Landowner Energy Scheme Feasibility Study

Large-scale energy schemes always start with grid, and grid always starts with feasibility. With lifetime ground rent often exceeding £10million, it’s worth getting this bit right.

ENERGY STORAGE

Where Roadnight Taylor can help

Beat your neighbours to the punch:

  • Get your foot in the queue for grid capacity

  • Avoid watching your neighbours get a scheme instead

  • Don’t sit and wait for developers to come knocking

  • Be proactive

Multiply your chances of success:

  • Five times the market’s grid application success rate

  • We can make schemes work where others can’t

  • The UK’s leading team specialising in grid connections

  • Multiple, credible developers, with a range of site criteria

Maximise income, minimise risk:

  • Top-of-the-market rents by competitive tender

  • Negotiate lease terms from a position of strength

  • Monetise the value of your grid rights, and your land

  • Have the option to self-develop or joint venture

The technical, commercial or regulatory key that will unlock  the grid – and so the rental potential in a site – is often obscured from all but those with the very deepest of network engineering expertise.  Finding it can be worth £millions.

The technical, commercial or regulatory key that will unlock  the grid – and so the rental potential in a site – is often obscured from all but those with the very deepest of network engineering expertise.  Finding it can be worth £millions.

The challenge

  • Landowners who want a battery, solar or wind farm normally rely on:

    • a developer approaching them before they approach their neighbours, and
    • the developer being successful in securing cost-viable grid capacity for a scheme

  • Sadly for thousands of landowners, already, a developer approached their neighbours first, and their neighbour has a scheme instead

  • Thousands more landowners allowed a developer to investigate or apply for a connection, only to be told, erroneously, that there wasn’t enough grid capacity.  They put their hopes in the hands of somebody without the extra-ordinary expertise it would have taken to make a connection work on their site

  • Nationally, about 15% of developers’ connection applications are successful – a failure rate of over 85%

The solution

What we do

Step 1 – Feasibility

Roadnight Taylor has the leading team enabling grid connections in the UK, and a finely tuned understanding of what developers will tolerate with regards connection costs and risks, and planning constraints.  We carry out a thorough, skilled, detailed and efficient study of publicly-available network data in order to rapidly deduce whether a technically-feasible and commercially-viable connection can be achieved – and, as appropriate, liaise with the relevant network operator’s System Planner to augment our study and gain additional network intelligence.  We then carry out a high-level planning study to identify ground appropriate for the technology and scale that may be viable, and consider your site’s grid and planning prospects together, in order to gauge whether it has genuine prospects for development.

Step 2 – Grid application

Roadnight Taylor has a grid application success rate of over 80% – some five times the success rate of the developer market.  We secure, for you, a technically and commercially viable connection offer  – independently of any developer.

Step 3 – Developer tender

We hand-pick a targeted pair of developers most likely to provide competitive bids for your scheme – and that have the resource, skills, funding, experience, appetite and tenacity to make your project a success (i.e. to enter into a lease with you).

Step 4 – Monetisation

We work with you, your land agent and your legal representatives to help you to safely turn the value you have accrued in your grid connection rights into significant capital receipts and rental income.

Our service is deeply specialised, combining a number of areas of niche expertise which, together, serve to:

  • multiply landowners’ chances of achieving lucrative leases
  • allow them to bank significant windfalls from grid connection rights
  • secure them the top-of-the-market in terms of ground rent and lease terms.

Over more than a decade, our feasibility, grid application and monetisation service for landowners has been commissioned by landowners with as little as one acre, to farms of varying sizes across the UK, and to some estates of over 60,000 acres – many of which are world-famous household names.

Lord Newborough

“I wish we had found Roadnight Taylor sooner.

They unravel the black art of the electricity grid, and their approach of applying to the distribution network operators on our behalf and then tendering to developers undoubtedly delivers the best end result, with no cost exposure to the Estates.”

Lord Newborough ARAgS
Rhug & Glynllifon Estates

Watch Case Study

Who does the work?

Our extraordinary team of Connectologists® have the hands-on technical, commercial and regulatory experience of the highest order – having held responsibility for many thousands of EHV offers and applications.  They are tenacious, diligent, self-assured and professional – and they are on your side.

Pete Aston

Pete Aston
Specialist Connections Engineer

Catherine Cleary

Catherine Cleary
Specialist Connections Engineer

Philip Bale - Roadnight Taylor

Philip Bale
Specialist Connections Engineer

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Some of our current landowner feasibility study projects

  • Data Centre Solutions Interview

In this interview, Pete Aston examines the complex grid connection landscape confronting Britain's data centre sector. The discussion opens with findings from our recent report revealing that most developers significantly underestimate connection timescales.

  • Edie - data centre report

The findings from our report 'Powering Great Britain's Data Centre Ambitions' have been featured in industry media recently. Edie, UK Tech News and Data Centre Solutions have covered the report.

  • Podcast: Grid News and Views 13

Pete Aston and Kyle Murchie return with insights on Britain’s evolving grid connections, from NESO’s new Gate 2 process to major charging reforms. They discuss what it means for developers amid soaring data centre demand and shifting energy policy.

  • Connectology Case: Is smaller sometimes smarter?

Pete Aston details how a client planning to connect a 20MW solar farm to their existing facility overcame a devastating connection offer: wait until 2029 for transmission reinforcement works through a a counterintuitive application strategy

  • Alan Pritchard Farrpoint podcast

Pete Aston sits down with Alan Pritchard from FarrPoint to explore the booming world of data centres. Alan explains why they've become critical national infrastructure and shares insights into the scale and cost of these projects - and why the UK's total capacity is still just 1.5GW.

  • data centre

Despite it taking three to eight years for data centres to be connected to the grid, half of industry professionals optimistically think they will achieve a connection within one to two, according to a new report Powering Great Britain’s Data Centre Ambitions.