The UK government announced GB Grid on 29 September, a state-owned company inside Great British Energy, the publicly owned energy company, created to compete with existing network operators1. Businesses will be allowed to build their own connections, with GB Grid able to co-invest. That speeds the wiring but adds no generation and no network capacity.
In March ministers gave AI Growth Zones, government-designated sites promised faster planning and grid access, the right to build their own high-voltage lines. GB Grid offers a version of that route, with state money, to any business. City AM, citing figures from Ofgem, Britain's energy regulator, put data centres at no less than 80 GW of the queue of demand waiting for a grid connection; other Ofgem papers put it near 73 GW. Either figure is well over Britain's national peak demand of about 45 GW.
CX Tech has lodged a 1,000 MW application for a campus near the former Chapelcross nuclear power station in Dumfries and Galloway, a record by City AM's count2. At 1,000 MW, that one request equals more than 2% of the national peak. A self-built line can bring a site like that to the edge of the network sooner; whether the network behind it can carry the load is a separate question GB Grid does not answer.
