The Manchester plan

Our Manchester development plan releases network capacity to facilitate our stakeholders’ major planned developments and decarbonisation plans in the Manchester area.

Manchester has seen an increase of over 40% in population since 2000, combined with its employment growth being much higher than national levels during the last decade.

In October 2022 at their Green Summit, the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) highlighted its commitment to support the acceleration of the region’s decarbonisation to meet its 2038 target.

Our Manchester development plan includes:

• Two new primary substations in the south of Manchester, i.e. in the Mayfield regeneration area and at the Southern Gateway.
• The installation of a third transformer at two primary substations in the eastern part of the region, i.e. at Eastlands and Queen’s Park primary substations.
• The replacement of all transformers at Frederick Road BSP in Salford and the installation of three new transformers and new 132kV circuits, and the replacement of the 33kV switchboard panels at West Didsbury BSP

As the North West’s electricity distributor, we need to provide the network capacity required to facilitate the decarbonisation needs and other plans of our stakeholders and customers. As part of our distribution system operation (DSO) load-related investment, we need to optimise this process in terms of reducing costs, mitigating risks and maximising benefits to our stakeholders and customers. The Manchester development plan releases an additional 91 MegaVolt-Amperes (MVA) of capacity onto Greater Manchester's network, increasing Greater Manchester’s capacity from 322.2MVA to 511.4MVA - enough to power every home in a city the size of Salford — added to Greater Manchester’s grid.