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EXCLUSIVE: United Utilities has said it will start looking at battery storage as a way of increasing its renewable energy use.
“We think battery technology is now advanced enough to start looking at storage,” chief executive Steve Mogford told Utility Week.
He pointed out that UU’s energy bill is about £65 million per year, and said the firm is maximising digestion from sludge, because “that will be important” when the market for bioresources opens to competition in AMP7.
“We’ve also opened our first gas-to-grid link this year,” he added. “And we think battery technology is now advanced enough to start looking at storage as well, as one of the ways of doing it.”
In its interim financial report for the six months to September 2016, United Utilities (UU) said it is “committed to reducing our carbon footprint and increasing our generation of renewable energy”.
The company plans to invest £100 million in non-regulated projects between 2015 and 2020, principally relating to solar power, and said it had invested £37 million of this during the last 18 months.
The first £1.5 million has been spent on more than 5,000 solar panels at its Fleetwood wastewater treatment works.
In October, it invested £3.5 million in Europe’s largest floating solar power development on the surface of its Godley reservoir in Greater Manchester.
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