Regen welcomes the awards of UK Government’s £6.7m long duration storage competition

The UK Government today announced the awards given under their Longer Duration Energy Storage Demonstration Programme, with 24 projects, totally £6.7m of the £68m pledged.

Ray Arrell, technical lead for the Electricity Storage Network (ESN) welcomed the announcement:

“Long duration energy storage (LDES) has a critical role to play in a net zero energy system – and this is a significant step forward in supporting a broad range of new, emerging and establishing energy storage technologies to develop their capabilities and cost-effectiveness. To support a net zero system, even more impactful policy support will be required for LDES technologies to be developed at scale and to fulfil their potential to support a high renewable generation and high demand electrification system that we will have in the future. Regen and the ESN calls on BEIS to build on this competition fund to consider the necessary reforms required to implement a tailored incentive, market structure, or equivalent financial support regime that rewards the functions that LDES can provide: large-scale assets charging/discharging energy for long durations and/or storing energy over longer periods of time.”

Ray also leads the ESN’s Innovation and Technology Working Group, of which long duration storage is a core topic of discussion. We will be discussing the results of this competition, along with the broader needs of the long duration storage sector, including the market structures and financial support necessary, at our next meeting in March.

We outlined our initial views on wider support from LDES in our response to BEIS’ call for evidence on long duration storage.

You can find information on all the awards here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/longer-duration-energy-storage-demonstration-programme-successful-projects/longer-duration-energy-storage-demonstration-programme-stream-2-phase-1-details-of-successful-projects