The rest of the country, however, continued to use a patchwork of small supply networks. This opened in 1901, and by 1912 had developed into the largest integrated power system in Europe. The first use of this system in the United Kingdom was by Charles Merz, of the Merz & McLellan consulting partnership, at his Neptune Bank Power Station near Newcastle upon Tyne. ( February 2019) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message)Įlectricity pylons in a suburban area of Pudsey, West YorkshireĪt the end of the 19th century, Nikola Tesla established the principles of three-phase high-voltage electric power distribution while he was working for Westinghouse in the United States. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources in this section. This section needs additional citations for verification. National Grid plc is the transmission system operator for the whole GB grid. Infrastructure connecting offshore wind farms to the grid is owned by offshore transmission owners. In Scotland the grid is owned by ScottishPower Transmission in the south, and by SSE in the north. Since the privatisation of the Central Electricity Generating Board in 1990, the National Grid in England and Wales is owned by National Grid plc. There are undersea interconnectors to the Isle of Man, Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Norway. The National Grid is a wide area synchronous grid operating at 50 hertz.

It does not cover Northern Ireland, which is part of the Irish single electricity market. The network serves the majority of Great Britain and some of the surrounding islands. The National Grid is the high-voltage electric power transmission network serving Great Britain, connecting power stations and major substations, and ensuring that electricity generated anywhere on the grid can be used to satisfy demand elsewhere.

For the UK Ordnance Survey National Grid for mapping co-ordinates in Great Britain, see Ordnance Survey National Grid. This article is about the power grid in Great Britain.

National Grid Substation Location Map