Inside NESO: Designing the grid for net zero in the UK with Julian Leslie (Director of Strategic Energy Planning and Chief Engineer @ NESO)

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Transmission. Today, we're joined by Julian Leslie from NESO, who is the director of strategic planning and the chief engineer. And we have a lot of fantastic guests who come on to Transmission, but it is quite rare that we get the chief engineer of the National Energy System Operator on. And this is a fantastic opportunity to see how they think and plan for the journey to net zero. From the conversation, I really enjoyed the trade offs considered within GB strategic planning, particularly around low carbon dispatchable power and the role that plays as we move to a net zero system. I think you're gonna find this a really insightful conversation. Let's jump in.

Hello, Julian. Welcome to Transmission.

Yeah. No. Thank you. It's great to be here.

And as always, we're gonna start off just with a brief introduction to you. So, who are you and what's your role in the space?

Yep. So, Nessa, I'm Julian Leslie. I'm director of strategic energy planning and the chief engineer, the newly formed National Energy System operator. But I've been working for, Nissan and its predecessor, National Grid, for for just over thirty years, predominantly in the system operation space, both here in the UK and over in the US. So lots of experience that has led me to this point where actually, planning strategically planning the future network requirements for for Britain is something which, I'm really looking forward to get into now as under NISO and our new roles that I'm sure we'll talk about later.

Absolutely. And let's get straight into who are Nissan. So, I mean, you've mentioned that it's changed a little bit in terms of its role. So would you like to just do a quick recap on that?

Yeah. So, if you remember that the electricity system operator, we were a legally separate part of National Grid since twenty nineteen, but recognizing the scale of the changes required in the energy industry, government and others decided that we should create this new independent organization called the National Energy System Operator, and we went live in October of last year with a real focus on accelerating the pace for decarbonization, but also bringing the whole energy system together. So we're not just electricity anymore. So all the activities that we used to do as ESO continue, but we've added in, gas development plans. We work with National Gas Transmission, and we're really thinking a whole energy system all the way down from distribution all the way up to transmission and everything in between.

Yeah. Okay. And one kind of really critical part of enabling your thinking to come through into the system comes from something called the SSEP.

So what is the SSEP?

Yeah. So the strategic spatial energy plan, one of the first of many acronyms, SSEP. It was determined through, this piece of work done by the network commission, a gentleman called Nick Windsor that was published just over two years well, just about two years ago.

One of the key recommendations from that report to accelerate the delivery of transmission was that there should be a strategic spatial network plan.

As a result of that, the government at the time, our previous government, sort of said that's a great idea. Let's extend that to become the strategic spatial energy plan. So that was adopted by the new government last year, and we got a commission in October from this current government to sort of ask us to participate and to produce the strategic spatial energy plan.

Now what that entails is looking predominantly this first one anyway, it's looking at the big key cornerstones of our future energy system, but really focusing this time around on large electricity generation sites and large demand consumption sites, but also think about hydrogen, hydrogen electrolysis, and potentially hydrogen storage as well. So really trying to get a big cornerstones, a big boulders of an energy system in place so that we can then balance the spatial elements of those plans and make sure that holistically when you add it all together, it means that we have a decarbonized system which is safe and secure.

Okay. And so this is I mean, the grid has always had plans. Right? So, we've always had plans to develop transmission to build new generation.

Is is SCP different to those plans, or is it kind of a continuation?

So the SSEP, as it stands on its own, is is very different because it's looking at a a number of zones, to be determined, but fifteen or twenty zones around Britain, looking at the spatial and environmental and community requirements and impacts of hosting generation sites within within those zones, looking to get the trade offs, looking at the cost benefits of particular technologies, where it's most windy, where it's most sunny, and making that sort of whole energy system sort of analysis that, as I say, meets the government's decarbonization targets, but also does that in a in a least cost way to consumers whilst understanding the impacts and taking into account the impacts on the environment in those local communities.

So there's a lot of balancing going on here between these these various different trade offs. The result of this strategic expansion energy plan is that later in this year, so towards the end of twenty twenty five, we will produce four or five different potential pathways, to government.

