Podcast: Grid future-proofing: has standardisation gone too far?

00:01:01 – 00:01:07 – Catherine Cleary

Hello, and good morning, and welcome to another Roadnight Taylor podcast. I’m joined by Philip and Alex. So hi, guys.

00:01:08 – 00:01:09 – Philip Bale

Hi, Catherine.

00:01:09 – 00:01:10 – Alex Ikonic

Hi.

00:01:10 – 00:02:00 – Catherine Cleary

And this morning we are talking about the risks of standardisation, and are we at risk of building too much grid? So, in particular with a kind of a view to look at transmission, new infrastructure, in particular substations. We’re quite keen to have a look at some of the projects that have come across our desks, in the last kind of year or two, and look at perhaps some of the kind of trends that we’re seeing in terms of how substations are designed, how that affects connecting customers, you know, the timeframes for getting connected, and I guess whether we, you know, are we gold plating everything, guys? Or are we sort of, you know, trying to hit some sweet spots of futureproofing?

So, Alex, maybe I’ll come over to you to kind of, like, set a bit of background here, and perhaps give an example project as to why this, we’re talking about this and, and thinking about it.

00:02:01 – 00:03:14 – Alex Ikonic

Yeah, so we’ve got one project that we’ve been working on the last few years, so it has a bit of a, bit of a history. So, I think it originally contracted back in 2022, so it had a kind of small onsite substation, since the transmission project, and over the next few years, there were a lot of other customers kind of, you know, joining the queue. So, in 2024, they were told by the TO that they were being rerouted to one of these new connection nodes, which might take, you know, seven or eight years more to construct.

So, this is a completely new substation, so the TO had to take, you know, sighting studies, go through the whole planning, construction; so, it would kind of pose a very significant delay to this project, compared to the connection design that it had originally. Then when Connections Reform rolled around, we actually saw that the majority of those other customers who had contracted to that node kind of fell away.

But it seems that NGET’s policy was still to kind of drive on with this idea of this connection node, this, you know, future-proofed big substation, when we thought that the needs case for it had been kind of severely reduced.

00:03:15 – 00:03:27 – Catherine Cleary

So, they went from a situation of having a lot of customers in one region that they thought they could connect into a connection node, and then post Connections Reform, that number has dropped significantly. It’s one or two customers in this case?

00:03:28 – 00:03:29 – Alex Ikonic

Something like that, yeah.

00:03:30 – 00:03:33 – Catherine Cleary

And, but the substation sort of design parameters effectively haven’t changed.

00:03:34 – 00:03:35 – Alex Ikonic

Yes. Yeah.

00:03:35 – 00:04:37 – Catherine Cleary

And I guess that, so I mean, that sounds like that has a massive timeframe impact on a customer, and a cost impact for the rest of us?

I, you know, presumably building a, yeah, but building out sort of like significant kind of 16 bay substation, would have quite a high cost. I mean, we typically see, it’s probably worth mentioning, we typically see sort of 400 kV connection node substations nowadays estimated in the kind of 100, 150 million pounds ballpark, you know. So, which is a very, very significant step-up compared to some of those smaller on-site, single customer or kind of like sort of single loop in, loop out circuits, that we used to see, you know, which were probably, I’m going back a few years in terms of cost numbers, but were probably more in the sort of 20 to 30 million ballpark.

So, I guess we’re talking about big cost difference. Are there other differences as well?

I guess I was thinking, are there other kind of impacts in terms of like land take? Alex, you mentioned like land siting studies.

00:04:38 – 00:04:47 – Alex Ikonic

Yes. Yeah, so those kinds of big substations obviously need, you know, a lot of land. I think some of the values that we were quoted at, for this substation was something in the region of like 100 acres, which I think actually…

00:04:47 – 00:04:48 – Catherine Cleary

It’s huge.

00:04:48 – 00:04:52 – Alex Ikonic

Yeah, I think that’s one of the biggest substations in all of the UK almost.

00:04:53 – 00:04:58 – Catherine Cleary

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, which for two customers might, might draw a bit of the wrong kind of attention, I guess.

00:04:59 – 00:05:38 – Philip Bale

I think the challenge with some of this is also, and this is part of the, what should we end up doing?

This is in a location which is close to some DNO customers and some DNO networks, and the question is around the coordination. And I’d be interested to know, Alex and Catherine for this one, do you feel like there has been coordination with the DNO for this region around would this new connection node have new SGTs that are going in there or not?

And is that then going to be located in a location that’s good for the original customer that triggered the need for the substation, the DNO with their network? Or is actually it going to be a hybrid where it’s naturally not good for anyone?

