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- [00:00]
A
I'm your host, Ed Porter. And welcome back to Transmission. Great Britain's energy system operator isn't just balancing the grid anymore. Not that that was ever an easy job. The role has expanded. Planning gas security, designing markets, building data infrastructure and mapping where every megawatt of new generation should go, all while the system itself grows year on year. My guest today is Kate o', Neill, chief operating officer at niso, the public body now responsible for planning and operating Great Britain's energy system. Kate covers a lot of ground operability, connections, market design. If you want to dig into the data behind any of this, COE Moto Energy's AI analyst has it link in the description. Anyone moving capital into GB Power needs to understand how the operator is thinking, because that thinking shapes every project that gets built. Hello, Kate. Welcome to Transmission.
- [01:07]
B
Good to see you. Thanks so much for having me on.
- [01:09]
A
Our pleasure. And let's dive straight into it. So what is one thing that people consistently get wrong about operating NISO day to day?
- [01:17]
B
Yeah, I think actually the one thing that people typically get wrong is just the sort of the breadth and depth, depth of our role. People have known us for such a long time as the electricity system operator, the electricity system planner, and I think they know conceptually now we're a whole system organization. But it's maybe starting to see and feel some of that shift, you know, even in the strategic planning space. Yes, historically we've been focused on electricity. Now we're strategically planning across gas and across hydrogen. Our other roles are evolving in a very whole system way as well. Providing that advice to government, providing whole system resilience assessments out into, into industry. You're just really seeing us make that sort of quite significant step change. And I think people, people knew it was on the cards for niso. It was something we talked about.
- [02:13]
A
Yeah.
- [02:14]
B
But I think seeing actually the reality of that play out the breadth and depth of where we are now spending our times, the things we are focused on, the whole system contribution we are making. That's probably the.
- [02:24]
A
I still hear that, I still hear say the National Electricity system operator. Yeah, obviously you're the national energy system operator. And so your, your, your sort of, your breadth is far bigger.
- [02:34]
B
Yeah, yeah, Wildly, wildly different. And I think not just the breadth of what we cover, but the type of roles that we do. So of course we're still operating the electricity system, still very involved in, in market design, still very involved in, in network planning. But some of those other roles that I talk to, you know, providing The Clean Power 2030 advice to government taking the learnings from the North Hyde substation fire last year and translating those into what are the learnings for resilience across the energy system and with the adjacent sectors. You know, those are huge step changes. Not everybody does see them, but it's certainly something that we're hoping is coming to life.
- [03:18]
A
Okay, and North Hyde, that's close to Heathrow, right?
- [03:21]
B
Yeah, that's right. So that was the big substation fire that, that took out Heathrow briefly, but there were some really, really great learnings about how you think holistically about sort of critical assets, what's connected to them, how do you engage with those customers that are connected to those assets? Do we have that real deep understanding of the relationships across the industry and how we will use them in an incident?
- [03:50]
A
Okay, and I'm excited to. A few of those were sort of electricity examples. I'm just sort of keen to give an example from the energy side. So broader energy side. Is there like a molecules type example that you think about on a day to day or something you've delivered recently that you can give people a flavour of?
- [04:04]
B
Yeah. So probably the most pertinent one today is our focus on gas security of supply. So we work really closely with National Gas, the gas system operator. But NISO actually has an explicit role in assessing the gas security of supply. Originally that role was five to 10 years out and we've actually just agreed with government that we will expand that role. So we're now covering two to 10 years out, working really closely with, as I say, National Gas, who are focused on the coming year. So 0 to 1 and then we're looking at everything sort of 2 to 10 out.
- [04:42]
A
And this is, this is a great topic. Right, because right now, global uncertainty in gas markets. So how does NISO think about that uncertainty and what more could we be doing to make our system more resilient?
- [04:55]
B
Great question. And I should probably just acknowledge, of course, the very human impacts of all of this that's going on in the Middle east and real people impacted in very real ways and acutely conscious of that. When you bring it back closer to home. I think there are a few ways that we're thinking about the impacts of those geopolitical events. I think first and foremost in the UK or in Great Britain, we will see this manifest in price. In the first instance, we're already starting to see those price impacts in the wholesale market and undoubtedly we're going to see those flow through the energy price cap onto bills. And we're acutely conscious of That a lot of focus on understanding that and what it looks like through a security lens. It's a slightly different conversation to the extent that I don't know if you've seen our very recently published summer outlook and where National Gas also published the summer outlook for the gas system.
- [05:59]
A
And just to give a quick. The summer outlook is a view of how the system will perform over summer. What are the risks?
- [06:05]
B
Exactly that, exactly that. So it's looking at what do we expect to see on the system over the summer, what do we expect the profiles to look like and then how do we feel about sort of the resilience and the security of the system to respond to what we'll see. And the good news is that both of those outlooks are showing that the system is secure and resilient for this summer. Obviously we don't rest on our laurels. We are keeping a very, very close eye. We're already looking ahead. We'll publish an early winter outlook, so similar type of document but looks a bit further out later this summer and a very strong focus on sort of understanding what the gas supply profile is looking like. We are very fortunate to have a good diverse mix of supplies but we do take it, as you can imagine, incredibly seriously. A huge amount to focus.
