Zenobē has begun building 1GW of battery storage projects in Scotland.
Worth a total of £750m, the projects will be based at Blackhillock, Kilmarnock South and Eccles.
Over their 15 years of operation, the sites are forecast to save up to 13.4m tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere, equivalent to taking 490,000 diesel or petrol cars off the road for 15 years – or the equivalent of removing more than all the cars in Glasgow and Edinburgh.
They are also forecast to lower consumers bills by over £1bn by reducing the curtailment of wind farms over the same period.
Construction at the Blackhillock site began this month with the site due to go live in in the first half of 2024.
With the new projects, company’s total Scottish portfolio has reached to 1.05GW/2.1GWh and equates to more than the total MWh of all grid-connected batteries operating in the UK today.
The new projects are all contracted to provide stability services to National Grid Electricity System Operator (NGESO) to improve the reliability of the UK’s increasingly renewable power system.
These are the first commercial contracts in the world to use transmission connected batteries to provide short-circuit level and inertia, essential for the grid to function efficiently as fossil fuel plants phase out.
James Basden, co-founder and director of Zenobē, said: “Zenobē is transforming the uptake of clean power, enabling the UK to become both more independent and greener in how it generates electricity. These projects are using the latest technological innovation to make renewable energy more reliable and affordable at a national scale. This is the future for how utility scale battery projects will work on every grid.
“Our projects at Blackhillock, Kilmarnock South and Eccles are world-firsts for battery storage, addressing a key, complex hurdle to the uptake of renewables in an innovative way and pushing forward our progress to energy independence and a zero-carbon grid.
Julian Leslie, Head of Networks at National Grid ESO, added: “NGESO is working hard to enable the UK to have a carbon free power network. Working with the industry we have developed contracts that accelerate the rapid uptake of renewable power. These contracts are part of the solution that will enable NGESO to have the ability to operate a zero carbon system in 2025.
“Investment into the use of new technologies by innovative companies like Zenobē is bringing this ambition nearer. The investment into these three major projects represents a turning point in how major grid scale battery storage can support the grid as fossil fuel generation is phased out.”