Europe’s biggest battery to be built in UK industrial hub

Sembcorp Energy UK announced this week that it intends to build Europe’s largest battery energy storage system, a 360MW facility, designed to help the United Kingdom achieve its 2050 net zero target.

The proposed battery storage project will be located at the Wilton International on a manufacturing site in the heart of Teesside’s industrial area, home to one of the UK’s leading process manufacturing clusters.

Both Wilton International and Sembcorp Energy UK are part of Singapore-based Sembcorp Industries, which currently boasts a balanced energy portfolio of over 12,800MW, including more than 3,300MW worth of renewable energy capacity.

Sembcorp Energy UK itself currently operates one of the UK’s largest battery portfolios consisting of 70MW worth of operational battery storage and a further 50MW already in the pipeline and set to begin operations in early 2022.

The newly proposed Teesside battery storage project, however, is well above anything in operation by either Sembcorp Energy UK or across Europe.

The company did not give a length of storage for the battery, but its previous installations have featured one hour of storage, with a focus on grid services.

“The National Grid Electricity System Operator (NG ESO) needs battery storage to dynamically manage the UK’s energy system in real-time,” it website says.

“Functioning like the cruise control in a car, our batteries automatically increase or decrease their output to ensure that the system frequency remains consistently within safe limits, reducing the risk of power cuts.”

Sembcorp Energy UK is also behind the proposed Whitetail Clean Energy power plant, which will also be located at Teesside – a 300MW net zero emissions natural gas CCS plant that will capture and store its carbon emissions offshore.

If Sembcorp is able to bring all its proposed projects to fruition, it will boast a total energy portfolio of over 1.6GW, with almost half of that being supplied by batteries.

“Now, more than ever, flexible energy sources play an increasingly important role in maintaining secure and reliable energy supplies,” Andy Koss, the head of Sembcorp in th UK and Middle East, said in a statement.