- [06:59]
A
The summer outlook is probably not the one that I'm sort of worried about. Usually that summer outlook it tends to have things around, things like oversupply of say solar in certain parts of the network. And so how can we say turn down solar to make sure we have the right balance of technologies and that sort of, forgive my sort of high level brief on the summer outlook but that tends to be the type of thing we think about just because GB as a system it's that winter load is the thing that kills us really or thing that's difficult as a system to sort of manage. And so the summer outlook, I feel like we'll get through okay. It's that winter outlook that's probably going to be the time that, you know, things will come home to roost in terms of like the, the, the uncertainty that exists within the markets today.
- [07:40]
B
Yeah. Can I give two, two parts to my answer on this?
- [07:44]
A
Of course you can.
- [07:44]
B
What one is just to say I am fascinated actually by the summer outlook because I don't know if you, if you know this but one of the hardest operability challenges for NISO isn't managing peak demand. That's difficult. We, we care deeply about it. One of our biggest challenges, the super, super low demand on the system and making sure, that we, one, have as much visibility as we need of how low those demands might be, and two, that we've got all of the tools that we need to be able to have sufficient flexibility on the system to, to operate it in response to those low demands.
- [08:21]
A
We'll definitely come back to part one in a second.
- [08:23]
B
Okay, part two, you're absolutely right. We are very, very focused on looking out to the winter, looking out to what peak demand will look like, and working really closely with national gas looking at. And it's very much their focus for the, for the coming winter. So one year ahead, will we have the molecules and is the infrastructure resilient? You put those two things together and that sort of forms their assessment and then we translate that into what would be the implications on gas supply for operating the power system. So.
- [09:02]
A
Okay, yeah, well, let's, let's have those two, those two threads. Let's start on the first thread, which is, I think, probably one of the most asked questions in GB power markets, which is when it's really windy and when it's really sunny, we go into our apps, we take a look at sort of how the system's balancing. We see lots of solar, lots of wind, and yet there's nearly always this kind of 2% or 3% of gas running. Why does that gas run?
- [09:28]
B
Yeah, so the gas is running not for the megawatts, as you say. There is plenty of other forms of generation to meet our needs. It's actually running for vital services that it provides to enable us to operate the system securely and resiliently. And those services, inertia, for example, you don't get them naturally in renewable, intermittent, renewable generation sources. So we are very, very focused on how do we get those services elsewhere cleanly and more cheaply than we get them by having gas on the system and essentially having to take the additional megawatts with it, but really having that gas on the system for the provision of those services. This has been a really long journey for us. So back in 2019, when we were the electricity system operator, was when we first said we can see a path to being able to operate the system at zero carbon. That means with no gas units running. But in order to achieve that goal, the problem we've had to solve, the challenge we've had to solve for is how do you get those stability services that you need onto the system? A whole set of challenges that we've had to solve for, and we've spent five or six years working on that. And we're getting really really close, aren't we? So.
- [11:02]
A
Absolutely.
- [11:03]
B
First of April last year, 97.7% zero carbon. We are. I cannot tell you how eagerly we are watching the dashboards. This week feels like it could be a week for another. Another record. Another record, who knows? But I think what we've seen over the last five years is brilliant innovation, both in the way we procure services, who we're procuring them from, so taking existing assets and getting them to set up their control systems differently or connecting them differently so they can operate in a different way that helps the system without providing additional megawatts. We've seen a lot of that innovation. We have worked really closely with the regulator to make sure the sort of, the security, quality of supply SQSs, the standards that we operate to are appropriate for the current sort of operating conditions of the system. And you put all of that together and what we're looking for is that Goldilocks moment, we call it, where, where we have just enough of everything we need on the system and if the market operate, the market offers us a zero carbon stack, we can take it without having to turn gas on for services that we could have got elsewhere.
- [12:23]
A
That would be very cool to see.
- [12:24]
B
So cool.
- [12:25]
A
Yeah, absolutely. And I think one of the things that's quite interesting in terms of how you design this, right, so you've kind of, in the early stages, you looked at things like synchronous compensators or batteries in sort of grid forming inverters and you thought, let's sort of do pathfinders, let's test this out. Now we're getting further on to the stage, we're now starting to get markets coming through where, where NISO are saying, okay, this isn't just going to be something that sort of happens in bilateral contracts kind of hidden away. We're going to say we need this amount of inertia or we need this amount of voltage control in these regions. And that is, I think, actually quite market leading for a system operator because it starts to give people, let's say you're a battery company or whoever you might be, it starts to give you a signal to say, could you build this thing for me? And then people can start to plan solutions, they can talk to the inverter companies, they can work out what they should be providing at those particular places. Do you look at that and think we've got that right, or do you look at it and think like that process is okay, but there are so many more things that we need to fix on it?
