Overview
EastCoastGridServices Ltd is consulting on a planning application to develop an energy storage facility connected to the national electricity grid at Branxton near Innerwick in East Lothian.
The project has been designed to meet the increasingly critical need to stabilize the UK electricity grid as older generating plants are decommissioned and more and more intermittent renewable energy from wind and solar farms is connected to the system. National Grid and Scottish Power have a crucial role in balancing the peaks and troughs associated with electricity supply and demand to manage the strain on the electricity network and ensure there are no power blackouts.
Carefully located energy storage facilities help solve this problem and the proposed Branxton facility will use lithium-ion batteries as the storage technology to balance the network. Grid-connected batteries such as these are able to respond at short notice to requests from National Grid to supply power during such periods as when renewable sources are not generating, or fossil fuel plants are unexpectedly offline.
The proposed site is located in a field adjacent to the East Coast railway line near Linkshead Farm and was chosen for its unobtrusive location and proximity to Scottish Power’s Branxton Substation with its future connections to the national grid and large windfarms offshore in the North Sea.
The facility will consist of rows of three meter high shipping-like containers which house the batteries along with power equipment to connect the facility via underground cable to the Scottish Power substation. The Branxton Energy Storage Facility will help Scotland to meet national and strategic targets for renewable energy and a net-zero grid.
EastCoastGridServices Ltd and its sister company GridCodePower Ltd are experienced developers of renewable energy projects across Scotland having developed three operational onshore windfarms in the Central Belt, two operational battery storage facilties near Livingston and Wishaw and the three largest battery storage facilities in Europe located at Hunterston, Kincardine and Windyhill all of which are about to start construction in the coming months.
Branxton Energy Storage Facility
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