And then the idea is at the moment that government will choose one of those pathways and then take forward into consultation during twenty twenty six. Okay. So it's a real step change from where we've been in the past where before we've been led very much by the generation connection and where we think the generation is going to be, and this is turning that around. So we look at twenty forty, twenty forty five, twenty fifty to say, actually, where is where is it most optimum to locate these various technologies?

And I think that's really getting into the the meaty part of this straightaway, right, which is when you're thinking about this plan, like, what are you optimizing for? Like, what is kind of the thing that's top of the list? And then sort of let's kind of work our way through a few of those.

I mean, security supply is always number one. So whatever plan we put forward, meets the various weather conditions that we're gonna see into the future, and make sure that under whatever weather conditions we can ensure we meet the demand on the system and such security supply piece.

Once we go beyond that, there's the spatial elements. It is it is that balance between the environmental impact, the impact on communities, but also the costs.

They're really trying to make that trade off between, actually, here's a really low cost solution, but it has a huge impact on the local community or a huge impact on the environment.

But through our analysis, through our stakeholder engagement and lifting ourselves back up, and actually, that probably means it's really difficult to deliver also if you got those big impacts. So actually, here's an alternative solution here. They may be a little bit more expensive, but has less impact to the environment and less impact on the local communities.

The idea being is that if, as the transmission commission's report said, this is all about accelerating the transition and delivery of the net zero infrastructure that we need, then going through that process now in the planning phase before recommendations are made, then it should, as I say, really hopefully speed up the final determination and that consenting of the of the projects and where they need to be.

So so a lot of that sort of phase what was that second bucket that you've gone to is thinking about what can we do in a sort of planning friendly approach to be able to actually bring through and deliver these large infrastructure projects.

It is. And and don't forget that the SSEP, the strategic expansion in Japan is based on these zones. So if you take North Wales, for example, we might say that is a good place for nuclear. We might say that. And, obviously, it's pretty obvious within North Wales where that nuclear side is likely to be. It's likely to be in Wilfa.

But our analysis won't say Wilfa. It'll say in North Wales. Then there's our other strategic planning processes that follow on from the SSEP that then determine, on a more granular basis where these big projects are going to be.

Okay. And so you start to get for individual technologies, you start to get recommendations by zones, and that also that you also do different recommendations by network size or so by by network, so between transmission and distribution?

So not not for this first one. This first one, again, is really focusing on the very large scale generation, so it doesn't really impact on the distribution side.

We are thinking about where we cite very large demand centers, so things as data centers, hydro and electrolysis. But, again, they are most likely to be a transmission level connection, certainly for this first strategic spatial plan anyway.

When we're doing that, when we're looking at then if you got a lot of offshore wind in Scotland, for example, in the SSEP, we'll take account of the potential sort of network investment that's needed to go from one of the northern zones to the to further south. But really the detail of that comes through on the centralized strategic network plan, which then detailing actually what are those network requirements to move that power across the system.

Okay. And maybe you mentioned it slightly earlier around government policy. So one of the kind of big factors that we've seen government state is around delivering, an average five percent load factor for gas in CP twenty thirty, which is obviously a huge change from kind of where we are today. Does that kind of statement, does that feed into SSEP in terms of how you think about it?

Yeah. So so the starting point for SSEP is the clean power twenty thirty. So our starting point is there's less than five percent of renovated gas running throughout the year, and then we will become across the year a hundred percent zero carbon, recognizing that there will be more renewables invested in than we actually need on a day to day basis, but the overall system cost, is the right thing to do. As we then look out into the mid thirties and into the forties, obviously, we just had the carbon budget seven announced sort of a couple of weeks ago. So we're factoring that in to then sort of see what is that energy mix that's needed in order to meet those various carbon budgets and the various, government policies that we then look out towards twenty forty, twenty forty five, then onwards to twenty fifty.

Okay. And I I think that's kind of it's really interesting that the there's the duration or the the length of forecasting within that process because these energy markets do change. And so the data changes, in terms of what we see. So solar grows more quickly than we expect or, say, offshore wind hasn't grown quite as quickly as as as, say, solar.

