£7m awarded to green energy storage firms

Nearly £7m has been awarded to turbocharge UK projects developing innovative energy storage technologies, in a first round of government-backed competition.

The intermittent nature of renewables like solar and wind power means energy can be produced when it is not needed, such as during extended periods of high wind. Twenty-four projects based across the UK have been awarded the first round of funding through the Longer Duration Energy Storage competition, worth £68m in total.

These projects will benefit from a share of over £6.7m to develop new energy storage technologies that can utilise stored energy as heat, electricity or as a low-carbon energy carrier like hydrogen.

Ranging from the development of thermal batteries to converting energy to hydrogen, they have been selected because of their potential to improve technology performance and reduce the cost of meeting net zero.

Successful projects could benefit from a greater tranche of funding from a second phase of the competition, which will support these projects towards commercialisation, encouraging private investment and creating new jobs.

Energy and Climate Change Minister Greg Hands said: “Driving forward energy storage technologies will be vital in our transition towards cheap, clean and secure renewable energy.

“It will allow us to extract the full benefit from our home-grown renewable energy sources, drive down costs and end our reliance on volatile and expensive fossil fuels. Through this competition we are making sure the country’s most innovative scientists and thinkers have our backing to make this ambition a reality.”

As part of the UK government’s commitment to reach net zero, we are accelerating the transition to clean, renewable energy, and shifting to a green electricity grid by stepping up the use of clean energy sources like wind and solar power.

The energy storage projects receiving funding today include:

• Sunamp’s EXTEND project, East Lothian, Scotland – will receive £149,893 for a feasibility study to further develop the storage duration of their thermal batteries. They will look to pair their heat batteries with household energy systems to tackle periods of low renewables generation on the grid

• Cheesecake Energy’s FlexiTanker project, Nottingham, England – will receive £139,411 to develop their thermal and compressed air energy storage technology to integrate more renewables into the grid, helping to fast-track the decarbonisation of the UK electricity system

• B9 Energy Storage’s Ballylumford Power-to-X project, Larne, Northern Ireland – will receive £986,082 to mobilise an innovative 20MW Power-to-X project at Ballylumford. Green hydrogen produced by electrolysers will be stored in underground salt caverns and used for transport and to displace natural gas in fuel blending trials.