TEC Register update: New 900MW Solar Farm at Gissing in Norfolk
Late on Friday, another vast solar farm has been given a connection offer and was added to the TEC Register. The 900MW Elmya Gissing BESS & PV scheme could span an area as large as 4,500 acres.
At the end of August, I wrote about a new 460MW solar farm in the Long Stratton area of Norfolk connecting to a new “North Anglia Connection Node A 400kV” substation. This was the first appearance of this new 400kV substation and the first connection offer granted to it. On Friday evening, we saw the second connection offer to this substation appear on the TEC Register, this time to a scheme from RPC Elmya Carnation Devco Ltd. More information on the joint venture arranged between Renewable Power Capital (RPC) and Elmya can be found here.
As I said previously, the Norwich to Tilbury Pylon proposals already include an East Anglia 400kv Connection Node (EACN), into which the North Falls and Five Estuaries Wind Farms, alongside the Tarchon interconnector, are due to connect in Essex. However, this is an entirely new substation and given connection offers at Long Stratton and now Gissing, we are getting a better idea as to its likely location. The map below shows the route of the proposed Norwich to Tilbury Pylon run and I’ve crudely circled Long Stratton and Gissing. These two connection offers help build up a picture of where the new 400kV substation, which is as yet un-consented and has no plans in the public domain, is likely to be located.
While I stress that it is not confirmed that this new 400kV substation will later form part of, and connect to, the yet to be consented Norwich to Tilbury Pylon run, it is becoming more and more difficult to think it won’t. These two connection offers correlate with my conversations with solar developers where, quite understandably from a commercial point of view, their search corridor for sites is along the Norwich to Tilbury pylon run as they know National Grid will want to sell redundant capacity on the line. Where, as ever, I have more quarrel is the piecemeal and opaque way in which the combination of schemes come about. These two solar schemes are contingent upon a yet to be consented 400kV substation, around which no information is known to the public, and that substation is - seemingly - contingent upon an unconsented transmission scheme, in the form of Norwich to Tilbury. Infrastructure begets infrastructure and nothing is being openly and honestly debated or consented.
Returning to the RPC Elmya scheme, using the now consented Sunnica scheme as our usual benchmark, we can reasonably assume that this scheme near Gissing in Norfolk will be between 3,600 acres and 4,500 acres in size. Alongside the Noventum Long Stratton scheme, this means we already have as much as 6,500 acres of solar with connection offers in this small part of Norfolk. Both schemes will likely be within 5 to 7 miles of the new substation. The connection date for the RPC Elmya scheme is October 2024, the exact same date as the Noventum solar farm.
Reform of connection offers and regional spatial planning around energy is underway, with Ofgem dealing with spatial planning and the new NESO tackling connection offer reform. However, this is slim consolation to those living along or around the new Norwich to Tilbury Pylon route, and the similar route between Grimsby and Walpole in Lincolnshire, into which connection offers seem to be being made at pace. Ed Miliband’s haste to decarbonise the grid by 2030 will be driving this and much more will follow.
There is little doubt that this is yet another part of the grand scheme being insidiously and somewhat surreptitiously rolled out by National Grid with the tacit approval of Ofgem. There is no doubt that this egregious invasion of our countryside and rural communities will be accelerated by 'Red Ed' Miliband, but the plans have long-since been drawn up under the previous Tory government - let us not forget! This of course directly contravenes the Gunning Principles, Treasury Green Book and Holford Rules and is open to legal challenge - which hopefully we can mount and fund to a successful conclusion. We have all known since the first so-called 'public consultation' back in 2022 that NG were treating the N to T scheme as a 'done-deal' - and now we comprehensively know why! This is not a democracy in which we live - it's a damned dictatorship and we must fight it to the bitter end.
" and much more will follow"
Yes, as we expect in Lincolnshire too. Our Grimsby to Walpole proposal will no doubt connect to an upgraded line from Walpole (the N Norfolk one) via Necton to Norwich and power can flow both ways though most will go south.
In addition to dreadfully inefficient solar farms (16% of maximum capacity overall), there will be onshore wind turbines (65% efficient) - probably as tall as the 403m, ie 1/4 mile, tip height of those planned for the Outer Dowsing windfarm (Swaffham's two are only 100m).
And, of course, to make up for the periods of 'dunkelflaute' there comes BESS - football pitches in size, (and more) and many of them. To be fair, if we're going to have solar and wind generation, we surely must have storage for the surpluses generated on windy and sunny days.
There will also be Green Hydrogen plants (there is a convenient main gas node and pipeline near the planned Walpole substations). These will be used so that surplus energy, rather than being stored, can be used by electrolysers to produce hydrogen that is blended with natural (methane) gas for domestic and industrial use.
Other heavy users of electricity in close proximity to the new substations, such as datacentres - AI or otherwise, will take advantage of the large, unbroken areas of the necessary farmland that will be relatively 'affordable' and straightforward (ie quick) to build on.