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Maximising the potential for co-location of solar and battery energy storage systems still requires significant work and consideration, according to panellists at the Clean Power 2030 Summit on 30 June. The discussion, reported by Energy-Storage.news, focused on storage integration and unlocking its value within a constrained grid.
Molly McCorkindale, senior analyst at Solar Media Market Research, moderated the panel and asked about low-hanging solutions that do not require major infrastructure investment to ease grid constraints in the UK. Trevor Wills, CEO at Pulse Clean Energy, said that on the grid side, enabling distribution network operators and the transmission operator to model their true capacity in a modern way is key. He noted that this begins with grid code, which forces these organisations to model new capacity or assets using a very defined perspective and oversimplified assumptions.
Wills gave the example of battery storage often being modelled as a generator, even though it can function as both a generator and a load. He commented that the grid sometimes argues it cannot connect batteries because, when the system is massively oversupplied, generation would create a problem. His response was that batteries would instead absorb oversupply and fix the problem the grid expects them to cause.
Tadgh Cullen, director of power markets & origination at Cero Generation, explained that batteries and solar PV do not actually compete for the same grid capacity. He said that for co-located projects, his company models the PV as having unconstrained access to the grid connection to simplify financing and approvals.
Sarah Honan, Head of ADE: Demand at The Association for Decentralised Energy, argued that the issue is not just grid code but cultural transformation. She described the new regime of the National Energy System Operators (NESO) as incredibly liberal, noting that Ofgem’s approach was lighter on regulation even though NESO lost nearly all its financial incentives. She added that NESO has been empowered to be more outcome-focused rather than following regimented ideals.
Looking at other markets, Wills highlighted that Spain has moved quickly in terms of its co-located structure, whereas in the UK most projects secure a Contract for Difference (CfD) and the battery operates around that profile. He said that to get a new project to financial close now, developers are not structuring projects as they would in the UK; instead, they structure them as proper co-located projects with one revenue contract where the battery takes generation from the PV and moves it to a time of day when it is needed. He added that although this sounds easy and has been how batteries have operated for 10–15 years, the reality is that they do not work that way in the UK. He suggested that Spain’s approach could be a better way of structuring projects and raised the question of whether the CfD should be examined to incentivise better co-location, noting he has never seen a UK policy that demonstrates an understanding of the benefits of co-location and battery storage.
Cullen added that he does not see any market doing it really well, emphasising that the UK is doing a lot right but always has room to improve. He highlighted Italy’s schemes for storage and solar PV, noting that Fer X is good for a project’s bankability and getting solar PV built, while MACSE gets standalone BESS built. He commented that no thought has been put into putting those two technologies together and not competing them against each other.
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