Great Britain · Atlas · Where to build
A new battery would find the most work, at the lowest charge, across Yorkshire, Teesside and south Lancashire
We scored all 231 grid supply point areas in Great Britain, the patch of country each supply point serves, on five public measures of how much work the grid is likely to give a new battery and what it costs to connect. Today two areas in the north of Scotland lead, because NESO calls on batteries there more than anywhere else. Their lead is narrow, because NESO’s register now shows much more storage consented or building in Scotland. East Anglia rises for a few years, but its bottleneck is planned to clear in 2031. Over 2030 to 2034 the lead moves to Yorkshire, Teesside and south Lancashire, behind the bottleneck between the north of England and the Midlands.
What this measures. How much work the grid is likely to give a new battery in each place, and what it pays to connect. It does not measure revenue, profit or the cost of building. A place that scores well here still needs a commercial case.
Colour compares the 225 areas we can measure, so it shows where a battery does better or worse than elsewhere in Britain. It does not say whether a battery pays.
East Anglia's bottleneck is full a quarter of the time from 2027, until NESO's new lines clear it in 2031
Each chart shows one grid bottleneck from NESO's Electricity Ten Year Statement 2025. The black line is how much power NESO plans the boundary to carry each year, including reinforcements. The shaded band is the middle half of expected flows across it, the thin line the busiest twentieth of hours. Where flows rise above the black line, power is held back and a battery behind the bottleneck has work to do. The figure above each year is the share of hours the boundary is expected to be full.
Flows are the lowest of NESO's three pathways in each year, the closest NESO comes to our cautious case. NESO's plan raises East Anglia's capacity from 4.5 GW in 2026 to 5.3 GW in 2027, which matches the timing of the Bramford to Twinstead line, and to 12.3 GW in 2031. In NESO's own data, capacity also falls in some single years, such as 2030 in East Anglia and the north of England.
We take the cautious end of every published forecast
Each dot is one published view of 2030 capacity in Great Britain. The filled dot is the figure we use. For wind and solar that is the low end, because less generation means fewer bottlenecks and a weaker case for batteries. For batteries it is the high end, because more batteries means more competition.
Our position on hydrogen and floating wind
Several forecasts include hydrogen and floating offshore wind at scale by the 2030s. Our judgement as industry practitioners, as of October 2026, is that neither will be built at scale in that period. We count no hydrogen, and no floating wind beyond the demonstrators already running at Hywind Scotland and Kincardine. Removing electrolysers also removes electricity demand that several forecasts place in Scotland, which leaves more wind behind the Scottish bottlenecks and slightly strengthens the case for batteries there. We will review this view as projects reach final investment decisions.
The north of Scotland leads today, and Yorkshire and south Lancashire lead over 2030 to 2034
The ten strongest areas in 2030 and the areas that lead today, with their score in each. Red lines rise by three points or more, blue lines fall by three or more. Neighbouring areas often share a score, because most measures are set for a whole charging zone or for everything behind the same bottleneck.
Five measures make the colour, and each can be read on its own, with local room shown beside them
A deeper red means a stronger case on that measure alone. The parts sit beside the blend so the colour can always be checked against them.
How the colour is made
- The unit is the grid supply point area. NESO publishes 231 of them with its transitional Regional Energy Strategic Plan (January 2026), and gives forecasts of local generation and storage for each.
- Each measure is scored by size, from 0 to 100: how far an area's value sits between the 5th and 95th percentile of the measured areas, capped at both ends so one extreme cannot stretch the scale. Big differences count as big and small ones as small. The colour is a weighted average. For 2030 to 2034: how often NESO calls on batteries nearby, the transmission charge and how often the area's tightest bottleneck is full count 25% each; batteries coming 15%; new local wind and solar 10%. The weights were tested: under four quite different sets, 17 or 18 of the top 20 areas stay the same. Today drops the local measure and uses what NESO paid in 2025 to 2026 to manage the bottlenecks behind the area.
- Every measure is carried at the level it is known, and says so. Charges are set for 27 zones. How often batteries are called on is measured on 217 batteries, so it is pooled by zone, or by the areas behind the same bottlenecks where a zone has too few. How often a bottleneck is full is shared by every area behind it. Only the local measure differs from one supply point to the next.
- New generation follows the cautious case. National growth to 2030 is taken from the low end of the published forecasts, then placed by evidence: offshore wind from the projects with the strongest evidence first (under construction, then consented, then awaiting consent), transmission sites at their substations, and smaller sites by NESO's split for each supply point area.
- Room to connect locally is shown for each area but does not change the colour. It comes from the distribution network operators' own published capacity data for their primary substations, taking for each area the substation with the most room both ways. All six operators publish it. Electricity North West's comes from its public heatmap workbook of 14 August 2026, which gives generation room with no backup circuit allowed for, so its areas may read a little roomier. The operators define headroom differently: UK Power Networks publishes spare capacity before contracted connections are taken off, the others after, and some publish in MVA. Ranking areas on figures measured in different ways would mislead, so the measure is a guide to where a distribution-connected battery might fit, not part of the score.
- Money is not in the colour. The balancing data shows what batteries paid to charge, not what they sold the energy for, so the measure counts how often they were called on. Distribution headroom, land and planning are also out, and could each become a sixth measure.
What our checks changed
- Hornsea 4 is still in NESO's register, though Ørsted stopped the project in May 2025. It is removed.
- Hornsea 3 was first counted as storage, because its register entry also names a battery. Offshore wind with a battery now counts as wind.
- Local headroom was first counted at 10% of the colour. Two things broke it: Electricity North West's areas, before its workbook was added, rose up the ranking because they escaped the penalty other areas took for having no room; and UK Power Networks' areas looked roomier because it does not take contracted connections off its figures. Headroom is now shown but not counted.
- Scoring by order hid the size of the gaps, such as a charge of £97.75/kW a year in the north of Scotland against payments in the south. Scoring by size moved Tyneside up and London down by 60 to 90 places.
- Two batteries with 43 MW between them gave South Wales the highest measured use in Britain. Pooled groups now need two batteries and 50 MW, as zones do, so six areas in south Wales are not coloured.
- The South Wales bottleneck cost NESO nothing in 2025 to 2026, yet new generation behind it scored as pressure. Today’s view now counts only what NESO paid to manage each bottleneck, and the 2030 view how often NESO’s own figures show it full.
- The first draft counted only the two Eastern Green Links as new capacity, and so showed East Anglia leading in 2030 with nothing to relieve it. NESO's Electricity Ten Year Statement gives planned capacity year by year for every boundary, including Bramford to Twinstead and the lines due in 2031. Using it moves the lead from East Anglia to Yorkshire and south Lancashire.
- Every consented onshore wind project falls 0.4 GW short of the low national figure for 2030, so onshore is counted in full rather than scaled up.