Can the UK Scale Solar Fast Enough for Net Zero with Chris Hewett (Solar Energy UK)

Hello, and welcome to another episode of transmission. Today, we're joined by Chris Hewitt, who is the chief exec of Solar Energy UK. The conversation covers all things solar and increasingly battery storage in UK, ranging from domestic installations all the way up to grid scale solar projects that are being approved directly by the secretary of state. We look at how this all stacks up in the government's central planning and how large the solar fleet might be by twenty thirty. I really enjoyed talking through some of the key biodiversity statistics on solar sites as well as some of the finer details of bringing solar projects to life on domestic homes. If you're a grid scale solar developer and want to look at the revenue future for solar sites, do get in touch with the Modo Energy team. And with no further ado, let's jump in.

Hello, Chris. Welcome to Transmission.

Thanks. Thanks for inviting me. Glad to be here.

And so starting off in the normal tradition, who are you and what's your role in energy?

So I'm I'm chief executive of Southlands UK. So my background is actually in energy and climate policy. I've worked in that for my whole career. It was, twenty five, thirty years now.

Renewables, green economy. I moved to work for SolarWinds UK in twenty seventeen. So basically having written spent my career writing a report saying this is how you get a green economy to work, then I started to represent the people who are actually doing it for real. So that's that's been exciting.

I'm glad to do it. So Solar Energy UK represents four hundred and thirty companies now across the whole sort of solar energy storage space all the way from sort of the large developers and and manufacturers all the way through sort of distributors all the way to the the small installers.

Okay. And I think people might have guessed from the name, but but what exactly is Solar Energy UK?

So, yeah, we're the trade association that represents, as said, four hundred and thirty companies, which is in solar and energy storage increasingly. If you're in solar, you're in energy storage. They they talk going hand in hand now.

I I agree. So how do you think the the solar roadmap so to get straight into the detail, how do you think the solar roadmap will help the rollout of solar and batteries in the UK?

So the solar roadmap is something which started we started work on that with governments under the previous government, so we started in twenty twenty three. It's taken until a couple of months ago to to publish it because obviously it had to be revised and updated and and improved actually think with the new government.

So it's now got it's it's a road map which which says we're gonna deliver up to fifty seven gigawatts of solar in the UK by two thousand thirty, which is ambitious, but we believe as an industry is is absolutely achievable. And it sort of breaks down some of the barriers. There's sort of sixty odd actions in there, which some of which are industry and that and some of which are government about how you address some of the barriers to to make that that deployment happen.

Okay. And let's help people understand, right? So fifty seven gigs by two thousand and thirty, what's the capacity of the solar fleet today?

So we're about it's probably twenty to twenty two gigawatts. I I give a range because this the the market numbers on the commercials of the large rooftop is is is are a bit shaky. So we think it's probably a little bit more than government is saying. So say it's about twenty two gigawatts of solar in the market at the moment deployed, we think we can, yeah, effectively sort of two and a half times that by the end of the decade.

Okay. So five years ish to deploy thirty plus gigs. So you're running at just over six gigs a year. Yeah. But we've only delivered up until twenty two at this point. So does that you see where I'm going with this? Is deployment doable?

Will do that?

Yes and the reason I'm so confident is one is the rooftop market is growing and it's very robust, it's actually since COVID, it started growing through through the COVID through the pandemic in twenty twenty. Since then, it's been on a steady incline of deployment. So this year in the residential market, we're on track to be the largest the the biggest ever deployment of solar in the UK even under the yeah. Comparing to the the highest sort of feed in tariff days.

So that market is very robust. So that's gonna continue to grow. See no reason why not. The utility scale market, we probably have almost as many as as much projects as we require to deliver that two thousand thirty target already have planning permission or are receiving planning and going through the system at the moment.

So it's the pipeline is absolutely there, it's we just need to sort of get on and build it.

Okay. So the pipeline's there, they've got planning and typically if you're going through connections of form at the moment, you've probably got land as well. But the thing I think the thing I think is probably it's difficult for batteries going through a similar process is just the ability to be able to deploy the gigawatts per year is quite hard because you actually need the sort of electrically qualified people, you need the grids to be able to accept that and there's some quite limiting parts to that deployment.

That a similar story from the battery side for the solar side as well?

