Keeping pace with power hungry data centres

Artificial intelligence is transforming the global economy at extraordinary speed, but it's also creating one of the biggest new sources of electricity demand Europe has faced in decades. As hyperscale data centres continue to expand, are Europe's power systems, grids and energy markets ready to keep pace?

In this episode of the Plugged In Summer Series, we explore what the AI boom means for the energy transition. The discussion centres around power supply and how grid constraints could shape investment, to the role of flexibility, policy and smarter energy management. We chat about the challenges and opportunities facing Europe's electricity system in the wake of such a growing industry. 

Featuring insights from experts in technology policy, data centre strategy and the power sector, this episode asks whether AI's growing appetite for energy can be aligned with Europe's ambitions for a secure, affordable and low-carbon future—and what needs to happen next.

Host:

Snjólfur Richard Sverrisson, Editor-in-Chief, Montel News

Guests:

Katie Berriman Davies, Head of Energy, TechUK

Liam Newcombe, SVP Product, Energy Strategy & Innovation, GreenScale

Steve Smith, Group Chief Strategy & UK External Affairs Officer, National Grid

Producer: Alexandra Carlon

Editor: Alexandra Carlon

#AI #DataCentres #EnergyTransition #ElectricityMarkets #PowerSystems #GridInfrastructure #Renewables #Flexibility #Decarbonisation #EnergyPolicy #Hyperscalers #DigitalInfrastructure #CleanEnergy #PluggedInPodcast #MontelNews

Transcript

Data Centres As Grid Opportunity

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I think it's also a perception point. Getting away from the idea that data centres are a barrier to decarbonisation. Because they're not, as I said, they can help spread the fixed costs that are absolutely vital to building more grid.

SPEAKER_03 0:15

But I think we really need to identify those regions and identify what class of generating and grid support capacity the TSO, the government, and the local community want to see there. And then use data centres as an anchor tenant revenue asset to make that investment feasible.

SPEAKER_01 0:33

Data centres can be great for us, great for the country, great for growth. So if we do this well, then this should see a reduction in bills for domestic customers and also for other business customers.

Why AI Is Driving Power Demand

Snjólfur Richard Sverrisson – Editor-in-Chief, Montel News 0:50

Artificial intelligence, hyperscale computing, and data centers are driving a new wave of electricity demand. In this episode, we explore what AI means for the power system of the future and how it could shape the energy transition. For this episode in the summer series, we're looking at AI and data centers. How power-hungry are they? And I'm delighted to be joined by Katie Berriman-Davis.

SPEAKER_00 1:18

Thank you for having me.

Snjólfur Richard Sverrisson – Editor-in-Chief, Montel News 1:19

And Liam Newcomb. Thank you. Good to see you again.

Nordics Win On Speed To Power

Snjólfur Richard Sverrisson – Editor-in-Chief, Montel News 1:22

Across Europe, where are you seeing the strongest demand for new AI and hyperscale data centers? And what factors are now driving these decisions beyond simply finding available land and power?

SPEAKER_03 1:34

Places with fast access to power and similarly fast planning are some of the Nordic markets. The Nordic regions have historically had very good, very strong energy policy. They've got very strong grids with nuclear, hydro, lots of other very reliable, dispatchable generation. And they also have relatively low power costs. They're very low by European standards, relatively low by rest of world

UK Queue Surge And Speculative Bids

SPEAKER_03 2:02

standards.

Snjólfur Richard Sverrisson – Editor-in-Chief, Montel News 2:02

Turning to the UK, Katie, what's the situation there?

SPEAKER_00 2:06

I mean, we've seen a huge influx in data center applications to the electricity grid over the last year. Well, a couple of years, but mainly over the last year, particularly in response to the AI growth zone announcement from the government. So that is trying to incentivize the clustering of data center projects in specific zones. And the incentives range from faster planning to faster grid connections and lower energy costs in certain regions. I think it's very important to note that the huge surge in applications does not necessarily translate to real viable projects. So the demand queue across transmission and distribution at the moment is 125 gigawatts. NISO has identified 50 gigawatts of data centers, but industry estimates has the real figure, so viable projects that will reach energization at between 8 to 12. So much lower than the 50 gigawatts figure that's been flying around headlines recently. And that's because of speculation. So where applications are submitted in the off chance that project might be built there, or multiple applications are submitted for the same project. So that's why there are reforms going through government, NISO, and OffGem at the moment to try and tackle some of that speculation in

Reforming Connections With Curate Plan Connect

SPEAKER_00 3:30

the Cube.

