National Grid Buys 73 Acres for Potentially Britain’s Largest Substation

National Grid Electricity Transmission has acquired 73 acres in Teesside for a proposed substation expected to add more than one gigawatt of capacity and potentially become Britain’s largest.

The site at Dorman Point covers about 29.5 hectares. The substation is part of National Grid’s Great Grid Upgrade, a program to expand and modernize the transmission network. Plans call for it to connect to a private-wire system serving a nearby planned AI data center and a battery energy storage system.

Battery storage can take in electricity when supply is plentiful or prices are low, then release it when demand rises. The substation and related connections would support power delivery to the planned facilities.

The land agreement was reached in late October, after an outline planning application was submitted in September 2026. The application is awaiting a response from the planning authority. Community consultation is expected to close Nov. 11.

The UK government identified Teesworks as a possible site for a major AI data center in 2025. Earlier applications described a campus of nearly 500,000 square meters, or about 5.5 million square feet.

A grid connection is one part of the buildout needed before an AI campus can operate. Projects also depend on suitable land, permits, transformer equipment and completed buildings, as TokenPost’s earlier coverage of AI data center power constraints explains.