A battery storage project developed by Pacific Green and owned by the Sosteneo Energy Transition Fund is now connected and operational on the transmission network following work by National Grid to plug the facility into its 400 kV Richborough substation in Kent, U.K.
Richborough Energy Park’s 100 MW battery will provide grid stability services and boost network capacity with the ability to power 250,000 homes for an hour, says Pacific Green.
The facility is managed by Pacific Green under a long term asset management agreement and was Sosteneo’s first U.K. acquisition.
To ensure a safe connection, National Grid upgraded its Richborough substation to accommodate new switchgear and installed new protection and control systems on its supergrid transformer, plugging in the project via a tertiary connection.
Richborough substation already hosts the connection for National Grid’s own 1 GW Nemo Link interconnector with Belgium, while Thanet Offshore Wind Farm also connects into an adjacent substation on the wider Richborough Energy Park site.
“It’s been a pleasure to work with the National Grid to develop Richborough Energy Park, and we look forward to continuing our relationship with many more projects to come,” says chairman and CEO of Pacific Green, Scott Poulter. “Having taken control of the site in 2021, I’m proud at the speed and efficiency with which my team has steered the project to financial close in summer 2022, first energisation a year later, full energisation last month and now into commercial operation.”
The Richborough site occupies land where a coal power station generated electricity from the early sixties through to 1996, and stood until its 2012 demolition.
