Overview
- Ofgem published a formal consultation on Wednesday proposing refundable upfront commitment fees to discourage speculative data centre projects from holding grid connection capacity.
- The consultation sets a proposed fee range of £237,500 to £712,500 per megawatt payable when a connection offer is accepted and returned when the site is energised or forfeited if the developer abandons its place.
- Ofgem says 315 data centre projects are in the connections queue, representing about 73 GW of demand that exceeds Great Britain’s roughly 45 GW peak electricity load.
- Alongside fees the regulator proposes queue-management milestones that require developers to show financial capability, commercial contracts and procurement progress to retain their place.
- If adopted the measures could speed connections for ready projects, raise costs for smaller or speculative developers, and interact with government fast-track planning and revised forecasts that sharply increased expected AI data-centre energy use.