BEIS wants feedback by 12 March on plans for a competition to share funding of up to £68M among long duration energy storage technologies with the aim of accelerating commercialisation.
The competition will open to applications in April-July, with projects going forward from September.
BEIS is planning to fund projects using ‘power to X’, thermal and electric technologies. It proposes to have parallel tracks for proposals at technology readiness levels of 6-7 or 4-5, respectively. Commercial technologies, such as batteries and pumped hydro, will be excluded.
BEIS says the competition could encompass energy storage technologies that:
- could be deployed at large scale,
- could provide competitive flexibility services and system benefits for the electricity system, and
- provide longer-duration storage capability.
BEIS defines longer duration as over 4 hours, but says longer durations will be scored higher.
More details here
Ed Porter, Business Development Director at Invinity Energy Systems said: “A £68M boost is welcome to the industry but it clearly does not deliver a silver bullet to address Net Zero. To provide a sustainable boost to the sector, government and regulators must create a market that rewards participants for better utilising low carbon generation to displace carbon intensive, fossil fuel generation. Such a rethink includes aggressive carbon price escalation to create a sustainable market for storage and renewables and a review of the need for long duration storage services to prevent non-frequency driven outages, linked to fundamental energy imbalances.”