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GIS Boundaries for GB DNO Licence Areas
L o a d i n g
Owner
National Grid ESO - view all
Update frequencyunknown
Last updated3 months ago
Overview

This dataset contains approximate GIS (geographic information system) geospatial boundaries for each of the DNO Licence Areas in Great Britain. There are 14 licensed Distribution Network Operators (DNOs) in Britain and each is responsible for a regional distribution services area. DNO Licence Areas are sometimes referred to as GSP Groups and historically have also been known as Public Electricity Supplier (PES) regions, though the latter name is no longer widely used. The DNO Licence Area boundaries are unusual because they are only well defined when tested. The boundaries tend to run through rural areas and change over time whenever a new connection is added close to a boundary. For example, a new connection close to an existing boundary can approach the DNO responsible for both neighbouring Licence Areas to ask for a connection, and is free to choose either depending on how much they will charge - once the new connection is made the boundary is, theoretically, re-drawn to ensure that the new connection falls into the correct Licence Area. The boundaries in this dataset were originally shared by Western Power Distribution, now National Grid Electricity Distribution (the DNO responsible for 4 of the 14 Licence Areas) and come with the disclaimer that they are probably a little outdated and not 100% accurate. That said, they are a good indication of the geography of DNO Licence Areas. DNO Licence Areas are widely used as an aggregation entity when reporting electricity network data, for example, in Elexon's publication of electricity settlement data. As such, they are also useful for regional modelling of the GB electricity transmission network, for example to aggregate distributed embedded generator energy flows onto the transmission network. A good example of this is the Regional PV_Live outturn estimates published by The University of Sheffield (https://www.solar.sheffield.ac.uk/pvlive/regional/).

BoundariesDNODemandGISGSPGSP GroupGenerationGrid Supply PointLicence AreaPESPublic Electricity SupplierRegionalShapefileSubscribable
Additional Information
KeyValue
Update FrequencyAd hoc
harvest_object_idbbc3b684-4d94-4cef-9051-a81b3eae179d
harvest_source_id916f7f66-3a3b-43e9-afc0-85d31134d7b3
harvest_source_titleNational Grid ESO
Files
  • ZIP
    GB DNO Licence Areas 20200506 with ESRI Shape File
  • PDF
    GB DNO Licence Areas 20200506
  • GeoJSON
    GB DNO Licence Areas 20200506 with GeoJson
  • ZIP
    GB DNO Licence Areas 20240503 with ESRI Shape File
  • GeoJSON
    GB DNO Licence Areas 20240503 with GeoJson
  • PNG
    GB DNO Licence Areas 20240503
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Access conditionsAccess control: Unknown
License conditionsLicense: Other (Public Domain)