British Solar Renewables has completed construction of the 49.99 megawatt (MW) Stocking Pelham battery storage project in England, the largest such facility in the UK.
The facility is located near Bishop’s Stortford in Hertfordshire, England, was actually completed back in December of 2017, using SMA’s proprietary E-house design, which houses batteries and other equipment in custom-built prefabricated buildings.
The project was commissioned in December under a two-year contract with the UK National Grid to provide grid balancing services. Thus, not only is Stocking Pelham the largest constructed battery storage facility in the UK, but it is also the beneficiary of a first for UK large-scale battery storage re-financing.
Stocking Pelham is made up of seven of SMA’s E-houses, 27 inverters, 12 kilometers of cable, and 150,000 lithium-ion battery cells, and is connected to the nearby 400kV substation via a 132kV grid connection. The use of E-houses helped reduce the site’s footprint by up to 50% as compared to other battery storage designs relying on shipping containers.
The project’s refinancing was completed through a debt facility with NatWest, part of The Royal Bank of Scotland Group, and is a step forward for the maturity of the technology in the UK.
Reference- Cleantechnica, Energy Storage News