Podcast: Grid News and Views #15 –
Has Connections Reform really failed?

00:01:49 – 00:02:41 – Pete Aston

Hello and welcome to another podcast from Roadnight Taylor. I’m Pete Aston, and I’m joined by my colleagues Alex Ikonic, Nikki Pillinger and Catherine Cleary. So, for anyone listening, this is our festive podcast because we all are wearing festive jumpers of one kind or another.

And if you are listening, if you listen very carefully, you may hear some jingle bells in the background. So, we are going to be really picking up on the, the Gate 2 notifications; so, picking up on the Christmas theme, I guess for some developers, Santa has come and delivered them what they were wanting and for others the Grinch has come and stolen Christmas.

So yeah, the Gate 2 notifications came out earlier this week from when we’ve been recording. So, I don’t know who wants to go first, there’s a lot to say about Gate 2 notifications. Yeah, go on Catherine?

00:02:42 – 00:04:04 – Catherine Cleary

Yeah, so I guess transmission customers did all get their Gate 2 notifications on Monday. And they, the notifications, I think we’ve seen quite a lot of people who are perhaps a bit confused by what they saw in the notifications. So, it confirms whether you’re Gate 1 or Gate 2 obviously, whether you’ve passed detailed checks or whether you’re still subject to some detailed checks, it also confirms what phase you are, but it only confirms the phase that you are for your first firm stage of the connections. If you have multiple stages of your connection and stage one is non-firm, then that Gate 2 notification doesn’t really give you any information about your first non-firm stage. That’s one thing to say if anyone’s thinking, where’s my non-firm stage one that I was expecting to be, you know, connected in the next couple of years? And that won’t be in your, in your notification. So, I suppose that that’s kind of one point to point out.

The other thing is that, that means that whether you’ve got a phase one sort of up to 2030, or a phase 2, 2031 and beyond notification, that’s not necessarily the whole picture as to when you’re going to get your offer. So, if you have got a protected project, and you are expecting a 27 or 26 connection date to be protected, then we have had NESO confirm that those offers will go out in January for transmission project as expected. So that’s kind of a, I think, a good thing, but a point of confusion that’s affected quite a lot of people.

00:04:04 – 00:04:18 – Pete Aston

Mm-hmm, and Nikki, in terms of just some of the numbers, in terms of some of the technology types and the pots that have filled up, can you give us a bit of a view as to how that looks for sort of solar batteries?

00:04:19 – 00:05:01 – Nikki Pillinger

Yes. So, as kind of expected batteries have been a big loser in this process, so pretty much any batteries without planning permission, have not got a grid offer or a Gate 2 offer. There’s been some solar schemes that haven’t got through, but not too many. So, there was quite significant solar allocations. Some wind projects, some wind, lots of wind in Scotland, has missed out unfortunately, and there’s been no reallocation between sort of England and Wales and Scottish wind capacity.

Yeah, some gas didn’t get through as well. But yeah, on the whole batteries have definitely been the, been a big loser as a, as was kind of anticipated with this.

00:05:02 – 00:05:08 – Pete Aston

Yeah. But, but on the batteries, Alex, there’s still quite a lot more batteries in the queue than are actually needed, isn’t there?

00:05:09 – 00:05:22 – Alex Ikonic

Yes. Yeah, absolutely. So quite a lot of batteries were protected, so it is easier to get planning permission for batteries, which is why they were able to get that planning status. So, I think it’s something like 62 gigawatts, oversubscribed with batteries.

00:05:23 – 00:05:34 – Pete Aston

So, and I guess what that means is if you were a battery customer and you got a Gate 1 offer, you’d have to wait for 62 gigawatts of batteries to come out the queue before there’s any chance of you…

00:05:34 -00:05:35 – Catherine Cleary

Yeah.

00:05:35 – 00:05:38 – Pete Aston

Being able to go in, in a future window. That’s, that’s a burden.

00:05:38 – 00:05:50 – Alex Ikonic

Yeah. And, and I guess some batteries could still be eligible for protections in the next window. So, if they had applied before the 20th of December for planning permission, so potentially that could grow a little bit more.

00:05:51 – 00:05:53 – Pete Aston

Yes. So that’s protection clause 3A, wasn’t it? I think.

00:05:54 – 00:05:55 – Alex Ikonic

Yes. That the one.

00:05:55 – 00:05:56 – Pete Aston

Yeah.

