A fire at the Thurrock BESS project occurred in February, when one containerised unit caught fire but was contained and extinguished within 24 hours, with construction resuming shortly after.
Other projects were also announced as completed in August. Eku Energy announced the start of commercial operations on its 28MW/56MWh Basildon and 39MW/55MWh Loudwater projects, and Field did the same for its 50MW/100MWh Auchteraw project. Foresight Group, via its Foresight Solar and FGEN funds, energised the 50MW Sandridge BESS.
However, construction on these projects was completed earlier, so they were not counted towards August’s total.
The new completed capacity brings the UK’s total fleet of operational grid-scale BESS to 7,582MW by power rating and 11,369MWh by capacity.
Only February has seen more capacity come online in 2025, when 425MW/952MWh was completed.
August a busy month for all UK BESS activity
August also saw numerous significant announcements of investments and planning approvals of UK BESS Projects.
Some 1,509MW/3,018MWh of combined capacity received planning consent, including BayWa r.e.’s Redshaw BESS.
Meanwhile Zenobē bought a 400MW ready-to-build (RTB) BESS from Innova and there were major BESS plan announcements from developer-operator Natpower and the UK government’s National Wealth Fund.
The UK’s total approved BESS capacity now stands at 73.4GW/152.4GWh. Having planning consent will be key for developers hoping to get their projects through an ongoing overhaul of the UK’s grid interconnection queue.
Zenobe also enlisted system integrator Wartsila for a 68MW project in Shetland, at the same time as SAE enlisted Canadian Solar for one in Wales, covered in this piece by Solar Power Portal. Note that the report does not track the quantity of projects going into the construction phase, given this can be harder to define.