Three names, one operator, and a good deal of confusion. If you are trying to notify the company that owns the cables in the East Midlands, the West Midlands, the South West or South Wales, you may have started at National Grid — the transmission business, which is not it — or at Western Power Distribution, which is what it used to be called.
The company you want is National Grid Electricity Distribution, usually shortened to NGED. It is four separately licensed businesses trading under one brand, and its connections site is a different domain from the one most people land on first.
The good news is that once you find it, NGED runs one of the more approachable G98 processes in Great Britain. It takes notifications through an online form that needs no account — you can also send the paper form by email or post — which puts it ahead of operators that gate their portal behind installer approval or an account registration. It is not friction-free, as the next section sets out, but it is a route a householder can actually walk down.
Three names, four companies — is NGED yours?
Four licence areas, and the first two digits of the MPAN on your electricity bill will tell you which:
- 11 — East Midlands
- 14 — West Midlands
- 21 — Southern Wales
- 22 — South Western England
Each is a separately licensed company — National Grid Electricity Distribution (East Midlands) Plc, (West Midlands) Plc, (South Wales) Plc and (South West) Plc — but you do not need to work out which one you belong to. The notification process is common across all four.
If you are in North Wales
NGED’s two routes
Online.NGED’s generation application form takes, by its own estimate, around ten to fifteen minutes, and you get an instant acknowledgement on submission. NGED quotes 15–20 minutes for the same online form elsewhere on the page; both figures refer to the online route, and it does not publish an estimate for the paper one at all.
No account is required, which is genuinely unusual. But “no installer credential” would be too generous, and an earlier version of this page said exactly that. The form’s own introduction is headed “Step 1 – Installer should be appropriately registered”, and its mandatory pre-flight list is the device reference number of any new or existing generation devices, the property postcode, and installer and customer contact information.
So a self-installing householder meets two obstacles before they reach a text box. There is a mandatory installer field, and there is a mandatory device reference number — and, as set out above, there is currently no verified-compliant plug-in solar device on the register to supply one from. Neither is insurmountable, but neither is nothing, and we would rather you knew before you opened the form than after.
On paper.If you would rather, NGED publishes the EREC G98 Form B as a Word document, which you can submit by email or post: email to its new supplies address, or post to its Records Team in Tipton. The postal option is genuinely still offered, which is rarer than you might think. Note that the paper form carries the same installer expectations in a more explicit form — an Installer Details block with an accreditation field and a signature line, and a declaration headed “to be completed by Installer”. Our walkthrough of Form B covers what that means when there is no installer.
Both routes end in the same place. The choice is yours, and neither is treated as inferior. NGED also publishes a Summary Guide covering which form applies to which situation, and a Competition in Connections section explaining that you may use an alternative connection provider for chargeable work — neither is relevant to a plug-in device, but both sit on the same pages and cause a certain amount of second-guessing.
G98 vs G99: which applies
G98 and G99 are both engineering recommendations published by the Energy Networks Association, and the difference between G98 and G99 is simply size. G98 covers fully type-tested micro-generators up to 16 A per phase — around 3.68kW single phase, 11.04 kW three phase — and is a notification. The G99 process is for anything larger: G99 covers larger systems, and a G99 application involves a detailed technical assessment and a connection offer before you connect to the grid.
Your device is not close to the boundary. The requirements for connecting a plug-in solar device sit at the very bottom of the G98 range, so a G99 application will never be in play. If a search has left you reading about G99 explained, G99 forms, connection offers or application status tracking, none of it is your process — that is the world of larger solar systems, not home solar of this size.
Installing solar the plug-in way changes the DNO application process
Worth pausing on, because it explains why this page exists. For a rooftop array, the DNO application process is something your installer absorbs — they know the national grid website, they hold the generation equipment specifications, they submit the G98 application while you make tea. Installing solar as a plug-in device removes that person from the chain. The G98 connection is unchanged, but you are the one who has to submit a G98, and NGED’s online form is the reason that is manageable in its four licence areas.
