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Highview Power has secured £300 million of debt and equity investment to build the first commercial-scale liquid air energy storage plant in the UK.
The 50MW/300MWh facility at Carrington in Great Manchester is expected to be up and running in early 2026.
The funding round was led by the UK Investment Bank and Centrica, which have contributed £165 million and £70 million respectively. The other investors include Rio Tinto, Goldman Sachs, Rio Tinto, Goldman Sachs, Kirkbi and Mosaic Capital.
The technology works by using excess electricity to compress and refrigerate air from the atmosphere until it condenses into a liquid. The liquid is then stored in low-pressure insulated containers.
When electricity is needed, the air is removed from the containers and reheated, causing it to evaporate back into a gas and rapidly expand. The expanding air is used to drive a turbine and generate power.
To improve the efficiency of the process, the waste heat from compression is stored and used to reheat the air during expansion. The waste cold from evaporation is likewise stored and used to refrigerate the air during liquification.
Highview Power opened a 5MW/15MWh demonstration facility located on the Pilsworth landfill site at Bury in Greater Manchester in 2018 and unveiled plans for the Carrington plant in 2020.
It has also commenced the development of four larger scale 2.5GWh plants across the UK, which are expected to see total investments of £3 billion.
Highview co-founder and chief executive Richard Butland said: “The UK’s investment in world-leading offshore wind and renewables requires a national long duration energy storage programme to capture excess wind and support the grids transformation.
“UKIB and Centrica and our partners have today backed our ambitious plan to bring renewable energy storage into the UK economy at scale, liberating the potential of what is both the greenest and by far the cheapest energy source for the UK economy and provide energy security.
“Our first project in Carrington will be the foundation for our full-scale roll-out in the UK and expansion with partners to share this British technology internationally.”
Butland told Utility Week “everything is ready to go” to start building the Carrington facility: “We’re on site. We’ve already ordered long lead time items. We’ve already started in effect.”
He said the plant will be operated without subsidy support on a fully merchant basis and will fulfil three key roles that will each account for around a third of its revenues: providing stability services including voltage control and inertia; helping to manage local network constraints; and storing excess renewable energy until it is needed.
Butland said the Electricity System Operator is currently dealing with voltage issues in the Manchester area “almost every night” and is “continually having to fire up gas plants” to stabilise the power grid.
“They don’t necessarily need the megawatts or the energy, but they need to stabilize there.” He said their plant will be able to provide the same services but “with no carbon at a lower cost”.
He said there is also very significant wind curtailment in the area due to network constraints “so we will be helping take some of that excess and storing it for use in lower wind periods.”
Butland said the nature of their technology means it is highly configurable to the specific needs of a particular area and scales “incredibly well.” He said the four 2.5GWh plants they are planning to build are expected to cost less than three times as much as the Carrington facility, despite being more than eight times larger in terms of storage capacity.
He said they have already completed early commercial and front-end engineering and design (FEED) work for the first of these plants, which could be installed near the proposed Hornsea Four offshore wind farm under a previously announced partnership with Orsted.
“We’ve done a decent amount of the engineering, so we’ll be looking at finalising the FEED and going into planning this year. We’re likely to put multiple 2.5GWh plants into planning this year at key locations in the UK… And the intention would be that following the commissioning of Carrington, we would roll straight into final investment decisions for the bigger projects.”
As well as providing funding for the Carrington project, Centrica has also joined Highview Power as a strategic partner for the wider rollout.
The group’s chief executive Chris O’Shea said: “The energy transition is an opportunity that could transform lives across the UK. But with a changing energy mix, and more intermittency from renewables, we have to explore new, innovative ways to store energy so our customers have electricity available when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine. Low carbon storage is an essential part of the solution when looking at how we manage peaks in demand.
“That’s why I’m delighted that Centrica is investing in Highview Power. Not only are we bringing capital to the table to support rollout and expansion, but we’ll be also sharing our expertise on the energy transition and power storage.”
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