Planning shake-up on electricity storage welcomed

The government’s decision to hand down planning powers over large batteries to local councils will spur the rollout of such projects – with potential spin-off benefits for wind and solar deployment – industry bodies have said.

The department for business, energy and industrial strategy (BEIS) announced today (14 July) that larger energy storage projects will no longer be handled as Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects (NSIP) in England and Wales.

Decisions on whether to approve batteries bigger than 50MW in England are currently handled by the government’s Planning Inspectorate under the NSIP regime rather than by local councils. The threshold in Wales is 350MW.

Battery projects, except for pumped hydro, will instead now be determined by councils under the Town and Country Planning Act.

The government claimed that the move could make it easier to construct large batteries to store intermittent renewable energy from solar and wind farms across the UK, helping to deliver storage cells five times bigger than those currently available.

It says the reform could treble the number of batteries serving the electricity grid.

Batteries were removed from the NSIP regime partly because, apart from pumped hydro, they have much lower impacts than other types of energy projects.

BEIS has been told that the current rules are distorting the investment decisions of battery developers, who are sidestepping the NSIP regime by building clusters of batteries smaller than 50 MW each rather than one larger battery.

Developers have been frustrated by the slow pace of decision making by the inspectorate, which can take up to took two years to process applications as opposed to the 16-week deadlines that council planners are subject to.

The changes will be made by secondary legislation which has been tabled in Parliament today.

Kwasi Kwarteng, minister of state for energy and clean growth said: “The key to capturing the full value of renewables is in ensuring homes and businesses can still be powered by green energy even when the sun is not shining, or the wind has stopped blowing.

“Removing barriers in the planning system will help us build bigger and more powerful batteries, creating more green-collar jobs and a smarter electricity network.”

Matt Allen, co-founder and chief executive of EDF-owned Pivot Power, said the rule change would make it easier to bring forward larger battery projects.

Jake Dunn, renewable development manager at Vattenfall UK, said the move was “absolutely the right way to go”.

He added: “The UK will never be free from fossil-fuels until electricity storage is part of our energy system, but the volumes of power we need to be able to store are huge.

“However, it’s crucial that storage is co-located at solar and wind farm sites, due to the significant logistical and cost benefits that co-location offers for grid connections and land. The electricity grid also needs urgent upgrades to be able to cope with the increasing demand for electricity, as we reduce the use of other fuels in our lives, as well as being able to accommodate more renewable generation and greater flexibility in terms of consumer usage.”

Rebecca Williams, RenewableUK’s director of policy and regulation, said: “We’re glad that the government has listened to industry and will now allow local planning authorities to determine battery projects of 50MW and above rather than the secretary of state which can be a longer and more expensive process. This scale of battery is becoming the new norm. Today’s announcement will stimulate investment in the energy system we need to reach net zero as fast and as cheaply as possible.”

Frank Gordon, head of policy at the REA, said: “The previous cap was largely arbitrary and skewed the market. As energy storage built alongside new renewables projects is crucial to unlocking subsidy-free deployment, the old system acted as major barrier to achieving our net zero target and building low-cost generation sites.”