Commercial
Gloucester Cathedral takes steps for Church of England’s
‘Shrinking
the Footprint’
campaign
Gloucester Cathedral, one of the best
known cathedrals in the UK, has
commissioned local business Mypower to
install 150 solar panels on the nave roof of
the historic 11th century building.
In the modern era, the cathedral is
famous as a location for three Harry Potter
films, a Doctor Who Christmas special and
an episode of Sherlock.
The solar panel installation is starting
in October and will allow Gloucester
Cathedral to reduce its energy costs by 25%
and help deliver the Church of England’s
ambitious ‘Shrinking the Footprint’
campaign, which aims to reduce its carbon
emissions by 80% by 2050.
RES completes its first UK energy storage project
RES (Renewable Energy Systems) has
successfully completed its first UK-based
industrial-scale battery storage facility at
a 1.5MW solar park south of Glastonbury
in Somerset.
RES has delivered the battery
energy storage system (BESS) under
an Engineering, Procurement and
Construction (EPC) contract for Western
Power Distribution (WPD) as part of a
project to explore the provision of ancillary
services to a distribution network operator
from an embedded BESS.
A leading global renewable energy
company, RES has pioneered energy
storage projects in the US and Canada
and is now delivering its energy storage
expertise at projects across the UK. The
310kVA/668kWh battery storage system
RES has delivered for WPD, at a British
Solar Renewables (BSR) solar park, is one
of the first such projects to be built under
a fully wrapped EPC contract in Europe.
The combined solar-storage project is
connected to WPD’s South West 11kV
network, and the BESS will be operated
using RESolve, RES’s storage control and
dispatch system, which will provide 24/7
management of the battery’s operation.
The completion of RES’s first energy
storage project in UK solidifies RES’s
22 | www.renewableenergyinstaller.co.uk
leadership in the global energy storage
sector, as reported in Navigant Research’s
Leaderboard Report, and takes RES’s total
contracted energy storage portfolio to
143.6MW/92MWh, alongside more than
200MW in development.
Tim French, RES’s Head of Projects for
New Technologies, said: “Completing our
first battery storage facility in the UK marks
an important milestone for RES. We’ve
been able to use our global energy storage
expertise to great effect in successfully
designing and building this project for WPD
and delivering it ahead of schedule.
“We recognise the significant potential
energy storage brings through increasing
the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of
grid operations without the need for
public or Government subsidy. RES is
very well placed at the forefront of the
rapidly expanding UK storage market,
which will play a vital role in the UK’s
transition to a low carbon future at least
cost to consumers.”