Who Is My DNO? Find Your Electricity Network Operator

Your DNO is the company that owns the cables running to your property, and it isn’t the company that bills you. Great Britain has six distribution network operators between them holding fourteen licence areas. The fastest way to find yours is the two-digit distributor ID printed on your electricity bill.

You need this before you notify anyone about a plug-in solar kit. From 27 August 2026 a compliant device can lawfully be sold and used in Great Britain, and notifying the network operator is mandatory. Notification goes to your DNO, not to the supplier you pay. Our full G98 notification walkthrough covers the process itself; this page just tells you who to send it to.

What a DNO Is, and Why It Isn’t Your Electricity Supplier

A distribution network operator, sometimes called your electricity distributor, owns and maintains the local electricity wires, poles, underground cables and substations that deliver power to your home or business. It doesn’t sell you electricity and it doesn’t issue your bill. SP Energy Networks puts it well on its own site: "no matter who you pay your bill to, we’re the people to contact if you have a power cut".

Your electricity supplier is the company you have a contract with, the one that sets your tariff and takes your money. You can change supplier whenever you like, and your current supplier has no say in who distributes the power. Your DNO comes with the address and can’t be changed. Both companies appear on your bill, which is a large part of why the two get confused. If you’re trying to work out which of them needs telling about a solar kit, we’ve set that out separately in telling your electricity supplier about solar.

Put plainly, the DNO is the company responsible for the physical service that keeps you connected. Confusingly, several operators run a public tool to find your electricity supplier as well, because they hold the meter point records. UK Power Networks names its version exactly that. Use one of those if you want to find out who your electricity retailer is; use this page if you want the network.

The distinction matters for one blunt reason. A DNO has a statutory interest in anything you connect that can push current back into its network, and a supplier doesn’t. That’s the whole basis of the notification duty described in our guide to whether balcony solar is legal.

Find Your DNO From Your MPAN

Every electricity supply point in Great Britain has a Meter Point Administration Number. On a bill it’s usually printed as a block of digits in two rows, sometimes inside a box marked with an S.

Elexon administers the industry’s Balancing and Settlement Code. It calls that lower row the MPAN Core: thirteen digits, made up of a distribution identifier, a ten-digit unique reference number and a check digit. Elexon’s definition of the first element is the useful part. It "identifies which Distribution System Operator’s Distribution System the Metering Point is connected to".

The upper row holds three more items and you can ignore all of them here. They’re the profile class, the meter timeswitch code and the line loss factor class. That last detail is the one Elexon says identifies which distribution use of system charge applies to your meter point.

So the first two digits of the bottom line are your answer. Find them, then read them off the table below.

This is the method to trust. It reflects the network your meter is physically registered against, which a postcode lookup can only approximate. If you’re about to fill in a notification form you’ll need the full number anyway, since the G98 form asks for your MPAN. The same number turns up again if you ever chase export payments, because the non-MCS routes described in getting SEG without MCS run on it.

The Distributor ID Table

Distributor IDs and licence areas are published by the Energy Networks Association, the trade body the network operators run between them. Postcode areas in the fourth column come from our own sampling, described below the table.

\* This postcode area straddles a licence boundary and appears in more than one row. Check a full postcode rather than assuming.

How we built the postcode column. We took up to six postcode districts spread across each UK postcode area. Each one was looked up against the Energy Networks Association’s own operator finder, and we recorded the distributor ID it returned. Twenty-nine areas came back with two different operators. Those are the ones marked with an asterisk. Six samples per area catches the obvious splits and misses the subtle ones, so treat an unmarked area as likely rather than certain. Boundaries follow historic network geography rather than county lines. W3, W4 and W5 in west London sit with SSEN, whose own company page confirms it works "from the bustle of West London to the smallest villages in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland".

If Your ID Is 24 or Higher

The association’s table runs from 10 to 23 for the licensed regional operators, then continues from 24 upwards for independent distribution network operators. An IDNO, in the association’s words, "takes care of a smaller part of the electricity network" rather than a whole region. Of the 703 postcodes we resolved while building the table above, 23 came back with an IDNO rather than the regional operator, and they weren’t all obviously new addresses. The list included postcodes in Bootle, Warrington, Halifax, Kirkcaldy and central London.

If your distributor ID is 24 or above, the operator named against that ID is who you notify, not the regional DNO whose territory surrounds you. The association publishes the full list. This is also the case most likely to catch you out when moving house with a plug-in kit, because two addresses a mile apart can sit on different networks.

The Six Network Operators in Great Britain

Each of these has its own notification route, its own forms and, in one case, its own deadline. We’ve written up each one separately.

• **SSEN** covers the north of Scotland and central southern England, two areas with nothing between them. It holds two distribution licences: Scottish Hydro Electric Power Distribution in the north, Southern Electric Power Distribution in the south. That’s why it publishes a separate escalation guide for each. There are two G98 email addresses and you need the right one.
• **UK Power Networks** owns the network across London, the South East and the East of England, which is three licence areas. It routes G98 notification through Smart Connect, an installer-only portal, which is the single biggest obstacle a self-installer will hit.
• **National Grid Electricity Distribution** has the most licence areas of any operator, four: East Midlands, West Midlands, South Wales and South West. Its own site describes the territory as the Midlands, South West and Wales. Notification is by online form or Form B, and it wants an operation diagram with it.
• **Northern Powergrid** delivers power across the North East, Yorkshire and northern Lincolnshire under two licences. It takes G98 notifications either through an account-based online form or a downloadable Form B, so you can avoid creating an account if you’d rather not.
• **SP Energy Networks** runs central and southern Scotland through SP Distribution, and Merseyside, Cheshire, North Shropshire and north Wales through SP Manweb. It’s the outlier on timing. It asks for Form B within 30 days rather than the 28 the others use, and it wants a circuit diagram and an SSEG test report with it.
• **Electricity North West** covers the North West of England, from rural Cumbria to urban Manchester, and it’s the only one of the six with a single licence area. Notification is Form B by email to a dedicated mailbox. One naming wrinkle: its website now presents the business as SP Electricity North West, and the association’s operator finder returns that name too. The distributor ID table still lists the older one.

