Statera Energy has submitted a planning application to South Oxfordshire District Council for a 500MW battery energy storage system (BESS) at Culham Campus – formerly UKAEA’s Culham Science Center – in Oxfordshire.
If granted, Statera’s Culham BESS will connect to Culham substation in 2027, when National Grid will extend it as part of a wider upgrade to the electrical infrastructure at Culham Campus.
The proposal would provide Culham Campus with an advanced connection to the electricity grid, providing greater power security, resilience and stability, supporting UKAEA’s intention to make the campus a world-leading fusion facility.
The 500 MW storage capacity requires 296 shipping containers adapted for batteries, 37 inverter houses, seven control rooms, shipping containers for storage and welfare facilities and a substation for customers.
It means the development of 26% of the site (seven hectares out of 26.8). The proposal also sets aside 16 hectares to restore a registered park and garden with new woodland and grassland habitats, delivering a 50% increase in biodiversity.
A belt of trees to the north of the site will be restored using 170 new native trees, restoring parts of the Nuneham Courtenay Park and Garden.
Greater BESS capacity close to National Grid substations, such as the one in Culham, is necessary to decarbonise the UK’s electricity system. Substantial growth in renewable energy generation will enable the country to achieve its target of achieving net zero emissions by 2050 and, even more urgently, decarbonising the energy system by 2035.
Energy storage will have to take this into account and balance the intermittent generation associated with wind and solar energy. National Grid expects batteries to make up the majority of storage capacity by 2050, with battery use rising to as much as 20 GW by 2030 and 35 GW by 2050 – current levels are around 3 GW.
Oliver Troup, development lead at Statera Energy, commented: “Aside from the national benefits that short-term storage offers in a flexible grid system, Statera’s Culham BESS will support the expansion of Culham Campus, which is already home to 45 companies and a leading center for nuclear fusion. .
“Finding sites suitable for these types of programs is quite a challenge. It is even more difficult to find a location that directly benefits such a unique science and technology park.”
The state of UK battery storage
Statera is also building a 300MW battery at the Tilbury Substation in Essex and maintains more than a gigawatt of battery systems in Britain. In March, the British company was granted planning permission for a 290MW/1,740MWh battery energy storage system (BESS) to be developed near the province’s capital, Exeter.
In November last year it was Statera acquired by global investor EQT. Being part of a larger financial institution like EQT will likely make securing debt packages – such as the financing of Statera’s Thurrock project – easier, as will combining the package with a long-term revenue guarantee, such as in the capacity market.
Last year, rising borrowing costs and falling revenues in Britain led to several major BESS developer-operators changing hands, including Banks Renewables, Zenobē and Gresham House.
As mentioned on our sister site, Energy-Storage.news, the Fund manager Gresham House said this at the beginning of this month that revenues for the Gresham House Energy Storage Fund are beginning to recover in 2024.
