Teesside
Welcome to our project page for Teesside Gigapark. This webpage provides information on our proposals for a new energy storage project located on a 50 acre site at Teesworks, part of the UK’s largest freeport in North East England.
We would like to hear your views about our proposals as we prepare a planning application to Redcar & Cleveland Borough Council. This page sets out all of the information you need to learn about our plans and share your views with us.
Teesside Gigapark
Teesside Gigapark will use a battery energy storage system (BESS ) to store electricity at times of lower demand so it is available when it is most needed, enabling more renewable electricity projects to connect to the grid.
The proposed site, which forms part of the wider development of Teesworks, is located on 50 acres of land, on the North Eastern area known as ‘Long Acres’. The site falls entirely within the administrative boundaries of Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council.
About the Gigapark
The layout of the site will include a connection into the existing electricity network that will allow the site to balance supply and demand on the National Grid Transmission Network and will be operational for up to 50 years.
The development will also involve landscaping including hedgerow planting and improved biodiversity management within the Teesworks Estate.
We believe that Teesworks is an excellent location for a BESS because:
- It can easily connect into the National Grid.
- The land is previously developed and is designated as brownfield.
- There are no historic, landscape or ecological designations on the land, and the site is set away from residential areas.
- The land is part of the wider Teesside industrial area enabling NatPower to partner with other industrial organisations to support the region’s continued growth.
- The surrounding area is heavily industrialised, and so an energy development is suited to this environment.
Teesside Public Consultation
We would like to hear your thoughts about our plans. We are consulting on our proposals from Wednesday 26th June until Friday 19th July 2024.
You can let us know what you think by filling out our online questionnaire or contacting us by email or Freepost. Our contact details are outlined at the bottom of this page.
Your feedback is invaluable and, where possible and appropriate, we will look to incorporate your comments into our evolving plans. This information will assist in informing the final proposal for our planning application, which we hope to submit to Redcar & Cleveland Borough Council later this year.
We are holding an event for the local community, where members of the team will be available to answer questions and discuss the proposals in more detail. Please come along, chat to the team and let us know what you think.
The public exhibition will be held on the following day:
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Wednesday 26th June 2024 2pm-7.30pm
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St Hilda’s Church, Roseberry Road, Redcar TS10 4AW
Once we have reviewed all the feedback, we will finalise our plans and submit a full planning application to Redcar & Cleveland Borough Council. As part of the application, we will submit a document that summarises the comments received from the local community.
Redcar & Cleveland Borough Council will then conduct its own statutory consultation before determining the application.
Frequently asked questions
The project
Teesside Gigapark is a proposed battery energy storage system (BESS). It will store electricity from the grid at times of lower demand, and release it back to the grid when it is needed most. It will make an essential contribution to ensuring reliable, secure and affordable electricity for the country as it moves away from using coal and gas for electricity generation.
Teesside Gigapark is being proposed by NatPower UK, a renewable energy developer with over 25 years’ experience and 30GW of assets developed across 20 countries and six continents.
We are making a meaningful contribution to the UK’s need for clean, secure and affordable energy. By delivering more than 60GWh of energy storage across the country, we are aiming to provide 20% of the energy storage requirement of the UK by 2040.
We develop, build and manage our own projects. That means that we are long-term partners in our communities – and we look to work with local residents, businesses and community groups to bring the benefits of the clean energy transition to the places we operate.
Teesside Gigapark will have a 1GW storage capacity.
Our site is 50 acres in total.
We are committed to supporting our communities in becoming the most sustainable communities in the UK. Wedo this through our Community Energy Transition Foundation, which invests in the communities where we work.
We want to make sure our work makes a genuinely positive impact – be that through funding local sustainabilityprojects, supporting the creation of new jobs and providing environmental enhancements and recreational opportunities in the communities around our sites.
That’s why we would like to hear from you about what your community needs to become more sustainable and how we could help. We would like to know about any initiatives that we could potentially support, as well as where you think there are unmet needs.
Environment
No. The entire site is located on previously developed land, known as brownfield, on the former British Steel site at Redcar.
This is an industrial landscape – Europe’s largest brownfield site. The site sits at the heart of the Teesside Freeport, surrounded by a diverse range of industries at the centre of a low carbon economy.
