bay sharing does exist today in our network. So, we have a connection product called Grid Parks that essentially means up to three different customers can connect into a single transformer that goes back to a kind of a single base – so it exists. The extension around bay sharing is how we can essentially accommodate two or more customers into a bay in a substation.

00:22:20 – 00:22:33 – Pete Aston

And I guess, the, for I guess any listeners who aren’t familiar with the Grid Park idea, that’s a, that tends to be like three sort of smaller sized connections, isn’t it? Like a, I don’t know, you’ve got 150MVA transformer or something, and three 50-megawatt batteries or something like that.

00:22:34 – 00:23:10 – John Twomey

Exactly that, yeah. So, you’re quite right, it needs the characteristics, those projects to be around 150 megawatts in, in totality. I guess the bay sharing has the potential for bigger sizes are projects to connect in because the bay, you know, is normally good for kind of 1800 megawatts on paper. So, it has the ability to be a really, really powerful and important part. I mean, historically it hasn’t really been an option, and the reason for that is because all of the bays have been allocated to customers pre-connection reform, and it’s needed agreement from those customers to change it. And yeah, my experience is that it’s been difficult to get that agreement.

00:23:11 – 00:23:20 – Pete Aston

And I guess in the past you had enough bays to go around as well. So, you almost didn’t need to do it.

00:23:21 – 00:24:04 – John Twomey

Certainly, in a world where you had spare bays, you know, it, that was, this issue didn’t exist. You’re now in a world where you’ve got such high competition for connections and bays that the efficiency of kind of looking at how you can connect more is obviously really important.

So, we see it as really, really, really key, I guess the big, big part of it is really understanding though, which substations have the ability for bay sharing and which don’t. Some of the more older legacy operational substations, still need assessment around their feasibility for bay sharing, proximity of other assets, the way it’s configured. Obviously for the new fleet of substations that are being designed today, you can, you can design that outcome with that in mind.

00:24:05 – 00:24:16 – Pete Aston

So, it’s a lot easier to go – I’ve got brand new substation design, you know, bay sharing in, because it physically increases the amount of room you need, doesn’t it? When you’re sharing a bay and extra disconnectors and circuit breakers and all that sort of business.

00:24:17 – 00:24:50 – John Twomey

It does exactly. So, you’re kind of just making sure you’ve got the right, proximity of land take and everything else to be able to do it. But yeah, we are hugely supportive of bay sharing as being an important connection product going forward. I guess the big part of it is kind of making sure that we’ve got confidence and clarity of where it can be applied, because obviously we want to make sure that point of offers going out to customers, that they’ve got something that they’ve got confidence in and it’s investible. And therefore, doing that assessment, which we’re undertaking right now is really important to get to that outcome.

00:24:51 – 00:25:33 – Pete Aston

Yeah, sticking with a sort of that the idea of batteries and oversubscription in, everyone’s expecting there to be a certain amount of attrition at some point in the future, maybe even during the course of this year. You know, developers will get Gate 2 offers and they won’t accept them for whatever reason, so how, how’s that then going to be factored into this process? Because it’s going to feel like, you know, all the, the Gate 2, phase one and then phase two offers are going to go out. And then in the process some of them aren’t going to be accepted and, you know, so how are you going to then have to factor sort of the redesign of these schemes into the process? It all sounds like a bit of a challenge.

00:25:34 – 00:26:39 – John Twomey

Yeah, I mean, I look at it as a positive challenge, but it will be a challenge. I mean, we will expect that there will be some offers that obviously go out and are not signed for different reasons. Now, what the volume of those offers actually look like remains to be seen.

And yeah, different organizations and individuals have a different kind of view on that. What is really, really important behind this is that as offers don’t get accepted, the options for other projects that is technically behind those projects in the queue, have the opportunity therefore to go forward.

So, I see technically like the next year, probably following Connection Reform as being probably an important year of optimization, you could essentially see like a second wave of voluntary updates to agreements. And the reason I say kind of voluntary is I do think at that stage it will be about having the conversations with customers that this opportunity has become available and is this an opportunity that they kind of want to take forward or not? But it will need to be worked through on the basis of that, the queue order and where people kind of sit within the new Gate 2 process.

00:26:40 – 00:27:37 – Pete Aston

So, I guess there’s something like hypotheticals I could think of here and, so I’ll work through some examples because it may be, it may be useful.

So, if a customer has a, let’s say it’s a battery customer has a, a Gate 2 offer into a bay in an existing substation, and then, so customer B has a, an, an offer for a connection into, you know, brand new substation. But the customer, A, the first battery chooses not to proceed with their, with their Gate 2 off for, for whatever reason, what’s your process then? Do you go right, there is now a better, cheaper, quicker, whatever solution for customer B and at that point you would then have a conversation with customer B, or, or is it, would you just automatically go, right, you’ve now got a different connection point, issue the offer out regardless, or, you have the conversation first or is?