- [13:29]
B
Yeah. It's a great question because I think the reality is it's an evolving process. Right. So when we first, when we first entered into these contracts via those pathfinder projects that you talk about, we weren't super experienced at articulating the need, but letting the market design the solution. So we spent some time sort of getting that right. You know, we were trying to be perhaps overly prescriptive and the market was telling us, but there's a better way. You know, tell us what you need and we'll tell you how we can do it. So that's evolved, I think. I think the market's ability to sort of conceive of what they can provide and what the business model looks like for providing it, it that has evolved. So we started off, we could only really do these things on pretty long term contracts that gave real sort of long term clarity of revenue. We're seeing that evolve. So we're seeing the potential for these markets to come closer to real time. That's been super helpful to us because as the system continues to change, we only want to buy the right amount of the right stuff. You know, we don't want to over commit and not create space for future innovation. So I feel like the evolution so far has been really positive as always. You know, we have tried really hard to build very close relationships with industry, with the market, to understand what they think we should do differently and better. And that's a conversation that, you know, is, is ongoing.
- [14:57]
A
Okay. And are there times you feel like it's not gone? So that was kind of a good description of like how it's worked quite well. Are there times where you felt, actually we've not kind of got this right or that, like we should have done things sooner or we should have operated those auctions in a different way?
- [15:12]
B
Yeah, again, I think some of it's come to, you know, how things have evolved over time. So these were new contractual arrangements for us. We were maybe a little bit tentative in how we set them up. We have worked really hard to get the risk balance in the right place. You know, the.
- [15:28]
A
So you're encouraging people to come forward?
- [15:29]
B
We're really encouraging people to come forward and take part. We want them to have skin in the game as well. We don't want them to feel though, like they can't come and participate because the risks are too high and there's a lack of clarity. So that's something that we've adjusted as we've gone. It feels like everything in, in this industry can take a long Time. And you always have that sense, that agitating sense of, I'm sure there's a way to do this faster and, and better. And I think, you know, I look at the markets team in nisa, a fantastic team of really expert, really credible individuals. You know, they've got the desire to get this right. And I think we see them making really great progress.
- [16:05]
A
There we go. And we, and we see these kind of similar things. We see voltage, voltage control markets coming through in Spain now we see inertia markets coming through in Germany. And so I don't want to sort of say which order they happened in, but it's nice to see that the system operators sort of influence each other. And I know we've gone down a bit of a niche here to get to this, but, but people I really hope are listening to this and going, look, when, when we can run a system, we. Without gas on it, that is a really cool thing and you'll forgive us for sending a little bit of time just talking about some of the weeds. Let's go back to that second thread before I forget it, because otherwise I will. And that is that there's the really hard time. So we have one challenge, which is how do you run the system on very low gas, very few spinning things, with the exception of any sort of spinning compensators. But the other side of the coin is the real challenge of operating in winter. So you get this high demand period. It's cold, it is dark, so solar is not very good, it is not very windy. And so you don't have the renewables kind of operating in a way that you'd like them to. And you're left with your gas fleet's interconnection, nuclear battery storage. Like, how do you get through that two, three week period?
- [17:11]
B
The focus really is on do you understand, properly understand the sort of, the characteristics of, of all of those, those assets and then have you got the flexibility to be able to sort of manage the, the interactions between them? And you've seen, I think, flexibility come much more to the fore, even as something that gets talked about in a meaningful way. I think historically as a sector, we've talked about flexibility around the edges. Now I think there is a much better understanding of what different types of flexibility exist. Why are they important? What does it actually take to be able to access them and use them in a meaningful way? And you know, for the very different types of flexibility that we need to build out, have we got enough of the right signals that give us confidence that we can get to where we need to be over the long term. So if you go back to The Clean Power 2030 Action Plan published by government, you know, huge requirement for growth and flexibility in that plan, both on the demand side, consumers and industrial and business demand, huge amount to do there and then a huge amount also to do on sort of low carbon dispatchable flexibility. And how do you unlock and sort of harness the value of that? And you know, in any given winter we will always make sure that going in we know sort of what the range of scenarios looks like and how we will be able to operate the system to meet those demands. But a big part of niso's role nowadays is that sort of longer term plan. Are we on a trajectory to have the flexibility amongst everything else we need in the system, but the flexibility in the system that we're going to need
- [19:04]
A
and that flexibility is critical. Right. So we talk about batteries a lot. I'm sure others do as well. And we think it's really important when you get into those sort of, sort of hard to get through periods. But there is also like we will need those gas units for a while yet. Right. So when we get into those harder periods through winter, there's kind of a gigawatt challenge. So there's the number of gigawatts you need to meet within the system and then there's also sort of the terrible hour. So let's say you've got a two week period where there's not enough energy on system. You also need some of those gas units to run to sort of provide this terrible hours. Yeah, and so that's the kind of challenge you're trying to get through. We don't think we have an answer yet of sort of how we get through it. So from my side, I sort of see gas running on maybe longer than we would, than we would like it to. But that to me seems like the pragmatic approach.
