Ofgem head of network regulation policy Judith Ross welcomed National Grid’s plans to include DSOs in its Future Scenarios for 2016.
But she said she wanted the ongoing debate about which parties will be involved in what roles in the transition to DSO to “hot up now”.
Ross said she wants industry to “make some first moves” and see where agreement can be reached on whether contracts and payments, or rules and codes, or a combination, will be needed to support the transition, as these issues would need to be dealt with “sooner rather than later.”
Ross said: “The definition of DSO is not set in stone, there is no blueprint we can go to ‘that’s it, that’s what you do, and what it should be’.”
“The challenges now might be different to those in five or ten years,” she added.
Distribution Network Operators are expected to transition into DSOs as they deal with increased distributed generation and demand side response on the networks.
Ofgem has made the transition to DSOs one of its four current priorities where progress can be made “fairly quickly”.
The other priorities include new developing business models such as storage and aggregators, new ways of operating, behaviours and roles, and engagement levels of industrial and commercial users in demand side response.