Energy storage owner-operator BW ESS announced today that its 350 MW / 1.24 GW Hams Hall BESS has entered commercial operations in the West Midlands of England, located next to National Grid’s Hams Hall substation.
By MWh capacity, it’s now Europe’s largest operational BESS, and will expand further, with a follow-on expansion also planned to bring power and capacity up to 400 MW / 1.42 GWh.
The site has seen a flurry of activity: the project reached commercial operation just 20 days after energisation, with BW ESS thanking partners including Sungrow, Energy-IO, National Grid and NESO. After receiving consent in May 2022, Sungrow was selected in 2024 to supply 280 PowerTitan 2.0 liquid-cooled BESS units.
In April this year, the site’s revenue was given security, with BW ESS announcing the project would be backed by a 10-year floor agreement with EDF. Under the agreement, the details of which were not disclosed, EDF will optimize its longest-duration battery contracted to date using its PowerShift platform.
On October 21, BW ESS announced it had secured debt financing for the Hams Hall site from lenders OCBC, Rabobank and Societe Generale.
Energization was achieved on or around October 13th, with COD and commercial operations reached on November 2.
Operations
UK grid asset data is made publicly available in various depths, depending on access levels and how close to real-time the data is.
Digging into the details, Hams Halls is divided into four transmission-connected Balancing Mechanism Units (BMUs), each 100 MW.
Data visualized by energycount.co.uk consolidates the four, and shows the Hams Hall BESS actively charging and discharging onto the grid during testing and operations, with totals on charging and discharging also counted.
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