With the pace of the transition toward electrification ever increasing, it’s now becoming increasingly challenging to obtain grid connections for all types of developments – whether it be data centers, EV charging hubs, solar farms, new factories, or housing developments.

With increasing connection queues in the UK continuing to clog up the process of getting connected, resulting in over 2035 connection dates being commonplace in some areas; the Connection Reform process is continuing at pace, led by National Grid ESO and supported by Ofgem and Government.

In such a period of flux and challenges, with power connections being critical to new projects, there are three key high-level areas that we recommend all of our data center clients have covered:

1. Stay up to date on industry reform:

With the capacity crunch, National Grid, Ofgem, and the other electricity network operators have been introducing process changes and new policies aimed at cutting the queue at an unprecedented rate in the last 12 months or so.

This means a continuous implementation of new rules that developers must navigate or risk having their connections canceled and in some instances with significant financial liabilities on the developer.

In addition to the multitude of individual changes, there is the ongoing major Connection Reform which will change the whole system and process in how you get connected and which aims to remove a significant number of projects from the queue.

It's therefore essential to stay up to date on all these changes, alongside staying well briefed and planning for the upcoming major reforms, to avoid having your project significantly disadvantaged.

The pace of change is extreme, even our large team of Grid consultants can find it challenging to stay up to date, so we appreciate how difficult it must be for developers and investors who have many other things to deal with on their projects. In order to help, alongside offering tailored advice to our clients and managing changes on their projects, we produce a free podcast that aims to share our insights with the wider industry (available on Spotify, Apple Podcast, YouTube, and Web Player).

2. Grid due diligence:

With the huge influx of projects seeking grid connections, the increasing technical complexity of connections and the resource challenges faced by the network companies; We now often see 10 year and/or £10M risks hidden in grid connection offers from network operators. Whether developing a project or seeking to purchase one, a detailed due diligence exercise is now essential for anything that the network operator issues. It’s only through this exercise that the hidden or often totally unmentioned £10M/10-year risks can be identified and mitigations devised.

As an example, these risks could simply be presented in a connection offer as a single bullet point which states a grid protection arrangement or communications interface has not been considered. Only an analysis of the risk by an experienced engineer who is aware of the potential time or cost impact of this technicality on a specific connection, on a specific part of the network will bring this to your attention.

Unfortunately, we’ve seen too many clients come to us too late, having spent significant amounts of time and money on projects, only to be told by the network operator years down the line that their connection is subject to multi-year delays and/or multi-million cost increases.

3. Optimize your grid connection via IDNO adoption:

To mitigate timescale and cost risks, we often deploy innovative solutions, enabled by the use of our sister company IDNO (Advanced Electricity Networks).

In some instances, this can dramatically reduce connection timescales via flexibility on design parameters or being able to purchase shorter lead time equipment. It often plays a role in mitigating some of the risks identified through our project grid due diligence stage and allows our customers to benefit from optimized grid connection costs as well; so it’s pretty much a win-win solution on every project.