Scottish ministers in the Energy Consents Unit have approved an application from energy storage developer Alcemi for a 300MW battery energy storage system (BESS) in Aberdeenshire, Scotland.
The transmission-connected Kintore BESS will be located on a 5.7-hectare brownfield site on the edge of the existing Midmill business park, 1.5km south of Kintore and 2.8km east of the Kintore substation.
Following the approval, Alcemi has a pipeline of 1,800MW of battery storage with planning permission in Scotland. UK-wide, Alcemi has a total 2.3GW of schemes consented. For the Kintore BESS, Alcemi has a connection date of October 2029.
As with the rest of its projects under construction, Alcemi’s Kintore BESS will be progressed in collaboration with Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP) through its flagship funds.
CIP and Alcemi partnered in February 2022 with the aim of deploying 4GW of energy storage across the UK.
At the beginning of the year, CIP secured financial investment decisions (FIDs) and issued notice to proceed to commence construction for Alcemi’s 500MW/1000MWh Coalburn 2 BESS in South Lanarkshire, adjacent to its existing Coalburn 1 BESS and the Devilla BESS of the same size in Fife.
Alcemi secured consent for the BESS projects the year previously. Chief development director of Alcemi James Forster said the firm was “thrilled” to maintain its 100% track record of consented projects.
Scotland is a competitive area for BESS development due to the high amounts of wind generation in the country that cannot be exported across the boundary to England due to the insufficient transmission network.
Consent for the Kintore project came within weeks of the Energy Consents Unit (ECU) consenting two other grid-scale BESS for Scotland. The first of the two, under development by Apatura, will have a 50MW/100MWh capacity and is the ninth BESS consent secured by the company in 16 months.
Closer in size to Kintore, Zenobē Energy received approval for a 200MW BESS which is due to connect in June 2026.