And so within SCP, how much flexibility is there? Because you'll kind of form a plan in twin you make a recommendation this year, a series of recommendations. Government will select one of those, and then that will form kind of the the the pathway. But going beyond that, is is SSEP a, like, a rolling process that will kind of continually be revisited and and updated?

So our view is on the SSCP because what it's really trying to do is give certainty in the next ten to fifteen years. That was the whole point to give them that clarity, and it feeds right through to the regulatory process as well. If you remember, we've had the anticipatory strategic transmission investment, the process, which is allowing the transmission owners now to really get ahead and start to invest in adequate time such that the network is being delivered, as and when the generation is connecting.

What the SSEP is trying to do is trying to build on that and trying to build this strategic view as to where the nation needs to go in their energy mix. Then as we look at the centralized treated now, we're planning much more strategically focused. So we may not know who we're building the network for in terms of the individual developer of a wind farm, but we'd have worked with stakeholders, worked with the Crown Estate, for example, if it's offshore wind, to say actually, we're not sure who's gonna develop the seabed for now, but we know that there will be something on this seabed and therefore we should build a network out to meet it.

So it is trying to look at those very long lead time items and therefore try to give that long term certainty And a bit like once people can see the network is coming, then it derisks the delivery of the development on the end of that that circuit.

So the risk of stranded assets at this stage is is negligible because if this grid capacity is, as we all know, is quite a scarce commodity and if there's grid capacity coming and the person at the end of that they were building it for isn't there or isn't showing up in time, then I'm pretty sure somebody else will. As we then look at sort of those changes as we roll forward, the SSEP is on a three yearly cycle. So again, we'll capture the big changes.

Obviously, the smaller things that happen in between, then the SSEP isn't covering those smaller connections and their smaller devices anyway. So they will feed through either through the regional energy strategic plan or feed through the future energy scenarios that we produce or through the connections process that we're currently reforming. So there's still a way in for all of these smaller projects. SSEP, as I said earlier, is really setting the big boulders, the big cornerstones of the energy system for the future.

Yeah. I do think about this as kind of, yeah, big boulders, SSEP, grains of sand are the things that kind of fall between it and as as as you say, come into those three year gaps or go into distribution networks.

Okay. And I think what's what's really interesting, you kind of referenced it in that offshore wind example that you might build transmission to a point where you might think offshore wind should connect.

Let's say just in a hypothetical world, this offshore wind actually people decide that for whatever reason, they don't want to take that site forward.

Obviously, a different tech would then look to try and take that connection.

Is that kind of anticipated that there'd be some you know, all, all forecasts are wrong at some point, but, like, is there some anticipation that there'd be some flexibility in terms of what takes which connection?

Yeah. So if you look at Celtic Sea, for example, we produced a report for that. So the Crown Estate said very clearly a couple of years ago, there's four and a half thousand megawatts of capacity of seabed that they believe is ripe for offshore wind development.

So we worked very closely with the Crown Estate. So if you got four and a half thousand megawatts out there, here's the network design you would you would need to facilitate that. There is something like twenty five thousand megawatts of connection applications seeking about four and a half thousand of actual deployable seabed.

So if we would stuck to our old process, me and my team would have been designing an hour for twenty five gigs of offshore wind in the Celtic Sea, which would be madness. Right? Because we know through work with the Crown Estates, there's only four and a half gigs available. So actually we've been able to design a network design that connects four and a half thousand megawatts in Celtic Sea, That's allowed the Crown Estates to then do their seabed assessments as well.

So we've done that high level assessment. What that does then it derisks the development of the offshore wind. So when now they do lease their seabed and people come forward and go through that seabed leasing process with the Crown Estate, then the developer is able to do that with their eyes open. They know what the network design is, where they're gonna land on shore, the route length of the and technology type of the connection to shore as well.