I think yeah, mean the some of the big themes of the roadmap are one is the network, the grid, the connections and this I'm sure you've spoken with other your other guests around some of the problems and the challenges faced faced there. That's that's probably the biggest challenge is getting the connections agreed quickly enough. The second and third ones are supply chain and skills and that's where we're seeing yeah, absolutely need to grow the workforce. We are seeing that workforce grow and we're starting to see people coming from outside of the sector and it's coming sort of transferable skills.

Classic one is is ex military personnel starting to move into the renewable sector, solar and wind. And so I think we're it's it's it's absolutely doable. The one reason I'm really confident we can get to that speed of deployment is because solar and batteries are the fastest to deploy. So if you're building a nuclear power station, you ain't gonna build that by two thousand and thirty, but we know that you can so so residential solar can be done in a day.

Obviously utility scale solar is a bit longer but it can be done in a matter of a couple of years, two or three years so.

Yeah and I can vouch for that solar and battery number being a day installed on a house or on my house very recently and it's like it really was a day to to get it done. It's remarkable. So somebody said to me, we need to think about getting homes to be battery ready and I thought I've just had a battery installed in my house and like it took a day, I I don't understand what could be done to get them more battery ready. They kind of they just plug in.

Yeah. It's it's a it's a very compared to a lots of other energy technologies, very, very straightforward.

Yeah. That that one had me scratching my head a little bit. Okay. And so one of the really interesting things I think we've touched on here is the sort of connections reform change. And so you were saying that there's still some doubt in terms of whether people get those positions in the queue. Is is there not lots of certainty coming out connections reform? So once you've once you've kind of got your site and you've got the planning permission, shouldn't you have a locked in date at some point this year confirmed to you?

I think we will do yes. I think I think come the end of this year there will be a lot of certainty for for a lot of projects. I think I think the the challenges which NISO are currently underway is is to is to do that queue reform process. So there's there's two things.

One is we had issues around, if you like, what they thought the allocation of solar and batteries should be. Up to two thousand thirty, we're we're broadly happy. Post two thousand thirty, I think they're under underplaying it. We may come back to that.

The current issue is that the the connections portal, they're literally the sort of platform that that the IT, which everyone is making their applications on live now. There's developers huddled around tables all over London, frantically trying to get their data into these into these portals, and it's not there are glitches and it's not bit more than a glitch.

There's there's there's a lot of problems and so that that is having to be delayed Yes.

Because it's in its current form not fit for purpose.

Yes.

NESA are putting a lot of resources in to try and fix those problems and we're still we and other trade associations are working very closely with them to make sure that happens. So that's so there's a bit of uncertainty about the actual process itself at the moment. But, yeah, I'm sure we'll get there by the end of the year. There will be a lot of certainty for some projects. And some projects won't get their gate to offer. So that will mean there will be some which which probably do get delayed. So we don't know yet.

And we should also say that today is the twenty ninth of July. This will probably air I think towards the end of August. Would say that this this It's a bit solved by then. It'll it'll it'll definitely be solved by then.

So, yeah, fingers fingers crossed. And and one thing we did see on the connections of form perhaps before the sort of glitch came up around the ability to submit projects. There was also some backwards and forwards around the the volumes that came out in the first draft. What happened there?

So this goes back to when the new government first came in they wanted to yeah they tasked NISO with delivering you know some advice on how do you get to zero carbon power by two thousand and thirty.

They gave to be fair to me, so they gave them a very short time scale so they could really only use the data they had in the in the future energy scenario fares, which we don't think the assumptions for solar and batteries were up to date in that. And so they so the numbers they first came out with were a little bit shy on where where we thought the industry was yeah. Could deliver. And that was just based on what's what we knew in terms of viable projects, in the planning system, had got planning permission and were about to get planning permission. So we did challenge the government and NESA over that around the time the Clean Power Action Plan came out, and the twenty thirty numbers were revised to make it more in line with what's happening on the ground rather than the spreadsheet. Unfortunately, the numbers for twenty twenty two thousand thirty five were also put into that plan.

They haven't been reality checked. They they they are still off the FES spreadsheet if you like and so that's that's our concern is that we need to have some sort of reality checking of those numbers and we're in the process of discussing that with Nissan and government.

