The short answer
Most on-farm solar schemes are not in the national connections queue at all, and the delays reported in the press do not apply to them. What does apply is a local network application, and its outcome sets the ceiling on the project.
The most common outcome on a rural network is not refusal. It is an offer to connect with a limit on how much you can export. That is usually workable, and sometimes it is better than the alternative, but it changes the design and it changes the economics.
The threshold most advice gets wrong
The reformed national queue, with its Gate 1 and Gate 2 process and the delays that have been widely reported, applies broadly to projects of 5 MW and above in England and Wales. The mechanism is a code change called CMP446, approved on 12 May 2025, which raised the assessment threshold from 1 MW to 5 MW (NESO).
Below that, it is an ordinary application to the local distribution network operator on ordinary timescales.
Two exceptions matter and both catch people out:
- In 39 of the 225 Grid Supply Points in England and Wales, where there are transmission fault-level issues, the threshold stays at 1 MW.
- In Scotland the threshold is 200 kW, because the transmission network there runs at lower voltages.
So a 500 kWp scheme in England is a routine application, and the same scheme in Scotland is not. Establish which side of the line a holding sits on before quoting anybody a timetable.
What kind of application, and how long it takes
G98 covers installations up to 16 amps per phase, which is 3.68 kW on single phase and 11.04 kW on three phase. It is connect-and-notify: install it, then tell the network operator.
G99 covers everything above that. Apply and wait for approval before installing. Almost every farm scheme falls into G99 Type A, which is anything under 1 MW, and Type A carries the lightest technical compliance burden of the four categories. That is a real, if minor, argument for keeping a scheme under 1 MW where the demand case allows.
The quotation timescales are set by a guaranteed standard, and the compensation for missing them is an entitlement rather than a goodwill gesture (ENA, April 2024):
| Connection | Working days to quote | Compensation if late |
|---|---|---|
| Low voltage, demand | 25 | £80 per working day |
| Low voltage, generation | 45 | £80 per working day |
| High voltage, demand | 35 | £165 per working day |
| High voltage, generation | 65 | £165 per working day |
Read the generation rows against the demand rows. A generation connection takes the network operator roughly twice as long to quote at every voltage. A high voltage generation quote is 65 working days, about thirteen weeks, before you even know the number. Build that into any option timetable or conditional agreement, and diarise the deadline so the compensation can be claimed.
Before spending money on design, ask for a budget estimate. Those come back in 10 working days below 1 MVA.
Who pays for reinforcement, and why it matters more than it sounds
Since April 2023 the rules split along a line that is very relevant to farms:
- Demand and mixed-use connections are “fully shallow”. The customer pays for the extension assets only. Any reinforcement needed further up the network is funded through everybody’s distribution charges.
- Generation connections are “shallow-ish”. The generator pays for the extension assets plus reinforcement at its own connection voltage. Reinforcement above that voltage is socialised.
- There is a high-cost cap of £200 per kW for generation. Above the cap, the customer pays the full reinforcement cost.
Two consequences worth acting on.
The first is a design point. A farm’s demand upgrade is cheap. The same farm’s generation connection is not. So where a project can be structured so that the binding constraint is import rather than export, for instance a battery charging on site, or electrified drying, or heat, the charging treatment is more favourable. It is worth testing whether a demand-led design changes the bill before accepting a generation-led one.
The second is subtler and it is the one people miss. Where a scheme’s constraint sits above its own connection voltage, the network operator will not send a reinforcement bill. It will instead offer a flexible connection with curtailment, or a distant date, or both. The capital problem has been converted into a revenue problem. That is not necessarily worse, but it has to appear in the appraisal as a reduction in output rather than disappear because no invoice arrived.
Why rural connections cost more
The network operator’s own published data makes the point. An urban connection carried out in a batch with others averages £4,662. A single connection in a mixed urban and rural area, not batched, averages £8,845, roughly double (NGED). A farm is never batched.
Four compounding issues:
- Distance. The published example costings assume a few metres of cable in a footpath. A farm is typically hundreds of metres to over a kilometre from a suitable network point, across private land, under tracks or through hedgerow. Cable length and surface type are the leading cost drivers.
- No batching. A single farm connection pays the full mobilisation on its own.
- Single phase is a hard ceiling. It caps connect-and-notify at 3.68 kW against 11.04 kW on three phase, and constrains every threshold above that.
- Voltage rise on long rural spurs. This is the technical constraint that most often produces a disappointing export offer, and it is worth understanding because it explains a lot of apparently arbitrary decisions.
Voltage rise, in plain terms
Electricity flowing out of your inverter and into a long, thin rural cable pushes the local voltage up. The network operator has a legal duty to keep voltage within statutory limits for everyone on that line. The further you are from the substation, and the thinner the cable, the more your exports move the voltage.
So the amount of export the network will accept can be far below what the roof could produce, and far below what the identical array would be allowed in a village two miles away on a shorter cable. This is why two similar farms get completely different offers, and why the answer is usually export limitation rather than a bigger cable. A bigger cable is the network operator’s cost to quote and yours to pay.
