The Hare and the Tortoise… and the Connections Portal

This is a story about how the fastest route isn’t always the quickest.

As soon as the new UK Government took office last summer, there was a welcome pedal to the metal in our efforts to decarbonise the electricity network. The Clean Power 2030 Action Plan (CP30) was published, the Strategic Spatial Energy Plan (SSEP) and Regional Energy Strategic Plans (RESPs) were mandated and the Review of Electricity Market Arrangements (REMA) was finally given its outcome, among countless other fast-tracked work streams.

Long overdue reforms to untangle the knots of our grid connections queue have also picked up pace moving to a ‘first ready, first needed, first served’ process whereby projects will need to meet criteria around land and planning rights to obtain a connection offer. However, the phrase to ‘move fast and break things’ was taken a bit too literally when it came to issues recently encountered with the Connections Reform submission portal. 

While the portal fiasco can be put down as another example of a large-scale, public IT system failure, it also acts as a cautionary tale for higher powers to adopt the alternative expression ‘measure twice, cut once’ when implementing some of the more complex processes underpinning our route to decarbonisation.

When the National Energy System Operator (NESO) launched its evidence portal on project readiness in early July, flaws in the process soon became apparent as developers across the UK struggled to submit project data. The delicate process of streamlining the queue without excluding the very projects it was designed to support was pushed to breaking point by a variety of technical issues.

January’s pause on applications gave a taste of the issues to come but the time to adequately test the portal ahead of evidence submission was unfortunately not a luxury that was afforded, despite industry warnings. NESO deserves credit for its tireless efforts, early acknowledgement of the portal’s failings and a willingness to work with industry, but lessons must be learned for future processes.

To restore confidence in continued project development, a revised timeline is required as informed by industry, as well as a commitment to learning from an overly blinkered vision on technical processes. Developers need accurate and detailed offers to secure firm investment decisions which avoid further costly delays or projects dropping out of the queue altogether.  

Maintaining momentum on the clean power mission also requires clear visibility of what new capacity will be available where and when so that projects can prepare submissions on time. Again, this needs to be published swiftly but deliberately to give certainty to future processes, with time allocated to test-running the portal’s next use. Crucially, NESO needs sufficient time to redirect resource back to dealing with the nuances of individual projects to sustain the progress of vital developments and contract discussions.   

For an industry that demands speed and certainty in decision-making, we almost have to whisper to decision-makers the benefits of a slower, more considered approach for the more complicated parts of our mission to clean up the energy system. The power of such an ambitious target to drive action will be most effective if it avoids bulldozing the useful, extra steps that avoid delays in the long term.

The overriding lesson? We can’t always be the hare, but we also don’t have time to be the tortoise. Let’s hold onto the fleet-footed boldness of the hare, while honouring the quiet wisdom of the tortoise and the lessons learned along the way.

• Blog by Holly Thomas, Policy Manager - Grid & Systems, at Scottish Renewables.