00:27:38 – 00:28:46 – John Twomey

Yeah, it will definitely be a conversation first. I mean it’s really; I think it’s really important through this process that we are making sure that any changes to contracts going forward go through a really mature, deep process in terms of understanding what that change is and making sure it’s fit for purpose.

I guess in that scenario that you’ve just put forward, you would hope that there would be clear alignment with that, you know, waiting for a new substation versus an existing one sitting there would obviously feel like something which, hopefully will be really aligned with what the customer wants to see.

Undoubtedly, from a network’s perspective as well, that we wouldn’t want to invest and trigger a new substation before we really needed to, unless there were really clear grounds that it was very much a no regrets decision for future proofing. So, I think in that situation, it would make perfect sense, move that customer, it would mitigate the investment that you’d need to spend on the new substation, and therefore that’s a good thing for consumers as well. But we would need to go through a network driven process, engaging with the customer about that option and what it would look like before the contract was updated.

00:28:47 – 00:29:11 – Pete Aston

There is obviously really tricky scenarios where you go, actually the new substation that’s being built is much closer to the customer’s site than, than the existing substation. You know, you could get some, see some difficult conversations, but I get your point that you go, well, if customer B is the only customer triggering the substation, then you can now move them over here, well, from a sort of whole system point of view, it doesn’t make sense to build the new substation.

00:29:12 – 00:30:03 – John Twomey

No, but I, but again, we’d have to be mindful that, you know, in a situation with where the existing substation was the preferred vehicle, if that existing substation was 20 kilometres away and it materially impacted to the economics for that project, then that would be a consideration in terms of actually, is that the right answer?

So again, you know, we’d need to make sure we engage with the customers, understand the kind of feedback, how it aligns with the commercial case for the project before any decisions that were made. I think, you know, I would hope that in that optimization process would feel on balance like a very good process for customers because it would be about moving forward. So, betterment in terms of time and works, but there could be, you know, particularly the, the odd scenario where it brings some tension into actually, what is the right answer.

00:30:04 – 00:30:51 – Pete Aston

Yeah. No, that’s, no, that all sort of makes sense, just moving away from batteries quickly the, I think it’s probably worth talking about demand connections for a bit. I guess some of the answers might come out the same, but, obviously NESO and Ofgem, the government are going through the process, looking at the demand queue now, like we’ve, they were previously looking at generation queue and there’s, I guess, the possibility of the demand queue shrinking from what seems like a very large number in the demand queue.

How will the sort of the, what will be the impact of demand projects being removed from the queue in terms of like network design elements, bay allocations, that sort of thing?

00:30:52 – 00:32:14 – John Twomey

Yeah, so again, I guess just to set the scene here, there is a, a really large over subscription of well demand on paper; obviously demand itself doesn’t have a number associated with it, but obviously the cumulative sort of gigawatts that are at Gate 2 our above national demand that kind of exists today. So, it’s obviously quite an extreme volume from that technology perspective.

If demand was to fall away, it would have, I think probably quite a positive impact in the optionality for other customers that would be contracted in the background in terms of a bay perspective. So, what it could mean, for instance, is that there’s access to bays that are now available for other forms of technologies that could be utilized. It won’t have a bearing on sort of significant changes to sort of why the system works; so the engineering work that we are doing assumes a forecast of what we expect demand to kind of look like, that goes into study process; it doesn’t put all of the demand that’s covered in Gate 2 into the study process because if it did, it would be driving probably a very incorrect and challenge and answer to come out.

So, it is based on a kind of forecast and recommendation that comes from NESO and then, then we use that as part of our power systems analysis to kind of look at the works.

00:32:15 – 00:32:40 – Pete Aston

So it sounds almost identical to the story you sort of, the picture you painted for, for batteries in the, in the sense that, you know, the, the oversubscription of demand in the queue is impacting on bay allocations and new substations, but not necessarily impacting on the wider reinforcement because you can make assumptions around how much batteries are actually going to connect, how much demand will actually connect. So, it sounds quite a similar story across both.

00:32:41 – 00:34:40 – John Twomey

Yeah, it is a similar story, the probably one notable difference is that batteries retain different type of queue positions across the Gate 2 process. So, you know, specifically if we were to talk about batteries in phase one, we have more batteries in phase one than what our CP30 and 35 number is; so that does mean there’s probably more tension upfront between batteries having access to existing substations, and not triggering the need for new substations at that point for demand, the large volumes of demand are towards the back of the phase two. So characteristic wise, it is probably more from a demand point of view about how many new substations do you need?

But obviously the, the lead time associated with developing and delivering those substations mean that actually that needs to still be sort of initiated and we needed to be working through that over the coming years.

