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What does the UK's future energy ecosystem look like?

Creating opportunities for stakeholders

How you can engage with DSO opportunities

Smart and local benefits for our communities

What you can expect and when from DSO services

What does good look like for DSO?

Within our current price control, RIIO-ED2, we are continuing to identify parts of our licence areas where solutions on the distribution network can support transmission constraints. This is particularly relevant in our Scottish licence area due to existing constraints, the unique topology, and the different voltage control boundaries compared to England.

Through our Distribution Future Energy Scenarios we forecast future demand growth and the uptake of Low Carbon Technologies, renewables and other DERs. The forecasts ensure our approach is tailored to individual local communities by reflecting local environmental influences, the existing local network infrastructure and societal influences, such as age, employment and economic factors, among others.

Your future electricity grid

We are working to understand how the demands on our networks are likely to change over the next decade. This will help us plan how we will support our demand or generation customers through network investment or flexibility. To support this process, we commissioned Regen to complete a set of future electricity scenarios for our Southern and Northern network distribution licence areas out to 2035. These studies are informed by National Grid’s Future Energy Scenarios.

The role of energy efficiency measures

SSEN has taken an industry-leading step in forecasting energy efficiency uptake in its distribution areas. Energy efficiency will play a key role in meeting net-zero. SSEN is committed to working with the local communities it serves to help them realise their net-zero goals. 

Supporting whole system solutions

SSEN is in the process of embedding a whole system approach across our entire business that embraces opportunities to collaborate with others to enhance consumer benefits and societal outcomes. These include:

  • Increasing the efficiency around how we deliver services can lead to savings for customers.
  • Enabling effective and efficient roll-out of LCTs and avoiding unnecessary customer and societal costs.
  • Increased system resilience through a more holistic understanding of future impacts and a wider toolset of smart solutions, such as improving in-home energy efficiency to reduce demand.
  • Developing a better understanding of what our customers and stakeholders need from us.
  • Improving wider societal outcomes through improved support for our customers beyond net zero.

As part of our commitment to embedding the whole system approach, we are sharing our Whole System Registers for each of our licence areas to demonstrate the projects that we are leading on and in collaboration with others.  These registers will be maintained and updated every year to confirm how Whole System works are progressing and being embedded across our business.

SEPD Whole System Coordination Register

SHEPD Whole System Coordination Register  

Related information

Download our DSO Action Plan