The idea being that a lot of this preliminary work has been done there for once the seabed lease is provided, It should be much much quicker then to get that wind to market. So we're trying to do is lift that concept, obviously apply it to other offshore zones as we go through the SSEP, but utilizing that concept for other technologies for onshore technologies whether it be nuclear, hydrogen storage, whatever it might be, use the similar principles.

Okay. Because I think that's where it gets quite it gets gets quite interesting. Right? So when we're talking about solar or or wind, and as much as they're new technologies, they are very much proven. When we look at other techs out there, you mentioned hydrogen, for example, there's just not as much data out there, so it's kind of hard to say that it's as far along as solar and wind. I don't think that's very, very controversial. But it would be possible to kind of plan for connections for that tech in a in a certain location.

But there might need to be if that does form a boulder, to to use that analogy, we we might need to revisit that in, say, three years' time and say, oh, actually, we thought there was gonna be five gigs here, but it feels like maybe there won't be, and we'll bring something else in there. Maybe there'll be, as you say, nuclear might be another example of an onshore tech that could could use that, connection capacity.

Yeah. And that's that's why we're on a three yearly cycle.

If you think about the transmission investment, even in the best world, it takes seven, eight years to build transmission investments. After three years, all you've done is desktop analysis, desktop assumptions. You've been on the ground. You've sort of done your environmental assessments. So actually, if if the direction of travel needs to change a little bit, it's not a huge investment that's been made at that point because you're not really putting your spade in the ground until three years before, the actual asset is needed. So again, there's that flexibility.

But I do believe though that network is such a rare commodity today that actually, as I said earlier, if we're starting to build out the network, then things will come along and they and they will use it. And it may not be what we thought it was gonna use at the beginning, but it might be something very different as you say.

Along with, as we saw in the Clean Power twenty thirty plan, though, in terms of our advice back to government, we're also making recommendations as to policy areas that might need to be considered in order to bring the plan to life. So if we determine through the SSEP that hydrogen and creation through electrolysis and the hydrogen storage is critical and through the hydrogen allocation rounds, whatever we believe that there's more policy investment to be made, then we'll be making those recommendations to SSEP as well. So again, trying to do the full circle, this isn't just us thinking, oh, wouldn't it be great if we had generation and network in these locations? It's also thinking about, well, what are those policy decisions and those policy areas that need further work in order to make it happen?

I think this is where it gets really interesting. Right? So maybe maybe the energy industry has always been to some degree like this, but it feels like since kind of early teens, we've kind of gone on this road of a little bit more regulation here. So we've kind of done electricity market reform in twenty fourteen through twenty sixteen. So we've got contracts for difference for renewal generation. We've got the capacity market for firm capacity.

And it feels like once that kind of more central planning type approach gets out of the box, it's it's very hard to to step away from it and kind of allow sort of a very sort of private market led decision making process. So how do you how do you get the right balance between, okay, this is where regulation needs to step in or there needs to be a planned connection versus the market's going to make a decision, and they're going to want to build technology x or technology y?

Well, but I think there is a role for both, obviously.

I think we take the Celtic Sea example. I mean, it's centrally planned, but we haven't determined who is gonna build the four and a half thousand megawatts. There's twenty five thousand megawatts of interest from from developers from all backgrounds, and they will bid through that seabed lease process in order to get access to that.

If you're looking at other the the big again, these are the cornerstones. So big nuclear, there's only a few places where it can go. Hydrogen storage is only a few places where it can go. So I think, certainly for this round, anyways, we're learning through SSEP about how all this works.

When you look at the locational flexibility of a lot of these very large assets, it's pretty limited because they've got other geographical or other environmental constraints as to where they will be. And I think through the SSCP, what we will clearly demonstrate is the relative cost of the locations of some of these technologies. So it'll be no surprises, sunnier in the south, so you could see a bigger propensity for for large scale solar maybe in the south, less in the north, but there may be more wind in the north as we've seen already with onshore wind in Scotland, for example. So I think

what the SSEP will do will just perform provide another level of information into the marketplace that helps to shape where these things should go. And, obviously, the big benefit is is then as this strategic spatial energy plan feeds into the centralized strategic network plan, it means the network is getting on the front foot in an anticipated way in order to facilitate what the SSEP thinks is a reasonable geospatial plan for the energy, sources.

