Connections, Capacity & Clean Power: Britain's Grid Reform - NESO

I'm your host, Ed Porter, and welcome back to Transmission. Great Britain's energy system operator isn't just balancing the grid anymore, not that that was ever an easy job. The role has expanded, planning gas security, designing markets, building data infrastructure, and mapping where every megawatts of new generation should go. All while the system itself grows year and year. My guest today is Cato Neal, Chief Operating Officer at NISO, the Public Body, now responsible for planning and operating Great Britain's energy system. Kate covers a lot of ground, operability, connections, market design. If you want to dig into the data behind any of this, Co, Motor Energy's AI analyst has it. Link in the description. Anyone moving capital into GB power needs to understand how the operator is thinking, because that thinking shapes every project that gets built. Hello, Kate. Welcome to Transmission. Good to see you. Thanks so much for having me on. Our pleasure. And let's dive straight into it. So what is one thing that people consistently get wrong about operating NISO day to day? Yeah, I think actually the one thing that people typically get wrong is just the sort of the breadth and depth of our role. People have known us for such a long time as the electricity system operator, the electricity system planner. And I think they know conceptually now we're a whole system organisation, but it's maybe starting to see and feel some of that shift. You know, even in the strategic planning space, yes, historically we've been focused on electricity, now we're strategically planning across gas and across hydrogen. Our other roles are revolving in a very whole system way as well, providing that advice to government, providing a whole system resilience assessments out into into industry. You're just really seeing us make that sort of quite significant step change. And I think people knew it was on the cards for NISO. It was something we talked about. But I think seeing actually the reality of that play out the breadth and depth of where we are now spending our time, the things we are focused on, the whole system contribution we are making. I still hear that. I still hear people say the national electricity system operator. Yeah. And those are your other national energy system operator. And so your breadth is far bigger. Yeah, wildly different. And I think not just the breadth of what we cover, but the type of roles that we do. So of course we're still operating the electricity system, still very involved in market design, still very involved in network planning. But some of those other roles that I talk to, you know, providing the Clean Power 2030 advice to government taking the learnings from the North Hyde substation fire last year and translating those into what are the learnings for resilience across the energy system and with the adjacent sectors. You know, those are huge step changes. Not everybody does see them, but it's certainly something that we're hoping is coming to life. Okay. And North Hyde, that's close to Heathrow, right? Yeah, that's right. So there was the big substation fire that took out Heathrow briefly. But there were some really, really great learnings about how you think holistically about sort of critical assets, what's connected to them, how do you engage with those customers that are connected to those assets? Do we have that real deep understanding of the relationship to across the industry and how we will use them in an incidence? Okay. And I'm excited to a few of those sort of electricity examples. I'm just sort of keen to give an example from the energy side. So the broader energy side, is there like a molecule type example that you think about on a day to day or something you've delivered recently that you can give people a flavour of? Yeah, so probably the most pertinent one today is our focus on gas security of supply. So we work really closely with National Gas, the gas system operator. But Nesau actually has an explicit role in assessing the gas security of supply. Originally that role was five to ten years out and we've actually just agreed with government that we will expand that role. So we're now covering two to ten years out. We're working really closely with, as I say, National Gas who are focused on the coming year, so zero to one. And then we're looking at everything sort of two to ten out. And this is a great topic, right? Because right now global uncertainty in gas markets. Yeah. So how does Nesau think about that uncertainty and what more could we be doing to make our system more resilient? Great question. And I should probably just acknowledge, of course, the very human impacts of all of this that's going on in the Middle East and, you know, real people are impacted in very real ways and are cutely conscious of that. When you bring it back closer to home, I think there are a few ways that we're thinking about the impact of those geopolitical events. I think first and foremost in the UK or in Great Britain, we will see this manifest in price. In the first instance, we're