00:05:56 – 00:06:01 – Catherine Cleary

And I think it’s any future window, actually. I don’t think they have to get it by the next window. I think they could go into any future window.

00:06:01 – 00:06:12 – Pete Aston

Okay. So, in terms of remaining headroom, I think as, it’s only really on shore wind, isn’t it, in England and Wales, that’s got any significant headroom left, is that right?

00:06:13 – 00:06:14 – Nikki Pillinger

Yeah.

00:06:14 – 00:06:15 – Catherine Cleary

Yes, and I think few zones are solar.

00:06:15 – 00:06:16 – Pete Aston

A few zones are solar.

00:06:16 – 00:06:18 – Alex Ikonic

I think under 500 megawatts split over three zones, I think.

00:06:19 – 00:06:22 – Nikki Pillinger

Yeah, we don’t have very small amounts of solar left.

00:06:23 – 00:07:03 – Pete Aston

But yeah, significant sort of numbers of schemes that have come out the queue. So, we were contemplating before we started the podcast how much of the data we’d go into, but we decided you can just go and look at NESOs website. Because we will just be waffling, around the numbers.

But, yeah, so really significant week for all the industry. I guess this is a week that we’ve been working up to for a couple of years, so yeah, so really significant.

In terms of what we’re seeing, in terms of, sort of clients that we’ve been working with, any surprises in terms of notifications that anyone’s seen?

00:07:03 – 00:07:17 – Nikki Pillinger

I’ve had one. So, I’ve yeah had a solar scheme that has Gate 1 because obviously the solar capacities have gone over slightly. Yeah, but not non-protected project.

00:07:17 – 00:07:20 –Pete Aston

So, was that a surprise for that particular client when they?

00:07:20 – 00:07:27 – Nikki Pillinger

It was a bit of a surprise. We weren’t quite sure which way it was going to go. But yeah, I don’t think I’ve had any other particular surprises.

00:07:27 – 00:08:32 – Catherine Cleary

Yeah, I suppose the advancement point is a bit of a surprise, so that’s not necessarily very visible to individual projects yet because the notifications don’t really show the kind of granularity or advancement within phases. But it was a bit of a bombshell that that kind of got dropped on Monday I think, you know, NESO acknowledged on their webinar that very few projects have, so, lots of people have requested advancement, but very, very few projects have actually been considered for advancement. So, it sounds like NESO and the TOs have had some conversations, and based, I think I was surprised , because based on the kind of connections design methodologies, you know, the wording in that sort of really suggested that those initial conversations were just about ruling out or kind of vetoing advancement requests that were obviously impossible without doing any study work. And it seems quite surprising to me that they’ve ruled out the vast majority of advancement requests without doing any study work.

So, I’m a little bit concerned about the process that’s sort of been followed there and it, it’s obviously not a great outcome if Connections Reform hasn’t actually managed to accelerate any projects, and that, that did seem like that was pretty glossed over, on Monday’s webinar.

00:08:33 – 00:08:52 – Pete Aston

Yeah, yeah it, it is an interesting point. Just on the sort of technical side, but, and how lots of the, the, the work was done by NESO in the background; there has been a technical handbook published, none of us have read it, so we don’t actually know what’s in it, but we are hoping to read it.

00:08:52 – 00:08:53 – Catherine Cleary

It’s been a busy week.

00:08:53 – 00:09:10 – Pete Aston

This week, next week. So maybe we’ll pick up on that on the next podcast. But the, yeah, there could be some really interesting things in within that, possibly about how they’ve done the, the process. And in terms of data Alex, what sort of stuff have they published?

00:09:11 – 00:09:41 – Alex Ikonic

So yeah, we’ve seen quite a few things. So, the first, bit is the kind of summary graphs. So, it kind of goes into the different technologies and kind of what’s made it into Gate 2, you know, what’s protected and what’s just sort of made it in through being ready and strategically aligned.

We’ve also seen the EA register being published, so that lists all the projects that applied for Gate 2, but it doesn’t necessarily say whether they were successful. It’s just, yeah, a kind of a coated list at distribution and at transmission.

00:09:42 – 00:09:47 – Pete Aston

And am I right in thinking with the EA register, it is only schemes that gave permission.

00:09:47 – 00:09:04 – Catherine Cleary

Yes. So it’s like a non-complete list of people who possibly asked for a Gate 2 offer.

00:09:53 – 00:09:54 – Pete Aston
Yes.

00:09:54 – 00:09:56 – Catherine Cleary
Yes. It doesn’t sound like the most useful data set in the world.

