Batteries galore! How green energy schemes are surging through the UK's planning system

Despite frequent headlines about planning disputes concerning renewable energy in the UK, green energy planning application success rates are generally high. Battery applications have surged in recent months to what would previously have been regarded as unlikely levels. Almost all of the batteries are given planning consent by local authorities.

However, problems connecting batteries to the grid are slowing progress. This means there will be more reliance on gas-fired power plants at peak power periods. This is compared to a system where there are more batteries in place. The problem is not that there are not enough developers wanting to develop batteries, or gain planning consent, but that the procedures operated by the electricity system are slowing their adoption.

As wind and solar become the dominant players in electricity markets, batteries are an important adjunct to these variable energy sources. These three technologies have become, and are becoming, ever-cheaper. Indeed, according to the analysis by the Fraunhofer Institute, battery plus solar systems are now cheaper than conventional power plants. (See HERE). The same logic will apply to the low cost of wind plus battery systems.

Planning consent rates for batteries, wind, and solar farms

You can see the rates of planning consent for different technologies in Charts 1 and 2, that is before (Chart 1) and after (Chart 2) appeals to central Governments. The ‘central’ governments are Westminster for England, and the Scottish, Welsh, and Northern Irish Governments.

Chart 1

Source: UK Government Renewable Energy Planning Database

Chart 2

Note onshore wind figures relate only up until 2016 because onshore wind in England was effectively banned from then until this year.

You can see that onshore wind in England has had the lowest rates for approval. Planning approval rates for onshore wind are better in Scotland. The windy conditions in Scotland have meant that the large majority of UK’s onshore wind has been deployed in Scotland. Batteries and offshore wind have the highest rates of planning acceptance at 90%+.

Despite some well-publicised controversies about solar farm planning applications, three-quarters have been given planning consent at the local authority level, even before appeals. Developers will tell you that the bigger problem is finding sites with good enough grid connections. Most of the solar farm planning applications made so far have been in England.

The rise of batteries

The quantity of batteries for which planning applications have already been made is impressive. You can see this in Chart 3 compared to peak generating capacity as measured by the National Electricity System Operator (NESO). This proposed capacity (over 76 GW) is rather more than the peak generating capacity for grid electricity in the UK. It is also rather more than the quantity of solar PV and wind power installed (see Chart 4 for this).

Of course, the amount of batteries that are (as yet) installed is a lot more modest. Around 4.7 GW was installed at the end of 2023. In addition, in May 2024 RenewableUK (see HERE) identified over 4GW of battery capacity that were under construction. However, the amount installed will steadily increase owing to various pressures.

Chart 3

Sources: UK Government Renewable Energy Planning Database and UK National Electricity System Operator (NESO)

Chart 4

Sources: UK Government Renewable Energy Planning Database and Digest of UK Energy Statistics

The Use of Batteries

But what are the batteries being, or going to be, used for? Initially, batteries have been (are being) used to provide so-called ‘ancillary’ services. This is the lubrication that keeps the electricity system working. Ancillary services include a) keeping the grid frequency stable and b) providing rapid adjustments to increase or reduce energy production to even out last-minute imbalances between supply and demand.

However, two growing streams of income are a) so-called ‘arbitrage’ activity and b) ‘capacity’ payments. Arbitrage is when batteries store energy when wholesale power prices are low and sell the energy when prices are high. As the grid becomes more and more dominated by variable wind and solar, the arbitrage opportunities will increase.

A few batteries are being co-located with wind and solar farms. This is to help the projects cope with periods in which the projects will not be paid money because of excess wind and solar on the grid. However, most planned batteries in the UK are independent of solar or wind farms.

Another major stream of income for batteries are so-called ‘capacity payments’. The National Electricity System Operator (NESO) is steadily increasing the capacity of batteries that can bid into the ‘capacity mechanism’ (CM). Under the CM the NESO gives incentives to provide capacity for the grid. Currently, most of the capacity incentives go to conventional power plants, or increasingly gas engines built to provide peak power.

According to RenewableUK’s analysis (see HERE) around 70 percent of the planned batteries (including a substantial quantity also in the pre-planning application stage) have already obtained clearance for grid connection.

Longer Duration Batteries?

In the grid-scale battery industry itself ‘long duration’ usually means longer than two hours. Often this discussion is confused with the issues of inter-week or interseasonal long-term energy storage, which I shall deal with in a later post. Most batteries being deployed hitherto have a maximum duration of only two hours - eg a 100MW capacity battery will store 200MWh of energy. Yet, as renewables penetration increases the demand for longer-duration batteries will increase. OFGEM defines long duration as being longer than 12 hours, and it is intending to introduce an incentives regime to promote development of long term energy storage (see HERE).