already starting to see those price impacts in the wholesale market. And undoubtedly we're going to see those flow through through the energy price cap onto bills. And we're acutely conscious of that. A lot of focus on understanding that of what it looks like. Through a security lens, it's a slightly different conversation to the extent that, I don't know if you've seen a very recently published summer outlook and National Gas also published the summer outlook for the gas system. And just to give a quick, the summer outlook is a view of how the system will perform over summer. What are the risks? Exactly that. Exactly that. So it's looking at what do we expect to see on the system over the summer? What do we expect the profiles to look like? And then how do we feel about the resilience and the security of the system to respond to what we'll say? And the good news is that both of those outlooks are showing that the system is secure and resilient for this summer. Obviously we don't rest on our laurels. We're keeping a very, very close eye. We're already looking ahead. We'll publish an early winter outlook. So similar type of document, but looks a bit further out later this summer and a very strong focus on sort of understanding what the gas supply profile is looking like. We are very fortunate to have a good diverse mix of supplies, but we do take it, as you can imagine, incredibly seriously, huge amount of focus. The summer outlook is probably not the one that I'm sort of worried about. Usually that summer outlook, it tends to have things around things that oversupply of say solar and certain parts of the network. And so how can we say turn down solar to make sure we have the right balance of technologies? That sort of forgive my high level brief on the summer outlook, but that tends to be the type of thing we think about. Just because GB is a system, it's that winter load is the thing that kills us really. I think it's difficult as a system to manage. And so the summer outlook, I feel like we'll get through okay, is that winter outlook that's probably going to be the time that things will come home to roost in terms of the uncertainty that exists within the markets today. Yeah, can I give two two parts to my answer? Yes, of course you can. What one is just to say, I am fascinated actually by the summer outlook, because I don't know if you know this, but one of the hardest operability challenges for NISO isn't managing peak demand, that's difficult, we care deeply about it. One of our biggest challenges is actually managing the super, super low demand on the system and making sure that we, one, have as much visibility as we need of how low those demands might be, and two, that we've got all of the tools that we need to be able to have sufficient flexibility on the system to operate it in response to those low demands. We'll definitely come back to part one in a second. Okay, part two, you're absolutely right, we are very, very focused on looking out to the winter, looking out to what peak demand will look like, and working really closely with national gas, looking at, and it's very much their focus for the coming winter, so one year ahead, will we have the molecules, and is the infrastructure resilient? You put those two things together, and that sort of forms their assessment, and then we translate that into what would be the implications on gas supply for operating the power system, so. Okay, yeah. Well, let's have those two threads. Let's start on the first thread, which is I think probably one of the most asked questions in GB power markets, which is when it's really windy and when it's really sunny, we'll go into our apps, we take a look at sort of how the system is balancing, we see lots of solar, lots of wind, and yet there's nearly always this kind of 2% or 3% of gas running. Why does that gas run? Yeah, so the gas is running not for the megawatts, as you say, there is plenty of other forms of generation to meet and needs. It's actually running for vital services that it provides to enable us to operate the system securely and resiliently, and those services, inertia, for example, you don't get them naturally in renewable intermittent renewable a'r unilddragoedd. So, we are very, very focused on how do we get those services elsewhere cleanly and more cheaply than we get them by having gas on the system and essentially having to take the additional megawatts with it, but really having that gas on the system for the provision of those services. This has been a really long journey for us, so back in 2019 when we were the electricity system operator, when we first said we can see a path to being able to operate the system at zero carbon, that means with no gas units running. But in order to achieve that goal, the problem we've had to solve, the challenge we've had to solve for is how do you get those stability services that you need onto the system, a whole set of challenges that we've had to solve for and we've spent five or six years working on that and we're getting really, really close aren't we? Absolutely. First of April last year, 97.7% zero