Snjólfur Richard Sverrisson – Editor-in-Chief, Montel News 3:30

I mean, I I think those reforms are crucial here, isn't it? Because you you you separate the serious applications from the perhaps the speculative ones, as you said. And how how do you do that? I mean, what what can how can you process this backlog?

SPEAKER_00 3:44

Do you you can imagine Tech UK represents 90% of the data center sector in the UK, so it's of paramount importance to our membership. Of Gem Niso and and Desnes are looking at three different pillars as part of demand connections reform. So the first is curate, and that is essentially trying to weed out speculative projects from the queue. Then there's also the plan pillar, the second pillar, which is trying to ensure that there's some strategy when we're connecting projects to the grid. So previously demand has only had to be ready and not needed, but now there's going to be strategic alignment. So projects that are seen as absolutely vital to the economy that deliver significant social benefits, they will see accelerated connection times. And then there's the connect pillar. So that's looking at more operational solutions. So for example, data center data centers building their own high voltage infrastructure, operating on the independent transmission owner model, which up until now has only been available for distribution networks, but whether we extend that to transmission networks and the various secondary legislation or class exemptions that might be required as part of a build and transfer model where data centers build the infrastructure and then hand it over to the transmission owner. There's also some focus on ramp connections. So where instead of securing the max capacity initially, the data center will build out in stages and that connection size will increase over years. There's also quite a lot of discussion around flexibility, which is a sensitive topic, I must say, around the sector. So also very happy to delve into that, but it's it's separate but linked to connection reform. I think that the subject of flexibility is frequently being debated across jurisdictions, not just the UK, but it's now being brought into connection reforms discussion in the UK as

Ireland And Finland Models For Access

SPEAKER_00 5:40

well.

Snjólfur Richard Sverrisson – Editor-in-Chief, Montel News 5:40

Liam, what what's the experience here in other jurisdictions, in other parts of Europe, in terms of tackling this backlog?

SPEAKER_03 5:48

A few transmission system operators who are sort of clearly out in front in terms of their their response to the market. You have AirGrid, who have traditionally been a leader, largely because they operate a relatively small network with a loss of data center load on it, with very limited interconnection. So they they don't have the ability to lean on cross-border connectors. So it it becomes quite a lot more difficult to run that network reliably and at an acceptable cost for billpayers. And that's the key thing, is that the TSOs are charged with doing things at minimum cost, uh, not maximum quality for data centers. So AirGrid have gone a long way with the CRU, the Commission for Regulation of Utilities in Ireland. And essentially now, if you want to build a large data center in Ireland, you have to go and build a renewable energy hub, either as the data center developer or in collaboration with somebody else. They've also brought in some very interesting market shaping in that regulation. So as we understand it at the moment, you're expected to place dispatchable generation either in the form of thermal or at some derating factor battery into the capacity mechanism. So that's a very specific and deliberate move to stop data center demand on the network driving up basic bill prices by pushing up capacity market prices. If you bring your own generation, you're providing the matching cover that the TSO is then required to buy. It's also arguably a much more efficient overall use of asset. If data centers have thermal firming capacity, it makes a lot of sense to share that with the network rather than competing with the network for the same turbines and the same fuel to electricity conversion. At the other end, we've got people like Fingrid with absolutely superb network data available. You can just go onto Fingrid's website and see exactly what capacity they have, at which supply points and distribution points.

Flexibility Versus Data Centre SLAs

Snjólfur Richard Sverrisson – Editor-in-Chief, Montel News 7:55

I'd like to just turn back to what Katie, you were you mentioned flexibility. Now, it's obviously this is a very important part of the discussion going forward. Um where is the UK today and how does this fit into sort of the wider grid connection reform?

SPEAKER_00 8:11

The UK is in the process of developing a demand capacity register, which I believe is meant to fulfil the same objectives as in Finland. So on flexibility, I think it's first important to note that data centres are committed to being good grid citizens. There are some operational difficulties if you're talking about load shifting or curtailment. So data centres, most data centres will have very strict SLA service level agreements that require five nines power availability.

UK Electricity Prices And Non-Commodity Costs

Snjólfur Richard Sverrisson – Editor-in-Chief, Montel News 8:43

Now the UK has some of the highest industrial electricity prices, certainly in Europe, if not globally. How much is that affecting investment into the country and and what kind of policy changes do you think could improve AI you know training workloads?

