On 7 March 2024, a little known company called NatPower issued a press release regarding a proposal to spend £10 billion on Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) projects in the UK. In addition to being picked up by the trade rags, the press release caught the attention of the wider national press because of the sheer ambition of it. Three ‘Gigaparks’, each storing 1 gigawatt of electricity, to be announced in 2024, another seven in 2025. Each Gigapark is budgeted at £1 billion, hence the overall total. The actual press release from NatPower was even more eye-popping – 60 Gigaparks costing £60 billion. However CEO Stefano Sommadossi, along with all of the other senior NatPower staffers, is Italian. And so the release was issued in their native language.
Teesside Gigapark
Three months after the press release, Nat Power held a series of consultation events for their first planned BESS, the Teesside Gigapark. The consultation events, running from June to July 2024, were held in Redcar, home of the proposed location of the Gigapark at the nearby Teesworks site. I reported on the first day of the consultation here. Since then, a planning application has been developed, and this will go before Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council on 3 December 2024. Permission is expected to be granted.
North Yorkshire Gigaparks
In November 2024, NatPower held consultation events for their next two Gigaparks. The Mowbray project and the Bellmoor project. The proposed Mowbray Gigapark will be located north of the village of East Rounton, more specifically 8 km (5 miles) south of Yarm and 12 km (7.5 miles) north of Northallerton. The project takes its name from its location in the Vale of Mowbray. The gigapark will be built partly beneath a 400kV transmission line, where a substation will be built to connect to it. The transmission line and its pylons can be seen here:
Mowbray consultation
The consultation event for the Mowbray project was held in East Rounton on 29 November 2024. You’ll have whizzed past the signs for East Rounton on the nearby A19, but you’ve probably never stopped off. But this idyllic village is worth a visit, as I did for the first time on 29 November. The NatPower consultation event was held in Rounton Village Hall, an elegant Grade II listed structure built by local philanthropist Sir Hugh Bell in 1906.
Slow motion car crash
The event was due to start at 3 pm, but the start was delayed for an hour due to a traffic jam on the M62. NatPower staff are based in Manchester. The event had been due to last four hours, but it closed at 7.15pm. There were plenty of staff wearing NatPower badges, but closer inspection revealed that most of these were external consultants. Other staffers seemed to have only a superficial knowledge of the project. However, the Teesside and Mowbray project leaders were available and were able to answer detailed questions. Several displays outlined the need for BESS systems, and how they work.
Crosstown Traffic
Despite assurances from NatPower about being ‘good neighbours’ construction vehicles would be a major concern. Prior to the event, I travelled the entire length of the proposed route from the A19 to the Mowbray site, which passes through East Rounton village. It’s a narrow road which contains some severe bends. It would be an understatement to say that this road wouldn’t be suitable for two years of HGV traffic. A much shorter route further north has been disregarded, presumably because this would require an expensive upgrade to the Green Lane junction on the A19. NatPower didn’t send their traffic route planner to the consultation event.
Where’s the fire?
Battery fires at BESS facilities, though rare, are dangerous due to a phenomenon known as ‘thermal runaway’, with the fire at the Carnegie Road BESS in Liverpool in 2020 being a case in point. Lessons have been learned since then though, according to the consultant from Greenfire Solutions, who answered questions at the East Rounton event. In particular, the trigger point for thermal runaway of the proposed batteries at the modern gigaparks is 200℃ as opposed to 70℃ in Liverpool. Fire suppression systems have improved, and battery containers will be spaced three metres apart to reduce the risk of fire spread. However, Natpower’s proposed gigaparks will have a power output of 1000 MW for 4 hours (= 4,000 MWhr) , four hundred times that of the Liverpool BESS at 20 MW for half an hour (= 10 MWhr), and far larger than any other systems presently operating in the UK. Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service struggled with the supply water to extinguish the Liverpool BESS fire. This would be much more of a problem in rural North Yorkshire, which doesn’t have the water capacity of major cities.
More pylons?
NatPower plans to spend £600 million to build new substations, but nothing on transmission lines. But transmission lines (and the pylons that support them) are equally important for capacity enhancements, and NatPower appears to be outsourcing this expenditure to the National Grid. And it’s not just the money. National Grid may have to act as a lightning conductor for the local ‘NIMBY’ protests which will inevitably follow. Other metaphors are available.
National Grid upgrades
In October 2024, taking a break from the PR exercise to sell the gigaparks, NatPower’s MD John Sturman warned that the UK Government will need to have enabled grid reform by April 2025 in order to meet its 2030 greenhouse gas emissions target on the way to Net Zero in 2050. The newly formed National Energy System Operator (NESO) is consulting on this right now, giving them a short timescale to come up with reforms. These reforms will need to include a radical shake up of planning laws to enable an accelerated build out of the National Grid. Localism will have to take a back step.
And in North Yorkshire?
Two 400kV transmission lines run through the entire county from north to south, roughly parallel to one another. In addition to providing local supply, their national strategic role is to move surplus renewable electricity from Scotland to the South of England. The Teesside and Mowbray gigaparks will be connected to the eastern transmission line. Bellmoor will be connected to the western one. At the Mowbray consultation event, NatPower’s spokesman insisted that they won’t need to add capacity to either of these transmission lines in order to accommodate the three new gigaparks. Perhaps NatPower is relying on the outcome of the NESO grid consultation to contradict this.
It shouldn’t happen in Herriot Country
NatPower’s third proposed gigapark is at Bellmoor, near the village of South Kilvington. It’s about 3 km (2 miles) from Thirsk. The consultation event for Bellmoor was held at Thirsk Racecourse on 6 and 7 November, and the consultation period has now expired. A local protest group, Thirsk Against Battery Storage (TABS) was quick out of the blocks. TABS is keen to remind people that the Bellmoor Gigapark will be visible from the top of Sutton Bank, ‘the finest view in England’, although NatPower would counter that both the Mowbray and Bellmoor Gigaparks will be screened with extensive vegetation. NatPower’s press releases and consultation materials are laden with ‘green’ promises and an emphasis on philanthropy. There’s a whiff of greenwashing about this.
Brownfield sites. The NIMBY solution?
North Yorkshire residents are concerned about the land taken by BESS projects. Bellmoor and Mowbray gigaparks will occupy 173 acres and 90 acres respectively. As more and more arable land is lost, this impacts on UK food security at a time of fragile supply chains. One solution is to use brownfield sites, but this isn’t so simple. Teesside Gigapark’s project manager confirmed that, even if planning permission is granted, construction won’t commence at this brownfield site until at least the second quarter of 2027, due to delays in land remediation. NatPower considered several other brownfield sites for their gigaparks, but many of these have already been snapped up by other projects.The former Ferrybridge power station site has been taken by another BESS provider. Nearby Eggborough could host a giant gas-fired power station. The Saltend Chemicals Park near Hull was examined, but this is at sea level, and the flood risk to a BESS would be too great due to that pesky climate change.
Rearranging the deckchairs
It’s a depressing thought that UK electricity consumption continues to increase. One of NatPower’s consultation displays predicts that energy use will double by 2050, supposedly the year of Net Zero. Although they would say that, wouldn’t they? The real debate needs to be about drastically reducing our energy use but nobody wants to talk about that anymore. We could insulate a lot of homes with £60 billion.
Have your say
The consultation for the Mowbray Gigapark will last until 13 December, or until 16 December depending on which part of the NatPower website you wish to rely on.
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