There’s plenty of wind in Scotland and a large and growing fleet of Scottish offshore and onshore wind farms produces significant amounts of green electricity. However, a large part of the demand is located much further south, particularly around London, in the Midlands and the southeast of England. And getting the power to where it’s needed is no simple task, given the limited capacity across existing and planned north-south transmission lines.

A new partnership between Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP) and Alcemi, a company backed by the leading UK sustainable energy funder Susgen, will help address that problem. The partnership covers the develop- ment of a portfolio of large-scale battery energy storage projects across the UK, supporting the integration of renewable energy capacity and the transition to net zero by 2050.

The portfolio developed by CIP and Alcemi, consisting of seven battery energy storage system projects, represents a significant entry into this market for CIP and addresses an existing and growing grid and dispatchable capacity issue in the UK market. Construction of the more advanced projects in the portfolio is expected to be funded by CIP’s current and subsequent flagship investment funds, Copen- hagen Infrastructure IV and V.

The projects, currently at various stages of development, are some of the largest energy storage projects in Europe, with planned capacities of between 300MW and 500MW each and storage duration of up to four hours.

They are being developed at strategic locations that will support the transmission system by limiting the impact of network constraints, by storing and then releasing excess power to avoid overloading the transmission network, and by providing other ancillary services to the system.

This will help reduce the overall energy cost for consumers and lower the carbon intensity of the UK power sector, ensuring better utilisation of the available renewable energy resource and limiting the need for fossil fuel power generation during peak demand. Batteries also mitigate stress events in the system (up to brownouts or blackouts), such as unexpected shutdowns of large power plants, when the system needs rebalancing almost instantaneously.

CIP has already invested in battery infrastructure in the U.S. and is also looking at several markets in Continental Europe and Australia. Each market has specific characteristics, according to existing infrastructure and regulation, and needs to be judged as such.