About the register
The Energy Incident Register exists to give the energy industry a shared learning resource it currently lacks: an open, anonymised, structured record of incidents and the lessons they produced.
What the register is
A free, public database of safety incidents, near-misses, and operational failures from utility-scale renewable energy assets and the grid infrastructure that supports them. Each entry is structured, anonymised, and accompanied by clearly stated lessons learned.
It is not a regulator. It is not an investigator. It is not a commercial intelligence service. It is a community resource for shared learning.
Scope
The register covers incidents in the following asset classes:
- Battery energy storage systems (BESS) at utility scale
- Solar photovoltaic generation at utility scale
- Onshore and offshore wind generation
- Grid-connection infrastructure including HV transformers, switchgear, and substations
- Hybrid co-located sites (storage with generation)
Residential systems, behind-the-meter installations, and small commercial assets are out of scope. The register focuses on assets where lessons learned can scale across operators.
Governance
The register is operated by ClearDeskPro CIC, a UK community interest company. A community interest company is an asset-locked legal structure: any value held in the company is permanently committed to community benefit and cannot be extracted as private profit. This structure is the foundation of the register's independence.
Editorial decisions — what gets published, how submissions are anonymised, what is rejected — sit with the founder of the CIC. As the register grows, an advisory group of independent industry figures will be invited to provide oversight on review processes and editorial principles.
Founder
The register is founded and currently operated by George Charalambous, who has 25 years of operational experience across renewable energy, battery storage, high-voltage electrical infrastructure, and water utilities. Past roles include senior service leadership at Canadian Solar e-STORAGE, operational turnaround at Lightsource BP, and large-scale HV infrastructure delivery at Balfour Beatty including HS2 and the Viking Link interconnector.
The register is operated as a community-benefit activity, distinct from the founder's other professional commitments. No commercial relationship exists between the register and any operator, vendor, or product in the industries it covers.
Why this matters
Utility-scale energy assets are deployed at speed. The pace of deployment outstrips the pace at which the industry shares safety learning. Major operators have internal incident-review processes; smaller operators, contractors, and new entrants generally do not. The result is that lessons paid for in one place have to be paid for again somewhere else.
A neutral, public, structured register narrows that gap. It gives the small operator the same access to industry-wide lessons that the major operator gets through internal sharing. It gives the new entrant a starting library of patterns to learn from. It gives the regulator and the journalist a credible reference point for sector-level questions.
The register is descriptive, not investigative. It exists to share lessons, not to assign blame. Submissions about incidents requiring formal regulatory investigation should be reported to the appropriate national authority first; the register is a complement to, not a replacement for, regulatory reporting.
Funding
The register is funded by a small annual donation from a separate commercial entity in the founder's portfolio. This donation is treated by the CIC as community-benefit support and is governed by the asset lock. The donating entity receives no commercial benefit, no preferential access, and no editorial influence in return.
Longer-term funding routes being explored include grants from public bodies (UKRI, Innovate UK, sector-specific safety funding) and modest sponsorship from industry bodies or insurers, structured to preserve editorial independence.
Independence
- The register accepts no payment from submitters or readers.
- The register accepts no advertising or sponsored content.
- The register has no commercial relationships with operators, vendors, or service providers in the industries it covers.
- The register's editorial decisions are not influenced by any third party.
- The register's funding sources are disclosed in the annual community report.
Annual reporting
Each year the register publishes an annual community report covering: submissions received, entries published, headline trends, methodology changes, governance updates, and funding sources. The report is published openly on the register and filed with the CIC Regulator as part of the company's statutory community interest report.
Get involved
The register grows through submissions. If you have witnessed or worked on an incident in a utility-scale energy asset, and the lessons would help others, please consider submitting. All identifying information is kept private.
If you would like to discuss the register, contribute editorial expertise, or talk about institutional support, please get in touch at info@energyincidentregister.com.