One of the country's first industrial-scale battery storage facilities is to be built at a solar farm in Somerset, as part of a new £1m project to investigate the potential for large-scale battery storage technology in the UK.
The project, announced today by solar developer British Solar Renewables (BSR) and electricity supplier Western Power Distribution (WPD), will explore the feasibility of connecting clean power generation with battery storage and the electricity grid to solve intermittency problems from renewable power.
The Ofgem-funded initiative is the first of its kind in the UK. It will see the construction of a 640kWh battery system at the BSR-owned 1.5MW solar park at Butleigh in Somerset, which is connected to WPD's South West network. The battery system - to be deployed by renewable energy specialist RES - will be completed by 2018.
Jenny Woodruff, Innovation and Low Carbon Networks Engineer at WPD, said the project will help maximise value from renewable energy sources. "Finding an economical way to store renewable energy will provide security of energy supply from renewable sources. It will ensure renewables aren't wasted, as in this case it will allow solar energy to be stored and accessed when required," she said in a statement.
Meanwhile, Gordon MacDougall, RES' managing director for Western Europe, said the project will see RES bring its expertise developed on storage projects in the US and Canada to the UK for the first time. "Our experience of delivering almost 80MW of energy storage globally has given us the ability to provide proven and reliable energy storage solutions, and we are confident that this project will open the door for other opportunities in the UK," he said.
The project will use the Somerset test site to develop a framework for commercial agreements that could be used by future investors and developers to roll out battery storage across the country.
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