However, in the medium to longer term the market for longer duration (ie longer than 2 hours) will increase. That is because there will be longer periods where there is excess production compared to demand. Take the example of generation by solar PV compared to grid demand for electricity. Look at Charts 5 and 6 below which are based on modeling data from NESO archives and projecting them forward onto a scenario with enhanced solar pv capacity. Chart 5 is roughly the current generation position for solar PV on a typical sunny summer day in the UK. As you can see peak solar generation will still be a lot lower than electricity demand. 75% of solar generation is delivered in the summer months in the UK.

Chart 5

However, look at Chart 6. This involves solar power accounting for 19 percent of UK electricity generation on an annual basis (about 4xs higher than the 2023 percentage contribution). We can see a significant generation excess compared to UK demand on a summer day. Now, this is much more of a problem given the likelihood that (in addition to the solar generation) the wind will be blowing and inflexible nuclear power will be running (ie it will not shut down). So energy will need to be stored if solar farms are not to be curtailed and the energy wasted.

Chart 6

You can see, however, from Chart 7 below, that if the solar PV can be stored at least for a few hours, then the generation can be spread out throughout the day (to meet demand) and not wasted. That is even though solar PV maybe 20 percent of the annual UK electricity demand in total.

Chart 7

Of course, much the same conclusion can be reached by modeling high levels of wind output compared to electricity demand. Long(er) duration batteries will balance higher levels of variable generation with demand. The point here is that longer-duration batteries (i.e. longer than two hours) is needed. The more variable wind and solar generation comes online, then the higher will be the demand for the batteries. However, longer duration batteries cost more than short duration ones.

Currently, most of the energy storage being deployed consists of lithium-based batteries. However, there are already niche uses for other technologies that are suitable for long-duration batteries. For example, iron ‘flow’ batteries are being used in Schipol Airport (see HERE). Flow batteries are tipped by some to be ‘the future’ for energy storage (see HERE). For the moment, however, lithium remains king of the batteries.

There is no technical reason lithium batteries cannot be deployed with durations of several hours or longer. The two limiting issues are how low the cost of the batteries falls and how frequently will there be the demand for the services provided by longer-duration batteries.

Have Government Regulations kept pace with green energy developments?

NESO projects that up to 27 GW of batteries are needed by 2030 (See HERE). Yet the energy consultancy ‘Modo’ (see HERE) says that the build-out rate for batteries is running behind what the NESO needs in its pursuit of a net zero strategy. ‘Connection delays at the DNO level’ are said (by Modo) to be part of the problem. The NESO is also projecting a long-term increase in the amount of longer-duration batteries that are required.

What is clear from the analysis of batteries in the planning system is that developers have more than enough plans for batteries to meet NESO’s medium-term projections. The problem is that the electricity system is too slow to cope with them being connected. On the other hand, a drag on the process and the speed conversion of proposed into actual grid-scale battery projects can be hampered by Government policies.

A central issue is that Government policy may still favour the old type of centralised-dispatch of power. For example, the contracts being offered to Hinkley C and, I assume, Sizewell C, will encourage nuclear power plants to generate whenever they can. Nuclear power will carry on being generated even when there is an excess of renewable energy. This will make it more difficult to absorb solar and wind power when there is excess generation compared to demand.

Then there is the investment in fossil-fuelled power plants fitted with CCS. These dinosaurs are incapable of the sort of rapid system flexibility that we need. That is even if the CCS plant will work at anything near planned specifications!

A coalition of battery providers has complained that batteries are not being used enough to deal with the problem of wind farms being curtailed (See HERE). They are saying that instead of curtailing the windfarms and making ‘constraint’ payments to the windfarms much greater use of batteries could be made to store the energy. The batteries could supply the electricity at a later time when there is less grid congestion.

Ofgem has prepared a ‘Connection Action Plan’ to deal with delays in connecting batteries to the distribution system. And, yet, according to Energy Barrister Sally Barratt-Williams the Government’s new transmission rules may prevent long-duration batteries from ever being connected. She says in a recent newsletter that ‘without change or relaxation to them, limit or, in all probability prevent, the possibility of there being any long duration batteries in place by 2030’.

The conclusion is that there are easily enough batteries and battery technologies available to meet the challenge of daily grid balancing in a nearly 100 percent renewable energy grid. The problems that are flagged up are soluble, but NESO, Ofgem, the distribution companies, and the Government need to get their acts together to change and implement the regulations!

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