China Huaneng Group is set to complete what it claims will be Europe’s largest battery storage facility by the end of 2020 in Wiltshire.

The state-owned utility is building a 100MW/100MWh scheme understood to be managed by Shell-owned Limejump.

States the company: “In recent years, with the rapid development of wind power in UK, the intermittence and fluctuation of wind power output is making the imbalance of time for supply and demand more and more obvious. After the project’s operation, it will become the largest battery energy storage project in Europe, providing power source emergency support when the main grid has an accident, and elevating effectively the safe operation level of the grid.”

The project is actually two adjacent 49.9MW sites being developed simultaneously, given planning rules lifting that cap were only relaxed last October.

The scheme also involves g2 Energy, Penso Power, SSE and Sungrow.

The battery could be usurped as Europe’s largest should Intergen decide to push ahead with plans to construct up to 175MW of storage at Spalding.

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