Future Energy Scenarios will guide network development

Today we have published our latest Distribution Future Energy Scenarios (DFES) to help our strategic planning to develop the network needed for a decarbonised future.

They show the way we expect demand and generation to grow on our network and align with the national Future Energy Pathways (formerly scenarios) produced by National Energy System Operator (NESO) and published in 2024.

The scenarios represent a year’s worth of data-gathering in partnership with Regen to understand the significant impact that the growth in low carbon technologies, generation and storage will have on our network.

They also include the plans of the 120 local authorities across our four licence areas, as well as major industry and business with nearly 8,000 local projects and plans being incorporated into this year’s forecasts.

DFES 2024 also includes four newly added sectors. We are the first DSO to include maritime, aviation, rail and agriculture sectors demonstrating our proactive approach to future network forecasting in our licence areas ensuring we can provide the connections customers need as we move to a decarbonised future.

Oli Spink, DSO Head of System Planning, said: “Our DFES is a key part of our strategic investment process because it informs us when and how to build our network. “By using DFES 2024, we can gain a better understanding of how our network can grow and operate in a smart, flexible manner. Over the next year we will be using DFES to plan our investment programme for the coming years, incorporating industry changes such as the government’s Clean Power 20230 plan, the creation of Regional Energy Strategic Plans and in preparation for the next regulatory price control.”

Regen’s Grace Millman said: “We have been working with National Grid Electricity Distribution since 2015 to deliver these annual DFES assessments. The 2024 edition goes further than ever before, with the largest ever scope of modelled technologies and stakeholders engaged, as well as reflecting targets from 12 local area energy plans to install MWs of renewable energy generation and thousands of heat pumps and EV chargers. We look forward to continuing our work with NGED as their DFES analysis enters its tenth year.”

You can view all the DFES 2024 documents on our website. You can also take a look at our DFES interactive map where you can view our forecasts for each year out to 2050.