Speed up electricity grid upgrade or else face higher bills, warns UK watchdog

A wind farm near Ardrossan, Scotland. A £70bn programme is under way to ensure more power can be carried from renewable sources to homes. Photograph: Alan Majchrowicz/Getty View image in fullscreen A wind farm near Ardrossan, Scotland. A £70bn programme is under way to ensure more power can be carried from renewable sources to homes. Photograph: Alan Majchrowicz/Getty Speed up electricity grid upgrade or else face higher bills, warns UK watchdog National Audit Office says failure to implement £70bn modernisation would also hold back economic growth The ‘great grid upgrade’ is off track – ministers should spell out the risks for bills Consumers will pay higher energy bills unless the UK government speeds up work on a vast programme of upgrades to the electricity grid to enable the switch to renewables, the public spending watchdog has warned. The National Audit Office (NAO) said that without faster action the extra costs associated with managing the ageing power network, which are ultimately passed on to the public, could reach £7.8bn a year by 2030. A £70bn programme is under way to modernise Great Britain’s network of pylons, overhead lines and substations so that more power can be carried from wind and solar farms and other clean energy sources to homes. Labour has said its plan to decarbonise the grid by 2030 will keep consumer bills lower than they would otherwise be, but the NAO said that if the planned upgrades did not happen fast enough then bills could rise instead. Of the 80 projects it said were needed to meet the target, just 16 are finished and most are in their early stages. Gareth Davies, head of the NAO, said the planned upgrades would “test systems not designed for activity at this pace or scale”. He added “Value for money now depends on delivery. Failure to implement these necessary grid upgrades will hamper economic growth as well as increase consumer bills.” When the grid cannot carry enough electricity from where it is generated to where it is needed, the system operator pays windfarms to switch off and gas plants to switch on elsewhere to meet the demand. These so-called constraint costs are added to bills, and reached £1.9bn in 2025-26. Without faster upgrades, the NAO said, they could climb as high as £7.8bn by 2030. Plug-in balcony solar panels to go on sale in UK for first time Meanwhile, the £70bn investment will require transmission owners – the private companies that build and manage the network – to more than quadruple their annual spending on upgrades, from £2.5bn in 2025-26 to more than £11bn by 2027-28.