Ofgem has put electricity network supply-chain resilience firmly on the agenda. In an update published on 16 September, the regulator said the expansion of Great Britain's electricity network cannot be delivered without a resilient supply chain.
Responses to Ofgem's call for evidence pointed to several recurring issues: credible long-term demand visibility, clear treatment of risk and cost recovery, greater transparency in how network companies allocate supply-chain spend, and proportionate reporting used as a diagnostic tool rather than a target.
Ofgem does not currently see a case for prescriptive local-content targets or broad new procurement rules. Instead, it plans guidance to help network companies consider growth, resilience and long-term consumer benefit in procurement decisions, alongside further work on the design of reporting.
That direction is reinforced by new government guidance to the Gas and Electricity Markets Authority. It asks Ofgem to consider how regulation can support domestic capability, energy security and resilience in supply chains and skills, while maintaining value for money and delivery confidence. The guidance also points directly to the potential cost of delay, shortage, outage and future supplier concentration.
What this means for network operators and their suppliers: the issue is wider than where equipment is manufactured. A resilient supply chain depends on understanding which suppliers, components, specialist skills and logistics routes are critical to the continued delivery and recovery of essential services.
Organisations should be able to answer:
- Which assets and services have long replacement or repair lead times?
- Where are there single suppliers, geographic concentrations or limited substitutes?
- Which supplier failures could disrupt an important service or breach an impact tolerance?
- What stock, alternative sourcing, contractual rights and recovery arrangements are genuinely usable during disruption?
- Can procurement, engineering, operations and crisis teams access the same dependency information under pressure?
AV Resilience view: Ofgem's direction suggests supply-chain resilience evidence will become more visible in electricity-network procurement and reporting. The practical opportunity is to connect procurement data with operational resilience: map critical dependencies, assess concentration and failure scenarios, set recovery assumptions, and test the response before an outage or shortage exposes the gap.
A supplier register is useful. A tested view of how a critical asset or service can be sustained and recovered is what makes it resilient.
