Consultation on changes to National Grid Electricity Transmission plc’s electricity transmission licence to publish the Electricity Ten Year Statement (ETYS)
National Grid Electricity Transmission plc (NGET), as the System Operator, is obliged to provide industry participants and other interested parties with information about the National Electricity Transmission System (NETS). This includes two specific documents that provide information for existing and future network users: the Seven Year Statement (SYS) for the onshore transmission network and the Offshore Development Information Statement (ODIS) for the offshore networks.
These documents are not entirely aligned with each other, given that they are published at different times under differing requirements. In order to address these inconsistencies, NGET consulted its stakeholders in spring 2012 on the creation of a new Electricity Ten Year Statement (ETYS) covering Great Britain to replace the SYS and the ODIS. The first ETYS was published on 30 November 2012 and the second on 29 November 2013.
Stakeholders have welcomed the ETYS as an improvement on the SYS and the ODIS, and we recognise the merits of this more holistic reporting approach. A further driver for change has been the European Commission’s “Third Package” of legislative proposals for electricity and gas markets which requires Transmission Owners to contribute to the drawing-up of a non-binding Community-wide ten-year network development plan (TYNDP).
We note that NGET has consulted on the approach to the ETYS and that NGET considers that replacing the SYS and the ODIS with the ETYS would better meet stakeholder requirements. We share this view and therefore consider that it is appropriate to amend NGET’s licence obligations to reflect this development in a permanent manner. This letter seeks views about the proposed changes to the licence to facilitate the replacement of the SYS and the ODIS with the ETYS. We welcome responses to this consultation by 21 January 2014.