UK local authority’s 30MW project will participate in all available flexibility markets

August 12, 2020
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The 30MW battery project is the largest to be owned by a local council authority in the UK. Image: Kiwi Power.

The UKs largest council-owned battery storage site, the 30MW Fideoak Mill site, is now fully operational and able to participate in delivering multiple revenue-generating services.

Located at local authority South Somerset District Council’s (SSDC) site in Taunton in south-west England, an additional £2.5 million (US$1.92 million) of investment has allowed the council to commission a further 5MW, making it the largest site of its kind in the UK.

It uses Kiwi Power’s proprietary hardware Fruit, which has been installed on all 22 battery units at the site. These will allow the batteries to provide balancing services to National Grid and participate in any of the UK’s 15 flexibility markets.

Thomas Jennings, head of optimisation at Kiwi Power, said that councils were looking to make the most of sustainability investments in an effort to meet “increasingly stringent targets.”

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“Landmark projects such as Fideoak are vital for demonstrating how investments in battery storage and renewables are value adding and income generating,” he continued.

“With rapidly changing market dynamics, SSDC will be relying on our co-optimisation team to ensure that the £12 million asset always participates in the right market at the right time so that it delivers the maximum return possible for the investment.”

Read the full version of this story at Solar Power Portal.

Kiwi Power’s Thomas Jennings was one of the panellists at a 2019 conference discussing routes to market in the UK for battery storage with Energy-Storage.news editor Andy Colthorpe: watch the video here.

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