Maybe maybe one thing that's kind of that will be quite hard, right, will be if if you're someone who believes you've got a really good project. Let's say we say you put the solar in the south and there's kind of wind further north, which isn't strictly true, but let's let's just use that analogy. And someone has a a project, say, in the Midlands, and there's not a connection being built to allow them to bring that project forward. How does a c SSEP think about that that process? Because that that's kind of where the rubber will hit the road as it were for sort of private investors who maybe think they've got a really good project, and possibly they're correct. Who knows? But if there's not a connection, then that can be quite difficult.

Sure. And don't forget the SSCP is on these zones across Britain, so it's not project specific.

And the zones, as I say, there's gonna be fifteen to twenty of them, so they're geographic quite large.

The rubber really hits the road as we do this CSMP, the centralized fusion network plan, because that is where working with the relevant transmission owners plus our own input will be determining where the network should be built and when. And, obviously, that is then point to point. It is new substations. It is connections into substations.

But at that point, we take a whole range of input data, obviously, what the SSEP says, but also what is what we can see by our market intelligence out there, through what is coming in the connections, process in the gate one process we'll have through connection reform.

And, obviously, as those things progress through great gate two, then, obviously, we will have real certainty that the network is needed, and then we can work with the transmission owners to make sure the network is delivered in time.

So I think if there are those outliers where actually there is a great project that actually the SSEP hasn't factored in per se, then there is other opportunities further down the line, through the detailed network planning, through the connections process where that thing can still come to market. You would hope that the SSEP is such a broad high level. It's more than just guidance because, obviously, that is the thing that is gonna be signed by government to say this is the energy transition plan that we want to follow for the next ten, fifteen, twenty years. But, obviously, there has to be flexibility in that.

Mhmm. There's there's also a balancing act in this. Right? Because, let's say you are looking to build out eighty large transmission projects.

In theory, it would be easier for everything to connect if you built out, let's say, double it, a hundred and sixty transmission projects. I suppose there's kind of there's two elements to that. There's both the the technical engineering capability of people who can physically deliver this work, and then there's also kind of the cost element to it. So so how did you balance or how does it think about the balance between building out certain parts of transmission versus cost and deliverability in terms of our capability.

So in the SSEP, it's looking at a cost optimization of the geospatial location using forty years of weather or whatever it is to make sure that the devices renewable devices is is situated in a part of the country which sort of gives a good return for that, so optimizing where they go.

So in a sense, once they're optimized, they're in the right location to give the maximum output.

The centralized strategic network plan then says, well, if that's where these things are located, here's the most efficient level of network you need in order to connect those things, trading off constraint costs versus investment in the network, just as we've done for many years through the previous network ops hearing assessments and the more recent, Pathway to twenty thirty reports and the Beyond twenty thirty reports, which is then looking at that cost benefit assessment as to that trade off between constraint cost and investment and the timing of all that.

Supply chain is a big challenge here though and as we've seen with the Clean Power twenty thirty action plan, supply chain is a key component of that. And we've seen great intervention by the regulator to support the transmission owners with the advanced procurement mechanism, which is just delivered towards the back end of last year, which is allowing the transmission owners to give that long term certainty to the supply chain so the supply chain can invest in capability and skills and resources so actually that the industry can be ready to deliver when it's needed.

Whenever whenever you kind of think about the work that CP thirty is doing and NISO is doing around enabling that transition, it always feels like we are leading other countries in terms of how we're thinking about developing the the grid. And I wonder if lots of other countries would be looking at us and thinking, okay. Look. How how are you doubling transmission capacity? Like, what are you doing? Because I'm sure there will be lessons in what we do that we'll be able to share with other other system operators.

Yeah. And there it does attract a lot of interest so that there's an international system operations network of which NISO is a member of. So we we work very closely with six or seven other system operators from around the world, which are at similar stages in their decarbonization, but we're all doing it inside different directions. So AMO, for example, in Australia, very much domestic rooftop solar, but that could be where we will be in a few years' time.

