A new report by energy service provider Joulen, formerly the Electric Storage Company, suggests 0.1% of UK businesses could provide the equivalent power of both Hinkley Point C and 130 grid-scale battery sites by installing battery energy storage.
The report, A Better Battery Strategy, outlines four steps the UK government could take to democratise the energy transition. It was modelled on 70 proprietary data sets and scenarios, taking into account optimisation opportunities, existing and possible market mechanisms, and public data sources.
The four steps are: to bring batteries into existing plans, such as the solar rooftop revolution and warm homes plan; to enable easier access for batteries to take part in all energy markets via virtual power plant (VPP) technology; to introduce tax incentives and better data use for increased returns in order to encourage battery investment and broader market participation; and to ensure optimisation is at the heart of deployment.
Democratisation can bring bills down for both consumers and businesses, according to Joulen, and its report argues that businesses with optimised solar and battery storage could save 60% on their electricity costs, with optimised battery storage accounting for 22% of this.
Residential batteries also offer savings of up to 65%, used in tandem with home solar installations. Further, if the home assets are optimised, the report says that participation in energy markets could open an additional income of £375 a year. If optimisation and participation were the standard, the payback period on the technology could be reduced by a third.
As the government pushes the UK towards net zero, and looks to make the UK a clean energy superpower, Joulen argues that battery strategy will accelerate the energy transition. However, given connection dates for many grid-scale battery projects are well beyond 2030, the nation is not likely to achieve the 50GW battery capacity that the report argues it should have by 2050.
This is why commercial and residential installations are essential. Incentivising investment, then, is critical; Joulen suggests offering financial benefits, such as relief on property rates for small and medium enterprises (SMEs), or the implementation of a benefit in kind programme similar to the cycle to work scheme for homes, would see an immediate uplift in clean energy deployment.
Sidestepping the bottleneck of grid connectivity issues will also reduce spending on clean energy curtailment. In a letter to the UK government and the ESO, battery storage developers argued that the ESO consistently underuses batteries in its efforts to handle energy oversupply, despite batteries often being a simpler, cheaper choice.
The report acknowledges that change at a national level cannot happen overnight, but that bringing smaller batteries, owned by households and businesses, into the balancing picture can ease local grid pressures. Optimisation will also help to avoid overbuilding and overspending on the energy transition, through making the most of all clean energy, and energy storage coming online.