SPEAKER_00 8:58

It that's a prime example of where the UK is not attracting specific types of workloads because AI training is very price-sensitive but location agnostic. So just as one example from a paper I read recently, Social Market Foundation, powering a 100 megawatt data center costs 220 million pounds per year in the UK compared to 56 million in the US and 67 million in Sweden. So that's why we're not attractive for AI training. It it simply doesn't make economic sense for projects to locate locate here. And I think historically our bills have been so high because gas sets the price of electricity. That is falling due to more renewables coming online, bringing down the wholesale price and decreasing the frequency with with which gas gas sets the price of electricity. So that was around 100% of the time, and it's now around 80%. So we're we're seeing some some really positive development from the decarbonisation of our grid. I think what we're increasingly seeing is non-commodity costs adding up on bills. So these are costs to fund network build-up. They're also costs to fund government schemes. So for example, renewables obligation or the feed-in tariff, where we're subsidizing legacy renewables projects. And they're very important schemes to fund, but they together have added 11 billion pounds to bills over 2025-26.

Regional Strategy And Behind-The-Meter Deals

Snjólfur Richard Sverrisson – Editor-in-Chief, Montel News 10:33

I like well, I'd like to round off now and time to get the crystal ball out. So to look at look ahead five to ten years. What does a successful European AI infrastructure strategy look like, in your view?

SPEAKER_03 10:48

I don't think socially we can afford to get into a position where data centers are perceived as being treated as special over any other type of business or residential consumer. We'll lose our social license to operate very quickly in that sort of circumstance. And I think what we'll need to do, recognizing that that central strip of Europe that's largely dependent on wind and nuclear and other relatively high cost forms of generation isn't going to compete on unit price with the Nordics or with the solar and wind resources of the Iberian Peninsula. So we we have location, we have major metro areas that need local cloud zones, et cetera. So to some extent, we're going to deploy classes of workload in the regions that they're well suited to. That doesn't mean we're going to build fewer data centers in United Kingdom or Germany, et cetera. It means we're going to deploy data centers regionally based on the requirement. But also there, as we've discussed, there are ways to get those bills down. One of the areas that we really need to improve the planning and policy complexity and certainty on is the ability to do things like behind-the-meter transactions. So a CPPA over the network, yes, fine. It'll lock in some power price for you. Even if you're a small operator, there are people like Zendo out there who will go and wrap that up for you so that you don't have to take on that complexity. And I think that's a real growing market as well. But for the sort of sized sites we build, 100 megawatts and up, realistically, I'm going to go and partner with one of the energy majors to have very large wind or solar resources nearby. It's a site selection criteria for me because I'm not in central Paris. I'm sitting outside somewhere. If I have the regulatory certainty that I can do enough of that behind the meter, I can create very attractive pricing for tenants to come and land in that data center. If it's done as part of a combined, so for example, if we look five years forward into AI growth zone policy and assume that the government, the TSOs, and the data center developers get together along with the energy majors, we can say we can identify regions of the country where we're not going to be building directly adjacent to housing or other friction elements and actually develop combined demand, grid support and generation assets where we can locally bring costs down. And I think a key part of that, we're looking at this in Northern Ireland at the moment, is that a lot of the transmission and distribution networks are at very low utilization at the moment. And as Katie pointed to, it's the non-commodity costs that are crippling across that central band of Europe. And that doesn't go away as we go into sort of wind and similar renewables because we're looking at shipping power thousands of kilometers to do that. What we actually need to do there is not just locate demand closer to the generation, but also make the demand flexible so that we can take away some of the necessary safety threshold that the transmission operators have to operate to. So in data center world, we design the cooling system for the hottest hour of a 20-year period with a little bit of headroom on top to make sure the data center doesn't fail. Grid operators do a very similar thing. They look at their worst possible hour on their worst possible day and say, do we have the network to do it? If everything goes wrong at the same time. In those cases, I think actually letting allowing data centers to access a less firm, maybe not a fully non-firm, but a firm with specific constraint periods, that allows the data center to get built. And if I can go and build a wind farm, a solar farm, a big battery, something else to support it, then I can get my power cost for my tenant down. Ideally, I am allowed to spill some of that renewable energy which I'm getting at a very fixed price to local consumers. At the moment, that's deemed to be market manipulation. But what if if I build a data center in, for example, Derry and I have spare wind power, why can I not spill my spare wind power to the people of Derry and give them some of the cheap power my tenant isn't using? That that seems obtruse to me. And it's very hard to explain to local people why there are good reasons for the grid rules that prevent that. But also, by putting those data center loads in place, we can bring average utilization up on the power networks. So rather than being a stressor and requiring huge quantities of decades-long investment that drive up all of the core non-commodity charges, I think what we need to do is work with the TSOs, move from the old analog grid dispatch to through digital to rapidly software-defined and responsive facilities so that the TSOs can manage those as modern networks with EV charging data centers and all the other assets and get that utilization up. And then we get the unit cost of each megawatt capacity of transmission backbone down. So it's complex and it's multidisciplinary, but I think we really need to identify those regions and identify what class of generating and grid support capacity the TSO, the government, and the local community want to see there. And then use data centers as an anchor tenant revenue asset to make that investment feasible.