00:09:58 – 00:10:06 – Pete Aston
Yeah. Any other data sets? So, I guess we’ve got the tech register and the embedded capacity registers. What’s happening with those?

00:10:06 – 00:10:41 – Catherine Cleary
The tech registers got an extra column on it, which is going to say Gate 1 or Gate 2. And there are a few, fields which are beginning to be populated now. So, there are some, schemes which are showing as Gate 1, those are schemes which kind of self-elected to go straight to Gate 1; they’ll only update that as, projects sign their offers, so get a countersigned position. So, we might expect to start to expect to see the kind of first projects get, go to kind of status on that. I guess, you know, sort of halfway through Q1 next year it’s not going to be imminent, and it might take the whole year, next year to kind of populate those forms, fully.

00:10:41 – 00:10:48 – Pete Aston
Does anyone know if the embedded capacity registers going to have the same in terms of Gate 1, Gate 2 notifications?

00:10:48 – 00:10:58 – Nikki Pillinger
No. So they’re just going to come off. So, any Gate 1 offers, will just be removed from the embedded capacity registers or that, that’s what we’ve heard from the DNOs, so.

00:10:59 – 00:11:00 – Catherine Cleary
Okay.

00:11:00 – 00:11:02 – Pete Aston
So, it’d be interesting to see if any of the DNOs do that, or any of them do it the same way.

00:11:02 – 00:11:16 – Catherine Cleary
Yeah, it’s a bit harder to track something being removed, isn’t it? You know, it’s quite nice having that field, and if it’s blank, you know it’s TBC, and if it’s populated, it’s populated. Whereas if something just gets removed, you don’t really know yet whether it’s just not been assessed yet or whether it’s…

00:11:16 – 00:11:44 – Pete Aston
So perhaps if anyone’s interested in tracking this, go and download a copy of the ECR now for every DNO and then do it every month from, from thereafter, track it through.
Okay, so lot, lots of stuff coming through on the data. So I guess we’ve mentioned that there are some projects that may be getting Gate 1 offer where they weren’t quite expecting it. So, we’ll briefly touch on this, but there, there is a disputes process, isn’t there, Alex? But it seems quite limited at the moment.

00:11:45 – 00:12:15 – Alex Ikonic
Yes. Yeah. So I think in the webinar earlier this week, NESO said that any disputes have to be accompanied by evidence, where you think they’ve done something wrong, essentially, which I think is quite hard to, to get in the first place. And crucially, even if you do enter into the disputes process, there’s not much that NESO or Ofgem could do to put you back into the queue, and I think that’s kind of the critical point there, that even if there has been a mistake, it’s almost too late to fix it.

00:12:15 – 00:12:38 – Nikki Pillinger
Yeah, I mean, and there’s been quite, sorry, been quite mixed messaging about that as well, you know, I’ve been to a few events and there’s been some webinars and, and it has been a bit, you know oh, okay. If there’s loads of mistakes, then we might look to rectify it, and then absolutely not, we’re not going to rectify mistakes. So yeah, potentially some mixed messaging there. But yeah, as far as we know, no queue re-entry.

00:12:38 – 00:12:50 – Catherine Cleary
I think the formal kind of dispute process guidance from Ofgem as well as NESO kind of written guidance is pretty discouraging, isn’t it? But both basically say there is no, um, no opportunities for reinsertion to the queue.

00:12:50 – 00:13:08 – Pete Aston
Yeah. Whatever Gate 1 or Gate 2, whatever you’ve been offered, that’s sort of, I was going to say irreversible. I guess if you’ve got a Gate 2 offer, you could elect to not have one, but I guess if you’ve got a Gate 1 offer, NESO said they won’t put you back in for Gate 2.

00:13:08 – 00:13:38 – Catherine Cleary
Yeah. And it could be a lot more nuanced than that, couldn’t it? So, I suspect that a lot of the cases that people might be concerned about are where they’ve got a Gate 2 offer, but they’re worried about, you know, how they’ve been treated and whether they’re, you know, where they are in that Gate 2 queue and they’ve been notified that they’re phase 2 potentially, and they, you know, they, at the moment they just don’t have any data to be able to see, does that mean they’re phase 2, but actually they’re still expecting a 2027 connection date, for example because they’re protected, you know, and I think so, I think a lot of that nuance, as you say, Alex, you wouldn’t be able to raise a complaint because you wouldn’t have any of the data.

