Energy: Storage

Lord Grantchester Excerpts

Wednesday 1st February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grantchester (Lab)]

My Lords, this is indeed a very complex area. To allow greater deployment, a new definition for storage should be developed to reflect its role in generation, demand and providing network balance. Does the Minister agree that the licensing of storage under the Electricity Act should be a special flexible case to allow these roles to develop?

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

My Lords, battery technology could offer huge benefits to the way that we both generate and store electricity and could provide better capacity to our electricity system in the UK. It could also enable us better to deal with the more intermittent nature of some renewable energy. The work done by Imperial College indicates that the savings per annum for producing electricity in this country could run at between £1 billion and £2 billion a year, so it is very important that we get the regulatory system right.