And for anyone kind of scratching their head and thinking what on earth's going on? So so I'll just add a little bit of detail. So the future NG scenarios, the fares, they give a direction of where the market is going and then the connections reform process which allocates the connections runs off fares as well as kind of other forms of modeling and that is the way that people get good connections. And so if if kind of fares has kind of got the wrong number in it then it can be possible that connections are formed doesn't make available Yeah.

They're of what they're doing is they're giving allocations per technology so sort of saying so solar's got a range of forty five to forty seven gigawatts and then another ten gigawatts of rooftop.

So actually, in in total, it's fifty seven. Wind has got a certain set. CCS has got some. Nuclear's got some.

Obviously, are those are assumptions that are going in. And I think the thing with solar and batteries in particular is it's they are such fast moving technologies. Assumptions that even we had as as sort of industry leaders three years ago have changed. You know, the cost of batteries have have have dropped dramatically.

So actually, it's really hard I think for sort of system modeler to keep up with the speed of change in the solar and battery market.

Yeah. I totally agree. We've had many conversations with the the FES team around just how quickly this moves. And I think even in a year you're seeing sort of totally different battery costs coming in. I think it's then really, really hard to actually be someone who's responsible for modeling that because this is moving and so all of your assumptions might then change quite a lot quite quickly. And so that does mean that I think there's perhaps real sort of humility that's kind of needed in the process to make sure that you're sort of adaptable to if it does change to this and if it is this easy to install it and if the supply chain is there, then yeah let's let's make the most of it, let's go quickly and let's let's sort of take this low hanging fruit that's being offered to us.

Exactly. And that's I think that's the position solar is now in. Solar is now undoubtedly the cheapest way of generating power in the country. No technology at the the last CFD auction prices, so it was the cheapest.

And that's so yes, and it can be deployed very quickly. So definitely we would say take advantage of that. Some technologies are gonna be slower to deploy and may also slip. CCS is is an unproven technology still in terms of the scale that's required at.

We know that that nuclear power stations, they do have a tendency to to slip their time scales. If any of those things drop out of the queue, then we know solar and batteries can fill that. And so that's think that's what we need. We need that flexibility to to keep the investment sort of warm if you like so that investors don't say Britain doesn't want solar or batteries anymore we'll go to Germany or Spain or wherever.

But because they should be able to have some comfort from government that there's likely to be more required in the next few years.

And can we talk about the two thousand and thirty to two thousand thirty five secondtion? Because the battery forecast was a little bit similar. It was like, this is such a good technology. We want twenty three to twenty seven gigawatts of it definitely by two thousand and thirty, which is a huge increase from the five to six gigs we're at today.

But after twenty thirty, oh no, we we don't need it.

We've got enough now.

And you're gonna think, well, that's a bit of a head scratcher.

What's going there? That baffled us as well as it was it makes makes no sense. It makes no sense with current technology, let alone what what it's gonna be like in five years time. I think there is a there is a sort of a an inertia in the the energy planning system, if you like, and in in the way that perhaps sort of needs so things institutionally to think about big power stations and it so wants to bring a big thing online that it can turn up and down.

That's that's traditionally how the system has been managed. That is not how wind, solar, and batteries work. So I think there's there's there's probably a lack of confidence particularly in how batteries how important batteries are gonna be. And they they I think they really understand the short term sort of day to day sort of fluctuations, struggling to see how batteries are helpful beyond that.

Whereas if you look at countries like California, for example, there are yeah. California has about ten gigawatts of batteries, I think. Yep.

There are times of the day when batteries are the largest deploying technology in in California. The sun the sun comes up and it goes down, the batteries switch on. Yeah. And it's thirty percent of the power in California, which is the fourth largest economy in the world.

So there's other countries which are moving much faster on this, and I don't think we quite realized in Britain how quickly these technologies Just how much.

Yeah. Yeah. And I I think it'd be remiss of me to not put some numbers in there. We have a team in California.

Our team in California.

Team in Texas. California numbers around twelve gigs. I think they added two gigs in h one of twenty twenty five, which is just a crazy number. And I think ERCOT has just gone through ten gigs as well. So, yeah, some some fun facts on on on battery deployment. And then just just for this the solar angle, so was it a reasonably strong deployment up until two thousand thirty and then a bit of a question mark between twenty thirteen and twenty thirty five?

