Scottish Hydro Electric or SP Distribution: finding out which is yours

Why there are two

Britain is split into fourteen electricity distribution licence areas. Scotland holds two of them. Scottish Hydro-Electric Power Distribution plc runs the north, and SP Distribution plc runs the south and the central belt.

Nothing on the ground tells you where the line between them runs. Your postcode does.

How to be sure which is yours

We hold the licence area map as a working map. It is right for most of the country and we have not checked it postcode by postcode, so we ask you to confirm it rather than take our word for it. There are two ways.

• Take the postcode to whichever operator you think is yours and run it through the checker on their own website.
• Or ring 105, which costs nothing, works from any postcode in Great Britain, and connects you to the company whose wires come into your street.

We do this with you when we answer your enquiry, so you are not left holding a guess.

The form, and the 28 days

Once the device is installed, you register it with your operator. It is a short online form asking for your name, your email address and the address the device is at, and you send it within 28 days of installation. The government reckons on it taking somewhere between five and ten minutes.

This applies in Great Britain. It is the same job whichever of the two Scottish operators you are with.

One device per household

The connection rules allow one plug-in solar device per household. That comes from Engineering Recommendation G98 Issue 2 Amendment 1, which the regulator approved in August 2026 and which stands until it is changed. The product specification allows one on a final ring circuit and then hands the question to the network rules, so one home is the answer you want.

Connection position from Engineering Recommendation G98 Issue 2 Amendment 1 and the regulator’s decision of August 2026. Registration process from the government’s final stage impact assessment. Both read 13 September 2026.