Business challenge
Northern Powergrid is leading Community DSO, a flagship innovation project running from 2023 to 2028, funded through Ofgem’s Network Innovation Competition and delivered with partners including TNEI and LCP Delta. The project is developing and trialling standard approaches that enable communities and regional stakeholders to work with their local electricity network operator to deploy Smart Local Energy Systems, while building resilience and capacity in local networks.
Impact was commissioned to support the programme through two linked strands: a nationwide baseline survey across Great Britain to measure awareness, appetite and barriers relating to Smart Local Energy Systems, and a structured trial partners workshop to capture engagement delivery, emerging learning and transferable lessons across the urban, suburban and rural trial archetypes.
The objectives were to measure awareness and understanding by demographic, geographic and DNO region; identify barriers and triggers affecting engagement, participation and investment appetite; develop practical customer personas to support engagement planning; and consolidate comparable learning from trial partners to inform programme reporting, decision-making and future trial design.
Our approach
Impact combined robust quantitative research with structured partner engagement. The customer research began with a project kick-off and regular progress calls, followed by five cognitive interviews to test survey comprehension, flow and interpretation. Impact then delivered an online baseline survey with almost 3,000 respondents, comprising 2,579 domestic customers and 414 SMEs, with coverage across all DNO regions.
Impact also independently designed and facilitated a six-hour workshop with Northern Powergrid, trial partners and stakeholders. Three breakout groups focused on the urban, suburban and rural archetypes, using a common framework to capture activity delivered, what had worked well, what needed to change and emerging lessons. A smaller stakeholder table explored cross-cutting issues, partner alignment and implications for programme learning and dissemination.
Outcome
The work provided Northern Powergrid with a practical evidence base combining national customer insight with grounded learning from delivery partners. The survey showed that awareness of Smart Local Energy Systems remains relatively low, but attitudes towards community-based energy solutions are broadly positive. Around half of domestic respondents said they would be likely to participate, with higher appetite among SMEs. However, investment appetite was limited, with barriers focused on financial capacity and limited understanding.
A key output was a practical segmentation, expressed as customer personas for domestic customers and SMEs, enabling the programme to tailor engagement, messaging and recruitment to different mindsets and circumstances. The findings indicated that domestic messaging should emphasise empowerment, savings and local pride, while SME messaging should stress commercial credibility and environmental leadership, supported by trusted messengers and clear, tangible examples.
The workshop created a comparable view of engagement delivery across the three trial archetypes and helped identify what was working well, where barriers were emerging and where approaches needed to adapt. Together, the outputs supported trial recruitment, programme reporting, future engagement planning and the development of practical “do’s and don’ts” for community engagement and trial design.
Findings were published in Northern Powergrid’s Community DSO: Community Engagement Demonstrate & Iterate Phase Report, available here: Community DSO Community Engagement Iterate Report – December 2025.pdf