- [19:55]
B
Yeah, I think that's right. Certainly our analysis shows that we're going to need gas in, you know, in, in some quantity on the system actually for really quite a long time. Certainly well through the 30s and probably into the 40s when we think about sort of the overall picture, we think about having all of the right resources, right generation resources. So what does the, what does the supply mix look like? We think about how does that relate to the network availability. So can we move the power that we need to move around the country and then have we got the markets that are going to send all of the right signals? And I Think, you know, again, when you look to the longer term the challenge is, you know, inevitably going to be how do you send the signals for that two or three week period where you absolutely are going to need to hammer the amount of gas on the system if that unit hasn't run very recently or you know, and I think there's a, there's a, there's an operational question there, there's a market signal question. And then me personally, I just have this sort of other interest in like there's a human question to that as well. How are we going to have people who want to come and you know, work in a gas fired generator that maybe is going to sit there sort of unused for big periods of the year but critically important when we do need it.
- [21:22]
A
Yeah.
- [21:23]
B
So I'm just fascinated by how we're going to make the system work through all of those lenses out in the very long term.
- [21:30]
A
They're very interesting. Let's, let's change lanes a little bit. So going from the sort of system operation let's go into something that has been talked about a lot. So connections reform.
- [21:38]
B
Yeah.
- [21:39]
A
Now everyone has covered connections reform at length and so I'm keen not to sort of do the story of how we got here, but I'm keen to do the sort of where are we going to in the future? So where are we right now and how is this good for consumers?
- [21:55]
B
What I would say is where we are now is we've come a really, really long way to get to a place where we, I think will, will soon be able to confidently say that we've got the right queue made up of the right projects that are ready and needed to meet the needs of GB's energy system. We couldn't say that, you know, even 12 months ago. So I think we are getting really close to that place if you don't want to go back too much. But it's useful to just remember the case for change for connections. There was 800 gigawatts sitting in the queue. That's sort of inconceivable. There are 280something gigawatts sitting in the queue today, 100 gigawatts of transmission demand. That feels much closer to what we need. And because of the readiness criteria, the strict sort of entry criteria that we've applied to being in the queue, we also know that those projects certainly as of today are ready and they have to stay ready. They have to continue to prove that they are making progress to be ready to connect. Okay, that's really important. That's brought us a really long way. It hasn't yet met all of the ambitions of connection reform. Because I think the third part is to be able to, having thinned the queue out, be able to connect projects sort of within a reasonable amount of time to when they wanted to connect. Yeah, and we'll start to see how much of that plays out as we get offers out to customers. But yeah, you know, as painful as. As it has felt, and I know it has felt painful, I think we are in a good place today in terms of where we need to be and I think we've got a good trajectory going forward.
- [23:41]
A
I mean, that feels like the thing that for consumers, they'll start to see projects being connected at pace and that's like in the ideal world and that's, that's where sort of they'll start to see some of that coming through to their bills. Let's do the other side. So let's, let's talk about the developer. So let's say I'm a developer, I'm sat in that sort of reformed queue. What do the next 12 months look like? Because there's a lot of uncertainty in there.
- [24:03]
B
So there's a few things. Right. There's very practically, what does it look like? Well, it looks like we need to get a firm sort of a quantity, clear and accurate offer out to every one of those projects. There are set windows within which we'll do that. So we have just finished for transmission and we're still working through for distribution, getting offers out for the projects that are due to connect in 26 and 27. And then there's a window for phase one projects out to 2030 and then there's a window for phase two projects. We are on track, working really closely with the network companies to making sure that every project in that queue gets its offer within the committed timeline. So practically speaking, that's what they can expect. And that offer will tell them when they're going to connect, where they're going to connect and how much it's going to cost. Three really important things for developers to know and then they'll have a period of time in which to choose to accept that offer or not. So that's another very practical step that's going to happen. The bit that may be is worth saying is what are the sort of the principles by which we're operating to get that work done? And I think the two that really stand out for me, one is with clear and transparent communications. So I think that's long been A criticism of the process so far. Have we been clear enough and have we been sort of transparent enough out there, talking enough about where we are in the process and what decisions are being made, what that looks like? So clear and transparent communications. And then our actual ways of working have also got to shift. So we've already made some really big changes. So, you know, I personally spend a huge amount of time with the network companies through the delivery structures that we've put in place, making sure that we are working really well together, working really well with customers, and that we're able to sort of get through this process.
- [26:00]
A
Well, let's talk about that for a second because I think as we built up to connections reform, projects were still being delivered. Then we go into connections reform and sort of some of the projects that had already committed were then being built throughout that process. It feels like there might be a bit of hiatus now between sort of those projects that are being built and then connections reform coming in. If we then hit a new stride, as it were, and all of a sudden we're delivering projects or offers are going out at sort of 2x the rate that they were historically. That's good to get the offers out. But at some point, sort of the rubber hits the road and we have to have to your human story. We have to have electrically qualified people who can do this work and make sure this stuff actually happens.
- [26:35]
B
Yeah.
- [26:36]
A
So how do you think about the sort of human delivery of expertise to make sure that these projects actually get delivered? Because that's something I worry about, that they've got this big wave of projects coming through and we all have an offer. Yeah, but it's not worth anything. If you actually can't get the people,
- [26:48]
B
you can't get the thing built. Yeah, yeah. It's a really great shout. How do we think about it? Well, we think about it a lot and we recognize, and I think. I think in particular the network companies who are going to, you know, ultimately are creating that offer or the details of that offer for customers recognize that there is huge value in early engagement with the developer to say, is this offer actually going to work with you? They've spent a lot of time, the network companies, talking to developers about, is this the window that you want? Would a better time look different? Do you need longer those types of discussions about the realities of getting stuff connected? They have long happened. But as you say, when you're. When the volume of offers, the volume of projects to get built goes up. We have to be ready to sort of face into that and have those conversations.
