(Yesterday, 3:46 pm)Adrian wrote I really can't understand why they'd order the buses before they have a connection offer and agreed timescales from Northern Powergrid? Isn't it a bit like building a house before having the planning permission.

All (or almost all?) of the various new electric buses are part-funded by grant from the government, aren't they? I suspect that comes with conditions requiring that the funds are claimed by a specified date, which is why the buses get ordered to meet that deadline. Although optimistic things will have gone into the bids for funding, from the outset all the parties involved - operators, transport authorities, DfT - probably knew that sorting out the electricity supply was a risk and might well not be possible by the hoped-for date due to reasons outside anyone's control. 

But it does seem a bit surpising that Arriva's Belmont depot is not within scope of a heavyweight electricity supply, as in former times it was the site of a big manufacturing plant. Maybe in the intervening years the electricity network capacity has been taken up by new housing estates and new offices, etc.

Privatising the public utilties and running themfor profit maybe was not such a good idea ... (Northern Powergrid is owned by Berkshire Hathaway - a huge US conglomerate.)