“Solar Media Market Research, which is the in-house team of experts at Energy-Storage News’ publisher Solar Media, tracked 60 new planning applications for large-scale battery storage projects in the UK last year, representing some 1.2GW of capacity. Lauren Cook said that activity has increased year-on-year in this regard and business models are changing quickly. Legislation has also shifted to allow projects of over 50MW capacity to bypass the Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project planning status that larger projects previously had to attain.

“The battery storage pipeline in the UK has reached over 14.5GW with around 1.2GW operational. The pipeline is continuing to grow as we see increasing number of projects of 50MW and larger,” Lauren Cook told Energy-Storage.news in an interview.

“There is also increased interest in battery storage co-located with wind and solar and we are now seeing more planning applications being submitted for these projects.”

Energy-Storage.news asked Cook how much of an impact lifting those rules that limited projects to under 50MW would have. During the webinar, the analyst had said that of projects deployed and planned in the UK, the largest share by percentage had been projects with 49.9MW rated output: in other words, the largest that developers could make them while complying.”

Source : Energy Storage News