SSE has purchased the project development rights for its first 50 MW battery storage asset on a consented site in Wiltshire, England, from Harmony Energy Limited (Harmony Energy).

The company plans to bring the project to financial close and construct the battery storage facility in Salisbury over the next 18 months. The project will help deliver essential balancing services to the energy system.

Its distributed energy division has a team of developers, engineers and energy service professionals actively growing its battery storage pipeline.

Harmony Energy is a developer of utility-scale battery energy storage projects. It has developed two projects in the UK, with a pipeline of over 600 MW of project rights.

"As we put more renewable energy on the grid and phase out fossil fuels, battery storage has a key role to play in helping the UK decarbonise”, Richard Cave-Bigley, Sector Director for Distributed Energy Generation & Storage.

“Our distributed energy division has ambitions to build a significant portfolio of batteries – we are looking at around 500 MW of early stage opportunities – and we hope today’s announcement signals the seriousness of our intent in this market.”

Peter Kavanagh, Chief Executive Officer of Harmony Energy, said: “The site has been four years development work in the making, demonstrating our expertise in bringing forward complex battery storage developments to construction-ready stage.

“It is great for SSE to have shown their confidence and enable our divestment. We share their vision and passion to help accelerate the deployment of energy storage which is fundamental to the UK’s energy mix and enabling the reduction of carbon emissions.”

SSE’s distributed energy team (part of its Energy Solutions unit) aims to play a major part in the emerging flexible energy system and provides key services to enable users to benefit from new ways to optimise and manage their low carbon energy use. It does this by adopting a ‘whole system approach’ through investing in, building and connecting localised, flexible energy assets to accelerate the path to net-zero and create a more resilient energy system for the long-term.