carbon. We are, I cannot tell you how eagerly we are watching the dashboards this week feels like it could be a week for another, another record who knows. But I think what we've seen over the last five years is brilliant innovation, both in the way we procure services who were procuring them from, so taking existing assets and getting them to set up their control systems differently or connecting them differently so they can operate in a different way that helps the system without providing additional megawatts. We've seen a lot of that innovation, we have worked really closely with the regulator to make sure the sort of their security quality of supply, SQSS the standards that we operate to are appropriate for the current sort of operating conditions of the system and you put all of that together. And what we're looking for is that Godelux moment, we call it where we have just enough of everything we need on the system and if the market offers us a zero carbon stack we can take it without having to turn gas on for services that we could have got elsewhere. That would be very cool to see. So cool. Absolutely. And I think one of the things that's quite interesting in terms of how you design this, right, so you've kind of in the early stages you looked at things like synchronous compensators or batteries in sort of grid with good forming inverters. Yeah. And you thought let's sort of do pathfinders, let's test this out. Now we're getting further on to the stage we now started to get markets coming through where Nesau are saying, OK, this isn't just going to be something that sort of happens in bilateral contracts kind of hidden away, we're going to say we need this amount of inertia or we need this amount of volts control in these regions. And that is, I think actually quite market leading for a system operator because it starts to give people, let's say you're a battery company or whoever you might be. It starts to give you a signal to say, could you build this thing for me? And then people can start to plan solutions, they can talk to the inverteous companies, they can work out what they should be providing at those particular places. Do you look at that and think we've got that rights or do you look at anything. That like that process is is OK, but there are so many more things that we need to fix on it. Yeah, it's a great question because I think the reality is it's an evolving process, right? So when we first, when we first entered into these contracts by those pathfinder projects that you talk about, we were, we weren't super experienced at articulating the need but letting the market design the solution. So we spent some time sort of getting that right, you know, we were trying to be perhaps overly prescriptive on the market was telling us, but there's a better way, you know, tell us what you need and we'll tell you how we can do it. So that's evolved, I think. I think the market's ability to sort of conceive of what they can provide and what the business model looks like for providing it that has evolved. So we started off, we could only really do these things on pretty long term contracts that gave real sort of long term clarity of revenue. We're seeing that evolve, so we're seeing the potential for these markets to come closer to real time. That's been super helpful to us because as the system continues to change, we only want to buy the right amount of the right stuff, you know, we don't want to over commit and not create space for future innovation. So what I feel like the evolution so far has been really positive, as always, you know, we have tried really hard to build very close relationships with industry with the market to understand what they think we should do differently and better. And that's a conversation that, you know, is ongoing. And at times you feel like it's not gone to that was kind of a good description of like how it's worked quite well, at times we felt actually we've not kind of got this right or that like we should have done things sooner or we should have. Operated those auctions in a different way. Again, I think some of it's come to, you know, how things have evolved over time. So these were new contractual arrangements for us. We were maybe a little bit tentative in how we set them up. We have worked really hard to get the risk balance in the right place, you know, the. So you're encouraging people to come forward to. Really encouraging people to come forward and take part. We want them to have skin in the game as well. We don't want them to feel though like they can't come and participate because the risks are too high and there's a lack of clarity. So that's something that we've adjusted as we've gone. It feels like everything in this industry can take a long time and you always have that sense that agitating sense of I'm sure there's a way to do this faster and better. And I think, you know, I look at the markets team in need. A fantastic team of really expert really credible individuals, you know, they've got the desire to get this right. And I think we see them making really great progress. There we go. And we see