SSEN is two networks that do not touch each other. It runs the wires across the north of Scotland — the Highlands, the islands, Grampian, Tayside — and it also runs them across central southern England, through Hampshire, Berkshire, Oxfordshire, parts of Surrey and, which surprises people, west London. One brand, one website, two licence areas about five hundred miles apart.
That geography shapes everything about notifying SSEN, because the first thing its process asks you to do is work out which of the two you are in, and it does not make that especially easy.
Is SSEN actually your network operator?
Your network operator is not your electricity supplier. If you buy your power from Octopus or E.ON or anyone else, that is a billing relationship; the operator is whoever owns the cable in the street.
The quickest check is your MPAN, the long supply number on your electricity bill. The first two digits are the distributor ID:
- 17 — Northern Scotland.SSEN’s Scottish licence area.
- 20 — Southern England.SSEN’s English licence area.
Anything else and you are on the wrong page. Distributor 18 is Southern Scotland, which is SP Energy Networks, not SSEN — a genuinely common mix-up for anyone in the Central Belt who has seen SSEN vans on the motorway. And if you are in west London, check the number rather than assuming London means UK Power Networks: part of west London sits in SSEN’s southern area.
Two areas, one process, two inboxes
Where a plug-in device sits in SSEN’s generation connections
Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks organises everything about connecting generation under one heading, and it is worth seeing the shape of it before you start, because most of the pages you will land on are not about you.
SSEN’s generation connection routes split by size. Anything at or above 50 kW is a full application with network capacity and reinforcement to consider, and for large schemes in Scotland a transmission impact assessment as well, because SSEN’s Scottish licence area sits alongside a transmission network with real capacity constraints. Below that comes small generator installation and storage connections, 50 kW or less. And at the bottom of that band sits microgeneration: single-phase generation equipment up to 3.68 kW per phase — 16 A per phase — at one property.
That last category is yours. A compliant plug-in solar device is 800 VA and 3.5 A, so nothing about reinforcement, network capacity or the transmission network applies to it. The same route covers solar PV, small wind turbines and other micro-generators; you want the solar panels version of it, and the connection process is a single form.
How SSEN takes a G98 notification
By email, on a downloadable notification form. There is no online portal for this — SSEN offers a customer account for other services, but its microgeneration pages route you to a document and an inbox.
You download G98 – Form B, a Word document, fill it in, and email it. SSEN’s own wording on its single-premises page is that once installed, you must submit the Form B to it within 28 days of commissioning.
What SSEN says happens next is worth quoting, because it is more than a filing exercise: it will review the submission and confirm whether the connection meets G98 requirements or whether any further action is needed, and once it has everything it needs, it will register the project and pass the details to its connections designers.
So this is a review, not a receipt. Which makes the address question more consequential than it looks.
The three email addresses
Here is where we have to be honest about a primary source, because SSEN publishes three different addresses across its microgeneration pages and they are not consistent with one another.
- The instruction attached to the Form B download says to email it to south.microgen@sse.com.
- The regional guidance elsewhere on the same page gives Notifications.northmicrogen@sse.com for Scotland.
- And Notifications.southmicrogen@sse.com for England.
The two Notifications. addresses are clearly the regional pair and are the ones we would use — the north one if your MPAN starts 17, the south one if it starts 20. But the download instruction points somewhere else again, and SSEN does not explain the difference.
If it matters to you that the form lands in the right place, and it should, copy both southern addresses and say in the covering email what you are notifying. It costs nothing and removes the ambiguity that SSEN has left in.
What to put on the form
Most of Form B is your address and your MPAN. Two boxes need care, and both catch plug-in solar owners specifically. Before you start, read our walkthrough of what the form actually contains — it has an Installer Details block and an installer declaration that a self-installed device has no obvious way to satisfy.
Registered capacityis the microinverter’s AC output, not the panel wattage. A compliant plug-in solar device cannot exceed 800 VA, so the figure is 0.8 kW or lower regardless of what the panels add up to.
