Scotland plans expansion of its battery storage sites

Scotland will be home to the three biggest battery energy storage systems in Europe after a major infrastructure investment company announced a new plan to add two more facilities to one that is close to completion.

Danish company Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, or CIP, has committed 800 million pounds ($982 million) to the development of a new project at Coalburn, in southern central Scotland, where a facility is being built, and a third at Devilla, near Edinburgh.

Together, the work-in-progress battery at Coalburn, which began in 2023 and is partly built on the site of an old coal mine, and the two new ones, which should be operational in 2027 or 2028, will have a combined power capacity of 1.5 gigawatts. Each of them will be bigger than any other battery in Europe, the company claims.

Battery energy storage systems charge up when electricity prices are low and can then help energy security by discharging when demand is high.

Scottish newspaper The National reported that much of the hardware is being supplied by a company called Canadian Solar and will be manufactured in China.

"CIP's latest investments in Scottish battery energy storage will support the United Kingdom's pursuit of a clean power system by 2030 and delivering a net-zero carbon economy by 2050," said Nischal Agarwal, a partner at CIP.

"Well-located battery storage, such as our Coalburn and Devilla projects, enhance energy security, provide the grid with much needed flexibility, and enable low-cost renewables to be deployed faster."

Scotland is the ideal setting for such storage units because of its surplus of renewable wind energy, a resource that will become more relied upon in the years ahead. Scotland is also ideal because of its compact grid infrastructure.

The Financial Times newspaper quoted figures from Aurora Energy Research, saying that at the end of last year, large-scale battery storage capacity across Europe was 10.8 GW, with 4.5 GW of that in the UK.

Scotland's First minister John Swinney described the investment as "a significant contribution to the growth of Scotland's energy transition infrastructure".

"By helping to supply reliable and secure power to our homes and businesses, well-located storage systems … can move us closer to net-zero and directly support the communities around them," he added.

Gillian Martin, Scotland's acting secretary for net-zero and energy, said the building of some of the facilities on a former fossil fuel site was "a symbolic example of new energy", but warned that it had to be ensured that the new technology could "coexist with the rest of Scotland as well".

"We have to make sure these battery storage parks are in the right place and in the right conditions and that communities see the benefit," she added.