these kind of similar things. We see voltage, voltage control markets coming through in Spain. Now we see inertia markets going through Germany. And so I don't want to sort of say which order they happened in, but it's nice to see that the system operates as sort of influence each other. And I know we've gone down a bit of a niche here to get to this, but but people I really hope I listen to this and go and look when we can run a system without gas on it. That is a really cool thing and you'll forgive us for sending a little bit of time just talking about some of the weeds. Let's go back to that second thread before I forget it because otherwise I will. And that is that there's the really hard time. So so we have one challenge, which is how do you run the system on very low gas, very few spinning things with the exception of any sort of spinning competitors. But the other side of the coin is the real challenge of operating in winter. So you get this high demand period is cold. It is dark. So so is not very good. It is not very windy. And so you don't have the renewables kind of operating in a way that you'd like them to. And you're left with your gas fleets into connection, nuclear battery storage like how do you get through that to three week period. The focus really is on do you understand properly understand the sort of the characteristics of of all of those those assets and then have you got the flexibility to be able to sort of manage the interactions between them. And you've seen I think flexibility come much more to the four even as something that gets talked about in a meaningful way. I think historically as a sector we've talked about flexibility around the edges. Now I think there is a much better understanding of what different types of flexibility exists, why are they important. What does it actually take to be able to access them and use them in a meaningful way. And you know for the very different types of flexibility that we need to build out we got enough of the right signals that give us confidence that we can get to where we need to be over the long term. So if you go back to the clean path 2030 action plan published by government, you know huge requirement for growth in flexibility in that plan both both on the demand side consumers and industrial and and business demand huge amount to do there. And then a huge amount also to do on sort of low carbon dispatchable flexibility and and how do you you know unlock and sort of harness the value of that. And you know in any given winter we will always make sure that going in we know sort of what the range of scenarios looks like and how we will be able to operate the system to meet those demands. But a big part of Nesos role nowadays is that sort of longer term plan or we are not trajectory to have the flexibility amongst everything else we need in the system of the flexibility in the system that we're going to need. And that flexibility is critical right so we talk about that was a lot. I'm sure others do as well and we think it's really important when you get into those sort of hard to get through periods but there is also like we will need those gas units for a while yet right so when we get into those hard those harder periods through winter. There's kind of a gigawatt challenge so there's the number of gigawatts you need to meet. Within the system and then there's also the sort of the terrible hour so let's say you've got two week period where there's not enough energy on system you also need some of those gas units to run to provide this terrible hours. And so that's the kind of challenge you're trying to get through. We don't think we have an answer yet of sort of how we get through it so from my side I sort of see gas running on maybe longer than we would do we would like it to but that to me seems like the pragmatic approach. Yeah I think that's right certainly our analysis shows that we're going to need gas in you know in. dar bod hopdd bryder, roedd iddechyddienud cyvベulu. Mae urnau badu pat newu mo roedd yma cywegoedd ai bbyrch to fechadau employ内 bod cwhr ymryddau y gall o fechadau ei rhyn paen ran 'd diwyngor cynny i'n mis wedi WiFi 9. Mae'm £2 AlphaCheck. Mae'rázag i fodaethoddd yn gallu f挾ffadef髰 gyffgroansir a'r gyd mae'n gallu'r yma gan ymwyr a'r cyntry a'r amdyn. A'r yma o'n gallu'r yma o'n gallu'r ceithau rydol a'r yma. A'r yma yma yn ymfaithol rydol a'r mewn ymfaithol rydol amdyn. A'r gydol a'r yma yn ymfaithol rydol a'r yma yn ymfaithol rydol a'r mewn yw 's ffondr, a'r gydol a'r gydol a'r gydol a'r yma yn ymfaithol rydol. i'n gweithgio'r amod y cael gwasol i'n gwasol. Mae'n gwaith ar gyda'r gwasol i'n gwasol, roeddwn, o'r gwasol. Mae'n gwaith'r gwasol. Ond gwasol. Ond gwasol i'n gwaith. Mae'n gwasol i'n gwaith. chyd y gallu hynny yn dehisticiaeth o mo Lifwydd fawr, wneudau 4 runway팅 Xiolafen Chyd ychydig oddu hynnyn, cyhid i myndiau 왔u This a boflegan hon o fo fearnion byn yw gwybod iech yn gwneud un gwydbar twndos bob o 6 degree a'u sefal beowoorywch gymy Yldau Fydwch są japhanionad a adaptodol stag'n sut andrydd beth ineg sydd yn segch been ond hanen muchas swyd o hynny