UK's largest battery storage facility at Tilbury substation (nationalgrid.com)

There was the largest one in Scotland a few months ago.

These are, dare I say it, the easy wins. Reusing the infrastructure from a demolished coal fired power station.

However I have yet to see Battery storage feature in the charts for UK energy usage yet.

I’m guessing that there are a lot of similar such sets that are being, or could be repurposed for battery storage.

Is it 300 or 600 MWh? Or is the storage 600, but it can deliver 300MW/h?

Edit: The company press release is much clearer: https://stateraenergy.co.uk/news/thurrock-energisation The storage is 300 MWh, but it can deliver a peak of 600 MW/h (presumably for half an hour).

Cool so when will this translate into cheaper energy? Why am I paying $0.4 per kwh?

For comparison with a gravitational battery, Dinorwig pumped hydro in north Wales has a max power output of 1.7 GW and storage of 9.1 GWh.

Time to decouple the UK Electricity price from Gas so we can actually reap the benefits of this as a consumer.

What is the chemistry and expected lifetime of the batterries? They are saying this is for sustainable energy future but it looks like it's using natural gas (not sustainable) powered energy to charge up Lithium(?) batteries that will need to be replaced every n years (also not sustainable). Which part of this facility makes it more sustainable?

> With a total capacity of 600MWh, Thurrock Storage is capable of powering up to 680,000 homes, and can help to balance supply and demand by soaking up surplus clean electricity and discharging it instantaneously when the grid needs it.

I mean, I get what they’re saying, but I’d certainly hope it is not capable of discharging 600MWh _instantaneously_!

The title change rather obscures the actual event that occurred - that this facility is now connected to the grid...

Found some older article on financing/timeline since there's not much info here:

https://www.ess-news.com/2024/11/05/financial-close-for-uk-p...

The battery storage was ~$200M. Pure prismatic lifepo cells are currently ~$60 per kWh in single digit quantities (would be $40M or 20% of total costs, which seems reasonable). The attached 450MW gas power plant cost ~$350M.

I find it rather remarkable how they aquired the contracts in early 2023 and the thing is already running.

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