NI UTILITY REGULATOR PROPOSES MAJOR CHANGES IN GOVERNANCE OF EIRGRID’S NORTHERN SUBSIDIARY

Michel Fisher

The Utility Regulator for Northern Ireland (UREGNI) which is responsible for how the electricity industry is run has proposed major changes to how the grid operator SONI is governed. As The Northern Standard reported at the time, a detailed report by the regulator last year found that the System Operator for NI is insufficiently independent of its parent company in Dublin, EirGrid. UREGNI said this might have led to consumers in the North being overcharged for their electricity.

The Regulator is now proposing that SONI should have an independent board of directors, with only one non executive director to be nominated by EirGrid. It has laid down fourteen requirements for SONI to implement within the next three years in order to keep its licence as a transmission system operator. SONI has been owned by EirGrid since 2009. A condition of SONI’s licence is that it must have full operational independence. However, the investigation by the Regulator found that SONI’s board of directors was effectively toothless. It said there was a lack of transparency on how EirGrid group costs were being assigned to SONI, costs which have risen consistently and reached £17 million in 2018.

It also found limited incentives for SONI to challenge those costs, as well as sub-optimal procurement decisions. Challenged by a DUP member during a Stormont Assembly committee hearing in June 2020, then SONI Managing Director Jo Aston told Christopher Stalford MLA that the company had never paid a dividend…