Solar Industry Welcomes Relaxation of Planning for Large-Scale Battery Storage

PLANNING LAWS will now be relaxed to make it easier to construct large batteries to store renewable energy, the government has announced.

The move will see ministers introduce secondary legislation to remove electricity storage, except pumped hydro, from the Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects (NSIP) regime in England and Wales.

These changes will make it simpler for large scale storage facilities to seek planning permission which will now be considered by Local Authorities.

STA Chief Executive Chris Hewett said: “We welcome the decision to make it easier to deploy flexible large-scale energy storage technologies in the UK, which will help to further decarbonise and improve the resilience of our energy system.”

“The next steps in unlocking the potential of energy storage, and maximising the crucial role it can play in managing growing solar and wind output, are to provide greater access to flexibility markets, including the capacity market, and applying fairer network charging rules.”

“Our aim has to be to fully decarbonise these flexibility markets and minimise all use of fossil fuel generation.”

There is currently in excess of 13.5GW of battery storage projects in the pipeline, with 1.3GW ready to build, 5.7GW with planning permission and a further 6.5GW proposed.