Key takeaways
The scale of planned GB transmission expansion means access to international supply chains will become a critical constraint on delivery.
Combining quantitative demand modelling, industrial landscape analysis and stakeholder interviews provided a comprehensive assessment of future supply-chain requirements.
The findings provide an evidence base to help industry, policymakers and investors identify where domestic manufacturing capability can be strengthened and where international sourcing will remain essential.
Current UK manufacturing capability represents less than 10% of forecast demand across many critical transmission asset categories, with some categories closer to 1%.
Project Background & Aims
Making the UK a clean energy superpower is one of the UK government’s five defining missions, supported by endorsement of NESO’s Clean Power 2030 aspirations and the industry’s Beyond 2030 GB transmission system blueprint. These plans represent a scale of network investment not seen in recent decades, raising important questions about whether existing supply chains can provide the required equipment within the timescales set out by Clean Power 2030 and Beyond 2030.
The Grid Scale-up project aims to assess where demand for transmission system assets can be anticipated to be felt most acutely. In combination, this project has also preliminarily assessed the UK’s present-day domestic supply capability for relevant assets, so as to draw a comparison.
PNDC has supported the National Manufacturing Institute Scotland (NMIS) among a wider group of interests within High Value Manufacturing Catapult (HVMC) to provide complementary skillsets to the project: HVMC bring expertise in supply chain and strategic industrial analysis; PNDC has spoken to the interests and componentry of power systems.
PNDC’s Role
We looked beyond the headline assets. Classifying public lists of transmission projects by asset category and project scope allowed us to generate a baseline assessment of asset volumes with a reasonable degree of certainty; each transmission project, however, is itself a complex undertaking and represents a large combination of quantifiable assets, so we took an understanding of power systems to compile a ‘bill of materials’ assumed to be typical for projects of each type. By developing representative bills of materials for different transmission project types, the team translated high-level network plans into estimates of the equipment and components that will be required at scale.
We characterised the industrial landscape. By listing and classifying the organisations which comprise the GB power systems industry we created a cursory ‘map’ of the landscape to provide a first glimpse of the inherent complexity of a regulated industry supporting a critical infrastructure. This was further supported by collating and synthesising international and domestic economic activity data. The relationship of these data to transmission assets was inferred, and offered a central perspective to complement anecdotal understandings of the industry and hence to further improve the comprehensiveness of the analysis.
We engaged with a cross-section of industry representatives. Twelve semi-structured interviews formed a qualitative evidence base of perspectives on the challenge associated with constrained supply of transmission assets, the role for innovation, and some systematic challenges of the task networks face in catalysing anticipated uptake in UK electrical demand, met by renewable energy.
Demand Through 2035 to 2050 is Forecast to Understand Growth Areas for Potential UK Manufacturing
Outcomes
The analysis suggests that domestic manufacturing activity is currently sufficient to meet only a small proportion of projected demand across many transmission-asset categories. For several critical technologies, estimated UK capability equates to less than 10% of anticipated demand; in some cases, closer to 1%.
A roadmap was presented offering an indication of practical steps the industry could pursue toward maximising UK access to all requisite assets. Rather than recommending domestic manufacture of every component, the roadmap advocates a targeted strategy: strengthening UK capability in selected high-value areas while maintaining access to global supply chains where international sourcing remains the most effective option.
Ongoing work in relation to the UK’s modern industrial strategy clean energy industries sector plan intends to build upon and take forward our findings.
Our work with PNDC and NMIS was a great example of the success possible through close collaboration and teamwork. As the subject matter experts on the whole energy system, PNDC’s knowledge and contribution was critical to understanding the UK electricity grid requirements, the innovation challenges and future manufacturing opportunities to benefit both UK industry and net-zero.
This project demonstrated the value of combining power-system expertise with manufacturing and supply-chain analysis. Understanding where future network demand will intersect with existing industrial capability is essential if the UK is to capture economic value while delivering a net-zero electricity system.
Without timely action, growing international competition for transformers, switchgear, HVDC equipment, cables and power-electronic systems could increase project costs, extend lead times and create risks to delivery of Clean Power 2030 and Beyond 2030 ambitions.
