A pinch under 6GWh of grid-scale BESS was approved for construction in the UK last month, bringing the total with planning consent to nearly 130GWh.
The figure is the highest seen in any month of 2025 so far, and comes from Solar Media Market Research’s ‘Battery Storage: UK Pipeline & Completed Assets Database’ report.
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The 2,869MW/5,998MWh of grid-scale battery energy storage system (BESS) awarded planning consent by authorities in May brings the total approved capacity to 61,674MW/128,789MWh, up around 6% month-on-month.
However, no new projects were commissioned last month, leaving the UK’s operational capacity unchanged at 6,424MW/9,160MWh.
Major BESS projects that were approved in May include the:
- 908MW Forest Road ESS project from developer Innova
- 100MW/350MWh Learielaw BESS project from ILI Group
- 100MW Kilwinning BESS project from Apatura
- 300MW Kintore BESS project from Alcemi
- 100MW/200MWh BESS project from Energy Optimisation Solutions (EOS)
Those four alone total around half of the total monthly figure, while there were smaller, single-digit planning consent wins for BESS projects including Balance Power’s 29.9MW project in Coylton, East Ayrshire.
Having planning consent will be one of the key criteria for projects in the current shake-up of the UK’s grid connection queue being undertaken by energy regulator Ofgem. The government expects the shake-up to unblock the grid connection queues by taking ‘zombie’ projects out of the queue, as reported by our sister site Current.
Read the previous two monthly instalments in the ESN Premium series of UK updates from our colleagues at Solar Media Market Research:
