British Gas owner Centrica PLC (LSE:CNA) is backing a £300 million pioneering project that uses cooled air to generate electricity.
Centrica will invest £70 million into the plant at Highview, a site in Carrington near Manchester, an area where the premier league team Man United’s training ground is based.
The British Gas owner is part of a consortium that also includes mining giant Rio Tinto, US bank Goldman Sachs and the UK Infrastructure Bank.
As part of the project, a 50-megawatt energy storage facility capable of running for six hours by 2026 will compress air into a liquid and store it at low pressure.
When power is needed the liquid will be heated, turning it back into a gas to drive an electricity-generating turbine.
UK-based Highview Power will run the project, which is being trialled as a way to store energy over the long term and balance the grid when weather affects the output from wind and solar farms.
Building the facility is expected to create 700 jobs and follows a successful pilot in Bury.
ESO, the National Grid’s Electricity System Operator, has said a total of 13 gigawatts of long-duration storage will be needed by 2035.
Discussions are also underway with Danish wind farm giant Ørsted, which yesterday unveiled plans for a new battery storage facility near Norwich.
Richard Butland, Highview’s co-founder and chief executive, said:: “The UK’s investment in offshore wind and renewables has brought with it the need for structural solutions to capture the excess energy and support the grids transformation. Without storage, there is no energy transition.
Chris O’Shea, chief executive of Centrica, added: “The energy transition is an opportunity that could transform lives across the UK.
“But with a changing energy mix, and more intermittency from renewables, we have to explore new, innovative ways to store energy so our customers have electricity available when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine.
“Low carbon storage is an essential part of the solution when looking at how we manage peaks in demand.”
Shares in Centrica eased 0.9% to 130.9p.