00:05:39 – 00:07:11 – Catherine Cleary

I do remember some of these conversations because after Connections Reform and lots of these customers have moved to Gate 1, actually the two remaining Gate 2 contracted customers in this case were the project that Alex is talking about and the DNO who needed a, you know, effectively to a new GSP.

But exactly you know, what you say is spot on, Philip. The, those two projects had quite separate locational drivers so, you know, a DNO obviously, you know, if they want a new GSP, you know, they’re going to need to extend all of their 132stakV circuits to it and so on. You know, they’re going to have quite a lot of cost and locational drivers that say, “Well, we might want it, you know, over here please’, to the TO and, you know, and obviously this project, that Alex is talking about, you know, is a consented renewable energy project, so it’s, you know, it’s got its fixed location, right? You know, so you’re kind of, you’re already sort of trying to, in that standardisation and saying, “right, let’s, you know, build one big grid node,” you’re perhaps already having to compromise in terms of location.

I suspect what puts the kind of nail in the coffin about whether you’re ever going to get the optimum engineering design is if you’re looking for 100 acres, that’s a very large land parcel, so that’s going to really potentially constrain you as to where you can, where you can then locate it. So, I think, I think that is true that we should be careful about when you do standardise substations as very large substations, I guess almost we’re saying standardised and future-proofed, then you are potentially making some compromises in terms of are they going to be well-located for your, you know, even for your current customers, let alone your future customers that you, you don’t yet know about.

00:07:12 – 00:07:47 – Philip Bale

And I think just to put it in perspective for everyone else, I mean, 100 acres if you picture it is a huge amount of space, a good example that I always point to, which is I think of a substation that’s been very well done, is Stoke Bardolph substation, so a new GSP that came in around about 2012, 2015 in NGET’s East Midlands region; a two transformer substation was initially put in, but there was space enough to go up to four transformers or for extra 400kV connections- that one’s built out as a smaller substation with additional space, that’s 27 acres, so we’re talking effectively…

00:07:48 – 00:07:49 – Catherine Cleary

Is that in total, including that extra space for future expansion?

00:07:50 – 00:08:10 – Philip Bale

In space, yep, exactly. That’s pre-screening, future expansion, all of the area for the wider element is 27 acres. So, when Alex and Catherine are talking about 100 acre substation, we’re talking about something that’s nearly four times as large of what a typically big GSP substation would end up being – so, it’s quite a big space.

00:08:11 – 00:08:12 – Alex Ikonic

Yeah, it’s a massive difference.

00:08:13 – 00:08:25 – Catherine Cleary

Yeah. Philip, I guess, I mean that’s sort of a good example of futureproofing, Stoke Bardolph, you know, where you’ve got the land available to extend if you need to. Do you know how long ago they built Stoke Bardolph?

00:08:26 – 00:08:48 – Philip Bale

So that was 2012, 2015 that was put in there, and it was very much designed as this is a location that could need to have expansion. At the moment, I’m not aware that I think it’s probably it’s been renamed as a connection node. I would presume that that has been triggered. The question is, will it still be needed after all of the Gate 2 assessments, and which projects get Gate 2 offers and which ones don’t?

00:08:49 – 00:09:59 – Catherine Cleary

So, so it sort of sounds like, I mean, there’s, there’s two things at play perhaps.

So, one is, are RTOs, and perhaps particularly NGET, we’re seeing this in England and Wales, looking to standardise on a design, so what they actually build, you know, and I guess the things that, that are kind of driving those very large substations are if that standard design is always things like a double circuit turn in, so it’s a, it’s a full, you’re turning in four 400kV circuits, for example, you know, that’s already making really quite a big substation. So, I guess we could, we could argue maybe there’s just a need for some more standardised designs. So maybe you have that for your super big nodes, and then we also need a standard, you know, much smaller single circuit turn in substation, for your cases, you know, like Alex’s project, you know, where actually maybe there’s only one or two customers.

I guess, are there, are there other ways of future-proofing substations? You know, so you, you go for whatever kind of, you pick your standard type of substation based on the current needs and then I mean, Philip, you’re sort of talking about space there. Is that just kind of like having a field to one side for future expansion or bit, is there a bit more to it?

00:10:00 – 00:12:13 – Philip Bale

I mean, I think the, the example of Stoke Bardolph for me is done perfectly; not only have they got the field to the side, but all of the screening has taken into account the future expansion. So that one has been designed for having a double turn in substation to go into that site. But I think also the, the main area that always causes problems is things like cable corridors; you can end up having a substation in a particular area and then end up effectively having it sterilised. So, I think there’s more that could be done, and Stoke Bardolph as an example of one that is quite tricky to get into from a cable consenting perspective.

