In the heart of southwest Scotland, near the village of Kirkconnel, lies Glenmuckloch, one of Britain’s last coalmines to cease production. The year was 2017, and at its zenith, the mine produced around 500,000 tonnes of coal annually. Though the mine may be closed, it is far from forgotten, as it holds the potential to solve a critical issue in Britain’s electricity grid.
Glenmuckloch is situated less than 40 miles from the most severe bottleneck on the nation’s power grid. The rapid increase in renewable energy has outpaced the infrastructure’s ability to transport wind power generated in Scotland to England and Wales, creating a pinch point along the Scottish-English border. The disused mine, which recently hosted the opening race of the European leg of the Extreme E motor racing season, could provide the solution.
Foresight Group, a FTSE 250 asset manager with approximately £12.1 billion in assets under administration, is leading the project to transform the old opencast site into a pumped storage hydro power station. The redevelopment aims to help manage the variations between supply and demand that come with having more clean energy on the grid.
The planned power station would operate by pumping water from a lower reservoir to an upper reservoir via a 700-meter pipe when electricity is cheaper and abundant. When supply is short, the pumps can be shut off, and the gates opened, allowing the water to flow down and drive turbines at the bottom, generating electricity. This process can take as little as five minutes.
According to the developers, the Glenmuckloch power station could power around 210,000 homes for eight hours with one full discharge of the upper reservoir and could begin dispatching electricity by 2029, making it the earliest of any planned pumped storage projects. The Glenmuckloch project is estimated to cost £350 million, and developers like Foresight are calling for long-term contracted revenue to support the high up-front costs.
The previous government initiated a consultation on a “cap and floor” mechanism, which would guarantee revenues if prices drop below a certain floor but prevent providers from charging above a ceiling when merchant power prices are high. Richard Thompson, a managing partner at Foresight, emphasised the importance of regulatory support in attracting private capital. He stated, “If you were just to take market revenues, there’s no certainty of making your money back and so, from an investment standpoint, that doesn’t make sense.”
Foresight has secured a grid connection and planning consent for the project and hopes to begin construction in 2026. However, the company is ultimately waiting on policy support. The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero has stated that it is taking immediate action to implement its long-term plan to make Britain a clean energy superpower and will lay out further plans on energy storage in due course.
As Britain moves towards a cleaner, more sustainable future, projects like the Glenmuckloch pumped storage power station could play a crucial role in balancing the grid and supporting the nation’s decarbonisation targets.
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