Decarbonising your local area takes more than ambition — it takes insight, alignment and early-stage support.
That’s where SP Energy Networks can help.
As local authorities develop bold plans for electric vehicle infrastructure, heat decarbonisation, and renewable energy, the electricity system behind the scenes has to be ready to respond. The challenge? Our networks weren’t built for this pace of change — and early coordination is essential to make delivery smooth, affordable, and fast.
How have we supported this early coordination? In the last year we supported 40 local authorities, 12 Regional Government Bodies, and three transport providers to develop their decarbonisation plans and have conducted over 2,000 Low Carbon Technology (LCT) optioneering studies. If you are a local authority this blog will give you more insight into how we can support your plans.
A Dedicated Team for Early-Stage Energy Planning
To make collaboration easier, we’ve set up a dedicated Strategic Optimisation team — your first point of contact for supporting your Net Zero plans with network insight and context.
The team works with local, regional, and national bodies to map out the potential electricity demand from energy strategies and planned Low Carbon Technology (LCT) deployments, helping you:
- Understand what the network can handle now
- Identify what upgrades may be needed
- Access indicative timescales and costs before developing budget estimates
It’s practical, early-stage planning support — designed to help you build smarter business cases and avoid unnecessary delays later on.
Smarter Planning with LANIT
To give you better insight into how your energy plans impact the network, we’ve developed the Local Authority Network Insight Tool (LANIT).
It’s a free digital tool currently available to local authorities only, giving visibility of:
- Where there’s available capacity
- Where constraints might slow down deployment
- What reinforcement work could cost — in simple, indicative terms
You don’t need to be a network expert to use it. LANIT is designed to make energy planning more accessible — giving you a clearer view of what’s possible.
Our dedicated team is also on hand to provide support in using the tool or to carry out the optioneering analysis on your behalf.
What’s New?
Based on your feedback, we’ve upgraded LANIT with new functionality to help you get even more from it:
- Add and model new electric vehicle, heat pump or solar connections
- Run power flow analysis up to 1MVA
- See improved accuracy on indicative customer and network reinforcement costs
- Model solar generation up to 200kW
- Access optimised analysis for clearer decision-making
These upgrades make LANIT more useful — and more powerful — as a planning tool at the earliest stages of energy planning.
Ready to Get Started?
If you’re working on decarbonisation plans in your local area and want to stress-test what’s possible, LANIT can help you move from ideas to action — with fewer surprises along the way.
Request a demo or get in touch: strategicoptimisation@spenergynetworks.co.uk
Net Zero isn’t just a national goal. It’s a local one. And the earlier we plan together, the easier it becomes to deliver.