Transmission & distribution |


Connections reform: how do you plan for moving goalposts?


The UK is enduring a period of rapid, yet necessary, reforms to power grid connections. What are the latest developments, and how can the complexities be navigated?


Charles Deacon Managing Director at Eclipse Power Solutions (www.eclipsepower.co.uk/solutions)


This isn’t the first article I’ve written about connections reform in the power industry, and I’m sure it won’t be the last. It’s a rapidly changing story, and one of immense importance to projects as diverse as housing developments, data centres and clean power generation. The connections queue has grown into a near-mythical beast, at once imperilling the UK’s energy security and seemingly threatening just about every major infrastructure project. It’s instructive to remind ourselves where we are and where we’re going, before looking at how investors, planners and developers can negotiate the upheaval to achieve their strategic goals.


Quick basics


First, let’s go over some basics. The UK’s power system is split between the transmission network – very high voltage cables designed to carry load over long distances with minimal losses – and the distribution system. The latter describes the edges of the grid infrastructure, where voltages are stepped down, and electricity is delivered to homes and businesses.


In practice, things are a little more nuanced: major power users and generators are connected to the transmission network, but the bulk of customers and smaller generators require a distribution connection. Skills and supply chain issues mean there’s a practical limit to how quickly these can be provided, so in recent years we’ve seen a huge uptick in transmission applications, as these have historically had an even lower bar to entry.


As a result, we’ve ended up with far more projects than the network operators and distributors have the resources to connect, and hence a queue. We don’t need all the schemes in the queue, but until recently all connection applications had equal priority. Which means projects that weren’t fully funded, didn’t have planning permission or simply weren’t necessary, would get a place in the queue and effectively block more urgent infrastructure coming in behind them. The introduction of fees, securities, and cancellation charges have had only a limited


limited impact if introduced simply for new applications. The effect would be much greater if the criteria were applied to all existing applications in the queue, but even this wouldn’t necessarily deliver the results the grid needed.


Analysis in February this year showed there were 221 GW of battery storage projects queued in the UK, against a target (quota) of just 27 GW by 2030. The picture shows the Minety battery installation, Wiltshire. Photo: Huaneng


effect in calming these speculative applications. By the beginning of 2025, the connections queue contained generation and demand projects totalling around 800 GW. But the UK’s peak power requirement is forecast to reach ‘only’ 80 GW in 2030. The looming important date: the year by which the government plans to have decarbonised the UK’s electricity. Having so many unnecessary schemes queued isn’t just absurd; it delays projects that are essential to hitting the Clean Power 2030 target.


The need for reform


That, in a nutshell, is why we need connections reform: to allow funded, important infrastructure to proceed without unreasonable delays caused by applications for connections that might never happen. The need for reform is most pressing in the transmission-connected space, and for larger distribution-connected generation projects. That’s where the current reforms are targeted – they exclude embedded demand: schemes connecting to the distribution network. In 2022, discussions started within the industry around the need to prioritise ‘ready’ and necessary projects. After considering various scenarios – from changing nothing, all the way to insisting that schemes had planning permission and funding – it was decided to offer priority to projects that had either their land rights agreed, or which had submitted a Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project (NSIP) planning application. If that sounds like a high bar, impact assessments showed it would in fact have a


20 | September 2025| www.modernpowersystems.com


Things have moved forward more quickly under the new government, which re-nationalised the National Energy System Operator (NESO) and gave it the remit to plan our entire energy system. NESO worked to establish how the UK could hit Clean Power 2030 objectives in the cheapest way possible, developing targets for the different generation and storage projects we would need. After being approved by the government, these have effectively been turned into quotas to be applied to the connections queue for generation projects, giving us an additional tool with which to filter applications.


First ready and needed What does this mean for transmission connections? The queue previously ran on a first-come first-served model, where applications were simply processed in the order they joined the list. The focus has now evolved to consider a project’s state of readiness – judged using the land and planning criteria I mentioned before – but also the extent to which we need it, weighed against the quotas – and remember these only apply to generation projects.


To get an idea of the effect the ‘first ready, first needed, first connected’ approach will have on the connections queue, you need only look at battery energy storage system (BESS) schemes. Analysis in February this year showed there were 221 GW of battery storage projects queued, against a target (quota) of just 27 GW by 2030. The ‘first ready’ part of the criteria means we can prioritise connecting the most viable 27 GW of battery capacity, ahead of stalled or surplus projects. However, ‘first needed’ means that the remaining nearly 200 GW of capacity is unlikely to retain a place in the queue, as it’s not necessary under the quota.


If BESS projects stand to fare badly under the


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