a'u mhor ddi'n�� będziemyau wneud sent ar yo sydd "Fort of the Storm" Now everyone has covered the collections of form at length and so I'm keen not to sort of do the story of how we got here but I'm keen to do the sort of where are we going to in the future. So where are we right now and how is this good for consumers. What I would say is where we are now is we've come a really, really long way to get to a place where we I think we'll soon be able to confidently say that we've got the right queue made up of the right projects that are ready and needed to meet the needs of GB's energy system. We couldn't say that, you know, even 12 months ago. So I think we are getting really close to that place. If you don't want to go back too much but it's useful to just remember the case for change for connections. I was 800 gigawatts sitting in the queue that's sort of inconceivable. There are 280 something gigawatts sitting in the queue today, 100 gigawatts of transmission demand that feels much closer to what we need. And because of the readiness criteria, the strict sort of entry criteria that we've applied to being in the queue. We also know that those projects certainly as of today are ready and they have to stay ready. They have to continue to prove that they are making progress to be ready to connect. That's really important. It's brought us a really long way. It hasn't yet met all of the ambitions of connection reform because I think the third part is to be able to have thinned the queue out to be able to connect projects within a reasonable amount of time to when they wanted to connect. We'll start to see how much of that plays out as we get offers out to customers. But as painful as it has felt and I know it has felt painful, I think we are in a good place today in terms of where we need to be. I think we've got a good trajectory going forward. It feels like the thing that for consumers, they'll start to see projects being connected at pace and that's in the ideal world. And that's where they'll start to see some of that coming through to their bills. Let's do the other side. Let's talk about the developer. So let's say I'm a developer or I'm sat in that sort of reformed queue. What do the next 12 months look like because there's a lot of uncertainty in there? So there's a few things, right? There's very practically what does it look like? Well, it looks like we need to get a farm sort of a clear and accurate offer out to every one of those projects. There are set windows within which we'll do that. So we have just finished for transmission and we're still working through for distribution, getting offers out for the projects that are due to connecting 26 and 27. And then there's a window for phase one projects at 2030 and then there's a window for phase two projects. We are on track working really closely with the network companies to making sure that every project in that queue gets its offer within the committed timeline. So practically speaking, that's what they can expect. And that offer will tell them when they're going to connect where they're going to connect and how much it's going to cost. So it's really important things for developers to know. And then they'll have a period of time in which to choose to accept that offer or not. So that's another very practical step that's going to happen. The bit that maybe is worth saying is what are the sort of the principles by which we're operating to get that work done. And I think the two that really stand out for me one is with clear and transparent communications. So I think that's long been a criticism of the process so far. Have we been clear enough and have we been sort of transparent enough out there talking enough about where we are in the process and what decisions are being made, what that looks like. Clear and transparent communications and then our actual ways of working have also got to shift. So we've already made some really big changes. So, you know, I personally spend a huge amount of time with the network companies through the delivery structures that we've put in place. Making sure that we are working really well together, working really well with customers and that we're able to sort of get through this process. Well, let's talk about that for a second because I think as we built up to Connections Reform projects were still being delivered. Then we go into Connections Reform and sort of some of the projects that are already committed were then being built throughout that process. It feels like there might be a bit of a hiatus now between sort of those projects that were being built and then Connections Reform coming in. If we then hit a new, a new stride as it were and all of a sudden we're delivering projects or offers are going out at sort of two extra rate that they were historically. That's good to get the offers out, but at some point sort of the rubber hits the road and we have to have to your human story. We have to have a literally qualified people who can do this work and make sure this stuff actually happens. So how do you think about the sort of human delivery of expertise to