- [27:40]
A
Are there any levers that you can pull, you know, when, if it starts to happen, if it starts to get delayed. We've got offers out but we actually can't get stuff done like, like what is that then? Is it still within ESO's control to do things to try and influence that or is that kind of at that point does it go over to the sort of network owners to think about this problem?
- [27:59]
B
We work really closely together on all of these challenges. It's interesting, right, because the focus has always been on like let's get the offers out. People need the certainty and the clarity. It is the network companies that do all of the studies, all of the engineering studies and that is ultimately what dictates the sort of the components of the offer, the conditions of the offer. I don't know. If you've got great ideas, we'd love to hear them. But for me, typically what I come back to is as long as we've got a really open and transparent dialogue, that is probably our best route to sort of maintaining fit for purpose processes.
- [28:36]
A
Yeah. And if you are sort of interested in the sort of electrical side of things, then get in touch with network companies. There are many roles going for people to connect up pieces of kit and it's a fascinating time to be in the space. Let's move on from Connections specifically onto a more niche part. So the battery storage queue that was a very large part of the queue has been slimmed down. It's now sort of in the 80 or 90 gigawatts. I can't remember exactly. Yeah, we think we need something like 40 gigawatts probably the clean Power plan was more talking about sort of 23, 27, but still we have more than we think we need. Yeah, that means it's oversubscribed. That means that NISO are having to think about all those projects that are kind of in that queue. How do you go from sort of that oversubscribed queue down to something that is closer to perhaps what you're after? And how do you do that without sort of triggering loads of sort of network studies for the whole, whole 90 gigawatts? Because that does feel like it would be a waste of some time because some of those projects aren't going to get built.
- [29:38]
B
Yeah, I mean you've really articulately captured the real complexity and trade offs that we're having to think about as we navigate this conversation. You're right. The oversubscription is multiples of what we needed for 20, 30. There are two real consequences of that. One you've rightly called out, which is just the sort of the time, the unnecessary time and cost of running studies and engineering the background for 90 gigawatts of batteries, which we all know deep down are unlikely to get built. But having to do that anyway, because that is what the process requires, right? We have to give accurate connection offers that reflect exactly what is in the queue. So you're balancing that trade off with how quickly will what I think ultimately will be sort of market forces catch up and force attrition, natural attrition, where some of those projects will fall away. The consequence that I've missed, that I think it is just worth calling out, is that those 90 gigawatts of batteries in the queue are effectively preventing one of the real benefits that we saw of connections reform, which is being able to bring other projects forward. So they're still holding a place in the queue. I think we all believe that some proportion of them will drop out naturally over time, but until they drop out, we have not achieved our aim of creating space or as much space to bring other projects forward.
- [31:17]
A
And this is the really fascinating thing, right? So as someone who's involved in system planning and starting to think about what are the right amount of technologies by different regions, so how many batteries in Scotland, how many batteries in England, how many batteries in Wales? I know it's more detailed than that, but just to give people, like a flavor of it, how do you balance the kind of prescriptiveness of that sort of central process of deciding sort of which techs go where and how many do we need of each individual type, wind, solar, batteries, gas, whatever it might be, with the sort of market operation, so how the market runs, because we do forecasting, and we know that when you do forecasting, forecasts are wrong because things change immediately after you make the forecast, right? And so you must know that when you put out these plans around batteries or wind or solar in particular places, that quite soon after you make that plan, it is probably not optimal. And then the market starts saying to you, okay, this project's dropped out, or these projects are delivering really well and we probably need more of them. So how do you kind of keep the flexibility in a central plan system to be able to make the most of either sort of gaps that are becoming available or technology's outperforming?
- [32:25]
B
So I would refer to it as a strategically planned system rather than a centrally planned system to the extent that. No, no, not a correction, but I think it's a. For me, it's a mindset thing. Right. So we're trying to, through strategic planning, sort of paint a picture of ultimately what do we need on a whole system basis across the piece, taking into account what's available to us, environmental considerations, economic considerations, communication, land consideration. All the things that Julian Leslie talked to you about on his podcast on strategic planning. Right. So it's about understanding the bigger picture and thinking about what we need in that context. What it doesn't do, because it's not a central plan, is dictate which projects get built precisely where, and that is where the market comes from. But you're right, there is a tension in there about how much do we strategically plan, how specific are those plans? I think for me, and you know, no doubt the sweet spot is really hard to find. I don't think this is a science. I think it is a, you know, it is something of an art form. I think it's about ensuring that those strategic plans already in and of themselves have some level of flexibility. They're never completely binary. You know, you have ranges and you look at how things are evolving as those ranges change over time, they get refreshed every so often. So even the ssep, which, you know, still yet to publish the first ssep, but that will be rerun every three years.
