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UK’s largest BESS begins commercial operations, while BESS connection queue exceeds 2030 grid requirements twice over
26/2/2025
News
BW ESS and Sungrow have begun commercial operations at the 100 MW/331 MWh battery energy storage system (BESS) in Bramley, Hampshire, the largest to be brought online in the UK to date. Meanwhile, analysis by Cornwall Insight suggests that the BESS connection queue currently exceeds the UK’s 2030 grid requirements twice over.
The Bramley BESS is ‘among the UK’s longest-duration and most versatile energy storage assets’, reports BW ESS. ‘The system will play a critical role in balancing variable electricity demand and intermittent supply, enabling the integration of additional renewable energy into the grid,’ it adds. (Maximum storage time is three hours.)
It is the first project in Europe to deploy Sungrow’s PowerTitan 2.0 liquid-cooled BESS, which combines a 2.5 MW transformer and a 5 MWh battery into a single container, said to be a major space-saver for BESS developers. Such a design also ensures simple integration and reduces installation time, according to Sungrow. The company conducted the world’s largest BESS burn test, replicating a real-world power plant fire scenario, as part of its development of the PowerTitan 2.0 system.
‘[Bramley BESS is a] notable project in the context of the UK’s energy transition,’ says Erik Strømsø, CEO of BW ESS. In 2024, it signed a seven-year tolling agreement providing a guaranteed, fixed-price revenue return with Shell Energy Europe for the project. The deal was the first such for a single BESS asset in the UK, ‘creating a template for a new revenue structure that will help to unlock energy storage market opportunities across Europe’, reported BW ESS at the time.
Last September, Sungrow signed an agreement with EW ESS for a 1.4 GWh PowerTitan 2.0 ESS for the 350 MW/1,750 MWh Hams Hall energy storage project. Currently under development in North Warwickshire, the project is expected to connect to the grid in 2026.
Meanwhile, Eku Energy reports that it has energised two new BESS sites in the UK. The 40 MW/55 MWh Loudwater BESS is located near High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire. The 28 MW/56 MWh Basildon BESS is in Essex. Both projects are expected to be commissioned soon.
BESS connection queue reaches double grid requirements for 2030
In related news, recent analysis from Cornwall Insight suggests the combined capacity of the queue for BESSs seeking connection to the UK electricity grid by 2030 has surged to 61 GW, more than double the network’s projected required capacity. Furthermore, it reports the connections queue for 2035 is quadruple the target capacity, at 129 GW.
‘[This] highlights the growing pressure on the government and the National Energy System Operator (NESO) to decide which projects will move forward, which will not, and how they will facilitate this process,’ it says.
The government’s Clean Power 2030 Action Plan sets out the target capacity ranges for specific technologies. Phase 1 sets out the target capacity range for 2030, which says the required BESS capacity will be 27 GW, split over distribution and transmission levels. Phase 2 provides a 10-year view out to 2035, with an upper capacity of 29 GW, but the 2 GW uplift is seen exclusively at the distribution level.
A small number of BESS projects will be protected from alignment with the Clean Power 2030 Action Plan capacity ranges, says Cornwall Insight.
Irrespective of connection date, altogether, there is 221 GW of BESS capacity in the full connections queue, according to Cornwall Insight (see Fig 1).
Fig 1: BESS connections queue compared to required UK grid capacities in 2030 and 2035
Source: Cornwall Insight and NESO
Commenting on the findings, James Lomax, Analyst at Cornwall Insight, says: ‘Given the rapid expansion of battery energy storage over and above forecast connections capacity, and now [Ofgem’s] proposed decision on how to prioritise and streamline connections, it could well be that more than 100 GW of BESS that wants to connect to the network will not get the option to until at least 2035 or even much later.’
He continues: ‘If an asset can’t connect to the grid, it simply can’t contribute. While NESO and Ofgem have set out some clarity on which projects will be protected and given a place in the connection queue, the challenge will now be building the infrastructure to allow them to connect. In order to meet the Clean Power 2030 capacity targets we would need to connect assets to the network on average 2.5 times quicker than we have over the past five years.’
