The announcement of Great British Grid marks a significant moment for the UK electricity industry. The new public body will invest alongside the private sector in network infrastructure. Government also plans to expand opportunities for developers to build their own connections and to accelerate competitive tendering for transmission projects.
I welcome that direction. Over the past year, through my advisory work and conversations across the power and data centre sectors, I have repeatedly heard the same concern: a business can have a viable project, funding and a site, yet lack a credible date for power. Uncertainty about when a connection can be delivered can hold back investment as surely as a shortage of network capacity.
Competition could help. Giving capable developers and delivery partners more control over a connection may bring additional engineering and construction capacity into the market. Opening suitable transmission projects to competitive bids could also test cost and delivery proposals. The opportunity is to widen the pool of people, ideas and capital available to meet an enormous infrastructure challenge.
But the detail matters. A developer might build its connection more quickly and still be unable to energise it if reinforcement of the existing network is late. New delivery routes also create interfaces between developers, transmission owners and the system operator. They need clear technical standards, responsibilities and decision times, particularly when one party builds an asset that another will operate.
There is a cost question, too. Competition should be judged on the cost and performance of the resulting system over its life, not simply the lowest construction bid. Reliability, future flexibility and the impact on other network users all matter.
My test for GB Grid and the wider reforms is therefore practical: will they produce connection dates investors can trust, increase the industry’s capacity to deliver, and secure value for consumers without compromising safety or reliability? We should measure those outcomes as the first projects come forward.
Technical bodies such as CIGRE can contribute to this next stage. By bringing utilities, developers, manufacturers and engineers together, CIGRE provides a place to share evidence and experience across organisational and national boundaries. That independent technical exchange will be valuable as the UK works out how more parties can design, build and operate transmission assets.
The announcement is a welcome signal of intent. Its success will depend on turning that intent into workable rules, capable delivery teams and connections that happen when promised.