Flexitricity bags deal to manage Europe's 'largest' battery storage site

Demand response specialist Flexitricity has clinched a deal to manage, optimise, and provide balancing services for one of Europe's largest battery storage sites.

The firm announced today that it has inked a deal with Gresham House Storage Fund to provide market access and optimise revenue for the 50MW/75MWh Thurcroft energy storage site in South Yorkshire, while helping National Grid ESO balance energy supply and demand.

From its Edinburgh control room, Flexitricity will dynamically move the asset's output between different markets, with National Grid ESO as the balancing mechanism. It will also provide frequency response services to regulate system frequency and it within safe operating levels.

The partners stressed that energy storage has a "vital role" to play in facilitating the UK's net zero transition.

"Flexibility is a hugely important part of decarbonising the grid and batteries are an excellent source of flexibility," said Andy Lowe, director at Flexitricity. "It is one of the only asset classes that can deliver the rapid response flexibility National Grid ESO needs now and will need even more in the future to maintain system stability. That's why it's been great to see the investment case for batteries gain momentum over the last 12 months and ambitious projects such as Thurcroft become reality."

The energy storage system at Thurston is Europe's largest, according to the partners.

Gresham House New Energy's managing director Ben Guest said the firm intended to have 360MW of energy storage operational by the end of this year. "Energy storage is an area of significant growth with Great Britain requiring at least 10GW in the next four years in order to enable to the ongoing transition to a renewables-led electricity market," he said.

"The UK has an ambition to achieve net zero by 2050 and it is our aim to contribute to this meaningfully, while achieving strong returns for our investors," Guest added.

In late April, Flexitricity revealed that it was the first aggregator to take advantage of a new virtual balancing mechanism (BM) wider access arrangement - introduced last year by National Grid ESO to open up the market to a wider range of providers - when it aggregated two energy storage systems owned by a Devon-based food company power to provide power to the the grid. The news was hailed by National Grid ESO as a "major milestone" for the UK's transition towards a smarter, more flexible and cleaner grid.

The UK's energy storage market is growing rapidly, as operators seek to balance an increasingly renewables-heavy grid, and one that must cater to a surge in electricity demand as more industries electrify to meet the UK's 2050 net zero ambition.

Cumulative energy storage installations in the UK soared past the 1GW mark in early April, according to Solar Media's latest UK Battery Storage Project Database Report, and that number is growing, fast. Around 1GW of applications were submitted in the second half of last year alone.

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• Topics
• Energy
• Infrastructure
• Efficiency
• Flexitricity
• National Grid
• energy storage
• ESS
• National Grid ESO
• Gresham House Storage Fund