Energy firm acquires a battery site in Newport

A BATTERY storage site in Newport has been acquired by a new energy storage company for an undisclosed sum.

Field, which is headquartered in east London and launched in 2020, has bought the 20MW (40MWh) site from Welsh Power.

The acquisition brings the company’s energy storage pipeline to 775MW (1,510MWh).

Since launching in 2020, the firm wants to grow its renewable energy infrastructure in a bid to decarbonise the National Grid.

It plans to get 1.3GW of battery storage operational across the UK by 2024, which the company says it is on track to achieve.

Last year, the company acquired sites in Oldham (20MW/ 20MWh) in Greater Manchester, Gerrard’s Cross (20MW/20MWh) in South Buckinghamshire, and Auchteraw (50MW/100 MWh) in Inverness. The Oldham site is already under construction, with further sites in development.

Field said it creates renewable energy infrastructure using the latest lithium iron phosphate battery technology. These are generally installed in fridgefreezer-sized “racks”, arranged into “strings” and feature the latest water-cooled technology to help improve degradation.

The battery is connected to the National Grid and will store energy generated at the time. Typically, this is charged overnight, said the firm, with nuclear and wind providing most of the capacity.

The company added that the battery will also be charged through the middle of the day with nuclear, wind and solar a big part of the electricity mix, especially at springtime.

It will sometimes sell energy to the National Grid Electricity System Operator to provide services to help them manage the grid.

One of the main functions of the battery will be to provide frequency services that help keep the frequency of electricity close to 50Hz.

The energy will also be sold to suppliers and then on to customers.

Chief executive of Field Amit Gudka said: “I’m excited to announce Field Newport and our progress towards building the energy infrastructure needed to decarbonise the UK’s grid.

“With the IPCC having just issued a ‘now or never’ climate warning this week, it really couldn’t be clearer that the time to act on the renewables transition is now.

“There’s still a massive way to go, but Field is on track to meet the target we set to get 1.3GW connected to the grid by 2024, and we’re hopeful that even bigger milestones will follow as we lead a huge acceleration of the energy infrastructure sector.”