But I think for me it always feels like everything is a pendulum. We go from one way and then swing the other and then come back again, and obviously then there’s time and then there’s damage, and the answer is probably somewhere in the middle.

A couple of other examples that I thought of, of substations that have been built recently that I think should have been bigger or should have catered for future expansion, which would be Braybrooke Substation, which is just south of Market Harborough, and Bulls Lodge that sits in between Rayleigh and Braintree. Those are two examples where I would say that there is a future needs case for additional SGTs in those regions. Both have sit relatively close to DNO networks that the DNO would probably have been interested in. If you were to look to the big picture, they probably would have warranted having bigger initial designs based on the wider needs case for GB. And my concern is now that we’ve gone from a case where some substations have been installed like those which make it incredibly tricky to extend them for future development, to this case of going to a massively wide standardised build everything super big, which end up potentially making it incredibly challenging to consent it in the first place, which then might end up going from a 100 acre AIS solution to a smaller GIS solution built for the future expansion, that if we’d have found the middle ground, we probably could have ended up with the cheaper AIS design that’s still going to be fit for purpose for the future.

00:12:14 – 00:13:38 – Catherine Cleary

Yeah. That really sort of chimes a chord with me, I think, this because I remember spending so long talking about anticipatory investment, you know, which was sort of, you know, do network operators have a kind of remit from the regulator to decide, you know, well, well actually I should build in a bit more capacity or a bit more space on a kind of anticipatory basis; and for a long time the answer to that was sort of no, wasn’t it? It was very hard to do. So, a lot of times people’s hands were kind of tied, and actually the network operator had to build the least cost solution, you know? Even if there was a, you know, a small incremental cost, that would’ve made a big difference in future, you know, that was probably really, really difficult for them to get approval for.

So, I suppose it sounds like we’ve kind of made progress on that, and but as you say, Philip, we’ve kind of perhaps swung too far the other way. I guess, do either of you think, maybe this is a cheeky question, do either of you think this is sort of a strategy? So, you know, is it easier to say, well, every connection node, you know, when we’re, NGET have sort of named their new substations which, you know, aren’t yet located and so on, they tend to have a connection node name, don’t they?  So sort of, you know, whatever it is, South Yorkshire connection node B or something like that, so do you think it’s a bit of a kind of strategy play to be like, well let’s decide that to begin with every connection node is, you know, a double turn in, double busbar arrangement, you know, with a very large number of bays and then we can slim it down from there. Do you think, that’s kind of like a strategy?

00:13:39 – 00:15:01 – Philip Bale

I think it’s a strategy. I’m not sure it’s a strategy that I would choose if they’re in the, if I was in their situation. I mean, I think as you’ve mentioned before, there’s been possibly an absence of strategy, possibly bound by what the feeling was around what would be acceptable from a funding perspective. And I think at the moment we are in a very different, there feels like there’s a different, future funding capability, where in the past it was reducing costs, trying to use flexibility, trying to avoid building assets, and now it’s a case of trying to build assets and plan for the future. I’m okay with the view of having let’s build big networks in key locations, I just think the answer is not to build it everywhere, that very early on you should look at should this be a standard very big 100 acre, one of the biggest substations in the UK capability? And then I think very quickly you should probably get to the situation of actually that’s not appropriate because that doesn’t work for the DNO and ends up being a hamstrung design, which is good for no one. And, or actually it’s going to be a consenting nightmare, and there’s not enough CP2030 Gated capacity in this region to warrant doing this amount of connections, and that we should end up with a solution, which is how far out should we be building and what is the realistic future forecast which would then justify it.

00:15:02 – 00:15:13 – [BREAK FOR MIDDLE SECTION]

00:15:14 – 00:15:48 – Catherine Cleary

That’s really a good point. So do you guys feel like I mean, there’s presumably there’s a bit of a difference, I guess, between saying you’ve got the contracted queue now kind of post the Gate 2 to the whole queue exercise, so which is really a sort of a CP30, so Clean Power 2030 to 2035 sort of remit.

So, I guess, there’s a bit of difference between saying we are designing for that queue; you know, that’s not, not necessarily, it might be future-proofing in the sense that you might be building a substation and the first person might connect earlier than the later people, but they’re still contracted customers, versus future-proofing for something else.

00:15:49 – 00:16:15 – Alex Ikonic

Yes. Yeah, because I think the question is kind of what is that something else? Because we still don’t have the SSEP, so we don’t know kind of what that’s going to say. Again, the SSEP will still be kind of zonal, so it will be hard to say a specific substation will be optimal for something that the SSEP says. And again, that’s something that will be updated every, I think it’s three years. So, I think it is quite hard to, you know, justify that futureproofing, quite to that extent.

