Independent Developer Balance Power has scored the building permit for a battery storage project of 29.9 MW in Coylton, East Ayrshire.
The Coylton Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) project comprises 18 battery units and covers 2.67 hectares of land south of the Coylton Electricity substation. The storage facility is expected to be operational in the summer of next year.
Balansmacht submitted its planning application in November 2023. The East Ayrshire Council approved the project on condition that construction began within three years of permission and that the permission will take 40 years from the date on which the project is connected to the schedule or 18 months after the development starts – what happens first.
The Council also stipulated that Balance Power must implement the landscape plant plan within six months of completing the construction, as stated in the planning application.
The developer said that the planning permission was achieved after an extensive community consultation process. As part of the Community Benefit package, Balance Power Solar PV has installed on the roof at the Ochiltree Community HUB, a registered charity.
Connections manager at Balance Power Oli Petterson described this as “a targeted but impactful way in which we can contribute to the incredible work that is done there.”
The Storage Project of Coylton is the second Bess Beneficiency of Balance Power this year. In April the building permit was granted for a 49.5 MW Bess in Staffordshire. The developer says that it has more than 2 GW of projects that are under development and that it has taken over 36 clean energy projects for permission from the planning, creating 531.9 MW capacity to support the grid.
National Grid has identified Coylton as an area that needs grid stabilization, and as such it is also host of a Bess project that is supplied by Statkraft. The Greener Grid Park, adjacent to the Coylton substation, will offer stability through confirmed scheduling converters, which always remain in the ‘grid-forming’ mode, which means that they inherently resist changes in voltage and frequency on the electricity roster.
Documents about the planning portal of the East Ayrshire Council show that Statkraft issued an opinion request of the screening in February of this year for an extension of the existing Coylon Bess site.
Statkraft wants to increase the capacity of the site, which is currently under construction, from 50 MW to 100 MW by increasing the number of battery units on the site from 24 to 38. The planning authority stated that an environmental impact assessment (EIA) is not necessary.
