UK’s largest battery power project approved by BEIS

LONDON (ICIS)–A new 320MW electricity battery project in the UK approved by the department for business, energy and industrial strategy will boost the country’s transition to a wind-dominated generation stack.

The InterGen Gateway project in Essex will be operational in 2024 and construction is scheduled to begin in 2022.

This project will make up approximately one third of the UK’s current total battery storage capacity and is the biggest of its kind in the UK so far.

Aaron Lally, managing partner of a storage asset managing company VEST Energy, said he expected more projects of this size to follow.

“It will be interesting to see how investment funds in the battery space adapt to new competitors, who hold decades of experience trading and monetising assets in the short and long term electricity markets,” he said.

According to VEST energy, UK storage capacity is projected to increase tenfold by 2025 .

Offshore wind should take up a larger portion of power generation as the UK inches closer towards its long-term net zero targets, and the UK grid will look to be less reliant on gas and nuclear based generation.

Due to uncontrollable and unplanned periods of generation, a largely renewables powered grid would result in more balancing issues , of which storage assets have already been proven capable of mitigating .

The increased availability of storage capacity would allow for a more efficient application of renewable energy as they can take off excess energy off the grid when it is oversupplied and provide capacity when it is short.