Among the most urgent challenges in GB’s energy transition is connections reform. Accelerating the process of connecting to the grid for low-carbon technologies and weeding the queue of zombie projects are priority issues, attracting the attention of leading minds in the sector.

Debate is live over the impact that National Grid ESO’s proposed TMO4+ reforms will have on the ballooning connections queues – projected to bulge to 800GW by the end of this year. While broadly welcomed, the proposals have been labelled insufficient by some. In a recent interview with Utility Week, National Grid’s president for Strategic Investment Carl Trowell said the Electricity System Operator must go beyond ambitions to shrink the connections queue through its “first ready first connected” principle and aspire to also reorder it. His words echo those of speakers at Utility Week’s Reforming Grid Connections Conference earlier this year.

There, experts from organisations including consultancy Baringa and power transmission company Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks suggested ESO’s reforms are simply a preliminary step in a “fundamental paradigm shift” for energy system architecting and management – a shift which will require parallel and coordinated transformations of planning processes, regulation and market principles. This process may challenge deeply ingrained commitments to technology agnosticism in decision-making, they said.

Completing this complicated jigsaw of reform entails tackling many “difficult and exciting questions”. But some parts of the puzzle should be more straightforward. At a recent roundtable debate hosted by Utility Week in association with global tech firm Autodesk, a mix of senior industry leaders including network operators and developers said that putting in place critical data and digital foundations for faster and more strategic connections involves “no regrets” actions which have broad support from system stakeholders. However, they also said that work to improve the visibility, shareability and integrity of data is moving at a frustratingly sluggish pace.

Read on to find out more about what the group had to say on challenges to the use of data to support transformation of grid connections.