What is a Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) and why do we need it?
Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) store excess electricity until sold into the National Grid to meet industrial or domestic electricity demands. Our BESS assets help level out expensive peaks and troughs of electricity pricing caused by supply and demand imbalance.
Lower 48 Energy Glenapp BESS aims to be a crucial project in an area of strategic importance for electricity transmission and in turn potential energy storage. Lower 48 Energy hopes to construct a strategic-scale BESS on land at Glenapp alongside existing farm buildings to the north of the Auchencrosh Substation.
We are proposing this project to help meet the increasingly critical need to stabilise the UK electricity grid. As older, non-renewable fuels are being decommissioned, renewable energy sources are being connected to the UK’s grid instead. Energy storage projects like this are vital to maximise on the intermittently produced energy from wind and solar farms.
Renewable Energy
The energy system is the backbone of modern society. To deliver on the transition to net zero whilst continuing to deliver for consumers, a whole energy system approach and strategic change is required across all fuels, renewable energy, and this includes Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS).
Renewable energy generation does not always match periods of high electrical demand and its generation is intermittent. We can only rely on its generation when there is wind or direct sunshine. Energy storage assets are required by the National Grid so that it can counteract the constraints and limitations that green, renewable generation can have on the UK’s grid.
Battery Energy Storage Systems allow the UK to increase the proportion of low carbon and zero carbon generation used to power the electricity network.
Projects such as Glenapp are critical in helping ensure that Scotland meets its objectives of becoming a net zero greenhouse gas emitting nation by 2045.
What we do
Lower 48 Energy BESS is a UK based business that operates across the Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) landscape.
Our engineers study the entire National Grid and the local Distribution Network Operators grids to identify viable and advantageous locations to build battery assets. Once we have identified a location, we then work with our planning teams to establish the exact location of the sites that would be sympathetic to building out an asset.
Our inhouse team of rural surveyors then approach prospective landowners and explain a proposition. Lower 48 Energy then apply to the National Grid and the Distribution Network Operators for a grid connection. If granted, we then apply for Planning Permission to build the asset. The construction of a typical Battery Energy Storage System will take about 9 months to build and commission. Once commissioned the facility will be ‘operated’ remotely from a dedicated office that monitors the facility 24/7/365, helping to keep the UK’s lights on.
Our Process
Early Development
This stage of the project is now complete. A Grid Connection Offer from National Grid has been secured and a planning consultant has been engaged to support early site investigation work.
Pre Planning
We are currently engaging with stakeholders in advance of consent submission.
Consent Application
WE AIM TO SUBMIT A S36 APPLICATION TO THE SCOTTISH MINISTERS BY THE END OF 2024.
Consented
If approval is given by the Scottish Ministers, we are likely to see consent being granted in late 2025.
In Construction
If it goes ahead, the construction of this project is likely to start towards the back end of the decade.
Operational
If it goes ahead, Lower 48 energy will manage the financial operation of the site and oversee the maintenance, insurance and compliance.
