| Focus on the UK


potential hydrogen networks of the future. We are really baking that in from day one.” He says this is where there will be new roles, because as well as delivering a Strategic Spatial Energy Plan (SSEP) for GB, NESO will have to deliver around 13 Regional Energy Strategic Plans. “We haven’t had to do them before, they don’t exist in GB, therefore we have the opportunity to build them on a whole energy system basis from the ground up.”


New responsibilities Leslie says, “Timescales are tight. We have committed that the first Whole Energy System Network Transmission Network Plan will be delivered at the end of 2026.”


The shape of those plans depends on some key policy decisions. Leslie says NESO will “build a range of potential network options thinking about environmental, community cost and deliverability issues. Then look at the range of options you can drive that might facilitate the networks that might facilitate that energy mix into the future. We then need to do a Strategic Environmental Assessment, so there will be a national consultation, then following the results and the conclusion of all that we will publish the first Strategic Spatial Energy Plan, which will be endorsed by government at some point in 2025.”


The nascent NESO had confirmation in November 2023 that it would have Regional Energy System Planner (RESP) responsibilities. Leslie says that framework is still in the design phase, but he is conscious regional plans will be important for electricity distribution networks as they prepare plans to be submitted to regulator Ofgem. He says, “we need to have a common set of input assumptions, and a common set of outcomes that we are looking to achieve by region, that then the DNOs can use to feed into their price control submission”.


Moving from electricity to the ‘whole system’ means his team will grow from around 115 to over 200. “We need the gas capability. We also need – as we haven’t before – environmental and stakeholder personnel as well. A Strategic Energy Assessment is a public consultation with the nation and to make the plan that we finally deliver acceptable to the public they need to be brought on the journey and communities have to have their voice heard.”


As for the regional planning role, Leslie wants to co-ordinate, not duplicate, existing work including a suite of Local Area Energy Plans already produced via local authorities. “So a lot of this is about collating data and information that is already out there. We are working now on a strategy that will build GIS capability that can suck in all this regional locational-specific information


and present it back to the analysts and engineers and whoever needs to look at it.” He says that has to be ‘digital first’: “when you think about the scale of the regional energy system planners working across the thirteen or so regions across Britain, the amount of data, the amount of councils, the number of local area energy plans that exist, all the developers, the DNO networks and gas strategies...trying to pull all that together and make sense of it all, we have to use a digital solution.


“The bit that’s missing…at the regional level especially, is the co-ordination and collaboration, and the common input assumptions and the common output assumptions as to what the region is trying to achieve.”


Julian Leslie believes the new NESO will be a unique body, but it faces a challenge common to energy system operators worldwide: enabling the shift to Net Zero and doing it faster. It is being set up as a General Election looms some time in the coming year, but Leslie says policy is largely consistent across the main parties. “Having a plan that gets you to 100% zero carbon operation in the electricity network is something that both governments will require and it is a no-regrets position”. There is only one extra challenge if there is a change of government: the low-carbon transformation may be accelerated. The NESO will have to be the enabler.


National Grid ESO Electricity National Control Centre. National Grid ESO will be the nucleus of the new entity, NESO www.modernpowersystems.com | May 2024 | 17


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