Snjólfur Richard Sverrisson – Editor-in-Chief, Montel News 16:36

You know, communication is of the essence here, and also across all these different um stakeholders. It's very reassuring. You know, we've heard of some of the challenges, but also a lot of solutions from you guys. So but you know, just a final question for you, Katie, if you can sort of briefly summarize. If we were having this conversation in five years' time, what would success look like for the UK?

SPEAKER_00 17:02

It would be data centers being able to connect to the electricity grid, I think, in in brief, because there's a lot of conversation around data centers' potential negative impacts. So whether that's increasing prices for everyone or leading to increased use of dirtier generation, whether that's you know gas or diesel. But a lot of these issues could be solved by allowing the market to do what it does best and react to investment and locational signals, ensuring that we have a flourishing CPPA market where data centers can actually lead to additionality, you know, that additional renewable energy coming on the grid. As Liam mentioned, trying to overcome some of those regulatory glitches that are currently getting in the way of a stronger, more cohesive relationship between clean energy and data centers. And I think getting away from I think it's also a perception point, getting away from the idea that data centers are a barrier to decarbonisation because they're not, as I said, they can help spread the fixed costs that are absolutely vital to building more grid. And a decarbonized grid is also a decentralized grid. So if we have these costs spread over a shrinking base of consumers, everyone's seeing their bills increases and they're increasingly going to point point the finger at data centers because that's what a lot of the media would would tell them to do. So I think it's it's trying to engage both the energy and tech sectors and understand solutions that work for everyone. And actually, it's so important to have both sides of the equation sat down at a table and working together on solutions rather than discussions happening in silos. So get data centers connected to the grid and allow them to be facilitators of the energy transition rather than getting in the way of that.

Snjólfur Richard Sverrisson – Editor-in-Chief, Montel News 19:05

Perfect. And what a great place to end. So uh, Katie and Liam, thank you very much for being guests in this episode of the summer series of Blood Din. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank

National Grid View On The Backlog

Snjólfur Richard Sverrisson – Editor-in-Chief, Montel News 19:16

you. Katie and Liam have outlined both the scale of the opportunity and the policy changes needed to support it. But what does all of this look like from the perspective of the electricity system itself? To find out, I spoke to Steve Smith, Chief Strategy Officer at National Grid, about whether today's networks are ready for the rapid growth of AI and data centers and the investments needed to keep pace. We've heard in this episode that the data center connection queue is heavily oversubscribed with many speculative applications alongside genuine projects. How confident are you that the current reformers will separate viable demand from speculation? And what remains the biggest obstacle to getting major projects connected more quickly, Steve?

SPEAKER_01 20:05

Well, I think before we get onto the reforms, a good place to start is the plan. So what we've just signed off with OffGem, our regulator, is our sort of investment plans for the next five years. And as part of that, we are committed to connecting about 10 gigawatts of data centers, which is a huge, huge number compared to what we have today. And they'll be connected both directly to our transmission system, but also to the district, the distribution networks as well that hang off our distribution system. So it's just worth saying we we start from a very good place. That is a you know a huge increase in the volume of data centers. So really the cue is about, you know, what are we going to do beyond the next five years? And can we do any more within those five years? So can we go beyond the plan we already

What Makes A Good Data Centre

SPEAKER_01 20:51

have?

Snjólfur Richard Sverrisson – Editor-in-Chief, Montel News 20:51

There's a groan view that that data centers shouldn't just consume power, they should also actively support the grid through flexibility, storage, and even their own generation. What does a, you know, what does a good, if you like, data center look like from a from the national grid perspective?

