Slowdown in grid connection queue growth likely to be blip

A slowdown in the number of projects registering for a grid connection is a blip due to the introduction of a two-step process for vetting such applications, the Electricity System Operator (ESO) has said.

In response to a recent Parliamentary question from Labour shadow climate spokesperson Kerry McCarthy, former energy minister Graham Stuart replied that data from the ESO shows that 1,530 energy projects were in the transmission connection queue at the end of February.

The ESO recently told Utility Week that the number of projects in the Transmission Entry Capacity (TEC) register, which contains all existing and future connection projects with the transmission network, had increased by just four.

The increase over the last five weeks is a slowdown compared to previous months, said Tom Betts, senior analyst at Aurora Energy Research.

He said that while the connections queue had increased by more than 1GW in some recent months, the average growth since the end of February had been around 150MW.

The slowdown in the growth in the number of projects on the TEC register follows a series of moves to make it harder for projects to secure a place.

The most recent of these was Ofgem’s introduction of a requirement last month stipulating that projects seeking grid connections must secure permission from the owner of the proposed site before they can do so.

Combined with the ESO’s introduction of milestones, which projects must meet within set times in order to keep a place in the queue, the new land requirements are designed to weed out speculative applications for connections.

However an ESO spokesperson said that it was “too early” to determine whether these reforms are having an impact on the growth of the register.

She said that the key factor behind the slow growth in the queue over the last month is that the ESO is focusing on processing second-stage applications under the two-step grid connection process introduced just over a year ago.

Under this procedure, applicants for a place in the TEC register will be given an interim offer within three months but without the full details previously required.

The second step of the process, to provide all the details that would normally come with the initial connection offer, must be completed within 12 months.

The bulk of the ESO’s recent grid connection activity has been amending the delivery dates of projects which have already gone through the first step of the application process, rather than register new ones.

Once the second-step applications have been processed, the number of new projects joining the queue is expected to return to the higher levels seen over recent months.

A spokesperson for renewable developer Low Carbon agreed that the slowdown in the TEC register’s growth is potentially a feature of the two-step offer process rather than a “real indication that the growth of the queue is slowing”.

However it remains “imperative that the ESO’s upcoming queue reforms tackle the existing queue,” he said.