Penso Power grows Europe’s largest battery storage scheme to 150MW
UK renewable energy and battery storage company, Penso Power, has secured land rights, planning permission and a grid connection offer to extend its 100MW Minety battery storage scheme in Wiltshire by a further 50MW.
22nd March 2020 by barnabyd
UK renewable energy and battery storage company, Penso Power, has secured land rights, planning permission and a grid connection offer to extend its 100MW Minety battery storage scheme in Wiltshire by a further 50MW.
The Minety project, 12 miles northwest of Swindon is Europe’s largest battery storage development. Work started onsite in December 2019 and it is expected that Minety will enter operation this autumn (2020). The additional 50MW capacity is to be built on adjacent land, and will enter operation in 2021.
The development of Penso Power’s Minety project has been enabled by commercial agreements with Shell Energy Europe and the energy tech company Limejump, a subsidiary of Shell. Shell has signed a major offtake agreement on the original 100MW project, whilst the batteries will be optimised and dispatched by Limejump. Penso Power established a blue-chip consortium for the initial 100MW development.
Penso Power is currently in discussions with potential offtakers regarding similar arrangements for the 50MW project extension.
The offtake structure de-risks the returns for infrastructure investors while accessing deep and liquid markets to enable the deployment of battery storage at a very large scale. Scale benefits enable the provision of a range of balancing services on a cost-effective basis.
Richard Thwaites, Penso Power CEO, said: “Minety is a landmark project for UK battery storage. Its sheer size marks it as the most significant battery storage development in Europe so far, dwarfing other battery developments in scale and ambition. It shows that storage will play a more substantial role in the UK energy market as we continue our path towards Net Zero.
“Energy storage facilitates a greener electricity system helping balance the intermittency of renewable generation. Our focus on large projects means that we achieve scale benefits on both procurement and deployment costs, while the offtake structure helps us provide superior risk-adjusted returns to our investors.”
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