SPEAKER_01 21:09

So, I mean, if we do this well, data centers can be great for us, great for the country, great for growth. So we we all know that, you know, that that AI is a is you know a huge growth area, so it can be, can be really good for the economy, but it can also be good for other users of our network. So essentially think of our network of a big fixed-cost network. So these users bring massive amounts of volume to our network and they pay for the volume they put across our network. So if we do this well, then this should see a reduction in bills for domestic customers and also for other business customers. Now, that hinges on when they connect that we don't need to do lots of investment on our networks to connect them. So that gets back to your question. What does a good data center look like? A good data center is one that can offer us some flexibility. So, what do I mean by flexibility? Well, in essence, our transmission systems only really stress. For a handful of hours a year. It's in the winter peaks when everyone's trying to use power at the same time. So if they can show us a bit of flexibility around those hours, typically we can connect them to our system without the need for, you know, for heavy investment in new lines or anything else. And that's where things like them having batteries on their side of the fence or them having some generation just to cope with those peak hours, or increasingly being able to flex how much power they take. And I can talk a bit more about that. That's what a good data center looks like. And that gets us into this virtuous circle where data centers are great for everyone else because they're paying for a significant proportion of our costs, and that means lower bills for everyone else.

Proving Load Flex With Software

Snjólfur Richard Sverrisson – Editor-in-Chief, Montel News 22:39

But they're not they're not that flexible though, are they? In essence, I mean they can't really ramp down and up again. I mean, that's not the essence of them as demand centers.

SPEAKER_01 22:48

So I think I think that's been the view for a long time. We've been doing some really interesting work with a company called Emerald AI. So this is a company that we in NVIDIA invested in a couple of years ago coming out of the US. And they've built basically a software algorithm which you can um put in data centers. And we trialed it in the UK a couple of months ago, and we're actually seeing that these large data centers can flex. So typically at any point in time, if we say to them, is there any of your load that's not absolutely vital? Could you just shift it by a couple of hours? Then the answer is yes. So we've got plans to take what was a fairly limited trial to a much bigger trial on a really substantial data centre in the UK to prove that. So I I think you the way you described it, certainly the way we were all thinking a couple of years ago, but we're now starting to see, you know, potentially technology playing a role in in helping the data centers to provide that flexibility.

Snjólfur Richard Sverrisson – Editor-in-Chief, Montel News 23:41

I mean, that could potentially be a game changer, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:44

Absolutely. And as you can tell, we're very excited about it. It's why we invested in the company. And I think Varun, who's the CEO and I, are, you know, out saying, look, you know, this this is exactly that, it is a game changer.

Competing Through Faster Connections

Snjólfur Richard Sverrisson – Editor-in-Chief, Montel News 23:55

We also talked in in this episode about certain countries that are very attractive for investors in terms of you know lower competitive, if you like, power prices, but also the other conditions. How how how can the UK remain competitive with other countries, either in northern and Scandinavia or in southern Europe, like what's for example, the Iberian Peninsula?

SPEAKER_01 24:19

So look, you know, w what are the what are the companies trying to do this care about? They care about you know quality of the the workforce, and you know, there the UK starts really strongly. I mean, AI, you know, began life and the big breakthroughs we've seen with companies like you know, DeepMind and Denise Hasvis, who obviously still based in London, there is this massive ecosystem of London AI-based startups. You know, we're moving beyond large language models to material science to physical AI. So that's one of the big pluses for the UK. And if you talk to the you know the big, the big US players, that's one of the things that attracts them to us. As you said, one of the downsides is sadly we have some of the highest electricity prices, that's not so good. And so where we can get that competitive advantage is for them, I think it's all about speed to power. They are in an arms race to build these models as fast as they can. They're all competing with each other. So if we can actually say we can connect you faster than anyone else, and that's where companies like Emerald AI and companies like Gridcare we're working with. So that's our mission at National Grid is to say how do we create that competitive advantage for the UK by saying we can get you on faster than anywhere else, then you can exploit that, you know, really talented ecosystem and labour force that we have in the UK, and hopefully that makes you think, well, you know, even though your energy prices are high, that compensates for that, and therefore we'd rather be in the UK than elsewhere.

Generation Adequacy And Better Siting

Snjólfur Richard Sverrisson – Editor-in-Chief, Montel News 25:38

You mentioned the 10 gigawatts that's uh that's being brought online over the next five years, Steve. What i is supply able to meet that kind of demand? Is it or does it need to catch up?

