The National Grid unveils £35bn upgrade plan

The National Grid has announced plans worth £35bn to significantly beef up the British electrical grid over the next decade.

The RIIO-T3 Business Plan for 2026 to 2031 will add 35 gigawatts (GW) of new power generation and storage to the mix and 19 Gigavolt-Amps (GVA) to support growing demand from power-hungry industries such as distribution networks, data centers, and gigafactories.

The plan will also include upgrading some 2,175 miles (3,500 km) of existing but now aging overhead power lines.

The National Grid, specifically its subsidiary National Grid Electricity Transmission (NGET), also plans to add 25 new substations around the country, with another 15 scheduled beyond 2031. Additionally, it will upgrade 10% of the existing substation infrastructure.

The investment see the NGET’s current workforce increase by over 50%, with more than 1,100 trainees, apprentices, and graduates to be onboarded by the end of RIIO-T3.

The NGET owns and operates all electrical power distribution infrastructure throughout England and Wales. They are responsible for the delivery from suppliers to the homes of over 25 million households and many businesses.

Future-proofing the national grid

All these upgrades will significantly increase the amount of electricity the grid can handle and dramatically increase its resilience for the future. It will also install greater decentralisation and, the NGET explains, provide more customers with two-way power flows.

This will prove vitally crucial if established self-generation, such as solar PV, or up-and-coming systems, such as bidirectional electric vehicle charging, are to have a real future in the UK.

Getting ready for a net-zero future

“This will lead to more stable bills, avoiding the kind of energy price shocks seen in 2022 and keeping bills lower in the longer term,” the NGET explained.

“The new infrastructure we are building will also move this clean power across the country and reduce the costs to consumers of constraining renewables, realising billions of pounds of consumer value.”

To this end, the NGET warns customers will likely see a temporary bill increase from the current level of £23 per person per year in 2026 to somewhere in the region of £44 per person per year by 2031.

These costs form a small percentage of your existing bills, currently at around £25 per year.

The NGET’s RIIO-T3 plan represents a bold step toward modernizing the UK’s electrical infrastructure and supporting the nation’s transition to net zero by 2050.

With investments in capacity, resilience, and innovation, this ambitious plan promises a cleaner, more reliable energy future for homes and industries across England and Wales.

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Christopher McFadden Contributor

Christopher is an Environment, Health & Safety (EHS) specialist with extensive experience advising consumer and trade clients on energy efficiency and sustainability. With a Master's in Earth Sciences from Cardiff University, Christopher has attained professional energy and sustainability auditing qualifications and various postgraduate certificates and diplomas. He is a qualified and accredited Level 3 and Level 4 non-domestic and domestic energy assessor, a Green Deal assessor, and a Practitioner member of the Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment (IEMA). He also recently qualified as a level 5 Retrofit coordinator. In addition to his day job, Christopher has also honed his skills as a STEM writer for several well-known online publishers, sharing his knowledge and passion for science, engineering, and dinosaurs with millions of readers around the world.

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