Rolls-Royce Holdings PLC (LSE:RR.) said it is seeing a growing demand for its industrial battery storage systems amid volatile electricity markets and has identified the first four sites for its mini-nuclear power stations.
Late on Wednesday, the FTSE 100 group’s Rolls-Royce Small Module Reactors (SMR) arm said it had completed its review of potential options for deploying mini-nuclear plants, supported by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), identifying former nuclear sites of Trawsfynydd and Wylfa in Wales, Sellafield in Cumbria and Oldbury near Bristol.
Trawsfynydd and Sellafield are sites controlled by the NDA, while Wylfa and Oldbury are on land NDA has leased to a third party.
Each Rolls-Royce SMR facility, which uses the same technology to power nuclear submarines, would create enough clean energy to power a million homes for 60 years, it said, but any formal commitment of the land requires government approval, specifically from the department for business, energy & industrial strategy (BEIS).
The review concluded that the four former nuclear sites are large enough to house an SMR, connected to the power grid and geotechnically stable.
SMR chief executive Tom Samson said: “Identifying the sites that can host our SMRs is a key step to our efficient deployment – the sooner that work can begin at site, the sooner we can deliver stable, secure supplies of low-carbon nuclear power from SMRs designed and built in the UK.”
This summer he said the first reactor could be up and running by 2029 if the government places an order before the end of this year.
In a separate announcement today, Rolls-Royce said it has delivered six of a total of eight industrial battery packs to German energy company VISPIRON, which is supplying them to solar parks in Bavaria and Thuringia.
The solar parks use them for intraday trading, which is important for absorbing unpredictable changes in electricity production and demand.
“With regard to increasingly volatile electricity markets, battery storage can be used to profitably market storage capacity while having a stabilizing effect on our power grids,” VISPIRON said.
Andreas Görtz at Rolls-Royce Power Systems said: “We see a growing market in the VISPIRON business model and in our storage products and are pleased that together we can make a relevant contribution to grid and supply stability and thus actively contribute to the energy transition.”