Britain’s biggest DSO today committed itself to 48 hour maximum connection approvals of home heat pumps or EV chargers. Starting from 18 October, most applications will be processed within a single working day, Western Power Distribution (WPD) said.
Trials in eight localities have led to newly streamlined internal provisioning permitting quicker approvals, the DSO for the Midlands and the West country said. Now owned by National Grid following March’s £7.8 billion buyout from American utility PPL Corporation, the distribution operator serves around eight million homes.
WPD is currently receiving around 200 requests a day to hook up EV chargers, heat pumps and other low carbon devices to its distribution grids. By 2030, the DSO anticipates 2,000 devices being connected every single day across its area.
New techniques have done away with the need for full technical assessments conducted up to now by WPD network planning teams, the operator explained.
Any network strengthening on distribution grids running at 132kV or lower can now be performed after installation, and not before. Type approval for consumers’ kit will be granted on application.
Paul Jewell, WPD’s head of DSO development explained: “Customers will be able to get their heat pumps or EV chargers running faster than before”.
“Connecting these vital technologies quicker (means) that our network planning team can spend more time getting our network ready for a net zero future”.
WPD spends £1 billion on its network every year. Around £100 of the average £588 home electricity bill across its patch goes on network innovations, it claims.
Correction: Yesterday’s version of this report stated in error that National Grid ESO owns WPD. We are happy to repeat that the DSO’s correct owner is in fact National Grid; per https://www.nationalgrid.com/document/140931/download.