- [33:56]
A
The Strategic Spatial Energy Plan.
- [33:58]
B
Sorry, Ed. Yes, the Strategic Spatial Energy Plan. So that will set out sort of 2035 onwards. What do we need on the system? And then closer to real time, you've got to make sure that the processes by which you are delivering against that plan, that they have enough flexibility to adapt to the changing conditions as you described, you're absolutely right. But if you take connections reform as an example, when we open the next window for connections, you know, if we have seen through attrition that we're now not at the cap, then that capacity becomes available, the next projects will come forward. It's, I would say, probably imperfect. I don't know what perfect would look like, but it's probably imperfect. But it is better than the alternative we've had before, which is in the absence of a strategic plan, we haven't been able to make, for example, the big network build decisions in order to reduce overall cost to consumers across the whole energy system. So I really do think we talked right up front about niso's role and I talked about the whole system lens to it. The other bit of our role that I think you see playing out here is our ability to sort of paint that picture, identify Opportunities, identify risks, look for the trade offs, call them out and then find ways to make sure that between our strategic planning and our sort of processes there is enough flexibility in the system to deal with them all.
- [35:23]
A
And there have been some cases of that which I think is fair to give sort of credit for. I think the industry would love to see that. The industry would love to see the sort of. Look, we've looked at this thing, we've been tracking this project, this project's dropped out, sorry. And we've seen that coming through in the press and okay, so that's kind of freeing up space and that gives us like we know that's happened, we're thinking about it, we're going to be updating the plans and we have that flexibility. I think if people, if people like understand that, I think it will help people on this to then go sort of one step beyond. So you are right that transmission build outs been relatively slow over the last sort of few decades versus kind of like how it once has been. And we're now going through this great big program of building out more transmission. What is stopping us kind of falling into the same trap of overbuilt or over subscribed queues and sort of this, this situation where when application windows reopen everyone just rushes in and books a slot.
- [36:23]
B
Well, hopefully the way the codes and methodologies have been designed we will prevent that from happening because the same sort of high entry criteria, so are you needed and then the readiness criteria, are you actually credible and going to put a spade in the ground. Those two things, they will still remain true. So that should stop the sort of the massive influx. We need to see what the next windows look like and I think, you know, test our processes and make sure they are working as we hope. We want projects to come forward where we need them so we want to make sure the methodologies sort of allow that. But I'm confident certainly on generation connections we won't end up in the same place because those criteria will be important. Will also through the milestone, through the queue management milestones, continue to sort of test the quality of the queue and things will fall out if they don't meet their milestones and then we'll bring new projects in. The interesting one I think that we haven't necessarily nailed yet is the queue for demand. So as you know, demand connections are uncapped. We saw a similar sort of massive uptick in demand connection applications to the queue in the late stages of connections reform.
- [37:40]
A
And how much of that is really,
- [37:42]
B
well, very hard to say, and that's where we're working with government and OFGEM to try to look, take all of the lessons from generation connection reform and say, you know, how do you, how do you actually figure out what is speculative versus what is ultimately actually going to get built? What was just a rush to get a place in the queue but isn't actually ready? We know from generation connections reform it is actually quite hard to figure out what's real. But if you look at what DESNES is thinking about, what ofgem's thinking about, what NISO is thinking about, there is definitely an intention to sort of curate that queue. So thin it out, make sure it's ready.
- [38:28]
A
Do you think about it spatially as well in the sense of, let's say we've got a lot of wind in Scotland, wouldn't it be nice to have say data centers in Scotland? Do you kind of think about it in the same sort of allocation box by region?
- [38:39]
B
Yeah, hugely important. And it comes back to again, doesn't it, where the beauty of spatial planning, strategic planning of the system and then market design helps you sort of achieve those really sweet outcomes like generation going and demand going and locating where the generation is.
- [38:57]
A
Okay, I have one final question on connections reform which is, and I think it's a little bit of a forgotten part. So co location, the concept that sort of two units can use the same connection and just kind of think about this logically. So when you have a solar park that is generating during the middle of the day, if you put a battery on that, the battery doesn't want to export at the same time as solar, like why would it, it's looking for a time in the evening when the solar is not generating to then export. And so in theory you could kind of get much better utilization out of that particular network point by sort of encouraging this colocation. It feels like in the connections of form process we've, we've almost been sort of single minded about wind or solar or gas or batteries and they've all kind of got their own individual buckets.
- [39:40]
B
Yeah.
