Found some older article on financing/timeline since there's not much info here:

https://www.ess-news.com/2024/11/05/financial-close-for-uk-p...

The battery storage was ~$200M. Pure prismatic lifepo cells are currently ~$60 per kWh in single digit quantities (would be $40M or 20% of total costs, which seems reasonable). The attached 450MW gas power plant cost ~$350M.

I find it rather remarkable how they aquired the contracts in early 2023 and the thing is already running.

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tim333 6 days ago | parent | next [-]

It's promising how costs are dropping. CATL have recently announced sodium ion batteries with a cost around $40 per kWh and material costs around $10 so there's room for things to drop as production scales. https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2025/08/catl-sodium-ion-batter...

CATL and BYD are both building 30 GWh per year plants or 60 GWh between them so that's enough for 100 Tilbury plants per year just from sodium batteries. And of course lithium batteries are still cranking along.

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zeristor 6 days ago | parent [-]

It would be interesting to read up on the economics of power storage.

As to what price points for the batteries equates to different usage patterns.

Peak shaving, morning and evening peaks, occasional discharge.

Batteries can make money also by taking negative price electricity.

Once gas has been run out of the market more battery power availability could support carbon free steel I imagine where it is just electrochemistry.

At each point they’d be ruptures in the market, where some forms of electricity just can’t compete.

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pjc50 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

The trouble with "use free electricity" schemes is that the capital cost never sleeps: you have built a fixed plant, on a piece of land, and paid for that, regardless of whether it runs or not. So there's usually a fairly high minimum duty cycle to make it economically viable.

You could make the argument in the other direction: the AI training datacenters could run for 23/24 hours, saving electricity at the peak time when it's most expensive and when they're pushing up the cost of electricity for everyone else the most .. but of course all those GPUs are too expensive to leave idle.

	▲	zeristor 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		Indeed, the biggest constraint being I imagine the grid connection. One thing I keep thinking is that with the grid being a network, there are certain key points in the network which would be extremely useful to have battery storage. Overall the system may have peaks and troughs, however it is a network of edges, some my reach capacity for several hours a day, if battery storage could be built at these points, then the other edges could still be served. Indeed some points may go up and down several times in a day, and a large enough battery to sate that demand could earn a lot. I can't see the high level prices reflect the intricacies of a working network. It might be useful on the edges when power is brought in, but further in where use and demand are intertwined something more sophisticated would be needed. I keep thinking there should be a good case for a simulator game so that people can understand how this really works. (Caveat the above is my chopped liver sliding down a wall version of it, I don't work in the industry and as a physics graduate I'm no doubt buoyed by an inherent arrogance of it being easier than it is.) Normally if I have an idea, I find that someone has already done something already. Are there any electricity network simulator games out there already?

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Dr4kn 6 days ago | parent | prev [-]

electricity peaks are probably reduced over time by hourly electricity prices. If a lot of people can save money by using electricity at cheaper hours the peak demand is reduced.

Plugging in your EV might charge to 40% immediately. When it charges to 80% doesn't matter if it has that charge in the morning. So it probably charges somewhere in the night.

Starting your dishwasher, washing machine dryer on a timer before you go to work, so it runs when energy is cheaper.

This doesn't eliminate the need for storage, but reduces its need.

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AnotherGoodName 6 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Check out https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hornsdale_Power_Reserve

63days from start to completion. Paid itself off in 2 years. Saved consumers well over $100million/yr across the state in power bill reductions (only 1.8million people in that state and this is after the battery owners took their profit).

There's really nothing but positives from grid scale batteries. They cut out all those <0 and >100x price fluctuations on the grid and the payoff for investors is ridiculous right now.

Australia's expected to 20x it's grid connected battery capacity between 2024 and 2027. The growth in battery storage is ridiculous since the costs have come down. https://elements.visualcapitalist.com/top-20-countries-by-ba...

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curtisblaine 6 days ago | parent | next [-]

> There's really nothing but positives from grid scale batteries

I'm pretty sure they have a matching number of positives and negatives.

	▲	dkural 6 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		:D one would hope.
	▲	livelaughlove69 6 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Very droll

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nonfamous 6 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I wonder if that growth comes from grid-scale batteries or from domestic installations. There are huge government incentives for installing a home battery system and connecting it to a VPP, so I wonder if the policy is focused at the domestic or grid level.