00:13:39 – 00:14:27 – Pete Aston
And there was just one other interesting thing I noticed on some of the numbers. So, I was looking at, the LDES pot this week…

00:14:28 – 00:14:39 – Catherine Cleary
Yeah I think from memory, I think the methodology sort of suggested if there was any capacity left in the pot…

00:14:40 – 00:14:44 – Alex Ikonic
So, I think that was only for the 2030 pot…

00:14:44 – 00:14:46 – Catherine Cleary
Right. A good memory, Alex.

00:14:47 – 00:15:01 – Pete Aston
Yeah. So yeah, there’s just some sort of slightly intriguing things that come out from that…

00:15:01 – 00:16:15 – Nikki Pillinger
So, we are now kind of expecting the actual formal offers…

00:16:16 – 00:16:17 – Pete Aston
Yeah. They’s still a very long, a long tail still.

00:16:18 – 00:16:27 – Catherine Cleary
Yeah. Yeah. I think it is right though, to flag that…

00:16:28 – 00:16:29 – Nikki Pillinger
Yeah. There’s so much to do.

00:16:29 – 00:17:00 – Catherine Cleary
You know, because they are having to take that kind of constantly moving timeframe…

00:17:01 – 00:17:10 – Nikki Pillinger
Yeah, and there’s so much for them to do as well…

00:17:11 – 00:17:14 – Pete Aston
And maybe restudy their own network reinforcement requirements.

00:17:15 – 00:17:24 – Catherine Cleary
Yeah, yeah you know people like UKPN have said…

00:17:25 – 00:17:48 – Pete Aston
Yeah. I guess one, one of the things to flag…

00:17:49 – 00:17:58 – Catherine Cleary
Yeah, and that you might be being asked for securities…

00:17:59 – 00:18:04 – Pete Aston
Because that’s interesting because with the transmission offer…

00:18:04 – 00:18:05 – Catherine Cleary
30 days after, after accepting.

00:18:05 – 00:18:06 – Alex Ikonic
Yeah.

00:18:06 – 00:18:17 – Catherine Cleary
Yeah. But the DNOs currently covered under different security regimes…

00:18:18 – 00:18:31 – Nikki Pillinger
And the DNOs have different securities policies as well…

00:18:32 – 00:18:47 – Pete Aston
And, and for customers who are going to receive a Gate 1 offer…

00:18:47 – 00:19:03 – Catherine Cleary
Yeah, I might have to have a look at that…

00:19:04 – 00:19:19 – Pete Aston
Yeah. So, we are very much looking forward to getting the first Gate 2 offers…

00:19:20 – 00:19:36 – Catherine Cleary
I guess I’ve voiced my scepticism but also disappointed about advancement…

00:19:36 – 00:20:07 – Nikki Pillinger
So, as far as we know, the position from DNOs is that no projects have had been advanced…

00:20:08 – 00:20:58 – Catherine Cleary
Yeah, I think that is…

00:20:59 – 00:21:20 – Pete Aston
What one thing that I’m noticing with quite a few projects…

00:21:21 – 00:22:41 – Catherine Cleary
Yeah, so lots of delay notices, for example…

00:22:42 – 00:22:48 – Nikki Pillinger
It’s a bit of a funny position to have said that advancement isn’t possible…

00:22:49 – 00:22:52 – Catherine Cleary
Exactly. So, like you said, I think that will probably come out in a wash.

00:22:53 – 00:23:27 – Pete Aston
Yeah. There’s, I guess a related topic is just around the construction planning assumptions…

00:23:28 – 00:23:58 – Catherine Cleary
Yeah, and the kind of, actually we don’t know what the technical CPAs are going to be…

00:23:58 – 00:24:12 – Pete Aston
Yeah okay. Let’s move on to some other bits…

00:24:12 – 00:24:45 – Alex Ikonic
Yes. Yeah, so it was announced again earlier this week…

00:24:45 – 00:24:54 – Pete Aston
So how’s this going to impact on windows that do come out next year, if any?

00:24:54 – 00:24:57 – Catherine Cleary
I think there has to be one within 12 months.

00:24:58 – 00:25:09 – Pete Aston
Yeah okay. So in the, at least one window that comes out next year…

00:25:10 – 00:25:28 – Alex Ikonic
So, it’ll probably be quite limited as to what capacity is available…

00:25:28 – 00:25:31 – Pete Aston
Yeah, I guess there’s a possibility that not every Gate 2 offer is accepted.

