The £300 million funding round was led by the UK Infrastructure Bank (UKIB) and multinational energy leviathan Centrica, supported by investors including Rio Tinto, Goldman Sachs, KIRKBI and Mosaic Capital.

The investment will enable the construction of one of the world’s largest long duration energy storage (LDES) facilities in Carrington, Manchester, using Highview’s proprietary LAES technology.

Once complete, Carrington – otherwise known as the location for Manchester United’s training complex – will have a capacity of 300MWh and an output power of 50MW per hour for six hours.

Construction begins on the site now.  Full operation is scheduled for early 2026. Over 700 jobs will be supported during construction and in the plant’s supply chain.

UKIB’s investment reflects its ambition to direct private finance to help new technologies reach commercial scale, as they aid Britain’s transition to Net Zero.

With its £70 million investment, Centrica comes on board as Highview Power’s strategic partner, supporting both Carrington & an accelerated roll-out of the firm’s technology elsewhere in the UK.

Highview believes its programme sets the bar for storage energy systems around the world, raising Britain to global leadership in energy storage and managing grid flexibility.

Highview Power is now at work planning four even bigger LAES plants elsewhere in Britain. The 2.5 GWh facilities, funded with an anticipated future £3 billion, will ensure a fast roll-out of the technology to align with the nation’s LDES (long duration energy storage) goals enabling the ESO’s Future Energy Scenario plans.

Highview Power has developed its LAES technology over 17 years. The technology can store renewable electricity for as much as several weeks, longer than electro-chemical batteries. The company says it is ready to be rolled out at scale, at key grid chokepoints.

Stability services to the National Grid including system balancing, feature among Highview’s business offers, speeding the redundancy of despatchable fossil fuelled power to manage demand volatility.

More manageable storage curbs curtailment costs, too. Last year British bill payers were caught on a £800 million hook, as stilled wind farms claimed compensation simply because the NG was too full to accept their low carbon output.

Highview Power seeks completion by 2035 of its larger UK installations, timed to meet one National Grid scenario of 2GW needed from LAES. That figure would represent nearly 20% of Britain’s energy storage for longer than two hours.

“There is no energy transition without storage” declared Richard Butland, pictured, Highview’s co-founder & CEO.

 “The UK’s investment in world-leading offshore wind & renewables requires a national long-duration storage programme to capture excess wind and support the grid’s transformation.

“UKIB, Centrica and our other partners are backing Highview’s ambitions to bring renewable energy storage into Britain’s economy at scale, liberating the potential of what is both the greenest and by far our cheapest energy source.

Centrica group chief executive Chris O’Shea enthused: “The energy transition is an opportunity that could transform lives. But with the UK’s changing energy mix, and more intermittency from renewables, we have to explore new, innovative ways to store energy so our customers have electricity available when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine”.

Greater Manchester’s mayor Andy Burnham weighed in too. “My vision is for Greater Manchester to be a leader in the green transition. Highview Power’s decision to build one of the world’s largest long duration energy storage facilities at Carrington is a huge boost for the region.

“This new plant will deliver renewable energy to homes and business across our region and bring world-leading technology, jobs, skills and investment to Greater Manchester. I’m delighted to welcome Highview Power”, Burnham declared.

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The UK’s reliance on gas

British reliance on volatile international gas markets has come into sharp focus. Spikes in energy costs led to Ofgem’s  80% price cap increase to £3,549 at the end of August. Less than two weeks later the government announced a two-year “Energy Price Guarantee”  limiting consumer costs to £2,500. After an outcry at the estimated £140 billion that this would cost the British people, the scheme will now only run until April 2023.

With energy the most important issue facing Britons today, a recent YouGov survey[1] revealed that 43% of UK adults believe the country imports too much gas. This increases to 54% among those who voted Conservative in the 2019 general election. With energy top-of-mind, it should be no surprise that 81% of UK adults support government investment in energy storage.

But the plan that the government originally announced relies heavily on “long term energy contracts with domestic and international gas suppliers,” “accelerating all sources of domestic energy, including North Sea oil and gas production,” and ending “the moratorium on extracting our huge reserves of shale, which could get gas flowing in as soon as six months, where there is local support.”[2] More oil, gas, and fracking.

Achieving net zero

Regrettably, these are not long-term solutions that strengthen the UK’s ability to decarbonise and achieve or net zero goals. Furthermore, this approach does nothing to utilise our abundant supply of renewable energy.

And while inflation increases globally and Russia has weaponized gas after its invasion of Ukraine, added to the existing net zero commitments, means that world governments are prioritising renewable energy at an incredible rate of growth.

Much of this growth has been led by the UK, where the transition to renewable energy has also driven an aggressive transition to net zero, and recently materially upped the country’s ambitions for offshore wind generation capacity. And the British Government has supported the development of the grid to become one of the most innovative, capable, efficient, and resilient national power networks.

Within this context, long-duration energy storage (LDES) has a critical role to play to enable the UK’s renewable energy potential and supply cheap, green power, deliver grid stability, and importantly, energy self-sufficiency.

