Britain has unveiled a plan to turn an abandoned coal power plant into one of the world's largest battery centres to store electricity from the North Sea wind farm. The developer The Banks Group plans to deploy up to 2.8GWh of water storage in the former Thorpe Marsh Power Station near Doncaster in northeastern England.

The transformation of Sop Marsh has been out of service since 1994. It is about 70km away from the North Sea coast. It will use a 65 hectare site to connect with 1.45GW of the British National Grid to provide a large amount of green power for the grid. The developer claims that this huge facility will become the largest battery energy storage system currently planned in the UK and one of the largest energy storage systems in the world.

Lewis Stokes, senior community relations manager of The Banks Group, said that Thorpe Marsh's existing grid connection and its growing wind farm portfolio close to the east coast would produce most of the energy that would go ashore, making it an excellent location for the project.

The variable power target to deal with its emerging offshore wind turbines is to reach 50GW by 2030, and having about 90GW of potential project pipelines is a real problem facing the UK, because the grid is ready to supply these two key priorities smoothly. Keywords: overseas news, engineering news

The Banking Group is ready to begin public consultation on these plans and work at the site. The giant cooling tower at this site was demolished ten years ago, and if approved, it will start in 2024 at the earliest. In the first phase of the project, up to 2.25 million tons of fly ash will be recovered and used as the secondary aggregate for making concrete blocks.Editor/Xing Wentao