The quantity of battery energy storage system (BESS) pipeline with planning consent is a roughly 5% increase on the 52.3GW/111.5GWh at the end of March, which itself was a roughly 5% increase on the 50.2GW/106.2GWh at the end of January, the data shows.
Major projects that were awarded planning consent last month include a 200MW/400MWh BESS from OnPath Energy and a 456MW project from Gresham House, both in Scotland, first reported by our colleagues at Solar Power Portal.
The milestone of planning consent could be crucial during regulator Ofgem’s reshuffle of the grid connection queue. January and February actually saw larger figures of BESS projects being approved, around 2,455MW/5,300MWh and 2,820MW/5,639MWh respectively.
The increase in operational capacity was comparatively lower in March than previous months, inching up around 1.7% to 6,374MW/9,043MWh from last month’s figure. The commissioning of Pulse Clean Energy’s 42MW/100MWh Hyde BESS, covered on Solar Power Portal, accounted for a big chunk of that increase.
The UK is Europe’s largest grid-scale BESS market, although Germany is larger overall if you include residential and commercial & industrial (C&I), as recent data from research firm LCP Delta and trade body EASE showed.
Our Market Research colleagues meanwhile estimate that around 700MW/1,400MWh of BESS projects started construction in the UK in the past month, meaning a total of around 18GWh is under construction.
