2023 has been a year of extremes for battery energy storage in Great Britain. In this article, we look back on what has changed in the battery energy storage industry throughout the year.
Total battery capacity continued to grow, reaching 3.5 GW by the end of 2023
The installation of new battery energy storage capacity has continued to rise.
- The total operating power capacity of batteries in Great Britain is now 3.5 GW, up from 2.1 GW at the end of 2022.
- Total energy capacity has grown even quicker, up to 4.5 GWh from 2.3 GWh in 2022.
- This means the average duration of battery energy capacity in GB is now 1.27 hours, up from 1.1 hours in 2022.
34 new battery projects came online in 2023, an increase of over 50% from that in 2022. The number of operational battery projects (greater than 5 MW) now stands at 108. This includes four new 98+ MW systems which arrived in 2023: Dollymans, Clay Tye, Bumpers, and Richborough Energy Park.
This is a record increase in capacity - and it’s increasingly coming in the form of two-hour systems
While the headline capacity number has grown, more significant is the acceleration of this deployment. 1.5 GW of new battery capacity came online in 2023, compared to 681 MW in 2022 and 343 MW in 2021.