- [39:40]
A
And yet we haven't thought about ways of combining some of these technologies. And when we look at say Spain or Germany, they're trying to get these schemes to come through where they're encouraging people to do this co location. So has it been forgotten about or
- [39:56]
B
am I missing it so? Definitely not forgotten. In fact, much debated I would say. So it's definitely features very heavily in our, in our conversations. I think maybe there's a timing issue here in in some respects you have to remember that Q reform for, for connections reform to, to get passed. And remember it took two years of, you know, really extensive consultation. We had to get to a place where people felt that the reforms were fair but were going to achieve the outcomes that they needed to. And a big part of that was once you'd taken out things out of the queue that weren't needed or weren't ready, that the sort of the underlying first come, first serve nature of the queue remained. We didn't throw the whole thing up in the air and then cherry pick the projects. I don't think anybody would have thought that was the right answer. One of the consequences of that was that certainly if you look out to 2030, more than 80% of what was in the queue was not co located. So as we've held on to that first come, first served sort of underlying logic, it means that projects that maybe started out as a single technology but latterly decided to co locate are going to end up with two connection offers. One for the part of the technology that was their original key position and one for the part that was their sort of Secretary Q position. That's primarily stuff that's sort of pre2030. So over time that will, that will shift. We'll get towards things projects that originally applied to be co located. We think there's huge value in that given that the, the capacities have largely been met for 2030 and 2035. We'll see what attrition does. But largely, maybe there's a period of time where this remains true. But to try and give you some confidence, some confidence to the market, we absolutely care about the value of colocation, the benefits of that to the system. We absolutely want to minimize unnecessary cost, minimize network build as far as possible, maximize the use of the infrastructure we've got. And I think processes like SSEP will be able to look at colocation for its potential, which is really different to what we were able to do when we were looking at how we're going to deal with the existing queues and how it works. So you know, I know that isn't going to satisfy everyone, Ed, but what I hope you can take away from it is it is not a lack of understanding or a lack of willingness to think about it on our part. It is this requirement for us to tread these very fine lines and trade offs and try to get to something that works now and will also work in future.
- [42:39]
A
It's a really good answer in terms of like how we've got to this place. And sort of why the codication almost feels further down the road. It almost feels like the sort of regrettable outcome perhaps is that in one particular location you could have 5 gigawatts of solar and 5 gigawatts of battery and in total you then have to build 10 gigawatts of connection. And that costs money. It takes time. It's all of those things. And it feels like we have to kind of commit to the connections before and process and commit to the queue for all of the good reasons around giving people confidence. But almost like, could there be like an amnesty type thing of saying, look, you know, if you've got those two connections, you've got a solar connection, you've got a battery connection, you know, you could in, you could in theory have some sort of sharing of bayes, you could have sharing of those connections. That, that to me feels like you were talking about flexibility earlier, about sort of NISO trying to be flexible and trying to have sort of the ability to adjust. Does this feel like something where, you know, you could look at it because we're seeing the best practice or maybe it's not best practice, maybe it's a mistake, but we're seeing other grids.
- [43:38]
B
Yeah. So we are absolutely talking about it. Things like bay sharing, things like really looking at how those assets will operate and what options can you give to developers. And we did give options through the original reform process for people to think about their assets slightly differently. We're absolutely doing that. The other thing we're trying to do and you know, please do everyone kind of call us out if you don't feel like we're doing enough. But we are trying to keep the debate open on these things. So the consultation that's out now on just closed actually this week on methodology changes, you know, that will be an ongoing thing. That's an ongoing discussion and you know, we're spending an awful lot of time kind of with developers and really keen to hear these things so that we can feature them in our longer term thinking?
- [44:27]
A
Okay, well we've done system resilience and sort of stability. We've done connections reform beyond connection reform. Let's go on to market design. So earlier this week we had the reformed national pricing coming out from desnes, not obviously in its final form, but what other sort of key priorities are you seeing beyond connections reform? To make sure that we're setting up a system that can get the most out of the new technologies that are
- [44:53]
B
coming through the markets. Work that you've talked about is Clearly a huge and ongoing priority. We were really pleased to see government's RMP delivery plan published. It is the continuation of a conversation that's been happening since last summer when the decision was taken not to go with location or pricing. And I think there's a couple of parts to it. One is, okay, what, what is rnp? What is reformed national pricing? If it's not wholesale market reform, what is it trying to do? And I think it's trying to do a few really important things. It's trying to send investment signals, citing signals that we, we've talked a little bit about. It's reflecting on the trajectory for constraint costs and trying to make sure we've got those in mind and thinking about how we're gonna manage them down. And then it's also trying to think about sort of dispatch efficiency. How do you ensure that the way we are operating the system is efficient? Those are really important conversations and it is really important that we have, you know, all the voices, I think, in that, in that debate. Some of these changes, they are not small. You know, these are sort of some pretty significant transformations that we'll see. But if you have in mind the scale of the challenge, constraint costs, you know, needing to build things in the right place to maximise the use of the system, needing to be able to operate and ensure a secure and resilient system that looks fundamentally different to the energy system before they're doing really big important things, I think it's critical that we get them right. So I really welcome the progress that we're making with a lot to do and we need to go pretty quickly, I think, to make progress.
- [46:40]
A
Okay, very interesting. And we're going from almost like the traditional grid. The traditional grid maybe had large transmission units and then had large demand centers and you kind of ran from generation to demand. The future grid has much more data, has AI involved, has batteries, EVs, heat pumps, flexibility and, and all of that can be dispatched in different ways. And we have so many more tools in our toolbox to be able to manage this system better and to run the network hotter. How are we making the most of that?
