Opinions and Papers

2025

Cheaper Clean Power (September 2025)

Electricity has both costs and prices. Labour promised a £300 reduction in domestic electricity bills by 2030 and said that only clean power would run the electricity system by that date. That promise makes sense if there are plans to bring prices down and to keep costs low.

What will Make Prices Come Down?

GB electricity costs are high. Gas sets the price for wholesale costs for ~98% of the time. Thus for ~98% of the time gas is needed...

Energy Policy End-to-End (August 2025)

There are multiple problems facing the growth of renewables, all the way from rooftop solar (caused by issues with rental agreements, re-sale values, network hold-ups) to there being insufficient heavy plant to create traditional inertia on networks.

As well as these problems and others of the same order (many being addressed in government policy papers, in NESO decisions or in promised consultations), there are bigger problems, each with their own...

The Future for Renewables Generation (July 2025)

Developers of small to mid-sized renewable energy generators - anything up to 99MW solar farms or 20+ wind turbines and most biomass and short-duration batteries – would have experienced a check to their business as a result of the introduction of the new revolutionary connections regime. While the connections process paused to allow the changes to be made to its arrangements, all these developers would have been forced to pause, too.

The big question for these developers (and the sheer number of outstanding applications for connections shows there are...

Cap and Floor Scheme: Will there be a Window 2?

(June 2025)

We are now at the start of the first bidding round for the cap and floor long duration battery energy storage (LBESS) scheme. The doors for applicants closed on 9 June. Some have asked whether that’s a deadline: Ofgem describes it as such but fudges the possibility of extension when it says:

The deadline for submitting applications is 9 June 2025. After this date, applicants will not have the automatic right to...

Cap and Floor Scheme Update (May 2025)

The cap and floor scheme is a state-aid subsidy scheme aimed at supporting long duration energy storage (LDES). The floor, or guaranteed income, covers project cost (debt and equity) and a profit cap limits upside to a level (yet to be determined) that is judged to be ‘fair’.

Ofgem recently announced the scheme target as (in sum) >50MW 8 hour batteries.

The scheme has been put together in haste (not a criticism). It is still being put together, although Window 1 opened for applications on 8 April; it closes on...

The New Connections Regime (February 2025)

Connections are ‘paused’ until the new connections regime is in place, i.e., it isn’t possible to obtain a connection at present. That pause affects both transmission and distribution connections. Once the pause has ended, a new regime for both comes into effect and changes the development landscape.

The scale of the change is intended. The new regime aims to...

The Connections Pause (January 2025)

New applications for connections needing a TIA or transmission impact assessment (all plant on all networks over 1MW, shortly to be 5MW) are subject to a pause, ending no later than 31 May 2025.

• NESO, the transmission system operator, has ceased dealing with applications until its new connections regime is in place or, if sooner, 31 May 2025.

   

• The distribution networks (DNOs) will accept applications but...

2024

Emissions Targets and Connection (December 2024)

We have yet another new emissions target – by 2035 the UK has undertaken to reduce emissions by 81%.

That target, announced at COP 2024, wasn’t the government picking straws out of the wind. It was the target recommended by the Climate Change Committee, based on its advice for the Seventh Carbon Budget to be published in February. At the same time, the UK will produce its Nationally Determined Contribution, setting out policies to achieve...

Corporate PPAs (November 2024)

Corporate power purchase agreements (CPPAs) seem simple and desirable. Desirable to the customer (a mid-to-large commercial enterprise) that wants to be able to point to a specific renewable source of power that ‘belongs’ to it and say that wind farm or that solar farm supplies it.

This part of the arrangement might be simple. Forever Blue Limited (FB) produces renewable power and Vast Enterprises Limited (VEL) wants to buy it. They contract for a price and the...

Pricing in Waste (October 2024⁽²⁾)

Battery project developers need to think about waste. To be exact, they need to consider – and factor into their financial models – the costs to be incurred when any battery project reaches the end of its working life.

A developer who adopts a wait-and-see attitude – on the basis that these are unknown future costs and the technicalities of disposal are uncertain - may find funding harder to attract. The reason is obvious: the project plan and financial model has a black hole. If the black hole is small, well, there’s no harm. But this particular...

The Connections Solution(s) (October 2024)

The inability to connect new projects to the networks has been a major problem for developers for the past few years. In many cases proposed projects have foundered and funding for renewables and storage has become harder to obtain. The fault is, we were told, that there is insufficient capacity on the networks and that the needed additional infrastructure would not be available until the mid-to-late 2030s.

The distribution networks came up with an interim workaround to the problem in about May 2023. That workaround took several months to implement, again causing projects to founder and making financing...

Helping the 2030 Target (August 2024)

Previous Updates have argued that Labour’s target of 100% zero carbon electricity by 2030 won’t be met. There are things it could do to get us closer than its current plans. To see exactly what they would be involves making some grand assumptions, summing the GWs available and deducting GWs needed.

The Great Grid Upgrade (Grand Assumption No 1)

NGC’s “Great Grid Upgrade” is under way, from Hinkley Point (completion due in 2026), across East Anglia, (Norwich to Tilbury), Suffolk and Kent, connecting new...

Labour’s 2030 Commitments (July 2024)

We have a (repeated) commitment from the new Secretary of State for Energy that electricity will be zero carbon by 2030. The commitment is about electricity not heat. The question to be asked, less ‘of’ than ‘about’ the man who is now in charge of all things energy, is whether the commitment is plausible.

Well yes, says the Secretary of State, because in the Energy Department is an outfit dubbed ‘Mission Control’ which will work with, inter alia, National Grid and ESO to “speed up the connection of new power infrastructure”.

Fine, but in May 2023 the ENA...

When Can Projects Connect? (May 2024)

If a solar, onshore wind or a project with another technology seeks to generate over a network (almost all must do so) the answer to the question when it can connect is either the mid-to-late 2030s (so no use to current contenders) or much earlier if, but only if, batteries connect sooner and relieve the crush on the relevant network.

After two plus years of the networks faffing around, batteries should be connecting now: we keep being told it will be one or...