National Grid Electricity Transmission (NGET) has announced a new ‘grid park’ concept to be unveiled in Sundon, Bedfordshire. The park will allow three customers to connect to the grid at the same point, widening opportunities to efficiently connect renewable energy assets to the transmission network.
EDF Renewables UK will be among the first connections made using the concept as it expands its Energy Superhub rollout, connecting its new Luton battery energy storage site. This was announced alongside a site in Cornwall, and builds on the launch of Europe’s ‘most powerful’ EV charging hub in Oxford.
Almost 150MW of battery-stored energy is being lined up to connect to the grid park through three grid-scale batteries, bringing greater flexibility to the network and aiding the UK’s efforts to reach its decarbonisation targets.
Mikey Clark, head of electricity connections at EDF Renewables UK, said “To accelerate a net zero future and support more renewables we urgently need to scale-up the UK’s battery storage capacity. Streamlining the process for connecting to the grid is integral to achieving this.”
National Grid has been continually investing across its network, having spent £4.2 billion over the last five years and proposing to spend another £7.1 billion over the next five to upgrade, adapt and maintain the transmission network.
“Our first grid park build is an exciting development, a proof of concept for a new way to connect low carbon generation in an innovative and cost-efficient way in the future” said Mark Beasley, the project’s director at National Grid.
“Making new connections to the transmission system is a complex process and our new grid park design is no different – we still have to manage the build and any planned outages, and ensure impact on regional networks and local communities alike is minimised.”
In September, Current± reported that connection applications quadrupled in the past four years as the renewable energy sector has grown and the need for battery-stored energy has increased ahead of Britain’s impending net zero targets.
This was shortly followed by an announcement that stalled renewable projects will be able to be removed from the transmission entry capacity (TEC) register at reduced cost from 1 October to 30 November. The decision was intended to allow new projects to be fast-tracked onto the transmission network and connected more quickly.
NGET’s TEC register policy and the announcement of the Sundon grid park site could lead to more streamlined connections and a more capacious, flexible network.