00:16:16 – 00:16:36 – Catherine Cleary

Yeah, and presumably that, you know, it would be a bit cart before horse because the SSEP was sort of meant to kind of like inform the network plan, the strategic network plans, and even those network plans, as you say, Alex, they’re not down to we’re going to build a substation in this particular location, they’re more sort of looking at boundary flows and so on, aren’t they? So, it feels like you’re, you’re kind of several steps behind knowing where you’d put a pin on the map for that strategic substation.

00:16:37 – 00:18:15 – Philip Bale

I think at the moment there’s a, there’s an element of, I think we might be doing it the wrong way around – this is my view, and the reason being is that we’re looking at specific projects and then looking at building these nodes, which I think is going to end up being suboptimal from an overall GB PLC perspective, what’s best for the country. What we as grid engineers tend to find is that a lot of the time people can be quite grid-led, that if there is a substation, a specific location, and it feels like at the moment we end up with massive substations that are particularly rural, and substations that are particularly urban, and at the moment we’ve had a massive growth of generation, and CP 2030 is looking at scaling that back. Now we’ve had a massive increase of demand, and then there’s going to be a looking of Demand Reform as to which projects in the right area go and get accelerated. I think there should be the middle ground. We should be looking at building substations which have the capability of satisfying the urban demand growth in the logical locations where it’s going to come, motorway corridors on the edge of big urban areas, future demand growth for domestic, industrial, commercial, that can also satisfy future generation connections in those regions.

So, you end up rather than having massive new substations which are primarily for generation and then the demand, it’s quite difficult to put a huge data centre, one gigawatt data centre in a very green rural area versus other locations where you build them, but it’s incredibly difficult to put a solar farm on the edge of London, as an example. And trying to find the middle ground between them, which means we build the right assets in the right place at the right time with the future for expansion and build it, and they will come.

00:18:16 – 00:18:24 – Catherine Cleary

Based on, so Philip, is that a kind of a bid for, I guess, futureproofing beyond the CP30 the kind of current grid queue?

00:18:25 – 00:18:43 – Philip Bale

Yeah, and I think so, and then looking at what could be consented in each of the different areas, and what is the ideal locations, and how do you build out DNO networks to feed into that, different substations, and a bit more coordination, which we’re hoping that the REPs are going to provide. But ultimately, at the moment, that’s not, they’re not in the right place at the moment to have finished all of their work.

00:18:44 – 00:20:04 – Catherine Cleary

This is interesting. I think, I might disagree slightly, Philip. Because I think I’m very conscious of what, Alex said, you know, that actually on our current grid queues, you know, CP30, CP35, they already have a huge amount of demand in there, you know, and I suppose, and realistically, I think, you know, we’re going to be building those connections for the next 14 years. You know, I think we’re still going to be building sort of the things that are at the back of the queue by the time we sort of hit 2040. So, I’m wondering, I actually think maybe it’s that’s enough – that’s enough futureproofing, you know, 14 years is a good horizon. Like, you know, like once we get beyond that, we’re not taking the most efficient economic decisions if we’re building grid infrastructure now for stuff which is going to connect in the 2040s, you know. So, I think that I’m worried that people are going to use the crystal ball gazing sort of too far into the future, and will get it wrong as a result, and end up with, you know, a potentially sort of expensive under-utilised grid.

And I suppose that’s expensive for everyone if, you know, an under-utilised grid, you know, means that we all as bill payers end up, you know, taking our share of higher user system charges. So, I guess it’s just that timeframe horizon. We sort of, sounds like we kind of all agree that some future proofing is sensible, the cheap kind of future proofing, like land rather than building the assets, is more sensible, but maybe the hard question is what time horizon and what basis should you use for that future proofing?

00:20:05 – 00:20:58 – Philip Bale

I think, I think the answer is probably somewhere in between us two, Catherine, which in some areas you do small and nimble because that’s the right solution, and in certain areas, and I’m thinking a small number of areas, then you do the bigger and the ground, the ones that you have so much confidence that it’s going to be the right answer, and still, as you said, buy the land, build the land and build in this future space for the expansion so it can be done as and when it’s needed. So, I think the answer is probably not too much future stargazing. And so, some of this, I feel like it would be great to go back in time, and we should have been doing this five or 10 years ago, and then we’d be in a much better situation.

