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Electricity North West has proposed spending almost £2 billion over five years as part of the first draft of its business plan for the RIIO ED2 price controls beginning in April 2023.
The electricity distribution network said the plan was built on feedback from a two-year consultation involving more than 18,000 customers and stakeholders.
The company has proposed £1,972 million spend under the price controls, including £325 million repairing and maintaining its assets, £451 million replacing and refurbishing existing infrastructure and £232 million reinforcing the network to add extra capacity.
This equates to nearly £395 million per year – a 49 per cent increase when compared to the current regulatory period. Annual expenditure on maintenance and repair would rise by 27 per cent to £65 million, whilst the figure for refurbishment and replacement would increase by 39 per cent to £90 million. Yearly spending on network reinforcement would more than triple from less than £14 million to almost £47 million.
Electricity North West chief executive Peter Emery said: “The challenge of delivering stretching environmental ambitions on net zero while keeping bills low and making sure we don’t leave anybody behind is tough.
“Our research has shown that 80 per cent of customers are willing to pay an additional £9.80 to achieve our ambitious proposals – but that means 20 per cent are not. We have worked hard to find a solution through innovation and efficiencies where we can deliver that high level of investment for just £2.14 extra a year on the average household bill.
“The result of that work would be to facilitate a greener, fairer, more prosperous and more connected future for our region – but before we finalise our plan we want to get the views of our customers and stakeholders. We would encourage anybody to read through our plan and let us know what they think so we can refine it further.”
Distribution network operators will submit their draft business plans to Ofgem in July. You can read Electricity North West’s first draft here.
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