Companies providing localised heat and power schemes in business parks and as part of community energy enterprises, invariably deliver their energy infrastructure by installing private wires rather than utilising the existing public electricity network. This is hugely wasteful with roads being dug up simply to lay wires alongside existing wires. Localised schemes of this nature are wholly consistent with a more distributed cleaner energy system and the commercial case for utilising private wires instead of the public network is a function of anomalies in the current regulatory framework. Our client wanted to assess the impacts and provide a case for removing these anomalies in order to facilitate cost effective delivery “local generation and supply” schemes.
We are experts in the industry arrangements, the options for delivering different business models and services within these arrangements, and the industry costs and implications associated with each. We are also independent and are trusted to provide an accurate balanced and impartial interpretation and representation of the relevant arguments and facts. We reviewed the regulatory framework and identified where there were material differences in the treatment of schemes on the public network compared to a private network.
We developed a model to compare the respective costs and quantified the impact of the regulatory differences, as well as identifying various ways in which the anomalies evident could be addressed. We presented our findings to Ofgem and collated all of our works in a report, which we made available to our client.