So, I think it’s just trying to make sure that we’re doing the right thing in the right place at the right time, which at the moment I think we have the concern that there’s not. I mean, a good example of that is probably one of the substations that’s still being built at the moment, which is Biggleswade, which myself and Catherine had a hand in the development of that substation at the very early stage.

00:20:59 – 00:21:00 – Catherine Cleary

And went on a very proud cycle ride to go and see.

00:21:01 – 00:21:48 – Philip Bale

We did, yes. A very, a very green visit where we turned up to a substation on bicycles, for a client meeting I should add, a small detour. But yeah, at that point, that has been designed as a very simple loop in loop out solution – two transformers, the network will be limited to 100 megawatts for SQSSP2 restrictions, beyond having extra 132kV interconnectors.

That one isn’t, I think it’s about to be finished at the moment. It’s sort of, I think, very close to being commissioned. That one was very clearly on the basis of this is the right solution for this area, but if you look at the tech register and the large demand register for those sites, at the moment that would be the small nimble solution, but possibly would point towards that there’s more needs case there than what’s been built out, and adding a third or a fourth transformer to that site is now very difficult because there’s not the land or the connection strategy for it.

00:21:49 – 00:22:13 – Catherine Cleary

But it is an example, I think small and nimble, Philip, you know, it’s probably a very good example of building a substation relatively quickly. You know, that’s sort of been a five-year development timeline, relatively affordably, you know, again, that’s the sort of 20-to-30-million-pound mark, you know. So, I think there we shouldn’t lose sight of those benefits where it’s the right thing for the right location actually to go small and nimble, I think I’d be really sad if we’ve kind of lost that solution from the toolkit.

00:22:14 – 00:22:30 – Philip Bale

Yeah. Again, and I think the question, probably the question is when the demand increase, what is the next solution?

Is it another small and nimble or is it a much bigger strategic location that’s needed and possibly designed earlier because the needs case for it is just needed and that then help drive the small and nimble solution?

00:22:31 – 00:23:07 – Catherine Cleary

One last question, which is maybe a bit left field, but does if we as an industry, perhaps if the regulator kind of does give a clear remit to TOs, especially in the, you know, we’re currently in the regulatory period T3, T4. A lot of these substations will be on T4, if the regulator does kind of set this direction for T4 and say, “eat your hearts out. Go, go for it. You know, we want futureproofing, you know, build big substations,” does that take the pressure off? So, you know, does that have any other kind of like, I guess, downsides in terms of, like how we’re incentivizing TOs to, like, efficiently use the network? Any thoughts on that?

00:23:08 – 00:24:06 – Alex Ikonic

I do worry that it will. So, I think if we do stick to those kind of really big, you know, double busbar, double 10 in substations, it kind of shifts the focus away from trying to optimize the existing structure that we have. So, things like bay sharing that I think we, we talk about a lot, I think that’s a very good example of something that, you know, can be quite difficult. And if we have this policy of just building a new big substation, it’s much easier to, you know, reroute new projects to new substations than it is to figure out kind of, you know, very difficult technical solutions.

I also kind of worry that it might stifle innovation as well. So, if we just think back a few years ago, the idea of, like, tertiary connections were, like, a really good example of like, using you know, existing infrastructure or kind of repurposing existing infrastructure to give, like, new connection solutions. And again, something like that, I would find it difficult to see how something like that could, you know, happen or be, be prioritized if we do have this policy of just pursuing the new big node substations.

00:24:07 – 00:24:08 – Catherine Cleary

I think those are really, I think really good points.

00:24:09 – 00:24:43 – Philip Bale

I think bay sharing, love the idea. I think it’s almost criminal to have a 100-megawatt battery connected to a 400kV bay on its own. It’s very much an underutilisation of it, tertiaries I’d struggle more to be enthused by tertiaries because I think they might have done as much harm as they’ve done good, in terms of de-rating SGTs and possibly is one that was could have been missed in terms of the innovative solutions, to go through because of the impact of de-rating of SGTs. So, I think, I think it’s sort of trying to find the right solutions for me.

00:24:44 – 00:25:57 – Catherine Cleary

Fantastic, thank you both very much. I think that’s been a fascinating conversation and yeah, and a good one to bang the drum on bay sharing again, which Roadnight Taylor are very much a fan of. Awesome, so I guess we will see how this goes and whether that pendulum sort of starts to stabilize. And obviously, if people have got projects where, where they are concerned that this kind of thing is affecting your point of connection, then, I think, you know, that’s something we’re quite keen to sort of have a look at.

Thanks very much, guys, and we will join you again shortly.

00:25:58 – 00:25:59 – Philip Bale

Thanks both.

00:26:00 – 00:26:01 – Alex Ikonic

Thanks both.