00:34:41 – 00:34:47 – Pete Aston

Yeah. So, the difference between battery and demand is more of a sort of a phasing issue over the next 9, 10 years?

00:34:48 – 00:35:16 – Pete Aston

Yeah, okay, that’s interesting. And would the same sort of process happen if, if demand customers were to be removed from the queue for whatever reason? Then there would just be a, you know, same sort of redesign looking at optionality type process that we talked about for batteries.

Whereas, you know, you would then potentially going to have conversations with other customers to go, this demand projects now come out the queue, so there’s now an option for you to come in here.

00:35:17 – 00:35:54 – John Twomey

It would, it’d be the same type of process. The difference, the only difference being that a lot of the demand is towards the, yeah, in phase two and towards sort of middle to back end of phase two.

So that does mean kind of on paper that the optionality for demand coming out, is more about the fact that you’re not triggering more, you’re not triggering more extensive new substations than what you need, so it’s more around that rather than it provides an opportunity for someone else to move into that slot because we’ve actually got a slot on a substation that needs to be built in the future.

00:35:55 – 00:36:19 – Pete Aston

Yeah, that makes sense, and does it work both ways around in terms of like, if a demand customer was to come out the queue, those bays could get allocated to a battery or a solar farm or something. And if a, you know, battery in the solar farm was to be removed from a queue, the, the bays could then be allocated to demand customers.

Does a, does it, does it work that way around or the bays for batteries can only be refilled with generation connections or something?

00:36:20 – 00:37:12 – John Twomey

Yeah, no, I mean, there is, there is kind of optionality for different types of technology and generation and demand to have the flexibility to go into different types of bays. For some substations there could be technical reasons as to why that might be difficult for certain projects. So, you might get to a position where you either hit your kind of max generation number at that substation and therefore it’s, it’s difficult to put another generator in. Or there could be things like the characteristics of this project, meaning it creates like fault level impacts, and those fault level impacts mean that we need to kind of replace lots of equipment within the substation.

So, it does come down to the characteristics of probably how big the project is, and what type of technology it is, and the effect it has on the system. But bays can be very interchangeable between demand generation and within generation as well.

00:37:13 – 00:37:22 – Pete Aston

Yeah, so I guess, you know you’ve painted a broad picture, but in reality, every situation is site specific and every scenario you’ve got to look at on its own merits.

00:37:23 – 00:37:37 – John Twomey

You do. And the important part of that is having the backdrop of like the right information, at the time to kind of support. What are the constraints within the substations and therefore, what flexibility does that arise to kind of all customers or a subset of customers?

00:37:38 – 00:38:04 – Pete Aston

And moving on from some of those technical considerations as we sort of move towards the end of the podcast here. What’s NGET doing about that sort of people resourcing point of view to actually deliver some of these connections? Because there’s obviously got a, a steep increasing the amount of connections you’ve got to deliver per year, so can you give us a sense of what, what that looks like in terms of sort of a people resourcing point of view?

00:38:05 – 00:42:22 – John Twomey

Yeah, I can, so I break the answer into kind of two chunks. The first chunk will just be around Connection Reform as well, and what that looks like for our business over the course of the next year. And then specifically, I widen up in terms of the delivery of like infrastructure and the physical connections.

So, starting first and foremost with Connection Reform, it is without doubt the biggest priority within our business this year for things that aren’t. You know, around keeping the lights on or safety and those types of BAU things will net that, which will obviously hugely important day in, day out.

This is, as you’ve already kind of set out the start of this podcast, a quite a unique program of work, and it is so important, I guess, to customers in terms of the outcomes that come out of it and the evolution of the process that it’s top tier from CEO downwards in terms of the organization, in terms of the priority, the organization itself has a huge amount of resource and structure, particularly on like a companywide program within the transmission business on this. So, we are very much kind of in a drumbeat of daily steering groups and such, like in terms of all the activities that need to happen and our kind of role within that.

If I then talk more extensively about connections, we are going like National Grid as an organization, particularly in transmission side, is going through a huge amount of growth, you know, we’ve just agreed our new five-year price control with Ofgem; around 35 billion pounds of investment within that in terms of the next five years. And big part of that investment is for connections and customers as well. So, there is kind of strength in the fact that we’ve been through that kind of program, and we’ve got the price control agreed with Ofgem and that gives us confidence in terms of the next steps over the next five years.

I guess what is really important within that is the fact that we are equally onboarding a lot of new people within the organization, both within kind of the customer facing teams, development, and the construction teams. Obviously, the growth that we have in connections is hugely significant and we are doing that kind of ahead of some of those needs, needing to be delivered.

