Network constraint and curtailment information

We conducted a comprehensive consultation and review and then confirmed our approach to the provision of network constraint and curtailment information.

Network constraints is an important issue for network operators and customers alike and at both a national and regional level, a significant amount of work is being undertaken to understand how best to deliver new connections in areas of the electricity network that are constrained.

We recognise that this remains an important issue for generation developers who, when assessing the feasibility of any proposed project, need to understand the possible levels of curtailment they could experience when accepting a connection offer. We remain fully committed to working with our customers and supporting them both prior to and following connection.

Before accepting a connection offer, generators need to understand the potential levels of curtailment they could experience and how it could affect the viability of their proposed project. Our design and commercial engineers will work with customers to support them during this period, making themselves available for upfront and ad hoc pre-application discussions. They can provide network information to enable customers to make informed decisions and signpost the tools we provide to help them make their own upfront assessments, including our long-term development statements and our network availability heat maps and contracted capacity register, the information on both of which is updated every month. These are the same tools used by our engineers when developing assessments for our customers.

Post-connection, we know that generators need to be able to mitigate for the risk of network outages as far in advance as possible. Through the dedicated DG owner operator forum we have established, we can provide generators with valuable information on our future capital investment programme and planned outages on both National Grid’s and our network. Our operational experts are on hand to discuss any site specific problems or network issues they are experiencing and we have published their contact details on our website to allow customers to engage with them outside this quarterly forum.

We understand that our customers place a lot of importance on this type of information and so we made a commitment to consult with them to better understand their specific requirements. We wanted to use this information to further inform our approach to the provision of network constraint and curtailment information.

During the course of the ICE plan year, we took every opportunity to engage with stakeholders. We discussed network constraints with attendees at our DG owner operator forums and asked those attending to tell us about their specific requirements.

We held a workshop at our Connections Customer Forum in November 2018 and sought feedback from national stakeholders via the Distributed Energy Resources (DER) forum. This comprehensive consultation exercise has informed our thinking and our approach to the provision of constraint and curtailment information to customers.

Based on the feedback we received, our review concluded that the approach we have outlined below will work well for our customers.

• Generators are encouraged to make use of the pre-application support and tools we make available to understand the likely levels of curtailment they could experience.
• Our engineers can provide a certain level of network data ahead of a customer making a formal application that will help them to form their own upfront assessments.
• Post-connection we encourage generators to participate in our DG owner operator forum, a valuable channel to obtain for up-to-date and accurate outage information. Our operational experts are also willing to support and provide information outside of this quarterly forum.

We understand that this remains an important topic for DNOs and generators alike and we continue to contribute to the debate on industry best practice.

We believe our current approach is aligned with the ENA’s Open Networks Project’s recommendations published in December 2018 We are aware of the recommendations of like the Solar Trade Association and look forward to the opportunity to discuss these further at one of our DG owner operator forums, where there will be an opportunity for continued and constructive debate.