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Great Britian’s Electricity Networks Commissioner talks to Utility Week editor James Wallin about winning over the nimbys, how Ofgem needs to stand out of the way and why transmission networks should be buying key equipment in bulk.

Nick Winser knows that electrical engineers are an unusual breed. He freely admits to a frisson of excitement when going abroad at the prospect of seeing new pylon designs, “particularly those space invader ones they have in France”.

The challenge for Britain’s first Electricity Networks Commissioner is that not everyone is as enamoured with the infrastructure to get us to net zero as he is. At least not when it’s in their back yard.

It’s a subject Winser, the former National Grid chief executive and currently chair of the Energy Systems Catapult, confronted head on in his recent report to government. This sets out a vision of halving the time it takes to build electricity transmission infrastructure from the current 12 to 14 years.

In his letter to then energy secretary Grant Shapps, the third since the report was commissioned, Winser said he was “confident” the process could be reduced to seven years.

He smiles when I ask him how he can express confidence when these are just a few of the recommendations his report makes:

• Reform of energy regulation
• Reform of the planning system
• The creation of the future system operator
• Update energy national policy statements and create two new over-arching documents – a strategic spatial energy plan (SSEP) and some electricity transmission design principles
• Undertake a massive public information campaign on the need for a grid refresh to hit net zero
• A major review of engineering and technician skills in the UK needs to be undertaken

He admits it is a “decent list” of demands but reiterates his optimism, pointing out there’s very little in his report that would need primary legislation.

Taking as an example the sector’s bete noire of the planning system, he says: “Coming into this, everyone was telling me the planning system was broken. But that’s not what I found. It’s a bit rusty and needs some oil but it’s not broken.”

The Planning Act of 2008 remains a “decent piece of legislation”, Winser insists, having established the rights of individuals and communities to air their views on developments in their area.

He insists he is certainly not “in the business of riding roughshod over people’s interests” but wants to ensure that more context is available to show residents what new infrastructure would look like, the impact of it and why it is needed.

“The bit of the planning process that is really ballooning is the pre-application phase. And that is getting ever longer, even before we get to this surge in applications that’s coming, because we’re trying to explain everything from scratch.

“We urgently need to reinforce the national policy statements (NPS). That is the oil to get the rusty machine working better, to link it to strategic spatial plans, and design principles. So when developers turn up in communities, they can say, here’s what we’re expecting to happen across the energy system, this is why we need new capacity and this is why we’ve decided its overhead or underground.”

This is all very well for the kind of people that go pylon-spotting on holiday, but does Winser really expect the average person to be aware of, let alone read, an energy spatial plan or design principles for electricity transmission infrastructure? And when it comes to the ardent not-in-my-backyard (nimby) brigade, will they care?

“There’s no point in trying to hide from the fact that this is complicated, expensive, significant stuff, and has to be dealt with very, very professionally. So there will need to be a layer of really excellent explanation. And it’s going to be really important to address those potentially contentious areas such as the trade-offs over onshore and offshore routes and the choices of technology onshore.”

These trade-offs are covered in Winser’s report. With the cost differential between overhead lines and those underground still standing at about 10 times, he argues there is “every opportunity to be generous” in providing compensation for communities hosting visible infrastructure.

The report proposes two components to this – lump sum payments for individual households close to new transmission lines and a community fund for the locality. This would be a defined value per kilometre and would only apply to overhead lines or other visible infrastructure, such as substations. The suggestion is that payments should be delivered through the networks and recovered through the regulatory settlement.

Winser admits there are other ways of paying back communities, with cheaper bills often cited as a solution. However, he says: “It’s important to have those direct associations so there is a clear link between making our energy greener and the benefit that’s bringing to the community. I can see the arguments for money off the bill but it pushes it all further into the background.”

To continue reading Utility Week’s interview with Nick Winser, click here to access the digital weekly edition where it first appeared.