greenwashing the grid

[adam2]

Electricity distribution in the UK is reasonably efficient, with loses between power station gate and consumers generally averaging about 10%.
There is pressure to reduce these losses, but some of the savings are illusory.

One tactic is to encourage or require larger consumers to take a high voltage supply at 11KV rather than low voltage at 230/400 volts. This then eliminates the small but real losses in the transformer, at least from the point of view of the energy supplier.
The losses still occur of course but are now part of the customers load, rather than counting as a loss in distribution.

Another related tactic is used for customers with physically extensive premises such as universities, industrial estates and large hospitals. In the past each building or area would have had its own supply from the DNO. The modern approach is to require only one central point of supply The losses in the possibly lengthy cables are now part of the customers consumption and not a "loss in distribution"

Yet another approach is to re-define some losses as business expenses and not as losses at all. For example large transformers often need forced cooling, at least under peak load. The energy used by the cooling fans used to be called a loss, but can be metered and defined as an expense.
Similar arguments apply to the water cooling of large high voltage underground cables, re-define the pumping energy as an expense and not as a loss.