⚡ “Britain’s Grid is at Breaking Point”

🚨 Headline Facts You Need to Know🧯 Why Our Electricity Infrastructure Can’t Handle the Clean Power Stampede — and What Must Change

🔌 Substations across the UK are running at 90–100% capacity — no room left for new solar, wind, or battery projects.

🧟‍♂️ The grid queue is clogged with “zombie” connections — projects offered access on paper but unbuildable in practice.

🪫 Curtailment is costing us £1.9 billion per year — we’re turning off clean power because we can’t move it.

📆 Major grid reinforcements like Eastern Green Link 2 and Yorkshire Green won’t be delivered until 2028–2032 — far too late to meet net zero targets without massive disruption.

⚠️ The clean energy transition is running on fantasy infrastructure — we’ve made promises without the wires, substations, or transformers to back them up.

💥 Why This Matters

❌ No Grid = No Net Zero

If the wires can’t carry it, it doesn’t matter how many solar farms we build. Projects are being greenlit without checking if they can actually connect.

🧾 Bills Are Rising for No Benefit

Paying generators to switch off is wasting public money — and it gets worse each year as grid congestion increases.

📉 The Public is Being Misled

Planning approvals continue as if grid upgrades are already in place. They aren’t. And some never will be unless priorities shift.

🔍 What We Found: The Evidence of a System in Crisis

Across regions like the West Midlands, East Midlands, and South Yorkshire, detailed data from NGED, Northern Powergrid, and the ESO’s Network Options Assessment (NOA) show:

Thermal constraints on dozens of 33–132 kV circuits (e.g. Drakelow, Brinsworth, Thorpe Marsh).

Voltage instability due to high inverter-based renewables and lack of reactive power compensation.

Substations like Brinsworth and Chesterfield operating at or above 95% capacity, with no connection headroom until post-2028 upgrades.

Delays of 7–10 years for new grid connection offers — even for projects already approved or under construction.


🗂️ See our full regional constraint analysis here
📄 Download the July 2025 EHV constraint maps (NGED)

⚖️ We Demand Grid Reality — Not Grid Fiction

🎯 Campaign Demands:

1. 🛑 A Moratorium on New Renewable NSIPs
Pause approvals for new solar, wind, and BESS mega-projects until the ESO confirms viable connection capacity within 3 years.


2. 📊 Full Disclosure from NGESO and DNOs
Publish all constraint maps, transformer delays, and connection backlogs — region by region.


3. 🔁 Fast-Track National Grid Renewal
Fund and deliver core reinforcements (like Brinsworth, Chesterfield, Thorpe Marsh) before enforcing net zero capacity targets.


4. 🧾 Ofgem Accountability
Ofgem must step in and ensure network operators cannot approve projects they know the grid cannot support.


5. ⚖️ Legal Challenge to Unlawful Grid Promises
We support legal action where National Policy Statements (EN-1/EN-3) or local planning decisions rely on connection claims that cannot be fulfilled.

🗣️ Tell the Truth: Ofgem, NGESO, National Grid

Dear Ofgem, NGESO, and the Department for Energy Security & Net Zero (DESNZ):

You are approving a grid-scale clean power rollout on a Victorian network. Your own data confirms:

132 kV and 275 kV circuits are overloaded,

SGT upgrades are years late,

Your connections queue is a fiction,

Consumers are paying for the illusion of progress.


It’s time to face reality. We can’t build what the grid can’t carry.

✅ Join the Campaign

📨 Write to:

Ofgem: contact@ofgem.gov.uk

NGESO: box.eso.connect@nationalgrid.com

DESNZ: correspondence@energysecurity.gov.uk