ScottishPower Renewables’ 1MW Cornwall battery energy storage system has exported electricity for the first time.
It is the first time ScottishPower has exported power from a battery, with electricity exported from the Carland Cross windfarm in Cornwall where the battery is co-located with. The site is also to have a 10MW solar farm installed, with construction work on this is to being in early 2021.
This milestone will allow power to be exported to Centrica’s Local Energy Market (LEM) as part of joint venture soon, helping to balance electricity supply and demand at a local level in the region.
The Carland Cross battery marks the start of ScottishPower Renewables’ pipeline of almost 1GW of battery storage projects across the UK and Ireland. Two battery projects under construction in the Republic of Ireland are included within this as well as the Whitelee 50MW ‘super battery’ just south of Glasgow.
Plans for the Whitelee battery were approved in 2019, with Ingeteam revealed as the supplier of the battery in July 2020. The battery will be used for a number of different applications, with its main use to be as a back-up for the Whitelee wind farm to allow it to better manage the energy delivered to the grid.
Lindsay McQuade, CEO of ScottishPower Renewables, said that whilst the Carland Cross battery may be small in scale, it – and batteries like it – “mark a new era for renewable generation”, highlighting the need to ensure the infrastructure to make best use of clean power is in place with renewables set to “become the backbone” of the UK’s electricity system.
ScottishPower unveiled a £2 billion investment programme in 2019, targeting large-scale battery storage and EV charging. It also revealed a hybrid power strategy for the UK and Ireland, combining solar and battery storage with wind on both existing and new sites.
