Highview

£45m for energy storage pioneer Highview to enable build of “stability island” which will deliver crucial grid stability services.

Highview has secured £130m in funding to begin work on a planned 3.2GWh hybrid long-duration energy storage (LDES) solution to improve grid resilience across southwest Scotland. Co-investment has come from British multinational energy and services company Centrica and investors including Goldman Sachs, KIRKBI, and Mosaic Capital.

See our news release here.

About Highview

Highview is a solutions-led energy infrastructure business. It has developed its LAES technology in the UK over the last 17 years to store renewable energy for up to several weeks and provide stability services to the National Grid.

The company leverages a proprietary analytics platform to forecast future energy needs, orchestrates strategic capital to develop solutions and curates its technology to design, build and operate the assets to meet those requirements.

The stability island and LAES/BESS facility at Hunterston will be the forerunner of Highview’s Millennium Series. It will deliver enough clean electricity to power around 650,000 homes for up to 12.5 hours, optimising Scotland’s plentiful offshore wind resources and in the process, release grid bottlenecks that currently curb renewable generation.

Why we invested

Our investment in Highview aligns with our net zero mission to address the climate crisis through a fair and sustainable economy while also supporting our place mission, which aims to transform communities and help people thrive

Phase one includes the development of Highview’s stability island, which will provide system support to the electricity grid and can operate independently of the energy storage elements to deliver critical inertia, short circuit and voltage support. These services will be vital for southwestern Scotland where they are currently lacking, and as a greater proportion of renewable energy sources enter the power mix. In turn, this will enable more power to be transmitted from the point of generation in Scotland to areas of high demand.

The site, which is located at Peel Ports at Hunterston, is expected to support 1,000 onsite jobs during construction and 650 jobs in the supply chain during the build-out of all phases, with the stability island set to be complete and operational by January 2028, followed by the full facility which is expected to be operational by 2030.

“Curtailment and intermittency remain significant challenges as Scotland continues to scale up renewable energy generation. Strengthening grid resilience is critical to ensuring that more of the clean energy we produce can be efficiently utilised.
“By partnering with Highview, our investment in this pioneering project will help deliver the infrastructure needed to support a more stable, secure, and sustainable energy future for Scotland.”

Mark Munro

Chief Investment Officer

Key Information

Key Mission

Net Zero

Amount Invested

£45m

Location

Hunterston

Co-investors

Centrica, Goldman Sachs, KIRKBI and Mosaic Capital.

Key Quote

Richard Butland, Chief Executive at Highview said:

"This capital raise is an important milestone for Highview, enabling us to build out the first phase of our long duration energy facility at Hunterston. By delivering much-needed grid services in this location, our stability island asset will prevent costly curtailment and maximise the renewable energy that we generate in the UK.

“Through the delivery of this phase and building on the lessons learned at our Carrington facility, we are also developing and strengthening our UK supply chain. This is turn supports future Highview projects, as well as the UK’s wider green economy, driving skills development, job creation, and economic growth across the country.”

Highview