And then the other two parts that I would kind of call out within this is that our process for delivering works with our main works construction partners is equally important. 2025 has been a really significant year, we’ve implemented a new supply chain framework within our business. So, the electricity transmission partnership; and what that enables us to do is it enables us to have regional partners, so regional partners that have, foresight and forecast ability of future work within a region moving away from case-by-case tenders for different projects. We now have a, if you like, a regional portfolio approach in place, that means that we’ve got lead partners in each of those regions, you’ve got secondary partners and you also have mechanisms within the framework that mean that you can kind of pull-on different partners from different areas as well. So, that is a really significant part of how we’re going to deliver work more at pace and be able to kind of also be able to deliver the work sort of ahead of needs over the coming years.

The final bit, which is more of an industry-wide piece, is obviously the importance of system access reform. So yeah, building the assets is one thing, making sure you’ve got the right level of system access to be able to connect the new infrastructure in is obviously really, really integral. So, there is a really central piece of work going on through NESO and Ofgem and government involved in terms of system access reform.

Our kind of strong place in that work is obviously to make sure that we are got a firm seat at the table in terms of how we can make sure we shape the maximum level of system access that you’ve got, and then obviously the execution of work you get in once and you kind of do all drivers in line with that system access and therefore you kind of don’t need multiple windows for different types of work.

00:42:23 – 00:42:59 – Pete Aston

Yeah, there’s lots going on – that sounds amazing.

The Ofgem and the government at the moment, sort of more on the, the demand connection side of things have been looking at sort of enhancing options for demand projects to do sort of self-build, self-ownership of projects. How does that factor into that sort of resource question?

Because I get from the outside perspective, it looks like if customers can build more assets themselves, that potentially takes a little bit of a burden off you. But, you know, does that, is that how National Grid sees it?

00:43:00 – 00:44:37 – John Twomey

Yeah, I mean again, I think the work that government are doing, and Ofgem are doing on demand and strategic demand is really, really welcome.

I think any option that enables more pace and optionality for customers to be put on the table has to be a good thing, there’s obviously a lot of current focus on demand owning HV equipment and building and maintaining that. Again, I think there is real opportunities associated with that.

I think we at National Grid really, really keen to kind of interface well with that and to make sure that the totality of the option that comes out of it, across what’s agreed for what a demand customer might own and operate versus like the wider transmission network is, is the right thing. I mean, there is undoubtedly so much work that needs to be done that where you’ve got options for customers to be delivering assets that they will own and operate as part of that. I think, you know, that is a really, really important opportunity that we kind of need to look at is probably coming at a time where it’s, it’s quite tight with the Connection Reform work and making sure that that can feed in. But I’m kind of really, really hopeful that, you know, we can make, make the right decisions around that.

We’re certainly from a national grid point of view not in a position that we want to protect building everything ourselves, absolutely not the case. I think this optionality for how the whole sort of ecosystem make sure that it’s got the right sort of balance in what needs to be done is the right thing.

00:44:38 – 00:44:41 – Pete Aston

Yeah, yeah. A lot more to go on that during 2026.

00:44:42 – 00:44:43 – John Twomey

There is, yeah.

00:44:42 – 00:45:02 – Pete Aston

We’re sort of nearly out of time, but I think one last question. How can developers help you? So obviously we’ve talked a bit more today about how National Grid is helping developers, but is are, are there ways in which developers can make your life easier, and make the whole sort of connection process a bit more slick?

00:45:03 – 00:46:14 – John Twomey

Yeah, I mean, as kind of when, back too earlier, the big opportunity I think we have between national grid and network companies and our customers is around making sure that this understanding of what they need out the process is really, really clear. So, the timeframes that they would like, connections for projects, the types of works, the risk appetite that they have, the sequencing of what is the most important project in their portfolio and making sure that that’s really understood. So, the level of clarity, I guess, and insight that we have to understand their needs is for me, kind of really, really central within this. The second part of this is as well around us as network companies being really clear about some of the constraints and challenges that we might have.

And what I have seen in certain situations is kind of where you open on that you get, you also get good ideas and optionality coming from customers, whether that’s around fast tracking, long lead equipment or anything else that needs to come into it. So, I think the engagement, insights, trust, and sort of clarity in understanding needs is really central.

00:46:15 – 00:46:48 – Pete Aston

Yeah. John, we’ve run out of time, sadly. I think we could talk, talk all day on this, it’s been really great having you in, thank you so much. And, yeah, I guess as an industry, you know, we all recognize National Grid’s doing, really important job and doing a good job, and I know there’s challenges, challenges, but yeah, I think we can all say National Grids doing a great job and keep up the good work.

Thank you everyone to, for listening as well and tuning in and we hope you join us again for another podcast soon. Thanks very much and goodbye.

00:46:48 – 00:46:49 – John Twomey

Thank you.