Grid connection waits of ’15 years’ normal in many areas

Storage and renewable generation projects are facing waits of “15 years plus” for a grid connection, the chief executive of Regen has claimed.

Utility Week has recently reported claims by renewable power generators that they face delays of up to a decade to connect projects to the grid.

However, Merlin Hyman, whose organisation runs the Electricity Storage Network, told members of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) Committee on Tuesday that projects would be “lucky” to be offered a grid connection within a decade and that dates like 2034 and 2035 are common.

Giving evidence to the committee’s inquiry into decarbonisation of the power sector, he said: “If you apply for a new solar farm or storage project in most parts of the country you will get a connection date in 15 years plus.

“Given our (grid decarbonisation) targets are rather earlier than that, that’s clearly a huge problem for the whole net zero transition,” Hyman said, adding that grid constraints are the “number one barrier” to the roll out of storage projects.

These long waits for grid connections stemmed from two main factors: long-term problems accessing investment and “short-term queue management”, he explained: “We have lot of projects not proceeding but have the capacity and those that can proceed are still in the queue.”

Hyman said the problem of grid constraint has been recognised but not sufficiently: “It’s not nearly a high enough priority. I’m not sure policy makers are aware of how critical this is and how it is blocking progress on meeting net zero.”

Will Mezzullo, head of hydrogen at Centrica, agreed, describing the grid as “absolutely constrained” and a bigger curb on low carbon development than skills or investment.

“We can hardly put any grid scale batteries or solar farm on the system.”

However, the UK could become a net exporter of long-duration storage services to other countries by using its rich legacy of salt caverns to store hydrogen, he said: “The UK could be selling long-duration storage to other countries and not just meeting our own demand.”

The evidence session also discussed MPs’ concerns that the poorer customers could be left behind in the roll out of flexibility and storage services.

Dr Jonathan Radcliffe, reader in energy systems and policy at the University of Birmingham, said: “Those who have the ability to purchase smart devices could potentially benefit from their use and the scale of demand side response or flexibility at a local level could leave a lot of people behind. We need to think about how that market should be regulated.”

Hyman agreed, noting that the transition is “all well and good” for those electric vehicle owners with driveways, whose charging bills are much lower than other motorists.

He said: “You could end up potentially excluding lot of people: fairness and equity in this process is going to be critical.”

“We have to be careful about pushing everything on to the consumer,” said Mezzullo, adding there is a role for the government and Ofgem to work closely with transmission operators to get more short-term balancing systems on the grid, like batteries.