Electricity transmission network requirements
Great Britain’s NETS must continue to adapt and be developed so power can be transported from source to demand, reliably and efficiently.
East of England boundaries
The East of England region includes the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk, with EC5 being the only boundary within this region.
North Wales and the Midlands boundaries
The Western transmission region includes boundaries in the Midlands and the north of Wales.
This includes the lower midlands boundary B9 and the north Wales boundaries NW1, NW2 and NW3.
North of England boundaries
The North of England transmission region includes the network between the Scottish border and the North Midlands.
Boundaries B7a and B8 are in this region.
Scottish boundaries
The onshore transmission network in Scotland is owned by SSEN Transmission and SP Transmission.
The Scottish NETS is divided into 7 boundaries:
South Wales and South England boundaries
The region includes the high demand area of London, generation around the Thames estuary and the long set of circuits that run around the South Coast and South Wales.
The pathways presented in the Clean Power 2030 report describe two possible ways that Great Britain can achieve a clean power system by 2030.
These pathways were developed from the analysis set out in FES 2024, with adjustments based on:
- the greater challenge of clean power
- a deeper assessment of the 2030 pipelines
- our stakeholder engagement for this report.
Our clean power pathways push the limits of what is feasibly deliverable, but there are some flexibilities at the margin. For example, onshore wind and solar could substitute for offshore wind; more demand-side response could substitute for batteries; more hydrogen or CCS could substitute for most other supply options.
One pathway, Further Flex and Renewables, sees 50 GW of offshore wind and no new dispatchable plants. The other, New Dispatch, has 43 GW of offshore wind and new dispatchable plants (totalling 2.7 GW, using either hydrogen from low carbon sources or carbon capture and storage [CCS]).
Across both pathways, there is a slight reduction in the expected north-south transfer, from Scotland to Northern England, across the B0 – B7a boundaries, more so in New Dispatch where the total wind capacity in the north is lower than in FES24.
In contrast, expected flows along the south coast and south-east of GB slightly increased due to the additional dispatchable generation capacity introduced in the New Dispatch and the increased storage capacity in Further Flex & Renewables. Overall, the Clean Power pathways are very close in their requirements across GB as the most ambitious pathway from FES 2024, Holistic Transition.
Informed by NESO’s Clean Power 2030 pathways, DESNZ have developed their own ‘Clean Power Capacity Range’, for each technology type in 2030. These are the ranges that will be used to inform NESO’s Connection Reforms and determine strategic alignment of future new generation projects needed to achieve clean power by 2030. Details on DESNZ’s Clean Power Capacity Range can be found in their Clean Power 2030: Action Plan.
Boundary charts source data
Download the source data from all of our published ETYS 2024 boundary charts in a tabulated format.