Developer Alcemi and investment group Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP) have partnered for the development, construction and operation of a 4GW portfolio of UK energy storage assets.
The projects are currently in late-stage development and are to be between 300MW and 500MW each, with a storage duration of up to four hours. This makes them some of the largest energy storage projects in Europe, the two companies said.
They are being developed at strategic locations that will support the transmission system by limiting the impact of network constraints, with this to help reduce the overall cost of energy for consumers as well as lower the carbon intensity of the UK power sector, by ensuring better utilisation of renewable energy and therefore limiting the need for fossil fuel power generation during periods of peak demand.
Alcemi originated the projects, and is to continue to develop the projects with the support of CIP and Alcemi’s founding investor Susgen. Procurement activities are to be primarily led by CIP and initiated later this year ahead of construction of the first project, which is scheduled to start in 2023.
Further projects in the pipeline are expected to go into construction regularly, and then energise throughout the second half of this decade, the companies said.
“We expect these projects to enable a cost-efficient transition towards the low carbon, highly resilient power generation sector in the UK,” Christian Skakkebæk, senior partner at CIP, said.
Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners manages nine funds and has approximately €16 billion (£13.5 billion) of assets under management focused on investments in energy infrastructure, including offshore wind, onshore wind, solar PV, biomass and energy-from-waste, transmission and distribution, reserve capacity and storage, and other energy assets like Power-to-X.
Other large battery storage projects in the UK include two 400MW/800MWh projects under development by Amp Energy, a 360MW Sembcorp Energy UK project and the 100MW/107MWh Capenhurst project from Zenobe.
Last week the scale and speed of deployment of batteries for the UK grid was highlighted on the site in a Guest Blog from Solar Media Market Research analyst Mollie McCorkindale. In 2021, 446MW of large-scale battery storage was installed in the country, narrowly beating 2018 to make it the year of most deployments on record, McCorkindale wrote.
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