What what was the Again, think I think the numbers they've got in there sort of slightly tail off in terms of the acceleration of deployment. So it's it's still growing, but it's not growing as fast as we would expect it to be. Okay. And again, you if you look around the world, so the Netherlands now has twenty percent of its power annually coming from solar. We were at the same last year as the Netherlands. No reason why we can't reach those sort of levels. Germany has a hundred gigawatts of solar deployed already.

It's it it is it is crazy. And we're and of course, Germany is a larger economy. It's not that much larger. So, yeah, again, if you look at across other countries, we should be matching that kind of level of deployment.

And I should say sorry. When I said that's crazy, I I don't mean in a negative sense. I mean, that does it just if you've watched this space for a number of years, like, the speed that some of these technologies are now starting to deploy is incredibly interesting. Germany also home to balcony solar. Yes. Is that something you've come across at all?

It's it's something which I know the government's really keen on. We're we're yeah. We need to look at the the I think it's possibly easier in Germany because basic things like you've usually got a socket on the outside Okay. In in in the German balcony, I understand, whereas we don't here.

And so there there'd be some some technical issues, I think. But the one thing I think you can say about solar is that it's it is such a flexible technology that you can deploy it, you know, almost a gigawatt scale in the solar farm now. You can deploy on a reservoir. You can deploy on the roof of a car if you want.

You can put it all sorts of places. And in ten years' time, they'll be deploying solar in areas we haven't even thought about because it's such a that modulus of technology makes it very, very flexible.

I think you also I I I know we're kinda going off a little bit of tangent, but I think Solar Energy also do some work on some of the biodiversity pieces on solar farms as well. Just when you were saying sort of a deployment, let's say one gig scale makes me think of adding on say solar to sort of low quality farming land and that sort of classic picture of sheep beneath beneath solar panels. Think some of your team have worked on that.

Yeah. Yeah. It's something which we've we've worked on this industry for the last sort of three or four years actually so we now have an annual survey by members of ecological assessments on solar farms and it's it is it is becoming apparent that you get good biodiversity. If it's managed well, you get very good biodiversity on solar farms.

So if it's replacing arable land, you're not putting pesticides on. You're not putting fertilizers on. You are just leaving land to rest. It's often sown with wildflowers to give it a head start, So you get a lot of floral diversity, you get more bees, more butterflies, the bird populations follow as well.

RSPB have just surveyed three areas of land in East Anglia. One set of land where it was a solar farm that was managed for biodiversity, another area where it's solar farms that were not managed for biodiversity, and the other the arable areas, three times more birds on the three times more diversity of birds on the solar farms compared to the arable land. So that's that's the RSPB's numbers not ours. So I think it's it's a growing area.

I think solar will also support the nature recovery as well as as well as climate.

I think people are really passionate about this area and rightly so and it would have been remiss of us to not to Glad you asked.

To have touched on it. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Let's now talk, we've talked a little bit about batteries and solar sort of side by side just as kind of separate technologies.

Let's let's combine them and let's talk about colocation. So in many cases, colocation seems like a really good thing to do but sometimes you don't see as much of it as we think we might do. What what is kind of the problem in colocation or is there a problem in colocation?

I think we're starting to see it come through now. So I think of that it's something like ten gigawatts of solar has got fifteen gigawatts have got solar or got planned permission already. There's another ten in the planning system. Amongst those, I think about six or seven gigawatts of those are colocation projects already.

So primarily, what you see is if you're designing a solar farm, you're likely to have some battery with it now. It's it's it's the question is, do you do the batteries first or the solar first or are you building them all together? So I think it's it will start to come through. But it's I think there's probably some complexities in the way that things are regulated and the way the connections are agreed, for example, which is which is sort of slowing down that process.

You still hear stories of a company which is asking for a connection for, yeah, say, a fifty megawatt solar family, fifty megawatt battery, and the DNL will come back and say, yeah. Right. You need a hundred megawatts of connection then.

Yeah. Clearly, in the real world, it's never that's never gonna be the case. And so there's there's an education piece I think in terms of where the networks are run.

Yeah. So the kind of the the the basic concept would be that instead of having to sort of double the amount of network as you could just combine the two, the battery works around the solar and you just get better utilization of your network.

