The UK Government has announced a new publicly-owned grid investment body that could help the data centre industry with its power problem – but will Great British Grid actually get data centres connected faster? 

Well, potentially – just not quite in the way the name might suggest.

Great British Grid will sit within Great British Energy and invest public capital alongside private investment in electricity network infrastructure. It will also be able to compete for transmission projects put out to competitive tender.

What it will not do is take over Britain’s electricity system.

Existing network operators retain their roles, NESO will continue to operate, plan and coordinate the system, and Ofgem will remain the regulator. You can read more about what exactly Great British Grid actually is over on Electrical Review, but for now we want to explore exactly what it all means for data centres. 

The data centre queue problem

Ofgem’s latest figures show the scale of the challenge that data centres face. They show that contracted demand in the connection queue increased from 41GW in November 2024 to 125GW by June 2025, with around 73GW of that total associated with data centres.

Of course, not all of those data centres will be built, but Ofgem can only work with the data that it has, and that means one of two things – prep a grid that is able to cope with the massive increase or get better data. 

Now the Government is taking both approaches. For instance, Ofgem is already trying to make that queue more credible. It has proposed a commitment fee and new progress milestones for data centre projects, requiring developers to provide evidence that their schemes are genuinely progressing.

The whole aim of the scheme is to deter speculative projects and make it easier for viable developments to move towards connection. We should hear about what the reality of that scheme is soon, with the consultation having only concluded this month. 

But clearing speculative projects only solves one part of the problem. Even a well-developed data centre can still be left waiting if the electricity network itself is not ready to serve it.

Grid delays have already hit Nscale’s Loughton AI data centre, forcing the company to explore alternative power options for a campus designed to support 50MW of AI capacity and scale to 90MW.

That’s where Great British Grid could potentially help. Sure, it can build its own connection – like it already is planning to do, and something the Government is looking to encourage more of – but GB Grid could use its public capital to help accelerate the wider network infrastructure needed to release capacity for multiple projects. That could be considerably more useful to data centre developers than simply adding another way of building the final connection into a site.

CyrusOne certainly sees an opportunity.

The operator has already had to think carefully about grid availability in West London, with its recently approved Southall data centre set to source power without relying on existing local grid capacity.

Andreas Rathmann, Director, Power and Energy at CyrusOne, noted, “Grid connection delays and rising energy costs are creating risks for further data centre development in the UK. The sector needs certainty that power will be available when required, and that energy costs remain competitive.

“More competition in the delivery of power infrastructure will benefit the data centre sector. CyrusOne, as a global data centre operator, has a track record of working with utility partners to deliver power infrastructure. The competition envisaged by Great British Grid is an opportunity to leverage utility partnerships and accelerate the delivery of power infrastructure in the UK.”

Show me the money

There is still one rather important unknown, however – and it could fundamentally lead Great British Grid down a rather underwhelming path. 

How much money will Great British Grid actually have to spend?

The Government says its initial start-up costs will come from Great British Energy’s existing budgets, while the long-term budget for the expanded grid remit will be decided through a future spending review.

Until that is known, it is difficult to judge how much infrastructure Great British Grid will realistically be able to accelerate.

So, no, Great British Grid is not a magic fix for data centre connections.

Ofgem can make the queue more credible. Self-build can give developers greater control over some of the infrastructure connecting their sites.

But neither automatically removes a constraint already sitting on the wider network.

If Great British Grid can put public capital behind fixing those constraints, that is where it could actually make a difference – we just don’t know how much cash the Government is willing to spend.