The three positions a farm can take
| Position | What it is | What it buys |
|---|---|---|
| Zero export | Nothing crosses the meter outward | Fastest, cheapest, least technical scrutiny. Not automatically accepted, so do not assume |
| Export limited | Export capped at an agreed figure by a control scheme | The workhorse. Sized to what the network can take rather than what the roof can produce |
| Full export | Uncapped to registered capacity | Highest theoretical value, and it triggers the full assessment, the reinforcement question and the longest timetable |
Export limitation is governed by an engineering standard called G100. The scheme has to be fail-safe, must not rely on wireless communication between components, and must reduce output within a few seconds. The limitation equipment itself is a modest cost, in the order of a few percent on a commercial system. On a complex farmyard with several supplies, the metering and communications work can cost more than the limiter.
The important question to ask at design stage, not afterwards: if we export-limit now, can the limit be raised later without a new connection application? Sometimes yes, sometimes no, and it depends on how the connection and the metering are designed. It is a cheap question now and an expensive one in five years.
Curtailment: what to assume when the offer is flexible
A flexible or non-firm connection means the network can turn your export down when the network is constrained. How often depends heavily on your position in the queue on that circuit.
The clearest practitioner figures we found (Roadnight Taylor, updated May 2026):
| Position on the circuit | Typical curtailment |
|---|---|
| Early connections | A few percent |
| Subsequent customers | 5 to 10% |
| Later customers | 20 to 40% |
| Under transmission-level management | Can exceed 60% |
Four rules for using those numbers honestly:
- Do not treat the figure in your offer as the central case. It is modelled on the network operator’s assumed capacity factor, its demand forecast, and the queue as it stood on the date of the study. If they model solar at 15% and your yield model says 11.5%, the percentage in the offer is not describing the quantity in your cashflow.
- Find out how curtailment is allocated. Under “last in, first out” your position is fixed when you connect and gets worse only for those behind you. Under a shared curtailment index it can deteriorate as others connect. A 10% assessment under each is not the same asset.
- Curtailment is not random. It correlates with your best output. Solar gets curtailed in the middle of sunny summer days, exactly when the array is producing most. Applying a flat annual percentage understates the revenue impact.
- There is no compensation. A flexible connection is a contractual acceptance of curtailment in exchange for connecting sooner and more cheaply.
Ask for the underlying data. UK Power Networks has issued curtailment assessment reports at offer stage since 2019, refreshed its datasets in August 2026 and provides a self-serve modelling tool. National Grid Electricity Distribution publishes a curtailment estimator with six supporting datasets. These turn an unknown into something you can model.
Why “size it to your own demand” has become standard advice
Three separate forces point the same way.
The value gap. A unit used on the farm is worth 25 to 35p. A unit exported is worth about 5p. Export is a residual.
The connection gap. A full-export design triggers the generation charging boundary, the longer quotation clock, potentially the national queue if it is large enough, and potentially active network management equipment. An export-limited scheme sized to demand can avoid all of it.
Curtailment falls away. A zero or low-export scheme has no meaningful exposure to constraint at all. The benefit is avoided import cost, which is contractually certain in a way that export revenue on a flexible connection is not.
The honest counter-argument. Sizing strictly to today’s demand caps the asset. If demand is 300 kW and the roof would take 800 kW, you are forgoing 500 kW of a twenty-five year asset at a moment when the marginal cost of extra panels is low and future electrification may grow the load considerably.
The better answer is usually: build the larger array, export-limit it now, and design the connection so the limit can be raised later. That only works if the offer and the metering permit it, which is why it is a design-stage question.
One case worth knowing
A free-range egg unit in Cumbria faced a £150,000 grid connection cost. Instead of paying it, the business installed 30 kWp of solar, a 45 kWh battery and backup generation for about £70,000 and ran off grid, displacing £1,000 to £2,000 a month of diesel, with a six-year payback.
The general point is broader than the specific case. Where a connection quote is large, on-site generation and storage are not competing against a per-unit electricity price. They are competing against the quote. Framed that way they win far more often. Get the reinforcement quote before dismissing either.
The due-diligence checklist
Establish which regime applies
- Is the scheme under 5 MW, and in England or Wales? Then it is a normal application, not the national queue. In Scotland the threshold is 200 kW. Confirm the Grid Supply Point in case it is one of the 39 where the threshold stays at 1 MW.
- If it is in the national queue, does it hold a Gate 2 or only a Gate 1 position? Gate 1 means no confirmed connection date.
Interrogate the offer
- Firm or flexible? If flexible, what curtailment assessment, and on what assumed capacity factor?
- Last in first out, or a shared index? Price the difference.
- How much contracted but unbuilt generation sits ahead of you on the same circuit? That is the leading indicator of future curtailment.
- What is the acceptance window? Distribution offers typically allow four weeks.
Charging and cost
- Is this a generation or a demand connection, and would a demand-led design change the bill?
- Is the £200 per kW high-cost cap engaged?
- Get the budget estimate before spending on design, and diarise the statutory quotation clock so compensation can be claimed.
The site’s own physics
- Single phase or three phase?
- How far to the nearest suitable network point, and over what?
- Is the agreed import capacity right for the future plan, including electrification and any battery charging? Reducing an over-specified import capacity is often the fastest saving available on a farm bill, but it has to be done with the electrification plan in view.
Design
- Has export limitation been modelled as an alternative to full export, comparing cost, date, curtailment exposure and net value?
- If export-limited now, can the limit be raised later without a new application?
- Is a battery in the base case? On an export-constrained site it is worth roughly twice what it is worth on an unconstrained one. See How big should a farm battery be?
Position as at 1 September 2026. Connections policy has changed several times in the last eighteen months and this page is reviewed quarterly. Thresholds, timescales and the high-cost cap should be confirmed against the current position before they are relied on for a decision.