Northern Ireland: NIE Networks, and Why the Table Above Doesn’t Apply

Northern Ireland Electricity Networks owns the electricity network there. In its own words it "is also the operator for the distribution network in Northern Ireland", serving 932,000 homes, farms and businesses. It was acquired by ESB in December 2010 and is regulated separately, by the Utility Regulator for Northern Ireland rather than Ofgem.

Nothing on this page’s table applies there. The association’s distributor ID list covers the fourteen Great Britain licence areas and carries no Northern Ireland entry. Its postcode finder returns no result for a BT postcode either. Northern Ireland doesn’t use MPANs for this at all. NIE Networks identifies a supply by a meter point reference number, or MPRN, which its own guidance describes as "a unique 11 digit number to identify your address".

The regulatory position differs too. G98 is a Great Britain connection standard, and Northern Ireland works to G98/NI. Our page on plug-in solar in Northern Ireland sets out what the August 2026 changes do and don’t extend to, and notifying NIE Networks covers the route itself.

Why Plug-In Solar Owners Need This

Notifying your DNO is not optional and never was. What’s still being built is a simplified registration route for plug-in devices; the obligation itself already exists and applies from the moment a device is commissioned. The specification requires the product to carry a statement saying so, along with a QR code linking to the registration guidance.

Two details make identifying the right operator more consequential than it looks. The first is the household limit. The specification permits one device per final circuit, but its own note records that current network requirements restrict this to one device per household unless and until that changes. Your DNO holds the record of what you’ve already declared. The second is simpler. A notification sent to the wrong operator sits in someone else’s inbox while you carry on generating.

If you’re still working out whether a particular kit qualifies for the plug-in route at all, start with the compliance checker, then read what actually changes on 27 August.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I find out who my DNO is? Look at your electricity bill for the MPAN block. The lower row starts with a two-digit distributor ID, and that number maps to exactly one licence area and one operator in the table above. If you can’t find the bill, enter your full postcode into the Energy Networks Association’s operator finder or your suspected operator’s own postcode checker.

Who is the DNO for my property or area? It depends on the property, not the town. Twenty-nine of the UK’s postcode areas straddle a licence boundary, and individual streets on new developments can sit on an independent network inside an otherwise ordinary area. The postcode-area table above gets most people to the right answer, and the distributor ID on the bill settles the rest.

What is the difference between a DNO and an energy supplier? The supplier sells you electricity, sets your tariff and sends the bill. The DNO owns the cables, restores power after a fault and administers the meter point. You choose your supplier and can switch it. Your DNO is fixed by where you live.

How do I contact my local DNO? Every operator publishes a general enquiries line. The Energy Networks Association also lists two numbers against each licence area, one for supply assessment and one for safety concerns. For a power cut anywhere in Great Britain the number is 105. That routes you to whichever operator covers you.

Who are the DNOs in the UK? Six operators cover Great Britain: SSEN, UK Power Networks, National Grid Electricity Distribution, Northern Powergrid, Electricity North West and SP Energy Networks. Between them they hold fourteen licence areas. Northern Ireland is served by NIE Networks, which is regulated separately.

Is there a DNO for gas? Your gas supply runs on separate distribution networks with their own operators. The Energy Networks Association’s postcode tool returns your gas network operator alongside your electricity one, using data it sources from Xoserve. Your gas supplier is a different company again, in the same way your electricity provider is. Gas networks have no role in a plug-in solar notification.

Why do I need to know who my DNO is? For a power cut, a new or upgraded connection, a damaged cable, and for notifying any generation you connect. That last one is the reason most balcony solar owners end up here.

How do I find my DNO certificate? People usually mean the acknowledgement an operator sends back after a G98 notification. That is the document some export tariffs ask for, described on their application pages as a DNO acceptance letter. Keep it. It’s the only proof you notified.

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Image suggestions

• H2 "What a DNO Is, and Why It Isn’t Your Electricity Supplier": simple diagram splitting the two roles, cables and substation on one side, bill and tariff on the other. Alt: "Diagram comparing what a distribution network operator does with what an electricity supplier does".
• H2 "Find Your DNO From Your MPAN": annotated example of an MPAN block on a bill, with the first two digits of the lower row circled. Alt: "MPAN block on a UK electricity bill with the two-digit distributor ID highlighted".
• H3 "The Distributor ID Table": map of Great Britain shaded into the fourteen licence areas and labelled with distributor IDs. Alt: "Map of the fourteen Great Britain electricity distribution licence areas with their distributor ID numbers".
• H2 "The Six Network Operators in Great Britain": coloured key of the six operators against the territories they cover. Alt: "The six distribution network operators of Great Britain and the regions each covers".
• H2 "Northern Ireland: NIE Networks": map inset of Northern Ireland separated from the GB licence areas. Alt: "Northern Ireland shown outside the Great Britain distribution licence areas, served by NIE Networks".
• H2 "Why Plug-In Solar Owners Need This": photo of a balcony solar panel with a notification form alongside. Alt: "Balcony solar panel next to a G98 notification form".