One of UK’s largest battery storage facilities given greenlight
As reported by Energy Live News today, SSE Renewables has given the go ahead for the construction of a new battery energy storage system (BESS) in Monk Fryston, Yorkshire, marking one of the UK’s largest BESS projects.
This 320MW/640MWh grid-scale battery represents SSE Renewables’ third BESS development to move forward, joining the ranks of its 50MW Salisbury and 150MW Ferrybridge BESS projects.
The Monk Fryston BESS project is capable of storing and operating for up to two hours. In turn this will play a vital role in storing energy for release to the UK national grid during peak demand periods when we usually turn to gas fired generation.
Effective balancing of energy supply with demand is critical and harnessing the potential of renewable technology even in less favourable weather conditions presents a lot of issues to the balancing but the use of battery energy storage system’s will help do this.
Finlay McCutcheon, Director of Onshore Renewables, SSE Renewables, said: “Taking a Final Investment Decision on our Monk Fryston project is another very exciting milestone for SSE Renewables and our solar and battery business, which now has four projects in delivery amounting to over half a gigawatt of new solar and battery capacity.
“We are continuing to take action at real pace to rapidly scale up both our installed renewable energy capacity and the associated large scale energy storage needed to support it, as is demonstrated by our diverse portfolio of projects across onshore and offshore wind, hydro and of course solar and battery.”
SSE Renewables have confirmed that construction is set to commence soon.
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