National Grid has announced up to 20GW of clean energy project connections to its networks in England and Wales are being accelerated.
As part of collaborative work across industry, 19 battery energy storage projects worth a collective 10GW of capacity will be offered dates to connect to the transmission network around four years earlier, on average, than their current agreements had stipulated. This is because of a new approach that takes away the need for non-essential engineering works to be carried out before connecting storage.
This is part of National Grid’s connections reform initiative targeting transmission capacity. This is being spearheaded by the Electricity System Operator and actioned jointly with National Grid Electricity Transmission.
On the distribution network, meanwhile, in the Midlands, South West of England and South Wales, an additional 10GW of unlocked capacity is being unlocked after National Grid announced plans to accelerate hosts of connections for different low carbon technology projects by bringing forward “shovel ready “schemes by as much as five year sin some cases.
It has already communicated with over 200 projects that are interested in fast tracking their distribution connection dates. Of this, 16 are interested in connecting over the next 12 months, while another 180 are aiming to do so over the next two to five years.