I think what was quite interesting, we had the clean flexibility plan came out last week, I think, certainly the second half of July.

And within that, it was talking about the potential for colocation to be a way of prioritizing certain forms of grid connection in the future. And I think that for me is very exciting because it's essentially saying, well, look, we don't necessarily need to build brand new sub stations. We might have some sites where we revise their connection agreement to allow them to be able to do this which just allows the network to be run slightly hotter rather than having to build out whole new swathes of network.

Agree. Think I think that's that's definitely the way forward. And also I think we need to look at the way existing connections are used. So if there are thermal power stations that are gonna only only gonna run five percent of the time is that connection being utilized for the other ninety five percent of the time for renewables? It should be if it's not. So that's that that I think is something else we should need to to look at.

Yeah. Super interesting. And I hope that it's kind of forming a key strand of the strategic spatial energy plan, which is what Lisa are working on alongside the additional network plans that kind of go underneath it. I won't go into acronym city, but there are lots of plans that exist. Okay. So let's move on from colocation then to behind the meter. So what is you know, everything's behind the meter.

So so I guess now we're talking about let's let's move to the sort of the the rooftop and and the sort of smaller scale solar.

Certainly anecdotally what we're hearing for residential solar is that over half of all new residential solar installations, not the new build stuff because that's that's driven by regulation but anything which is retrofits onto existing homes, fifty percent at least fifty percent is likely to have a battery with it as well now. So there's market is really taking off.

It's also often linked to the fact that someone might be looking at having an EV in the future, they've got an EV, electrification of heat. So those four technologies of solar battery, heat pump and EVs are really starting to sort of be merged together in the consumer's mind.

So it's gonna grow fast, think. And I think there's there is potential for behind the meter batteries particularly to help with some of the system problems we have. So take Scotland. We know we have a lot of wind which is currently being curtailed because the transmission network can't can't export that that level of power. That should create a strong market fall behind the meter batteries and time of use tariffs in Scotland because you you should be able to get very cheap electricity at certain times of day. And so that's that's something I think we will start to see more of.

And so I I really like the idea of lots of wind in Scotland, very cheap energy bills in Scotland. We have talked potentially too much on this podcast about the zonal pricing. So zonal pricing now is is is not is not gonna be considered an option in the near term. We then have a lots of generation in Scotland, this desire to really get sort of batteries and EVs to work in Scotland to make the most of this sort of excess generation. Have you looked at all about sort of ways in which we could kind of get low cost energy into consumers' homes?

I think it's it's less about where the energy is when the energy is. I think I think I think we need to the debate needs to now focus. Now we've now we've we've moved past the zonal pricing debate, which which I think everyone got bored of, even Greg Jackson probably got bored of it in the end. But so now we move past that, think what I'm really more interested in is the time of use tariffs and how we get that sort of timing because there will be times when there is you know, if we treble solar on the grid, there will be times when there's more than a hundred percent of solar on the grid.

We we've had days when it's forty percent already. So there'll be times when that's and that drives very low pricing in the wholesale market, which should be a market opportunity for EV charging or for batteries. I'm not sure it needs that much policy. It's it's it needs a bit of allowing those sort of markets to develop and encouraging those markets to develop because I think that's that's that's where I see it be going in the future.

And I think we've we've done an injustice. Obviously, you're from a solar background and we gave a wind example. We should have given a Southwest and solar example, shouldn't we? Missed opportunity, I'm afraid. Okay.

Domestic solar feels like a slam dunk of an idea. It doesn't take long to install. If you have a roof, you're lucky enough to have a roof then you can kind of get it installed very quickly. The panels themselves a hundred, two hundred pounds not very much. Is it ever a bad idea to get domestic solar?

Very rarely. If you if you live in the shadow of a tower block or or under a very large tree, then yes, that would be a bad idea.

But it'd still be a good idea to get battery because I because I think that that's that sense of how the battery can can offer you cheap electricity even on its own if you can't get solar, but generally ninety five percent of time. So it's gonna be a good idea for for you. I think what's what we're encouraging the government to do and then what the government is doing is is there is a strong market in the, if you like, the able to pay market. Those who have got yeah.

The the one the one barrier, the biggest barrier is access to finance. So if you have the access to capital, you can borrow and put it on. Absolutely, you should. Not everyone does.

