Customers utilising less than 75% of their maximum export capacity

We said we would contact all our HV and EHV generation customers utilising less than 75% of their maximum export capacity to discuss the release of unused capacity.

“It was reassuring to see a commitment to freeing up capacity that was being held by projects that have no prospect of proceeding. By being firm and consistent on this the connections community will benefit from greater certainty.” 
Simon Holt, REG Power Management.

Ofgem had requested the development of initiatives by DNOs that could withdraw capacity from projects where it was not being fully utilised as part of its QMEC consultation. Northern Powergrid has taken a proactive approach to addressing this issue and we included relevant commitments in our previous ICE plans.

In October 2016, we added a commitment to proactively contact customers utilising less than 75% of their maximum export capacity to discuss the possibility of them releasing any unused capacity.

We identified a total of 170 demand and generation customers – which represents 100% of our HV and EHV customers utilising less than 75% of the export capacity – and approached them about releasing capacity. We have worked hard to make this possible through new processes and internal systems that we have introduced, which ensure that we can closely monitor the situation for our customers with fresh data being analysed each month.

Of the 170 approaches we made, in 79 instances, through discussions with our customers we were able to release capacity or understand and resolve why the capacity was being underutilised. This process continues as a business as usual practice for us and we will report our success rates back via the DG-DNO steering group and Ofgem to help shape future best practice guidance on the issue.