How to solve Scotland’s renewable energy grid capacity problem

This year kicked off with the Scottish Government setting ambitious targets of achieving 20 Gigawatts of low-cost renewable energy capacity by 2030, generating the equivalent of 50% of Scotland’s total energy demand.

Scotland’s ideal geographical location offers enormous renewable energy potential and is already the UK’s renewable energy powerhouse. Recent figures published by the government revealed Scotland has more than doubled its renewable electricity generation in the last decade and its wind capacity is over 11GW – representing 39% of the UK’s capacity.

It is anticipated that Scotland’s ability to export green power will increase in the next decade, with almost 50GW of wind power in its project pipeline and the bulk of this production coming from offshore wind.

The prospect of a low-cost, homegrown source of energy is enticing and the proposed reforms to grid connectivity announced in the Autumn Statement have been welcomed by the sector. The commitments will allow the development of projects that have been facing up to 10 years of delay.

However, there are still complex regulatory and infrastructure barriers preventing Scotland from reaching its full future energy potential. The country’s net zero pursuit is being slowed by antiquated grid infrastructure designed for fossil fuels almost 100 years ago.

Many large-scale developers are being told it will be decades before they can connect new Scottish projects, if at all. Where permission is obtained, those developers are often charged more to connect to the grid than equivalent projects elsewhere in the UK.

To scale-up renewable energy generation, an overhaul of the grid infrastructure is needed.

This means greater investment in building more pylons, power lines and substations to carry cheap renewable energy to the people and businesses who need it, whilst also supported by more flexible policies from the district network operators and regulatory changes.

Grid capacity and grid balancing

Scotland’s transmission network will need to double in size by the middle of this decade, triple by 2030 and increase by five to six times by 2050 to support the UK’s net zero targets.

To solve this there needs to be significant investment in updating grid infrastructure, supported by an increase in grid balancing projects.

Energy storage projects are an effective mechanism to support grid balancing. Not only do they have the advantage of providing readily accessible power when renewable energy sources are generating insufficient supplies, they also allow for greater cost efficiency by controlling when electricity is stored or released.

Changes in planning legislation enabling 50MW+ energy storage projects, which have enabled the acceleration of battery storage capacity and an increase in transmission connected and distribution connected schemes, have been gratefully welcome by the industry. The largest energy storage projects being promoted in Scotland include several pumped hydro storage schemes providing potentially up to 60GWh.

The current battery technology deployed in energy storage projects works well but, just as encouraging, is the development of new technologies making grid balancing efforts easier.

As R&D investment continues to be ploughed into technologies such as flow batteries, molten salt batteries, liquid air and hydrogen storage, new solutions will be commercialised and – benefitting from economies of scale – become viable for widespread use.

When one considers the prospects of these new products in addition to the fact that existing battery and clean energy technologies are set to continue becoming more cost effective, the future energy landscape in Scotland looks positive, presenting opportunities for investors, but only where the projects can connect to the grid cost effectively and the grid infrastructure is capable of handling the increased capacity.

Devolving the grid

Scotland is a vast country, with rural areas accounting for 17% of its territory.

Many of these areas will benefit from the proliferation of devolved micro-grids, which are also making grid balancing easier through the energy transition.

There are many examples of local community micro-grids, with their own clean energy generation and storage facilities to regulate the network.

One example is the Fair Isle energy project which uses an intelligently controlled renewable micro-grid with wind and solar power and battery bank bringing 24-hour power to islanders.

The rise of localised grids could mean that significant portions of Scotland end up largely autonomous from an energy perspective, reducing pressure on the national grid.

Regulation and planning

The development of Scotland’s future energy potential will benefit from a more stable and agile regulatory framework.

Policymakers hesitating to implement change has hindered consumer confidence. Clear and concise regulation will, without a doubt, open the market to more renewable generation and investment into upgrading outdated infrastructure.

A systematic approach to making planning decisions will boost the development of future energy projects. Land use decisions should sit with those who understand planning and what is needed to move towards net zero.

Taking a combined view results in the land allocated for renewable generation projects also having grid access, but if decisions are made in isolation, then sites can be ring-fenced, but are completely inaccessible to the grid.

Damien Bechelli is a corporate partner at law firm TLT