Free energy tools and data for site owners

Spare grid capacity near your site: substation headroom check

Rapid chargers, batteries and solar all depend on how much spare capacity the local electricity network has. Enter your postcode to see the nearest substations in the open data published by the network operators, and how much spare capacity each one reports.

Site postcode

Substation	Distance	Spare demand capacity	Spare generation capacity	Network operator

Indicative only, not a connection offer. The nearest substation may not be the one that supplies your site, and it may belong to a different network operator from yours. Only your network operator can confirm capacity, through a connection application.

How this works

Your postcode is turned into a location by postcodes.io. We show up to three bulk supply point (BSP) and primary substations within 10 km, nearest first.
Spare demand capacity is the headroom each network operator publishes for new load such as chargers. Spare generation capacity is headroom for solar or batteries exporting to the grid.
Charger counts divide demand headroom by the charger's rated power, treating 1 kVA as 1 kW. They ignore other new connections, diversity and the site's own supply, so treat them as a rough first screen.
Each operator updates its data on its own schedule; the date of each source is shown below.

Sources and licences

LTDS Capacity Heatmap, National Grid Electricity Distribution (East Midlands, West Midlands, South Wales and South West England), updated 27 July 2026, 1182 substations. NGED Open Data Licence: Supported by NGED Open Data.
Generation Availability and Network Capacity (headroom dashboard data), SSEN Distribution (north of Scotland and central southern England), updated 11 March 2026, 899 substations. CC BY 4.0: Contains data from SSEN Distribution, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
Heat Map Data - Substation Areas, Northern Powergrid (North East England, Yorkshire and northern Lincolnshire), updated 6 October 2026, 639 substations. Northern Powergrid Open Data Licence v1.0: Supported by Northern Powergrid Open Data.