UK renewables and battery developer Anesco has warned that the looming de-rating of battery storage in the Capacity Market risks scaring investors away from the technology.

Eelpower has commissioned a 10MW battery energy storage system (BESS) in England, backed with both frequency response and capacity market contracts, in the first of a new pipeline of projects being planned by the company over the next decade.

What is thought to be the largest operating containerised vanadium redox flow machine system in the UK has been connected to the grid by manufacturer redT energy, with the 1MWh project becoming the first to sign up to a local energy market being set up by British multinational utility Centrica.

Home battery storage company Moixa is to expand its GridShare aggregation platform to include third party units for the first time after securing over a quarter of a million pounds from the UK government.

The UK government’s Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) has refused to provide any clarity over when a decision on the potential de-rating of energy storage assets within the capacity market (CM) will be made despite a senior policy advisor stating the judgement is “imminent”.

A representative of National Grid, the UK’s transmission system operator (TSO), has said that energy storage will be “integral” to the network’s flexibility strategy – while urging developers not to rely solely on early frequency regulation contracts.

The UK’s large-scale battery storage installations have reached 100MW of capacity, made up of around 50 individual sites larger than 250kW. Lauren Cook of Solar Media’s Market Research team discusses how this point has been arrived at and what we might expect to see coming next.

Chris Pritchett of UK law firm Foot Anstey recently served as moderator for the “Developers and financiers debate” at the Energy Storage Conference at the Solar & Storage Live 2017 show in England. Afterwards, Andy Colthorpe caught up with Chris for an in-depth interview on camera.

No one moment took energy storage into the mainstream of the UK power system more than the outcome of National Grid’s August 2016 tender for Enhanced Frequency Response (EFR). Reporter David Pratt examines the business case behind Vattenfall’s first EFR project and asks what grid operators and regulators’ next moves are likely to be.

Energy storage investors in Britain will need to have their projects in the ground by June next year at the latest if they are to take advantage of the lucrative new ancillary services market set to be implemented by National Grid, according to Sungrow’s European managing director.