Planning law in the UK has been changed to allow energy storage projects over 50MW to come on line without going through the national planning process. This could pave the way for a major expansion of battery storage facilities across our towns and cities, to support green energy use in new builds and to balance our energy demand.
The previous system was cited as a barrier due to the time and cost of the process – which could add up to three years to a project’s development timeline, according to the Energy Storage Network. This change reflects the evolution of storage technologies in recent years.
This data is used for system optimization, maintenance planning, and regulatory compliance. Battery Energy Storage Systems play a pivotal role across various business sectors in the UK, from commercial to utility-scale applications, each addressing specific energy needs and challenges.
The change in the law should make it much easier for energy storage schemes to get planning permission, to attract funding more easily, and enable them to be built more quickly. The recent UK Battery Storage Project Database Report by suggested the UK has more than 13.5GW of battery storage projects in the pipeline.
Energy storage is a crucial technology to provide the necessary flexibility, stability, and reliability for the energy system of the future. System flexibility is particularly needed in the EU’s electricity system, where the share of renewable energy is estimated to reach around 69% by 2030 and 80% by 2050.
By definition, a Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) is a type of energy storage solution, a collection of large batteries within a container, that can store and discharge electrical energy upon request.