make sure these projects actually get delivered? Because there's something I worry about that we've got this big wave of projects coming through and we will have an offer. But it's not worth anything if you actually can't get the people to do it. Yeah, it's a really great shout. How do we think about it? Well, we think about it a lot and we recognize and I think in particular the network companies who are ultimately creating that offer, all the details of that offer for customers recognize that there is huge value in early engagement with the developer to say is this offer actually going to work with you. They've spent a lot of time, the network companies talking to developers about is this the window that you want would a better time look different. Do you need longer those types of discussions about the realities of getting stuff connected. They have long happened. But as you say, when the volume of offers, the volume of projects to get built goes up. We have to be ready to sort of face into that and have those conversations. Are there any levers that you can pull? If it starts to happen, if it starts to get delayed, we've got offers out but we actually can't get stuff done. Is it still within ESO's control to do things to try and influence that? Or is that kind of at that point does it go over to the sort of network owners to think about this problem? We work really closely together on all of these challenges. It's interesting, right, because the focus has always been on, like, get the offers out, people need the certainty and the clarity. It is the network companies that do all of the studies, all of the engineering studies and values ultimately what dictates the components of the offer, the conditions of the offer. I don't know if you've got great ideas, we'd love to hear them. But for me, typically what I come back to is as long as we've got a really open and transparent dialogue, that is probably our best route to maintaining fit for purpose processes. If you are interested in electrical side of things, then get in touch with network companies. There are many roles going for people to connect up pieces of kit. It's a fascinating time to be in this space. Let's move on from connections specifically on to our niche part. The battery storage queue, that was a very large part of the queue, has been slimmed down. This now, in the 80 or 90 gigawatts, I can't remember exactly, we think we need something like 40 gigawatts, probably. The Clean Power Plan was talking about 23 to 27. Still, we have more than we think we need. That means it's oversubscribed. That means that Nesau are having to think about all those projects that are in that queue. How do you go from that oversubscribed queue down to something that is closer to perhaps what you're after? How do you do that without triggering loads of network studies for the whole 90 gigawatts? Because that does feel like it would be a waste of some time, because some of those projects aren't going to get built. You've really articulated the real complexity and trade-offs that we're having to think about as we navigate this conversation, you're right, the oversubscription is multiples of what we need here for 2030. There are two real consequences of that, one you've rightly called out, which is just the sort of the time. I am a'r cymryd i cymryd i'n coss i ddynnau eich ar yngynyrn i'n bachgwarn, ac mae'n gwaithio'r cymryd i'n ddynnau cael bwysig. Mae'n gwaithio'r cymryd, ac mae'n gwaithio'r cymryd i'n gwaithio'r cymryd. Mae'n gwaithio'r cymryd i'n gwaithio'r cymryd, ac mae'n gwaithio'r cymryd. Mae'n gwaithio'r cymryd i'n gwaithio'r cymryd i'n gwaithio'r cymryd i'n gwaithio'r cymryd. Mae'n gwaithio'r cymryd i'n gwaithio'r cymryd i'n gwaithio'r cymryd i'n gwaithio'r cymryd i'n gwaithio'r cymryd i'n gwaithio'r cymryd i'n gwaithio'r cymryd. Mae'n gwaithio'r cymryd i'n gwaithio'r cymryd. Mae'n gwaithio'r cymryd. And thinking about what we need in that context. What it doesn't do because it's not a centrally plan is dictate which projects get built precisely where and that is where the market comes. But you're right, there is a tension in there about how much do we strategically plan? How specific are those plans? I think for me, and you know, I've no doubt the sweet spot is really hard to find. I don't think this is a science. I think it is something of an art form. I think it's about ensuring that those strategic plans already in and of themselves have some level of flexibility. They're never completely binary. You have ranges and you look at how things are evolving as those ranges change over time. They get refreshed every so often. So even the SSEP, which you know, still yet to publish the first SSEP, but that will be rerun every three years. The strategic spatial energy plan. Sorry, yes, the strategic spatial energy plan. So that will set out sort of 20, 30, 5 onwards. What do we need on the system? And then closer to real time, you've got to make sure that the processes by which you are delivering against that plan, that they have enough flexibility to adapt to changing conditions as you described you're actually