So the fact the government is is allocating a fair chunk of money to the warm homes funds, which will include solar and batteries or grants for low income homes is really good thing. I think, again, there's interest in trying to make sure that landlords and the rental market, there's there's more access to that. GB Energy, obviously funding schools and hospitals and care homes and all sorts of places which will really, really benefit from from solar and cut down their running costs and therefore so I think there's you need to use government money in a in a wise way to increase the access to solar and batteries to those who don't have the access to it the moment.

Yeah.

And I I think I should just for completeness, the solar panel might cost you a hundred or two hundred pounds but you still need the company to come along The installation is installation cost. So there might be scaffolding, it's kind of fixing to the It's it's still a few thousand pounds.

If you're looking at yeah. If you're looking at solar on a battery in a house then then then you probably are talking about about ten thousand pounds and more depending on, yeah, on what what Yeah. Yeah, what size of system exactly.

I could give you a number.

I would say From personal experience.

From personal experience, I can tell you that ten panels, a six kilowatt hour battery, total costs about eight thousand pounds.

There you go.

So whether that's yeah.

I I that's a Yeah.

I'm reluctant to sort of say it's gonna cost you this much because it absolutely depends on the on the sort of the aspect of your house, the design, what you yeah. That lots of things can change. But yeah, it's it's a it's not an unreasonable sum but yeah.

Eight thousand pounds is still quite a lot of money to a lot of people. I think there's there's other things we can do and we we we are talking to the finance sector. I think if we can get if you like the mortgage market to start to value solar and batteries more, think that's that's one thing which we did research a few years ago which demonstrated that a home which had solar on it like for like is likely to be two thousand pounds more valuable than a home that doesn't have solar. Mhmm.

That was twenty nineteen, we did that research, that was before the price of energy went up. So I suspect that that value is is a lot greater. It's estate agents still don't necessarily understand, I think, the value of solar and batteries. But I think that's it will come.

It will come.

It feels just like absolute lunacy really. Like it's it's something that you don't have to do anything. It it runs runs kind of on your home kind of automatically, it cuts your electricity bill massively. I really do scratch my head when systems are, I'm not sure it's gonna add value to your house.

But like I say it's this year, we think this year is gonna be the biggest deployment of residential solar ever in the UK. So I think it's starting to get through in the market, and it will get to a tipping point when I think as well when you start to see those new home new build housing estates on on the outskirts of town, you come in to a town on the train Yes. And you're seeing an entire estate with solar on, it will start to sort of tip in the mind. Yeah.

And actually, that's what a modern home should have. That's gonna gonna be a very low bill. It's gonna be a lot less to run than my house is. And so I think that will start to Yeah.

Have some have some sort of behavioral effects.

This might be an insight into my life not yours. Do you find you sometimes walk around a sort of suburban place and you look and you think, the last time I walked down this road was that solar panel there?

Because I find myself thinking that.

It's it's yeah. You can't help but look at roofs when you we're traveling on a train in my job. So yeah, you're looking at it should be solar on that or yourself your heart is lifted when you do see a very large solar array on a warehouse or something.

I'm pleased we've got a shared passion for looking at rooftops. Okay. Very good.

Okay. Let's let's move on to the solar task force. So it's key to the solar strategy. You have been co chairing it today. What tangible process have we have we seen so far?

So I think the the Solar Task Force itself was was set up as a temporary body, if you like, to to draft this road map, which we've done. So that was a joint government industry. I co shared it with previous Conservative ministers and and Ed Miller and Latterley.

It's an air produced road map. Thankfully, that road map is not just gonna get stuck on a shelf and and ignored. There there will be a permanent body, the solar industry council, which will also be cochaired by myself and Michael Shanks, the energy minister. And again, we'll have a sort of a set of stakeholders probably a little bit wider than the sort of task force.

Hopefully, it'll start to meet in the autumn. The idea is that we'll meet three times a year to sort of check where we're up to with the road map, but also be a place where if there are other barriers come up, then we can start to raise those those issues with with government. So I think it's it's now sort of hardwired into into the government's thinking, which is great, both in terms of targets, but also delivery. And it's a partnership.

So there's things which we are gonna be doing as an industry, which we pledged in that roadmap.

And so in since the government hold our feet as far as well, so Mhmm. And what what would be an example that a consumer might be able to understand?