Energy storage capacity is zero. Battery storage within the device is not permitted on the plug-in route, so there is nothing to declare. If you find yourself wanting to enter a number, the kit you own is battery-integrated and it cannot use this route at all.
Our field-by-field G98 form walkthrough covers the rest of the boxes.
The DNO Response — the bit that matters if you want an export tariff
This is SSEN’s most useful published detail and almost nobody surfaces it.
Most suppliers, SSEN says, require a “DNO Response” before you can apply for an export tariff. That is the email SSEN sends to confirm it has logged your commissioning documents and that the system complies with G98 or G99. Without it, a supplier’s export application tends to stall.
Now the realistic caveat, because we are not going to oversell this. For an 800 VA device, export is a rounding error next to self-consumption — the value is in the electricity you use as it is generated, not the trickle you sell. The Smart Export Guarantee also generally requires MCS certification, which most plug-in installations will not have. So the DNO Response is worth having on file, and it is worth knowing what it is called when a supplier asks for it, but it is not the reason to notify. Our guide to SEG tariffs for balcony solar sets out what is realistically available.
When Form B is the wrong form
One SSEN-specific rule to know about, and it will not apply to most people but it applies squarely to some of this site’s readers.
SSEN pushes you off the single-premises route if another property in the same postcode — ignoring the last two digits, so the whole of PH1 2xx — has had generation installed within the last 28 days by the same installer. SSEN’s wording is that you must apply before you connect if that applies; it does not name which form, so ask rather than assume Form B still covers you.
For a single flat with one device, irrelevant. For a block where several residents buy kits from the same supplier in the same month, or a housing association fitting a handful at once, it is exactly the trigger. Worth checking before you assume Form B covers it.
None of this is optional
Mandatory means mandatory
Two further points that sit under the same heading. G98 is a Great Britain document — Northern Ireland uses G98/NI, and SSEN’s areas are both in Great Britain, so this page applies straightforwardly. And however many socket circuits your home has, the operative limit is one device per household, because Engineering Recommendation G98 Issue 2 Amendment 1 2026 restricts it to one and the tighter of the two rules wins.
On timescales, we can tell you SSEN’s deadline for you — 28 days from commissioning — but not SSEN’s for itself. It publishes no acknowledgement, no response standard and no timeline on its microgeneration pages. There are turnaround figures circulating in owner groups, some of them cheerfully fast, and we are not going to repeat them as though SSEN had committed to them.
Keep your documentation either way: the completed form, the date you sent it, and whatever comes back. Compliance is demonstrated by records, and the records are yours to keep.
Frequently asked questions
How do I get a G98 certificate from SSEN?
There is no certificate as such. What SSEN issues is the DNO Response — an email confirming it has logged your commissioning documents and that the installation complies. Keep it; that is the document people mean.
Is G98 a legal requirement?
Yes. Network operators describe notification as an obligation under the Electricity Safety, Quality and Continuity Regulations 2002, and the Interim Product Specification requires plug-in solar devices to be marked with a statement that it is mandatory.
Is a DNO the same as a G98?
No. The DNO — distribution network operator — is the company; G98 is the engineering recommendation you notify under. SSEN is a DNO. G98 is the paperwork.
What is the G98 letter?
Informal shorthand for the operator’s acknowledgement. With SSEN it is the DNO Response email.
Can I install generation without SSEN’s permission?
G98 is structured as a notification rather than a permission regime, and SSEN’s process assumes the device is already commissioned when Form B arrives. That is not the same as saying no rules apply — the device itself has to be compliant, and the notification is still mandatory.
How do I get my generation export MPAN?
Your electricity supplier arranges it, not SSEN, and only if you are pursuing an export tariff. SSEN’s own guidance is that for distributed generation under 30 kW the supplier handles it.
What happens once the device is installed and commissioned?
Send Form B within 28 days, to the regional address for your licence area, and keep the DNO Response when it comes back.
For the standard itself rather than SSEN’s implementation of it, see our G98 and DNO notification explainer and the shorter G98 notification guide for balcony solar. If you have not yet bought, our tracker of certified plug-in solar kits covers where the ENA register has got to.