STRATA INTEL

Terms used in our reports

Reference

Acronyms, key terms and data sources

Every Strata Intel report carries its own glossary. This page collects the same definitions in one place, for anyone reading a report who wants to look a term up without opening the document.

Acronyms

Only terms the reports actually use. If an abbreviation is not here, our reports do not use it.

BDUK
Building Digital UK
DNO
Distribution Network Operator
DNOA
Distribution Network Options Assessment
EMF
Electric and magnetic fields
ENA
Energy Networks Association
EPC
Energy Performance Certificate
EV
Electric vehicle
kVA
Kilovolt-amperes (apparent power)
kW
Kilowatt (power)
kWh
Kilowatt-hour (energy)
LTDS
Long Term Development Statement
MW
Megawatt (1,000 kilowatts)
NEED
National Energy Efficiency Data-Framework
OMR
Open Market Review
TA6
The Law Society's Property Information Form
UPRN
Unique Property Reference Number

Key terms

The words that carry the most weight in a capacity finding.

Headroom
The spare capacity a network operator publishes for a substation — how much more demand it can take before work is needed. The figures in a report are the operator's published network headroom.
Primary substation
A substation handling high voltages, usually stepping 33kV or 66kV down to 11kV. One typically serves several thousand homes.
Secondary substation
A smaller substation stepping high voltage — typically 11kV — down to low voltage for distribution locally. This is the substation a single home connects to.
Maximum demand
The power a home draws at once, rather than the energy it uses over a year. A connection application is assessed on maximum demand, and the Energy Networks Association's own form says a load survey is needed to establish it.
Gigabit-capable
A connection able to deliver 1,000 Mbit/s or more. Ofcom counts a premises as covered where an operator reports an end user could order such a service there.
Open Market Review
How Building Digital UK asks broadband suppliers where they have built, and where they plan to build, so that public money is not spent where a commercial build is coming. Suppliers are not obliged to answer, so the resulting view has gaps in it.

Where the findings come from

Our reports are desktop assessments built from published data. The network findings come from the distribution network operators' own published figures: their network headroom forecasts, Network Development Plans, Distribution Network Options Assessments and Long Term Development Statements. The home's details come from the Energy Performance Certificate register. The utility networks serving the address come from the appointed-area and asset data of the companies themselves, and from Apogee's GridCheck network operator search for gas, water and sewerage.

The primary substation is matched to the home by the operator's own published supply-area boundary where one exists, and by proximity where it does not; each report says which was used. In England: Flood, coastal-erosion and water-stress findings come from the Environment Agency, and the supply-reliability record from Ofgem. In Wales: Flood and coastal-erosion findings come from Natural Resources Wales, and the supply-reliability record from Ofgem. No assumption about layout or demand is supplied by anyone: nothing in a report is modelled from information given by any party to the transaction.

This page is generated from the same configuration the reports are rendered from, so a definition here is the definition printed in the document, give or take the odd “this report” changed to “a report” where a sentence written for a document would otherwise point at the wrong thing. Reports are screening assessments built from published data and should be read with the limits stated in them.