The purpose has not changed either. NGED needs to know what generation is connected to its local network so it can run the distribution network safely — grid stability and grid safety are the whole point of the exercise, and a record of what is feeding the UK grid at street level is how it is maintained.
You may install first. NGED says so explicitly.
This is the sentence that makes NGED unusual, and it is worth quoting because it settles an argument that runs endlessly in owner forums:
“You may install and commission the generation before providing information about the generation to us. Once the generation is commissioned you must fill in and return a G98 Installation Document along with an Operation Diagram within 28 days.”
So in NGED’s area, the sequence is: plug it in, then tell them, within 28 days of commissioning. Nothing about the meter changes, and you do not need to wait on a distribution network operator’s response before switching the device on.
Do not carry that assumption across a boundary.It is NGED’s position, not a national rule, and at least one operator takes the opposite line — SP Energy Networks’ own page says you must inform it of the proposal before or at the time of commissioning, and gives you 30 days rather than 28 for the confirmation afterwards. Two operators, two different instructions, both quoted from their own websites. This is exactly why we have written these pages one operator at a time rather than as a single directory.
The Operation Diagram — and the lockable isolator
NGED names an Operation Diagram in its 28-day sentence, which makes it look like an NGED speciality. It is not, and an earlier version of this page presented it that way. A schematic is a universal Form B requirement.The declaration on every operator’s copy of the ENA form reads: “I enclose a copy of the system schematic which has been left on site at the Customer’s incoming meter location.” NGED is simply more explicit about it than most.
For a plug-in solar device the drawing is short: panel, microinverter, factory-fitted lead, BS 1363 plug, socket outlet, with the inverter’s make, model and rated output labelled. There is no additional wiring and no dedicated circuit. Our reading is that this satisfies what is being asked; it is a judgement about a requirement written for wired installations, not a statement of NGED’s policy, so if yours is a borderline case, ask and keep the answer.
The harder one is the isolator. NGED’s own G98 eligibility criteria require that “an isolation switch is installed, capable of isolating all phases, and lockable in the ‘Off’ position”, and that “a circuit diagram is displayed on-site”. Form B then asks for the Location of Lockable Isolation Switch.
A plug-in solar device has no lockable isolator. The plug is the means of disconnection, and a 13 A plug cannot be locked off. This is the single field on the form that a plug-in device cannot answer honestly, and neither NGED nor any other operator has published guidance for the device class. Ask before you submit rather than improvising.
The capacity figure, using NGED’s own arithmetic
NGED publishes a worked example on its procedures page, and it is the clearest statement of the capacity rule anywhere on any of the six operator sites:
“a single phase PV solar installation that uses a 3kW inverter is deemed to have a rating of 3,000 ÷ 230 = 13.04A, which is within 16A per phase threshold for G98, assuming the generation operates at a power factor of 1.0”
Run the same sum for a compliant plug-in solar device. The Interim Product Specification caps AC output at 800 VA and output current at 3.5 A. So: 800 ÷ 230 = 3.48 A. Against a 16 A ceiling.
A plug-in device uses roughly a fifth of the headroom G98 allows. It is not a marginal case and it will never be one.
Which brings us to the box people get wrong. Registered capacity is the inverter’s AC output, not the panel wattage— the continuous steady state rating of the inverter, in the industry’s phrasing. A kit with 1,600 W of panels feeding an 800 VA microinverter is an 0.8 kW installation on this form. If you have written 1.6 kW you have answered a question NGED did not ask. The capacity of 16 A per phase is the ceiling for small-scale generation of this kind, and you are nowhere near it.
And energy storage capacity is zero, because storage within the device is not permitted on the plug-in route at all. A kit with a battery in it is not doing this process; it needs a conventional installation instead.
Our field-by-field walkthrough of the G98 form covers the remaining boxes.