right. But if you take connections reform as an example, when we open the next window for connections, you know, if we have seen through attrition that we're now not at the cap, then that capacity becomes available, the next projects will come forward. I would say probably imperfect. I don't know what perfect would look like. It's probably imperfect. But it is better than the alternative we've had before, which is in the absence of a strategic plan, we haven't been able to make, for example, the Big Network build decisions, you know, in order to reduce overall cost to consumers across the whole energy system. So I really do think, you know, we talked right up front about Nesos role. And I talked about the whole system lens to it. The other bit of our role that I think you see playing out here is our ability to sort of paint that picture, identify opportunities, identify risks, look for the trade-offs, call them out, and then find ways to make sure that between our strategic planning and our processes, there is enough flexibility in the system to deal with them all. And there have been some cases of that, which I think is fair to give a sort of credit for. I think the industry would love to see that. Look, we've looked at this thing, we've been tracking this project, this project dropped out, sorry. And we've seen that coming through in the press, and it's okay, so that's kind of freeing up space. And that gives us, like, we know that's happened, we're thinking about it, we're going to be updating the plans, and we have that flexibility. I think if people understand that, I think it will help people on this. So then go sort of one step beyond. So you are right that transmission build out has been relatively slow over the last sort of, a few decades versus, like, how it once has been. And we're now going through this great big program of building out more transmission. What is stopping us, kind of falling into the same trap of overbuilt or over subscribed cues, and sort of this situation where when application windows reopen, everyone just rushes in and books are a slot. Well, hopefully the way the codes and methodologies have been designed, we will prevent that from happening because the same sort of high entry criteria, so are you needed? And then the readiness criteria, are you actually credible and going to participate in the ground? Those two things, they will still remain true. So that should stop the sort of the massive influx. We need to see what the next windows look like, and I think test our processes and make sure they are working as we hope. We want projects to come forward where we need them. So we want to make sure the methodologies sort of allow that. But I'm confident, certainly on generation connections, we won't end up in the same place because those criteria will be important. We'll also, through the milestone, through the Q management milestones, continue to sort of test the quality of the Q and things will fall out if they don't meet their milestones and then we'll bring new projects in. The interesting one, I think, that we haven't necessarily nailed yet, is the Q for demand. So as you know, demand connections are encamped, we saw a similar sort of massive uptick in demand connection applications to the Q in the late stages of connections reform. And how much of that is real? Well, very hard to say, and that's where we're working with government and off-gem to try to look, take all of the lessons from generation connection reform and say, you know, how do you actually figure out what is speculative versus what is ultimately actually going to get built? What was just a rush to get a place in the Q, but isn't actually ready? We know from generation connection reform, it is actually quite hard to figure out what's real. But if you look at what Desnaz is thinking about, what off-gem is thinking about, what Nesos is thinking about, there is definitely an intention to sort of curate that Q, so thin it out. And ensure it's ready. Do you think about it spatially as well? In the sense of, you know, let's say we've got all the wind in Scotland, wouldn't it be nice to have say data centres in Scotland? Do you kind of think about it in the same sort of allocation by region? Yeah, hugely important. And it comes back to again, doesn't it, where the beauty of spatial planning, strategic planning of the system and then market, design helps you sort of achieve those really sweet outcomes like generation going and demand going and locating where the generation is? OK, I have one final question on connection reform, which is, I think it's a little bit of a forgotten part. So co-location, the concept that sort of two units can use the same connection and just kind of think about this logically, so when you have a say, a solar park, that is generating during the middle of the day. If you put a battery on that, the battery doesn't want to export at the same time as solar, like why would it? It's looking for a time in the evening when the solar is not generating to then export. And in theory, you could kind of get much better utilization out of that particular