Image: Whitelee windfarm has 215 turbines (BJ Mullan/CC BY-SA 3.0)
The Scottish government has green lit a plan to build a 50MW battery to store power generated by its Whitelee onshore windfarm near Glasgow, the largest in the UK.
The lithium–ion battery will cover an area half the size of a football pitch, and will be the largest in Europe. Scottish Power Renewables will build it as an extension to Ardochrig substation in South Lanarkshire.
The aim is to smooth out electricity supplies from Whitelee by storing power produced during periods of low demand.
The battery has more than twice the capacity of any battery in the UK. It will be able to store enough electricity to charge 806 Nissan Leaf vehicles over a total of 182,000 miles, according to a spokesman for Scottish Power.
Keith Anderson, Scottish Power’s chief executive, said: “Batteries will take renewable energy to the next level. It is a nice, neat solution to help use more and more renewable power in the UK, because that’s what we need to be doing to reach a net zero-carbon economy.”
Last year Scottish Power, which is part of Spain’s Iberdrola Group, became the first major UK energy company to commit itself to generating all its energy from wind power.