- [47:14]
B
It's a really expanding area for NISO is one of the things I would say both in terms of how we think about data, digital AI for our own organization. So the bits that we're accountable for. But also, and I've talked a lot about niso's expanding mandate, we also have pretty important roles in helping to, to shape how industry thinks about these challenges, these opportunities as well. So If I just talk about those for a second, there are two things really I think are going to be critically important. One is data, the ability to share data, unbelievable quantities of data that are going to need to be moved around the system. And it's bonkers that we don't, you know, we don't have that visibility and access that we so easily could have if we could get our data sharing think infrastructure right.
- [48:01]
A
It's important to say that NISO do a very good job of data sharing relative to other system operators. So I'd like. I don't know, there's a rolling. It's easy to say this when you're here, you see, but I would say if you weren't here. So I just. Yeah, just to make that clear.
- [48:17]
B
Thank you. I think we can see the importance of it and the value of it and we want to encourage it right across the system. So we're taking a role in helping to think about and establish pilots for that sort of data sharing infrastructure. The other one then is just digital, sort of more broadly digital coordination. Like what are the rules of the game, what are the standards and how do we get this whole thing to operate in a. In a very sort of interoperable way. And again, you know, there are lots of parties operating in this space. NISO is trying to step up and step in and sort of really get that conversation going and start to be clear about what's needed and what it will take to get there. We're not going to own all of the that stuff. We're not sort of building an empire here. We're trying to enable and facilitate the right conversations and the right outcomes. It's really important in niso. I mean, I could spend all day, every day talking about the use of data and digital and AI in our own spaces. And we're looking really thoughtfully and trying to be really disruptive about how we think about the opportunity is you probably know we're on a massive sort of systems transformation in the control room. We're well through that and that is going to offer so much potential for us now in terms of sort of better deploying new technologies, new digital solutions as they come. So I think that's really important. But we've also still got some really gnarly problems to solve on the system. We've talked a lot today about connections and the flow of connections coming through. For every one of those projects that needs to get connected, it's got to have access to the system. I'm going to have to take an outage to connect it. Imagine planning for that. How am I going to get all of that access to the network?
- [50:06]
A
This feels like a great AI problem I think if you, it's very good with large data sets. If you fed it sort of, and there's obviously problems with this. Right. But if you fed all of the data points into say a very large, into something like Claude or whatever it might be and you run that, it would be quite interesting to see what would come out because it'd probably say something like, oh, this super grid transformer that's here is running on hot standby, but it doesn't need to. We could be doing something with this and it's almost like you could get a sort of fresh set of eyes on so many of the problems that are sort of not allowing us to run our network as hard as we'd like to. So I'd be fascinating to see. I mean, I don't know whether it'll actually happen but I'd be fascinated to see what the outcome would look like.
- [50:47]
B
Well, we're on it, we're working on it, we're so it's, it's really active. We're also trying to learn not just from others in the energy sector globally, but also from other organizations who are dealing with similar types of problems, not necessarily energy related but you know, lots of data having sorted to, to try and come up with really, you know, solve really complex pathway type questions. So yeah, I'm excited and I know
- [51:14]
A
you were looking to keen to plug a topic as well. So let's, let's, let's give you the opportunity to plug, plug that.
- [51:21]
B
Yeah, well I think it goes to a bit of what we've talked about today. So the, you know, if you think about geopolitical context, sort of security of supply questions, changing nature of the system, the operability of the system, the challenges that we're going to face and the market solutions that we're going to need to help us solve those problems. Just, it just remains so forefront of mind, it's so important and it feels like an area where we can get plenty of help. So we've very recently published our 2026 Operability Strategy Report alongside our Markets Roadmap. The Markets Roadmap starts to explore routes to market for sort of different types of assets and how we're thinking about unlocking those routes to market. I would love people to engage in that, take a look at what we've put out, talk to us about it, tell us what more we can do and how you can help. Super interesting.
- [52:11]
A
And we will put the link to that in the comments.
- [52:13]
B
Thank you.
- [52:13]
A
And then final question. Kate, is there a topic in the energy world you have a contrarian view on?
- [52:19]
B
Yeah, so I think this view may be pretty contrarian, but I'm going to, I'm going to take it anyway. What I'm, what I'm going to say is, actually I, I like connections reform. I appreciate that the connections reform journey hasn't necessarily been great for everyone and there's, it's been a long time and a lot of uncertainty and we haven't always got the delivery of connections reform. Right. But honestly, if I reflect on what we're trying to achieve, the need to solve a really challenging problem for industry and to move us away from something that was not at all fit for purpose to something that is fit for purpose and can work for the future, to do it in a way that's been really consultative with industry, that's brought so many voices in and maybe even, I don't know, but it may be in energy terms, in some respects delivered relatively quickly compared to some of the other reforms that we have tried as an industry to deliver. You know, I genuinely believe, and I'll hold on to, we're doing the right thing with the right intent. So, yeah, that's my contrarian view.
- [53:23]
A
An incredibly formative process. And I wonder whether a similar group in 10, 15 years time will look back at the connections reform process and say, well, why does the system look like it did today? Or does today it's because of this process we went through. So, yeah, a fascinating place to end this. Kate, thank you very much for coming on. You've been a wonderful guest.
- [53:42]
B
Thank you for having me.