Households near new pylons and electricity substations will be offered up to £10,000 off their energy bills over a 10-year period in a bid to reduce local opposition to transmission infrastructure.
The plan is expected to be announced by Chancellor Jeremy Hunt on Wednesday when he delivers his autumn budget statement.
The discount will be offered to those living closest to new pylons and electricity substations, but details, including how close the households have to be to qualify for the full amount or who will pay for the discounts, remain unclear.
The government is also expected to announce plans aimed at halving the time needed to approve and build transmission infrastructure from 14 years to 7 years, including a new premium planning service across England to guarantee faster pre-application services for major applications in exchange for a fee and refunds where this is not met.
Low carbon energy infrastructure is expected to be designated as a critical national priority, and the planning system is expected prioritise the rollout of Electric Vehicle (EV) charge points.
A Treasury source said, “Expanding the grid will unlock global investment for Britain and bring improvements for people across the country, with energy security that will keep energy costs down.
“And by speeding up the planning system—including the rollout of EV chargepoints—we will be tackling one of the most common issues raised by businesses who are keen to invest in the UK.
“This Autumn Statement will show that it’s the UK government who are taking the long-term decisions to deliver the changes we need.”
Payment for residents who live near overhead lines or other visible infrastructure was part of the recommendations submitted by Electricity Networks Commissioner Nick Winser in June.
He also recommended that better visual design so visible infrastructure would be more acceptable to locals, as they are much cheaper compared to underground or offshore lines.
According to the report, new wind and nuclear power would be “wasted” unless the electrical grid has enough capacity to transmit them.
However, because wind and solar farms are often smaller, the national grid would have to pull lots of smaller cables to many different power generation sites across the country, rather than enormous cables to a few big coal plants.
In Britain, “around four times as much new transmission network will be needed in the next seven years as was built since 1990,” Mr. Winser said.
In his letter to then-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero Grant Shapps, Mr. Winser said if the grid isn’t upgraded at the same pace as home-grown energy, not only the power will be “standing idle,” customers will also face “very high” congestion costs.
Because a given piece of electricity transmission equipment can only carry a certain amount of power before it becomes overheated, the National Grid Electricity System Operator (ESO) acts like an electricity traffic police by giving some energy generators “constraints payment” so they reduce output.
The method is also meant to be used to reduce the size of household bills. For instance, when it’s “very windy,” the ESO can pay some gas power generator to turn down their output to give way to a wind farm because it would be cheaper, but it can’t do that if the wind farm is not plugged into the part of the grid that’s connected to where energy is needed.
The commissioner said the ESO estimates that “even with optimal reinforcement of the grid, annual constraint costs could rise from around £0.5–1 billion per year in 2022 to a peak of £2–4 billion per year around 2030.”