The cost of wasted wind

From 1 September 2021 to 22 May 2022, the UK produced 1,300 GWh of electricity from curtailed wind energy. £150 million in constraint payments were made, and because this energy wasn’t able to be stored, the UK also paid £240 million for fossil fuels to replace the unused renewable wind power.

With the UK unable to use all of the wind energy it produces today, what happens when additional wind capacity comes online, as occurred recently with Hornsea 2?

Unfortunately, it means additional wasted renewable energy with additional constraint payments because fossil fuels are still needed to make up the difference. But it also means that the grid becomes increasingly unstable because wind and solar are unable to provide grid stabilisation. Without stabilisation, the grid could face widespread blackouts.

Long-duration storage is the long-term solution

The long-term solution to the UK’s energy crisis is not to drill for more oil and gas or to increase fracking, it’s to capture the renewable energy that is already being produced in order to reduce fossil fuel usage, achieve grid stability, meet our net zero goals, and achieve energy security.

Rupert Pearce, CEO of Highview Power, leverages his background in leadership, transformation, and business strategy to position the company as a global leader in accelerating the energy transition. Prior to joining Highview Power, he served for nearly a decade as CEO of Inmarsat PLC, the world’s leading mobile satellite operator.

[1] https://highviewpower.com/news_announcement/uk-energy-security-undermined-by-lack-of-energy-storage-capabilities/

[2] https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/pm-liz-trusss-opening-speech-on-the-energy-policy-debate

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The liquid air energy storage plant uses cryogenically-liquefied air as a medium for storing energy. It is especially suitable for special applications that require large amounts of energy over a discharge time of several hours, and enables fluctuating, renewable sources to bear base-loads. The MAN turbomachinery train will form the core of the CRYOBattery facility that, upon completion, will form one of Europe’s largest battery-storage systems. This will ultimately supply clean, reliable, and cost-efficient long-duration energy storage – primarily from renewable sources.

Wayne Jones OBE, chief sales officer and member of the executive board of MAN Energy Solutions, said, “The Carrington project is a massive milestone for the future of storage technology and for the United Kingdom’s goal of a 100% clean, carbon-free energy future. This technology’s unlimited potential means that any number of domestic and global projects await its successful conclusion.”

Construction of the CRYOBattery began in late 2020 with commercial operation commencing during 2022. Highview Power will operate the facility in partnership with Carlton Power, a UK independent power-station developer.

Construction will proceed in two phases. Phase 1 will involve the installation of a ‘stability island’, to provide near-instantaneous energy grid stabilisation. This will be achieved using a generator and flywheel, among other components. Enabling short-term stabilisation will provide the basis for Phase 2 and the completion of the more complex liquid air energy storage system that includes various compressors, air expanders and cryogenic equipment.

Phase 2 will represent the integration of stability services with a full-scale long-duration energy storage system, and in doing so promote the full integration of renewable energy. The Carrington project will offer a blueprint for future projects and cement the partnership between MAN Energy Solutions and Highview Power.

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“Our facility will deliver much needed clean, reliable and cost-efficient long duration energy storage to the National Grid,” said Javier Cavada, Highview Power CEO and president. “The CRYOBattery will help the UK to integrate renewable energy and stabilize the regional electrical grid to ensure future energy security during blackouts and other disruptions.”

In June, Highview Power was awarded a £10 million grant from the UK Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS) to build the facility at Trafford Energy Park, in Carrington Village, just 8 miles outside of Manchester. A visitor center will be located adjacent to the plant and will be open in the first quarter of 2021. The visitor center will provide an immersive experience allowing visitors not only to see the progress of the site being built, but also to have the opportunity to take virtual tours.

Highview Power will operate the facility in partnership with Carlton Power, a UK independent power station developer. The CRYOBattery will enter commercial operation in 2023. The facility will use existing substation and transmission infrastructure, with its income derived from several markets, including arbitrage (buying electricity when prices are low and selling it when prices are high), grid balancing, the capacity market, and ancillary services such as frequency response and voltage support. The Trafford Power site at Manchester was developed by Carlton Power to be the first project consented in Europe as being fully Carbon Capture Ready. Its proximity to its designated carbon storage field make the site one of the most economically viable sites in the UK for conversion to carbon capture and storage.

Highview Power’s proprietary cryogenic energy storage technology utilizes air liquefaction, in which ambient air is cooled and turned to liquid at -196°C (-320˚F). The liquid air is stored at low pressure and later heated and expanded to drive a turbine and generate power. It is the only long duration energy storage solution available today that is locatable and can offer multiple gigawatt-hours (weeks) of storage. The CRYOBattery has a small footprint, and is scalable with no size limitations or geographic constraints, allowing for the deployment of massive amounts of renewables. Highview Power’s cryogenic energy storage plants offer valuable capabilities including voltage control, grid balancing and synchronous inertia, that give grid operators the flexibility to manage power and energy services independently.

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