When Form B is not the right form
NGED routes you to its multiple micro generation process if you have connected, or are planning to connect, micro-generators at more than one premises within a local geographic region inside a 28-day window — and it defines that region precisely, as an area extending 500 m from each micro-generating plant installation. For one flat with one device this is irrelevant. For a block of UK homes buying kits together, or a landlord fitting several, it is the trigger — and it is worth checking before you file six single-premises notifications that should have been one application for connection.
The distinction matters because the multiple-premises route is an application rather than a notification: NGED may need to look at the local network before agreeing a new connection arrangement, where a single generation installation needs no such assessment.
Can NGED refuse it?
You will read, in a great many places, that a DNO cannot refuse a G98 notification. We have never been able to verify that as an absolute, and we are not going to repeat it as one.
What is defensible is narrower. G98 is structured as a notification rather than an application, which is why NGED is content for you to commission first and tell it afterwards. NGED’s published procedures set out eligibility conditions — the equipment must be within 16 A per phase, must be fully type tested, must conform to the listed technical standards — and it is those conditions, not NGED’s discretion, that determine whether the route is open to you.
The realistic failure mode is not refusal. It is that a device which is not type tested, or not verified on the register, was never eligible for this route in the first place.
The register is the real gate
That has a specific consequence for NGED’s online form, as set out earlier: a device reference number is mandatory, and there is currently no verified-compliant plug-in solar device to supply one from.
The duty to notify, and the thing that is actually unfinished
Two things that get conflated
Two related points. G98 is a Great Britain document; Northern Ireland uses G98/NI, and all four NGED areas are in Great Britain. And whatever your circuit count, the limit that binds is one device per household, because Engineering Recommendation G98 Issue 2 Amendment 1 2026 restricts it to one until and unless it is amended.
One gap we could not close: NGED promises an instant acknowledgement on the online route, but does not make clear whether that covers the post-commissioning installation document or only the initial application.
Frequently asked questions
How do I get a G98 certificate from National Grid?
There is no certificate. Submitting the online form produces an instant acknowledgement, and that acknowledgement is the record people mean when they say certificate. Keep it.
Can a G98 be refused?
Not in the way people imagine. G98 is a notification route with eligibility conditions attached — type testing, the 16 A limit, conformity with the listed standards. Equipment that meets them uses the route; equipment that does not was never eligible for it.
What is a G98 proof of grid connection?
Your submission plus the operator’s acknowledgement. Suppliers sometimes ask for it before processing an export tariff application.
What is the G98 letter?
Informal shorthand for that same acknowledgement.
Does my DNO charge for G98 notification?
NGED does not publish a fee for the single-premises route, and we have not seen one charged. We have also not found a published statement that it is free, so we would not want to promise it in NGED’s name.
Do I need to contact my DNO before getting solar panels?
In NGED’s area, no — it explicitly permits installing and commissioning first, with the notification following within 28 days. In other areas the answer differs.
Does adding a battery require G98 or G99?
A battery-integrated plug-in device is not on the plug-in route at all, whichever engineering recommendation applies to it. Solar PV and battery systems installed conventionally follow the normal generation route. See what the battery rules exclude.
How do I determine the rating of my installation?
Inverter AC output divided by 230 gives the current in amps. For a compliant plug-in device: 800 ÷ 230 = 3.48 A.
How long does a G98 notification take with National Grid?
The online form gives an instant acknowledgement on submission, which is faster than any other route in this group. NGED does not publish a separate turnaround in working days for the paper route, so if you email or post the form, allow longer and keep your copy.
Can I check my application status?
NGED’s online route issues an acknowledgement with a reference number at the point of submission. Keep it — that reference is what you quote if you need to chase, and it is what a supplier may ask for if you later apply for an export tariff under the SEG.
Do I get paid for sending energy back to the grid?
Only under the Smart Export Guarantee, which generally requires MCS certification that most plug-in installations will not have. For a device this size, self-consumption dominates and export is marginal. Our SEG export rates guide sets out what is realistic.
For the standard itself, see our G98 and DNO notification explainer and the shorter balcony solar G98 guide. On the hardware, balcony solar inverter types explains how microinverters are rated.