Slade: We need regulatory air cover for connections overhaul

Reforms to speed up grid connections must consider how to deal with disgruntled developers being kicked out of the queue.

Energy Networks Association (ENA) chief executive Lawrence Slade told Utility Week a “fundamental change” to the way connections are managed was clearly required but stressed the need for “the regulatory regime to change to keep up”.

He said this included Ofgem giving “regulatory air cover” to make sure that difficult decisions are accepted by those affected.

National Grid Electricity System Operator (ESO) is currently reviewing the way contracts for transmission entry are awarded, alongside a temporary process to fast-track certain schemes and an amnesty for those projects wanting to exit the queue. Meanwhile, the ENA has launched its own three-step plan to ease the logjam, including promoting certain shovel-ready projects above those that have had contracts for longer but are not ready to connect.

Slade pointed out that while there was widespread acceptance of the need to do something differently, there would inevitably be winners and losers.

He said: “We have to make sure we’re all on the same page in terms of streamlining this process and get it moving. But you have to accept that if you’re moving some people out of the queue or pausing them and you’re moving other people up the queue, some people will be very happy some people, frankly, won’t.

“So, we need to have that regulatory air cover to make sure that when we start moving things around, that is accepted.”

He added: “We will need to be really clear in our communication about this and for that we all need to be aligned.”

Slade emphasised the willingness across Ofgem and government to tackle the issue, highlighting the fact that networks now have a dedicated minister (shared with nuclear) in Andrew Bowie. However, he insisted this needed to be backed up by urgent action.

He was speaking to Utility Week prior to the speech by Jonathan Brearley at Utility Week Live on Tuesday (16 May) in which the Ofgem chief executive called for “joint responsibility for getting the connections regime sorted once and for all”.

This chimes with one of the steps in the ENA’s plan, for transmission and distribution networks to be more interactive when co-ordinating connections.

Slade said: “That’s about looking at the flexibility for customers and at different contractual options.

“Rather than being strict and rigid about the contracts you can offer, let’s have a little bit more flexibility built in there in terms of what we can offer and the delivery that sits behind that.”

We need a plan for planning

Reform of the planning system is fundamental to enabling a move from a ‘first come, first served’ approach to one based on the principle of ‘first ready, first connected’, Slade said.

“How do we get planning working so you don’t take away anything from local communities, and you maintain that democratic process around planning and engagement that is absolutely fundamental to net zero? How do we keep that but speed the process up?”

He admitted these are delicate trade-offs but said there was a danger of looking at community engagement in a “slightly too binary and uncoordinated manner” and that a more holistic view was needed.

He added: “It’s not just waving a wand and changing planning. It’s linking it at every level, how we’re managing this process and making the whole thing more accessible for people. That way they can understand what we’re doing and the impact it’s going to have on them.”

The third plank of the ENA’s reform plan is about giving greater flexibility for storage customers. This will see standardised non-firm connections offered to storage operators, allowing them to be connected more quickly while also improving networks’ ability to manage that capacity and make it available to other customers when it is not being utilised.

Slade described this as a reflection of the fact that the transmission queue “is not one homogenous block of power. It is made up by multiple projects and multiple technologies with very different requirements”.

Asked why progress has been so limited to date on an issue that has been a talking point in the issue for many years, Slade said: “I think it’s because there are so many different moving parts. It’s not just down to the networks or Ofgem or government. It’s the fact that everyone’s got to be working together to actually deliver this.

“If we sort everything out from the networks perspective, you wouldn’t necessarily move everything along unless you’ve also got everything from a regulatory regime point of view and from a government policy point of view. It’s just taken a while for those three elements to come together.

“Undoubtedly having targets in place gives you that element of concentration that we got to do this. There is no excuse now, this has got to happen.”