So how what how are they learning from that? You got California with a lot of sunshine, a lot of solar, a huge amount of batteries, and they almost can run now, charge the batteries in the day when it's sunny and so the demand then overnight the whole count the whole state runs on batteries. So there's a whole lot of learning we can get from them. And then obviously, we are now very much in the strategic planning space.

We have the largest offshore wind farms anywhere in the world. We've got the most offshore wind anywhere in the world, and how you integrate that and coordinate, with the rest of the network is something that people are looking to us to help. And, obviously, as you know, in October last year, we were the first major economy in the world to turn off the last coal fired power plant. So we are making great progress on this decarbonization journey, through twenty years plus of consistent policy decisions and consistent support for for the journey that we're on.

In some ways, I think about AMOs for Australia and and and California, as quite lucky in in a way that the kind of the peak demand that they see on their system often tends to happen during summer periods when they can kind of rely on the solar to link with the cooling load that is on their system.

We have a slightly different problem in the UK in that we have all of our demand will come in winter periods, which is just harder to do with well, you can't do it with solar. So it's a a fundamentally different problem, potentially harder problem for GB in comparison to those regions.

In in some respects well, it's just a different problem. It's not any harder or any easier. I think the things that plays into the GB position is that we do have large nuclear, which obviously is weather independent.

We have a a reasonable amount of pumped hydro storage and running river storage. And, obviously, if you've seen in our clean power action plan, we also, are gonna have around twenty five to around thirty gigawatts of battery storage as well, grid scale battery storage.

So we can start to shift load around in the day. The other thing we found through the clean power analysis that we did for twenty thirty is that the value of low carbon dispatchable generation is huge. So you'd have seen in our report that we said we need between two and four gigawatts of either hydrogen power or power with carbon capture and storage.

When we have those higher levels of low carbon dispatchable power, we have our least levels of offshore wind. So with four gigawatts of low carbon dispatchable, we can run a clean power system with forty three gigawatts offshore wind. With no low carbon dispatchable power, you need fifty gigawatts of offshore wind. So you can see the trade off and you can see therefore there's a complex cost benefit there that actually, yes, a gigawatt of carbon capture storage is really quite expensive, but actually it saves you one to two to two and a half gigawatts of offshore wind and the associated storage that goes with that.

So there's a complex sort of trade off imbalance to really work out what the cost benefit is is there. So I think as GB, as I say, we are very different to California and Australia. We do have that sort of backbone of of nuclear plant. We are looking to develop these low carbon dispatchable technologies, and we're also looking to think about what is that long term energy store that we need.

Is it hydrogen in storage? Is it compressed air in in salt cabins or disused gas and oil fields? So there's a whole range of technologies where we need to be able to store energy to cover for those periods in the winter where it's dark and and still and cold.

Yeah. I I I feel like the kind of conversation is actually moving on to storage, which is which is great news because this is, on the face of it, a storage podcast. So that's good. It's good.

It's good we've made it there. It feels like it's one of the hardest areas to get right. There's the pace of change within storage has been enormous. We've kind of talked about this before on, the podcast where the cost of batteries, the DC component between twenty twenty four and twenty twenty eight is halved, and there's loads of reasons behind that.

But we have seen short duration storage move very quickly and change quite a lot. And then we have longer duration storage, which we haven't built any of for near enough forty years. And then the other two you mentioned were kind of hydrogen's power and CCUS, and both kind of technically possible. We just haven't seen the kind of scale coming through on those.

To me, that feels like one of the hardest things to get right because there's just not the certainty. Oh, I feel like there's there's not quite the certainty to be able to say, oh, this is gonna be the number. So so so how do you when you're building this type of plan, how do you deal with that level of uncertainty between those those technologies?

So I think it's understanding the the various use cases, and thinking about even if you have a low cost lithium ion battery, how would it be utilized in the market, and how do you get the best value from it? What we see today is that the short duration, batteries are very flexible, and they're great within day, and they can shift loads. They can capture power when it's sunny or windy then then use it later in the day. So a short term flex.