network point by sort of encouraging this co-location. It feels like in the connections of form process, we've almost been sort of single-minded about wind or solar or gas or batteries and they've all kind of got their own individual buckets. And yet we haven't thought about ways of combining some of these technologies. And when we look at, say, Spain or Germany, they're trying to get these schemes to come through where they're encouraging people to do this co-location. So has it been forgotten about or am I missing it? So definitely not forgotten. In fact, a'r cymryd yng Nghymru, ddiwch yn ymwch i'r cymryd, ddiwch i'r cymryd, ddiwch i'r cymryd. Mae'r cymryd yn ôl, ac mae'r cymryd yn cymryd yn ymwch i'r cymryd. Mae'r cymryd yn ôl ymwch i'r cymryd, cymryd ymwch i'r cymryd, cymryd ymwch i'r cymryd ymwch i'r cymryd, ac yn ymlyn ei ffwrth i'r cyflwynau yw oes â faid i'r cyflwynau yna, ac yn ymlyn yna mwy'n yw cyflwynau. Mae'r cyflwynau, ac yn ymlyn yw'n amser yna, ac yn ymlyn yma. Mae'n amser yma yn aroddau sydd yma yn yna i'r cyflwynau yma. Mae'n amser yma. Mae'r cyflwynau yn amser yma, ac yn ymlyn yma. Mae'n amser yma. Mae'r cyflwynau. Mae'r cyflwynau yn amser yma. I'm going to have to take an outage to collect it. Imagine planning for that. Am I going to get all of that access to the network? This feels like a great AI problem. It's a great AI problem. I think if you-- Yeah. It's very good with large data sets. So if you fed it, sort of-- And there's obviously problems with this, right? But if you fed all of the data points into, say, a very large-- into something like Claude or whatever it might be, and you run that, it would be quite interesting to see what it would come out. Because it would probably say something like, this supergrip transformer that's here is running on hot standby, but it doesn't need to. We could be doing something with this. And it's almost like you could get a sort of fresh device on so many of the problems that are sort of not allowing us to run our network as hard as we'd like to. So I'd be fascinating to see-- I don't know whether it'll actually happen, but I'd be fascinated to see what the outcome would look like. Well, we're on it. We're working on it. It's really active. We're also trying to learn not just from others in the energy sector globally, but also from other organizations who are dealing with similar types of problems, not necessarily energy-related, but lots of data having sorted to come up with really-- solve really complex pathway type questions. So yeah, I'm excited. And I know you were looking to key into plug a topic as well. So let's give you the opportunity to plug that. Yeah. Well, I think it goes to a bit of what we've talked about today. So if you think about geopolitical context, sort of security of supply questions, changing nature of the system, the operability of the system, the challenges that we're going to face and the market solutions that we're going to need to help us solve those problems, it just remains so forefront of mind. It's so important. And it feels like an area where we can get plenty of help. So we've very recently published a 2026 operability strategy report alongside our market's roadmap. The market's roadmap starts to explore routes to market for different types of assets and how we're thinking about unlocking those routes to market. I would love people to engage in that. Take a look at what we've put out, talk to us about it, tell us what more we can do and how you can help. That's super interesting. And we will put the link to that in the comments. Thank you. And then the final question, is there a topic in the energy world that you have a contrarian view on? Yeah, so I think this view may be pretty contrarian, but I'm going to take it anyway. What I'm going to say is actually I like connections reform. I appreciate that the connections reform journey hasn't necessarily been great for everyone. And it's been a long time and a lot of uncertainty. And we haven't always got the delivery of connections reform right. But honestly, if I reflect on what we're trying to achieve, the need to solve a really challenging problem for industry and to move us away from something that was not at all fit for purpose, to something that is fit for purpose and can work for the future to do it in a way that's been really consultative with industry that's brought so many voices in. And maybe even-- I don't know-- but it may be in energy terms in some respects delivered relatively quickly compared to some of the other reforms that we have tried as an industry to deliver. I genuinely believe, and I'll hold on to, we're doing the right thing with the right intent. So yeah, that's my contrarian view. An incredibly formative process. And I wonder whether a similar group in 10, 15 years time will look back at the connections reform process and say, well, why does the system look like it is today? Or does today? It's because of this process we went through. So yeah, a fascinating place to end this. Kate, thank you very much for coming on. You've been a wonderful guest. Thank you for having me. [MUSIC PLAYING]