Renewable energy storage firm Apatura has secured planning permission to build and operate a 100MW battery energy storage system (BESS) near Dundee in Scotland.
Scottish ministers approved the scheme, which will consist of 52 lithium-ion batteries in steel containers directly connected by underground cable to the nearby Tealing substation. Notably, the local authority Angus Council lodged no objections to the proposed development.
The council noted: “The development would contribute towards meeting government energy targets and generally complies with the relevant policies of the Angus Local Development Plan and National Planning Framework 4 [for the development and use of land].”
The 2.5 hectare site, 7.5km north of Dundee and 1.8km south-west of the village of Tealing, is located in open countryside and development will include new native species tree and wildflower planting to deliver a biodiversity net gain at the site.
Andrew Philpott, chief development officer at Apatura, said: “The proximity of the existing Tealing substation makes the site an ideal location for energy storage. Importantly, the proposed development will provide a significant boost to the local economy by creating jobs during the construction, operational and eventual decommissioning phases of the facility, as well as indirect job creation in the supply chain, maintenance and other related services.”
BESS in Britain
This latest consent follows the firm gaining planning approval for a 700MW BESS in Inverclyde, which, once completed, will be Scotland’s largest standalone BESS. It is also the largest project for which Apatura has received approval across its 10GW pipeline.
Apatura’s successes come as Cardiff City Council unanimously approved a 1,000MW capacity BESS, the largest in the UK to secure planning permission. Meanwhile, developer OnPath Energy’s 200MW BESS in Bathgate, Scotland, passed through West Lothian Council’s executive committee with no objections.
The approvals are timely, after operational BESS from several companies stepped up during interconnector failures. When the NSL interconnector stopped exporting power to the UK from Norway, Roger Hollies, CTO at Arenko Group, posted on LinkedIn that 1.5GW of batteries across NESO’s network were able to inject power into the grid during the disruption, including 12 batteries on Arenko’s Nimbus platform.
Separately, the Moyle interconnector, which runs between Ireland and the UK, tripped seeing Statkraft BESS activate to stabilise the British and Irish electricity grids.
In other applications, battery storage technology has been somewhat overlooked, highlighted by an open letter penned by developers including Zenobē and Harmony Energy. Responding to fears that the Balancing Mechanism does not make proper use of BESS, choosing other, often more expensive, solutions, the National Energy System Operator (NESO) set four “short term” actions to make a “meaningful impact” on skip rates.
NESO also committed to further work on a number of code modifications, to review and clarify the ‘30-minute rule’ and to review balancing reserve and wider reserve procurement strategies.
