grid connection

“Battery storage is going to be an extremely important part of net zero,” says Nick Winser, the UK’s electricity networks commissioner, at Solar Media’s Energy Storage Summit EU 2024.

Solar Energy UK has warned that grid delays are “descending into a farce” as renewable projects with accelerated connections remain unable to supply electricity for years.

Fresh delays from Northern Powergrid have pushed back the connection date of Enviromena’s 30MW BESS in Northumberland to 2036.

Wokingham Borough Council’s Barkham solar farm has been granted a grid connection “more than a decade earlier”.

The new ClearViewConnect report, published by National Grid Electricity Distribution (NGED), will grant developers an anonymised view of generation connection pipelines for specific Grid Supply Points (GSPs).

The newly published Grid Connections Action Plan outlines an overhaul that could release 100GW of capacity from the connections queue and cut average connection times from five years to six months.

“We need to think about the grid not only from the point of view of energy but as the backbone of the future economy,” said Michaɫ Sobczyk, head of regulation and markets at renewable energy developer EDPR Poland.

62GW of the transmission entry capacity (TEC) queue is filled with “phantom” projects, utility Centrica has said.

Public consultation has opened on a large-scale solar PV project in Buckinghamshire which is at the early stages of development, by co-owners EDF Renewables UK and PS Renewables.

The Department of Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) has announced a £3.25 million funding package to support projects using artificial intelligence (AI) to accelerate solar connections to the grid.