I mean, the battery fleet is really proving its worth in the system. There is that then the next stage. It's, well, what do you do when it's not windy or sunny for ten or twelve hours in in twenty thirty and beyond? And it's, like, okay.

Well, we've got did Norway get a pump storage hydro station in North Wales that can run for six hours at full output. But what else have we got out there? There is nothing yet out there in in the market. So this long duration energy storage is looking to to bolster that nine, ten, twelve hour period.

There are some technologies out there now which are looking at twenty, twenty four hours, which again bridges you from one day into the next day.

But then, ultimately, though, what happens like, we had three weeks at the beginning of November in twenty twenty four where it wasn't sunny, and it wasn't windy. You know, it's for three weeks. So what is that long term solution for that, which is where your hydrogen storage comes in, your high high energy density storage, which you can store away for for a very long time potentially to then bring it out when you need it for a three week period that happens once every once in every while.

Yeah. And let's let's spend a bit of time on that that three week period. So just in terms of describing the problem, that is both a gigawatt problem and a terawatt hour problem. So you both need the power to get through that period, but also you need the energy in reserve to be able to get through it. I think it's really interesting to think about how short duration storage behaves in those periods because I think it there's some analogy for your offshore wind example where you were saying, actually, instead of having fifty gigs of offshore wind, we could have forty gigs of offshore wind provided we have some firm dispatchable power that runs alongside it. And so it's really interesting for for short duration storage in those periods.

It still has work to do even though there's no there's no sun and there's no wind. It still works between demand peaks, and so it still helps to solve the the gigawatt problem you have because it's helping to manage those peaks. It's not necessarily generating terawatt hours of energy, because it's not a generator.

It's actually net demand, but it does help to smooth out those those demand peaks. So even when you get that kind of that three week period, you still have things like short duration storage, which on the face of it, it shouldn't really be that useful in that that type of condition. It actually does quite a lot of work then.

Absolutely. It does because what we'll hopefully have in that in those periods is, as I said earlier, we got the nuclear running. Hopefully, we'll get a inclusively we'll commission, maybe size will see and another SMRs into the future, maybe another large nuclear fleet. And, obviously, the demand, as you know, will profile.

There's a consumer role in this as well. So, actually, I've got an eighty five kilowatt hour battery, so that my drive, I consume about eight kilowatt hours a day. So in theory, I could run my my car, could power my house for up to ten days. But the point is, though, in your short duration batteries working within day even in a cold still period of time in the winter, then you're right because there will be some light during the middle of the day, hopefully, at some point, which combined with then the nuclear any low carbon dispatch for generation we've got, you can then start to fill your batches ready for then the peak that comes, a few hours later.

So they will always have a role to play in shifting and shaping the load to match the generation we have, whatever mix of generation that we've got on the system. So this whole concept today that the demand rises in the morning to eight AM, levels off, rises a bit over lunch and rises rapidly towards a five thirty, six o'clock peak, that concept the underlying demand will follow that. We as consumers will ask how we'll behave. But the demand we see from the system will be could be any shape because it'll depend on where the generation is coming from at that moment in time, and the demand will be there to consume as much as that generation as possible to store it in for later when we when we're gonna need it.

And there's all kinds of kind of niche things that start to happen. So, like, between four and seven o'clock in in my house, I I run a dishwasher. I I put you know, the fridge just carries on running. But the battery that sits on the side of the house would not allow grid to see it. So that's kind of that would pick up loads. And and so it's interesting when things like short duration storage both exist in the transmission network, you also start to see these texts coming through into, as you say, profiling demand. So the shape of demand is kind of both changing as people use energy more flexibly, but also some of the techno technological advancements like your EV, also start to shape kind of how that consumer demand looks.

Yeah. And and you can see it now when some of the suppliers, were as you know, we are actually one of the only countries in the world which has got a proper demand flex service. I mean, other countries are sort of playing around with twenty, thirty homes and we said a couple of three winters ago, you know, well, let's just go out there and anybody with a smart meter with a supplier that's got a tech in the background to sort of participate. We've had several million people households now participate in Demand Flex.

