July was a busy month for large-scale battery storage activity in the UK, with Engie commissioning a system, Masdar and Fidra hitting financial close on projects, Eku Energy buying one, project consents for Aura Power and Starlight Energy, and more.
Engie starts commercial operations at 100MW BESS in Scotland
French power firm Engie has commissioned 100MW of battery energy storage systems (BESS) in Scotland.
Consisting of two projects located in Cathkin (near East Kilbride) and Broxburn (west of Edinburgh), each BESS site is sized at 50MW/100MWh and will deliver rapid-response grid services and support round-the-clock integration of renewables.
Engie’s AI-driven optimisation platform, Orus, will power the BESS projects’ dynamic response to the grid. According to the utility, the 2-hour storage duration will play a critical role in balancing supply and demand by discharging the stored surplus energy to the grid when required.
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The start of operations at the two BESS sites brings the utility’s onshore renewable energy portfolio to 242MW. The company also has 2.1GW of pumped storage hydro capacity operational in the UK.
See the full original version of this article on Solar Power Portal.
Masdar secures £97 million for 540MWh BESS projects
UAE-headquartered power firm Masdar has closed its first battery energy storage financing in the UK, part of a long-term £1 billion commitment to the market.
The £97 million financing will go to projects totalling 205MW/540MWh of capacity, Masdar said today (3 August). It didn’t say which institutions provided the financing.
It didn’t specify the projects either, but later in the announcement said that battery projects in Rochdale, Cardiff and Chesterfield are progressing through development.
It commissioned its first operational battery storage project in the UK in December 2025, a 20MW/40MWh system in Stockport.
The projects are part of a pipeline it gained by acquiring developer Arlington Energy in 2022, which it says totals 3GWh of capacity.
See the full original version of this article on Solar Power Portal.
Financial close for Fidra Energy’s 500MW West Burton C battery energy storage system
BESS developer Fidra Energy has reached financial close on its 500MW/1.1GWh West Burton C battery energy storage system project.
The Nottinghamshire project is located on the site of the former West Burton coal power station. Construction will begin later this year, Fidra said, and the project is expected to be fully operational by 2028.
A group of international lenders have committed £231 million loan facilities, which combine with backing from EIG, which established Fidra Energy, and the UK’s National Wealth Fund (NWF).
When Fidra reached financial close on its 1.4GW/3.1GWh Thorpe Marsh BESS, the largest such project in the UK, the NWF committed up to £200 million of equity to finance the construction of both that and the West Burton C projects. It did not disclose what share of the financing will go to each.
Manufacturer Sungrow will supply batteries for the project, and H&MV Engineering will be the principal designer and contractor of the 400kV grid connection, electrical scheme and for the erection and commissioning of the Sungrow battery systems.
See the full original version of this article on Solar Power Portal.
Eku Energy acquires 300MW/600MWh UK BESS from TBC Partners
BESS owner-operator Eku Energy has acquired a 300MW/600MWh battery project in Oxfordshire from TBC Partners.
Construction at the Didcot project is scheduled to begin later this year, and is expected to connect to the grid in 2028. The project will connect to the Didcot Substation, south-west of the site, and the sale follows the start of National Grid’s upgrade work at the substation, which included three new electrical equipment bays and three supergrid transformers.
The project will be Eku’s first transmission connected BESS in the UK, and follows extensive work by the company in Australia, having submitted two 1,200MWh BESS projects to the country’s Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act earlier this year.
In March, Eku COO Tom Best and director of policy Rachel Rundle told our colleagues at Energy-Storage.news about the importance of reforms to Australia’s National Electricity Market (NEM) to facilitate more storage deployments, and this week, Eku CFO Erin Lee described storage as an “essential part” of the UK’s energy mix.
See the full original version of this article on Solar Power Portal.
Danske Commodities to optimise Cero Generation’s 70MW/140MWh battery
Energy producer Cero Generation and energy trader Danske Commodities have announced the signing of an optimisation agreement for a new UK battery energy storage system (BESS).
Cero Generation and its UK development partner Enso Energy have chosen Danske Commodities to optimise their 70MW/140MWh Lower Larks BESS.
Lower Larks has an anticipated operational date of Q2 2027 and will be located in Bristol, England. The BESS will be colocated with the Larks Green solar project, the UK’s first transmission-connected solar farm, which was completed in April 2023.
Danske Commodities will optimise the BESS through a seven-year tolling agreement. For this, Danske will cover the battery’s market exposure.
“The 140MWh Lower Larks battery… completes the Larks Green project by adding a second battery to our operational co-located PV-BESS site,” explained Tadgh Cullen, director of power markets & origination at Cero Generation.
See the full original version of this article on Solar Power Portal.
Aura Power bags consent for 4-hour battery energy storage in North Somerset
Developer and IPP Aura Power has secured planning permission for a 100MW/400MWh battery energy storage system (BESS) in Sandford, North Somerset.
North Somerset Council gave the green light to the 4-hour Sandford BESS, which is due to connect via existing National Grid infrastructure. According to Aura Power, it will continue working with National Grid to bring forward the project’s connection date through the ongoing electricity network reforms.
Only BESS projects that had been given ‘protected’ connections will connect to the electricity grid in Great Britain before 2035. A comparable project, Zenobē’s transmission-scale 200MW/800MWh Coalburn BESS, is due to connect in 2028, having been the recipient of the first formal connection offer issued by the National Energy System Operator (NESO).
Aura Power currently has another 4-hour duration BESS under construction in Capenhurst, Cheshire.
See the full original version of this article on Solar Power Portal.
NextEnergy’s Starlight Energy secures 240MW/960MWh BESS consent
Developer Starlight Energy has secured planning consent for a 240MW/960MWh battery energy storage system (BESS) near Stockton-on-Tees in Durham.
The Thorpe Thewles BESS is the largest such project developed by Starlight in the UK, according to the developer’s announcement, which it posted to LinkedIn.
Starlight Energy is the developer arm of NextEnergy Group, launched in 2022. At the beginning of this year, Starlight sold a BESS it developed in Scotland to the NEUK I Fund, owned by NextEnergy Capital—the investment management business within the same group.
As of April this year, Starlight Energy’s global portfolio was 7GW, with 850MW solar and 250MW storage assets in the UK, where its parent company NextEnergy is based. Starlight currently operates in Canada, Greece, Italy and Romania.
NextEnergy Group was behind the development of the Llanwern Solar Farm, commissioned in 2020. Having established Starlight Energy through internal reassignment, the developer now counts the project, at one point the largest solar farm in the UK, as part of its portfolio.
See the full original version of this article on Solar Power Portal.
The start of July also saw BESS owner-operator Field close financing on 1GWh portfolio while Pulse Clean Energy enlisted BESS supplier Envision Energy for 310MWh project.