So well, I think it's things like the changes to the future building standards, which which will require more solar on on on homes and warehouses, that's that's one of things which which is in the road map. There's a number of things on skills and supply chains, so I'm trying to sort of make sure that there's there's, like, warm home sort of skills grant, and some of that will go into helping to train sort of solar installers, for example.

It's there's no there's no sort of lots and lots of big issues. There's there's like sixty small things, but it's it's but they all add up. So it's it's on things like, yeah, skills and lab force, trying to make sure there's a there's some UK supply chain benefits in in from the industry both cell around batteries network sort of connections issues. So it's it's it's yeah. There's lots of little things but I think it adds up to something which is which is substantial.

Okay and to ask one kind of final question before I go into the sort of usual last two, I wanted to ask about the really large solar projects, sometimes you see these kind of going through kind of quite protracted planning permission processes. Is there any kind of work that's being done done in that space to make sure that that is kind of being being streamlined?

So I suppose in the last two or three years, we have started to see more larger transmission connected solar projects coming through which which go through the national planning system, not not not the local authority. It goes through through you know, it's approved by the secretary of state. One thing which the new government did do was start to sign off. There was there was there was a a growing queue of projects which had gone through the system.

They were sat in the secretary of state's inbox, and the previous government was not signing them off. This government has signed off quite a number of them. It did quite a few in the first week, and it's it's continued to do so. So that's since it's it's it's taken the brakes off of some of those planning requirements, That doesn't necessarily mean they're gonna get built next week because you often have conditions in that planning.

So that's that's that's one of the the little sort of loops we're now going through. So things like, would you believe the sort of the the requirements for archaeological digs on a site before it's built? They could be quite onerous up to a million pounds to be spent by developer because the local authority has said we need to check if there's anything important in that ground before you start building a solar farm. So some of those things are we're working through them now which is taking longer than we'd hope but it's still I think it's faster than it wasn't the previous government.

Really interesting. And the size that you need to get to in order to end up in the Secretary of State's inbox, how big do you need to be?

So that has changed. So it was fifty megawatts, It's now a hundred megawatts. I mean, still a lot of solar farms are built in below a hundred megawatts and will go through the local planning process, and the vast majority of those projects do get approved by local authorities. So that's still still plenty of those which are distribution connected ones.

Anything above a hundred megawatts is goes to the Secretary of State and then that that's that's a longer process.

Okay. Really interesting. So to move on to our final two questions, is there anything you'd like to plug?

So yeah. The one thing I think I would to plug is recent Solar Energy UK report on the economic impacts of solar and batteries. So we've looked at we've looked at the sort of deployment we think is both what's in the road map, but also what we think is possible by twenty thirty five and asked an independent consultant to sort of look at what does that mean in terms of GVA and job creation in the country. So that's that's something you go to the Solar Energy UK website. I think the one thing about the jobs in our sector is they are they're gonna happen in the short term. We will be creating a lot of these jobs in the next five years. So that's that's that's one I would plug.

And did you mention GVA?

Yes. Sorry. Gross value added. So how much basically what is the solar and battery into Uni worth for UK PLC in terms of jobs and growth for the economy? I'll see it's positive story.

Okay.

So check out the report and you'll and you'll see that in there.

Indeed.

And then final question, is there a contrarian view you hold to something that you believe that the majority of the market doesn't?

So listen to some of your other your other guests on this one. Think I think the contrarian view I probably hold is I think we as a as an industry obsessed by making sure we we tackle that problem and and we're we're potentially investing in some technologies which are very expensive to deal with that problem. I suspect solar wind and batteries will chip away at that. I suspect batteries will be able to to to be longer and longer in terms of their their storage duration. And so that problem will not be anywhere near as big as everyone is fearing it's going to be.

Okay. You're absolutely right. People do obsess about it.

And indeed and I think that is a really good contrarian view because it reminds us of this kind of bigger picture that actually we want to kind of reduce carbon across the system really quickly with the tools we've got now, solar, wind, battery, that's gonna move us quickly. Worrying about the Dunkelflauter is is a is a problem that we don't all have to work on.

Indeed.

Chris, thank you very much for coming on Transmission, you've been a fantastic guest, we hope to have you on again soon.

Great, pleasure.