Re: battery fire

On 17/01/2025 22:47, Jeroen Belleman wrote:

I fail to understand why battery storage facilities must be huge.
They really should be distributed, and there doesn't seem to be
a good reason as to why they aren't.

That is really very simple.
The main costs of a planning application for this sort of thing in the countryside are roughly constant with only a tiny increase for surveying a larger piece of land. The value increase after obtaining planning permission is a proportion of the total contract value. Speculators drive the obtaining planning consent side in the UK.
Once they have obtained planning permission then they throw it over the wall to the builders from Hell to try and implement it. They even say as much on their website - to their investors see "Our Strategy" in:
https://natpower.com/investor-relations/
Rural land here of low grade for agriculture (aka 3b) is ~£4k/acre
With planning permission for housing it is worth £40k/acre
With planning permission for a BESS it is worth >£500k/acre
(hard to give an exact number since none this big have been done)
No surprise that they try to go for the biggest chunk that they can.
Ours is apparently a £1.2bn budget as is the one just down the road.
--
Martin Brown