00:25:31 – 00:25:34 – Nikki Pillinger
Oh, yeah. There’ll be a huge amount of Gate 2 offers that still aren’t.

00:25:35 – 00:25:36 – Pete Aston
This is a, Nikki put the prediction.

00:25:36 – 00:25:53 – Nikki Pillinger
I say huge amounts; there will be a significant amount of Gate 2 offers…

00:25:53 – 00:26:00 – Catherine Cleary
And I guess they might have like a quite a significant step up in liabilities…

00:26:00 – 00:26:19 – Nikki Pillinger
I think it’ll be interesting with the, the window overlap…

00:26:19 – 00:26:21 – Catherine Cleary
Yeah.

00:26:21 – 00:26:22 – Nikki Pillinger
That all seems pretty slot into each other.

00:26:23 – 00:26:31 – Catherine Cleary
I’m sceptical that you can close the next window until everyone’s Gate 2 offers…

00:26:31 – 00:26:32 – Nikki Pillinger
Yeah, you would hope.

00:26:32 – 00:26:36 – Catherine Cleary
Which means you can’t close the next window until 2027.

00:26:37 – 00:26:39 – Pete Aston
So, they can open the first window.

00:26:39 – 00:26:42 – Catherine Cleary
They can open the first window next year, but they can’t close it…

00:26:45 – 00:26:47 – Nikki Pillinger
Yeah, that would make sense, but there’s nothing confirming that.

00:26:47 – 00:26:48 – Catherine Cleary
No, not yet.

00:26:48 – 00:27:05 – Pete Aston
Oh, we, we’ll wait to see, but it certainly seems like it’d be almost impossible…

00:27:06 – 00:27:19 – Catherine Cleary
Yeah. So, I suppose we might see lots of applications which are gated Mod Apps…

00:27:19 – 00:27:37 – Pete Aston
Yep. Yes. Okay. Interesting…

00:27:38 – 00:27:47 – Catherine Cleary
Well, I know that we’ve decided…

00:27:47 – 00:27:48 – Pete Aston
Okay. Back to what it was.

00:27:48 – 00:28:01 – Catherine Cleary
So we’re back to… revised NOA next year in 2026.

00:28:01 – 00:28:02 – Pete Aston
And NOA stands for?

00:28:02 – 00:28:04 – Catherine Cleary
Oh, Network Options Assessment.

00:28:04 – 00:28:05 – Pete Aston
Okay. Yep. Just checking.

00:28:05 – 00:28:08 – Catherine Cleary
I’m grateful for that…

00:28:09 – 00:28:10 – Alex Ikonic
Christmas quiz now.

00:28:10 – 00:28:47 – Pete Aston
So, we’re going to RESP…

00:28:47 – 00:29:39 – Alex Ikonic
Yes so, the project commitment fee…

00:29:40 – 00:29:42 – Pete Aston
And M1 is initiating the planning application.

00:29:42 – 00:29:44 – Alex Ikonic
Yes – submitting your planning consents.

00:29:44 – 00:29:51 – Pete Aston
Yeah okay…

00:29:52 – 00:30:01 – Catherine Cleary
But it doesn’t apply to demand…

00:30:02 – 00:30:52 – Alex Ikonic
So yeah, so every six months, NESO are going to publish that information…

00:30:53 – 00:31:03 – Pete Aston
Okay, good. A couple more things to mention…

00:31:04 – 00:31:24 – Catherine Cleary
Monday. Yeah, it was really, it really was Christmas come early…

00:31:24 – 00:32:18 – Pete Aston
Yeah, so we’ll say no more on that one…

00:32:18 – 00:32:20 – Catherine Cleary
Quite specific to connections.

00:32:20 – 00:32:38 – Pete Aston
Yeah, yeah…

00:32:39 – 00:32:53 – Catherine Cleary
Yes, quite bold strategy…

00:32:54 – 00:32:59 – Pete Aston
Yeah, and then something called the Connections Accelerator Service…

00:33:00 – 00:33:04 – Catherine Cleary
So yeah, I think we’re going to do some digging…

00:33:04 – 00:33:18 – Pete Aston
Yeah, so lots to sort of look out for…

00:33:19 – 00:33:21 – Nikki Pillinger
No, I don’t think so…

00:33:22 – 00:33:42 – Pete Aston
Yes. Yeah, it’s been quite a week…

00:33:42 – 00:33:44 – Catherine Cleary
Thanks, bye.