SPEAKER_01 25:51

The the the sort of irony or the thing you have to get your head around with electrical electricity systems is they're only stressed for a small number of hours. So, you know, we have you know maybe a hundred hours when the system's close to peak, and that's when you know your generation capacity is stressed for most of the rest of the year. So for the other 8,660 hours of the year, you know, and particularly if you think, you know, during the summer months, overnight, there's there's lots and lots of generation. So it's really only those those peak periods. In the UK, as we've moved to a predominantly renewable system, we've still got you know all the gas fire plant, you know, the nuclear, you know, the gas fire plant acts as backup. And then we've also, National Grid owns, you know, seven interconnectors that connect us to various European countries. There are other companies, so we've got ten interconnectors in total. So we don't think there's a generation problem. We think we've got you know the flexibility. We've also got lots of batteries coming onto the system. And as I said, even if there is, it's really only about that sort of handful of hours, where as I said, we can import from other countries or use batteries to just meet those, meet those peaks.

Snjólfur Richard Sverrisson – Editor-in-Chief, Montel News 26:54

What role does strategic planning and reform national pricing, what does that mean for data center location? Should should they be closer to generation sites?

SPEAKER_01 27:03

There is a huge prize. We we have areas of the country where if we can encourage data centers to go there where it's close to the generation, particularly to the offshore wind, that reduces the need for us to build new transmission lines, you know, build new capacity. So that would always be our first preference. But we recognise, you know, that in some senses the customer's always right. There are other reasons why they might not be able to do that. So it's kind of a bit of push and pull, if you like. So we'd like to sort of make those opportunities available to people and say, look, if you locate there, it'll be really beneficial. You know, we can basically offer you discounted network rates, et cetera, et cetera. But I think the reality is that you know we'll we'll get a bit of a mix. We'll get some people who are willing to move and able to, and others who aren't. And at the end of the day, our job is to do what our customers want. And so we'll we'll meet both needs. But again, that flexibility is key. Even if they're locating further away from demand, the more they can be flexible, then the more we can use the network we have. I mean, one of the things it's worth remembering there, you know, we do have a network that has quite a lot of spare capacity on the demand side on it. So it was a system that was built for peak demand of about 65 gigawatts today because because of changes like energy efficiency, because we've now got a lot more rooftop solar, things like that. Our system actually only does a peak about 45 gigawatts. So there is spare capacity on the network. So if we can get that flexibility, get them in the right places, then as I said, we can we can use that spare capacity and not need to build more more capacity. And that's where it has that great impact on other people's rates and bills.

Snjólfur Richard Sverrisson – Editor-in-Chief, Montel News 28:36

There's certainly a very key word there, that flexibility

The Great Grid Upgrade Investment Plan

Snjólfur Richard Sverrisson – Editor-in-Chief, Montel News 28:39

there. But um if we look ahead to 10 years, Steve, what what investments need to happen now? I mean, in in network, storage, uh the the word flexibility and generation to ensure that AI-driven demand strengthens rather than destabilizes the energy transition more widely?

SPEAKER_01 28:58

So I mean if I talk about you know uh our business and and transmission, and we we are embarking on a once-in-a-generation, or or probably once-in-three generation, investment program, which is already underway. So we're calling it the Great Grid Upgrade. So it'll be the biggest build-out of of the transmission system since it was first constructed back in the in the post-war era. So we're committed to spending, you know, of the order of 40 billion pounds on our networks over the next sort of five to six years. Most of that will be in transmission. And a lot of that is because if you think about it, our system was built for a different world, the coalvard, gas pipe, power stations, the old nuclear plants, everything we've connected to date and everything that's coming, the offshore wind, the new batteries are in different places. So we're having to build out our network both onshore and increasingly offshore to connect up, you know, the large wind farms that have already connected, but the large wind farms that that are still to connect, and the batteries, you know, that we'll need. So it is it is already underway. You know, we've broken ground. There, there are 17 major projects we're involved in. We've broken ground on three of them, and you know, that will be our major focus over the next five years to just deliver all of those projects on budget, on time, you know, hopefully if we can ahead of time, ahead of budget, you know, so that we've got the system we need to connect up all that renewable generation and storage.

Snjólfur Richard Sverrisson – Editor-in-Chief, Montel News 30:23

Well, best of luck with that, Steve, and and thank you very much for for being a guest on this episode of the Plugged In Podcast. You're welcome, and lovely to talk to you, Richard.

Wrap-Up And Listener Call To Action

Snjólfur Richard Sverrisson – Editor-in-Chief, Montel News 30:31

And to you listeners, thanks for listening to this episode of Plugged In. If you enjoyed this discussion, please like, rate, and follow to make sure you get the latest podcast episodes as soon as we release them every Thursday. Finally, you can head to MontelNews.com for more news and analysis from our team of journalists across Europe and beyond. See you next time.