That's carried on through this winter. But also you can see some of the suppliers are not just focusing on a turn down service over the night peak, but also turn up service. So when it's sunny on a Sunday afternoon when there isn't a lot of demand because industry and offices aren't operating the same way, actually, can consumers charge their car on a Sunday afternoon? Can you heat your hot water on a Sunday afternoon?

Do your washing, your dishwasher, whatever to increase and change that load shape because that's an efficient thing to do from a whole system basis. And I think when we get the thirty million households and bill payers on smart meters with flexible tariffs or whatever with the right black boxes in their houses that it's alright for me. I can sit there and work on my four different apps and optimize myself, but I I recognize that that's not what everybody is gonna do. And therefore, finding a way that makes this really easy for the end consumer to do that.

The result of which is a lower bill for the consumer because you're consuming the energy when it's lowest price.

Can I can I confirm four apps? Is that the is that the required number to to really go as low cost as possible on on your home?

Yeah. One for the car, one for my supplier, and then, yeah, a battery and solar optimization within the house.

I love it. I love it. And and and it just feels like to go away from the very, very large transmission level planning that we've been talking about so much in this, actually, some of the things that consumers will really feel lower cost bills on on near term, things like solar panels or being able to flex CV charging, that kind of thing. It really does they might notice that before some of these bigger changes within transmission build out. Transmission build out, as you say, takes seven to ten years. So that part of the conversation is quite interesting because I I think we will end up seeing some of that sooner than some of the the the the big changes as part of transmission transmission build out.

And that's absolutely right. In our clean power plan, we said that we need to get up to twelve gigawatts of flexible demand on the system, which will be a combination of industry, but also a lot of domestic, flex as well. And as I say, we've seen hugely successful periods over the last three winters now where demand side has made a difference, and we're starting to see suppliers testing that as I say with these demand turn up. Because presumably if I'm consuming and charging my car on Sunday afternoon, I'm not doing it over the peak on Sunday or on Monday even because the car's still fully charged from Sunday. So consuming demand, when the generation is in abundance is is a way of also reducing the peak demand because therefore you're not reducing you're not consuming over the peak when you might have been otherwise.

Okay. That gets me through really what I wanted to run through today on SCP, and I wanted to have time at the end for the sort of two questions that we ask everyone. So the first question is, is there anything you'd like to plug?

So I think we have been working very hard on the SSCP methodology, everything we've talked about over the last while. We went out for consultation in December.

We had, hundred and thirty five respondents with nine hundred comments on our methodology.

So we've baked all of that into what it will be our final methodology, and that's gonna be published in the next few weeks. So if you're interested to know the detail on the modeling and the process we've talked about on this on this podcast today, then that is the place to go and look. So you'll see that, very, very soon.

Okay. And just to timestamp this, so the today is the twentieth of March, and so we might end up releasing this after that comes out. But but just so if you're a little bit confused by that, then then that's that's that's what's going on with the the times and dates. And, final question, is there a contrarian view that you hold? So is there something that you believe that the majority of the market doesn't?

So I think the strategic planning, there's a very strong role for the market still to continue in that. So this isn't a full central plan as we're now we are not going back to the CGB days.

So therefore, the market's really engaging with our processes, really engaging through the stakeholder forums that we have and bringing forward ideas and new technologies and thinking about we need to understand the developers' positions into the future so we can build that into our assumptions.

So the market has such a strong role to play continuing going forward even with these centralized plans. So would anybody listening to this, please keep engaging with Nissan, keep engaging with our methodologies and our processes, and let us know what is going on. Let us know what is what you're excited about in terms of new tech that's coming forward or new ways of of operating your tech. But also let us know what your concerns are, and then we can work together and and really make a difference.

And I think not contrarian for the private side of the market, but probably certainly contrarian to hear it from the SCP side that the that there is such emphasis in terms of private role within what is a a central plan.

Okay. Julian, thank you very much for coming on. We'd love to have you back on to check-in on how SCP does, and you've been a wonderful guest. Thank you.

It's been a pleasure. Thank you.