Most people assume Great Britain's grid connection queue works on a first come, first served basis. It doesn't - and that misconception is costing developers time and money. Connections reform was meant to bring clarity to the queue, but projects that were declared protected and pushed to the front are still missing their connection dates, and new contract disputes are now stalling projects that should already be moving. It all comes down to what actually gets built — and whether Britain can get anywhere close to Clean Power 2...
Most people assume Great Britain's grid connection queue works on a first come, first served basis. It doesn't - and that misconception is costing developers time and money. Connections reform was meant to bring clarity to the queue, but projects that were declared protected and pushed to the front are still missing their connection dates, and new contract disputes are now stalling projects that should already be moving. It all comes down to what actually gets built — and whether Britain can get anywhere close to Clean Power 2030.
Catherine Cleary, Specialist Connections Engineer at Roadnight Taylor and a returning Transmission guest, joins Ed Porter to unpack what's really determining who connects to the grid, and when.
They cover:
- Why the grid connection queue isn't ordered by application date and how a 20MW battery project can end up waiting behind a nuclear power station for the same network reinforcements.
- Why gate two offers under TMO4+ are going out with technical errors, and why fixing something as small as a typo can take months once you're one of hundreds of affected projects.
- Why NESO's oversubscription numbers might be the wrong problem to solve, and what bay sharing could do instead.
- Why data centres and other demand customers are pushing for independent transmission owner (ITO) status, and what Ofgem's latest signal means for future connections.
- Catherine's contrarian take after 15 years in the industry: why Britain might be about to build too much grid, not too little.
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Chapters:
0:00 Introduction
1:13 Two myths about the grid connection queue
2:05 Queue order vs. connection order: nuclear vs. battery example
3:34 The 4.9MW de minimis threshold loophole
4:12 TMO4+ and connections reform: from design exercise to rollout
6:41 Gate two offer errors and technical query delays
9:05 Clean Power 2030 deliverability under connections reform
13:37 Engineering capacity for 30GW of battery storage
16:01 Bay sharing and hybrid project connections
17:49 CMP470: the oversubscribed technology commitment fee
22:04 Co-location, AC/DC coupling and TMO4+ shortcomings for hybrids
25:15 Fixing TMO4+ for hybrids: the parent/child concept
28:05 Data centre and demand connections vs. generation
33:39 Politics, policy and the connections queue
36:35 Contract delays: the new longest pole in the tent
39:16 The case for independent transmission owners (ITOs)
41:50 Contrarian view: are we building too much grid?
