The biggest battery storage sites in the UK in 2024
The UK government publishes quarterly statistics on the Renewable Energy Planning Database, which was last updated in January 2024. There are some companies that want to charge a lot of money for up to date statistics on the latest battery storage, wind farm and solar projects in the UK, but you can quite easily download them from this database and sort them in any spreadsheet software.
Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) have become much more important for introducing flexibility into the electricity network, and with the decrease in the price of the technology, much larger batteries are in development and under construction than are currently operational. The largest battery storage site in development is 1450MW, or 1.45GW.
BESS capacities are usually given in megawatts and megawatt hours (MW/MWh). A megawatt is a measure of the rate of energy production, the maximum energy that can be produced at any moment. Megawatt hours are a measure of the volume of energy — usually the total a BESS can store. A 1MW/2MWh BESS can produce 1MW at any time, and store 2 hours worth of energy.
Because the sites currently operational are much smaller than those in development, here are two tables: firstly the top 20 sites under development, and then the top 10 sites currently operational. If you want the full set of this data, or to copy the values (since Medium unhelpfully doesn’t allow you to embed iframe embeds), I’ve collated it in this spreadsheet.
Top 20 sites in development
Top 10 operational sites
These figures were correct as of January 2024. However, since then, other big batteries have come online, such as the 99MW/198MWh Clay Tye BESS, a joint project from Harmony Energy and Fotowatio Renewable Ventures which would be the third biggest operational battery in the UK. NextEnergy Solar Fund has also seen a 50MW BESS in Fife, Scotland go live in March, while TagEnergy and Harmony Energy have also seen a 49MW BESS in Scotland go live the same month.
There are hundreds of projects currently in development, but it is not certain that all those in the pipeline will be completed. The BBC reported in February that the 150MW Cleve Hill BESS was refused planning permission by Swale Borough Council.
The biggest BESS projects in the UK will change significantly over the next few years, so for more recent updates, it’s a good idea to check the government’s Renewable Energy Planning Database.
