While Brexit looms, bringing uncertainty into the country’s economy and international relationships, the role energy storage will play in a decentralised, low(er) carbon and more flexible energy system at least seems a little more assured than it did before.
Even Prime Minister Theresa May has namechecked energy storage and claimed a mooted research institute overseen by the government’s chief scientific advisor, Mark Walport, could make the UK a leader in battery and energy storage R&D as part of its industrial strategy reforms. It will have some catching up to do to meet advances in regions like California’s Silicon Valley and New York, but the announcement provided some rare optimism in Britain’s gloomy Brexit winter.
Also at government level, the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) successor to the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), is apparently currently “wading through” the many responses it received to a so-called Call For Evidence. This quasi-consultative solicitation of stakeholder responses to issues pertaining to reform of the energy sector, which was welcomed by the industry, closed in mid-January.
BEIS official David Capper, who is its Deputy Director and Head of Future Electricity Networks, told trade association the Electricity Storage Network’s annual symposium event last week that key themes emerging were the need to foster markets for flexibility services and allow developers to ‘stack’ revenues. Priority number one, he said was to remove the policy and regulatory barriers storage faces, including providing much-needed regulatory clarity. BEIS recognises that storage is important for “reducing the UK’s emissions going forward,” Capper said.
Tendered agenda
Over the past few months readers of Energy-Storage.News have seen that a 200MW tender for enhanced frequency response (EFR), grid-balancing that responds within one second of registering a frequency deviation, was completely filled by battery projects. Those contracts are just for four years, but quickly following that tender was the T-4 capacity market auction, guaranteeing capacity to ‘keep the lights on’ between 2020 and 2035. Of 3.2GW capacity secured, 500MW of storage won out in that process, with both tenders held under the auspices of the transmission operator, National Grid.
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