Battery energy storage system (BESS) developer Apatura has secured planning consent for a 150MW BESS in Scotland.
The Neilston BESS will be located in Paisley, Renfrewshire, around 17 miles south-west of Glasgow. Renfrewshire Council approved the decision with no objections, following a close working relationship between Apatura, Scotland’s Energy Consents Unit and Renfrewshire Council.
With this approval, Apatura now has 1GW of approved or operational BESS capacity, as well as having Scotland’s largest energy storage pipeline at over 10GW.
Andrew Philpott, Apatura’s chief development officer, stated: “BESS plays a crucial role in modern energy management, especially in the context of renewable energy integration and grid stability. It is central to our goal of enhancing the renewable energy infrastructure in Scotland and follows on from a number of recent successful planning consents.
“This scheme will help deliver stable energy prices, leading to reduced bills and taking the pressure off households while at the same time increasing energy security.
“We are determined to deliver reliable, clean energy to communities across the country, and this latest planning consent does just that,” concluded Philpott.
Apatura plans for the future
This project is the sixth that Apatura has received planning consent for in the past 14 months, continuing a successful pattern.
Arguably, the most notable approval of the firm’s recent run came in September of last year, when planning consent was awarded for Scotland’s largest standalone BESS, a 700MW development in Inverclyde, Scotland.
The Aunchetiber BESS will be situated on around 16.39 hectares of land and will be made up of 240 BESS units, 140 BESS transformers, 280 BESS inverters, three 33kV switchrooms, a 400kV control building and a 400kV to 33kV transformer compound. Just a month later, the firm announced it had been granted planning permission for a 100MW BESS near Dundee.
Apatura’s success north of the border is reflective of Scotland’s hefty appetite for BESS. Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP) recently announced that it has made final investment decisions on three separate 500MW/1000MWh projects across Scotland, while RES and Intelligent Land Investments (ILI) Group both closed out 2024 by securing planning permission for their own BESS projects, a 49.9MW project in Moray and a 100MW Ayrshire project respectively.