We are committed to sensitive and appropriate design for Teesside Gigapark, and we seek to limit impacts on the amenity of our neighbours and the local community.
To protect the visual amenity of the area, we have selected a site that is a significant distance from residential areas. We will also assess the potential impact on the landscape from a range of viewpoints around the site. The results of this assessment will inform the development of our proposals, including potential mitigation measures.
While the batteries are silent, the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning system does generate some noise – typically around 65 decibels at a distance of 5 metres. This is about the level of a normal conversation. However, this needs to be set in the context of a busy, industrial setting where businesses operate 24/7.
The units will be located a significant distance from the nearest homes, on the other side of the railway and Trunk Road.
Safety
Yes. BESS make use of tried and tested technology, much of which we use in our day-to-day lives – for example, in mobile telephones and electric vehicles.
Safety measures would be built into our battery design, such as a fire suppression system, with multiple layers of safety, which would only operate in the very unlikely event of overheating of the batteries. Batteries would also be housed in self-contained units.
Battery storage is safe by design, given this, the risk of fire is extremely low, though we recognise that it is of the utmost importance to provide reassurance that this has been fully managed.
We work closely with the local Fire and Rescue Service, local authority environmental health teams and other statutory bodies to confirm that our proposed designs meet the health and safety requirements set by local and national policy.
We are currently in the process of conducting thorough ‘plume assessment’ study work, which looks at the likelihood that a fire could take place, what hazards could result and the health and safety impacts from them. This information will be submitted as part of our planning applications and helps provide certainty to regulators and fire authorities that the safety measures built into our BESS mean that the risk to the local community is extremely low.
In the unlikely event of a fire, it would be contained within individual containers and unable to spread. Our systems have inbuilt monitoring and suppression mechanisms that provide several layers of safety.
Construction
Should Teesside Gigapark receive planning permission from Redcar & Cleveland Borough Council, we would build Teesside Gigapark in three phases. We expect to start phase one construction in 2027 and finish work around December 2028 – this phase would take approximately 18 months. We anticipate the delivery of phase two by 2030 and phase three by 2035.
The measures we will take to limit the potential effects of construction will be included in a Construction Management Plan (CMP) which will be submitted as part of our application.
We are currently developing our CMP and are keen to hear from the community about measures we could introduce to ensure the construction process is as least disruptive as possible.
The CMP will set out mitigation measures, controls and monitoring to reduce environmental effects during construction such as dust, noise and disturbance. Measures such as wheel washing, street sweeping and mist spraying will be implemented.
Temporary construction compounds would be established on site before construction begins. These would be hardstanding areas which would contain things like staff offices and welfare facilities, material and machinery storage, security and car parking.
We will assess the likely impact on the local road network, and submit a Transport Assessment as part of our planning application.
Our approach to managing site traffic will be outlined in the Construction Management Plan, which will also consider the potential cumulative effects of other local projects on the road network.
Activity on site will vary day by day across the construction period. However, we expect 2,000 HGV and light vehicle deliveries will be required over the initial two phases of construction. We are proposing to access the site via Trunk Road, off the A1053, entering the site via the Steel House Gate.
More information about construction activity, phasing and timings will be available as part of our planning application.
During operation, the site will be managed remotely with minimal traffic using the local road network, involving weekly site visits.
The CMP will set out mitigation measures, controls and monitoring to reduce environmental effects during construction, including any noise and vibration.
Potential mitigation measures could include:
• Careful selection of plant and construction methods.
• Use of site enclosures where practicable.
• Locating potentially noisy equipment away from homes and other places where people may hear it.
• Reducing the risk of noise and vibration at source.
• Designing traffic routes to avoid homes along minor roads, where practicable.
The construction phase of Teesside Gigapark will take approximately 18 months and will create around 300 jobs locally.
If we are granted planning consent, we will be looking to procure suitably qualified, local suppliers to help us deliver the project. If you are interested, please register your company details with our team.
After this consultation, we will consider all of the feedback we receive. Community feedback, along with our ongoing environmental assessments and technical work, will help us to refine our proposals ahead of submitting our planning application later in the autumn.
Should Teesside Gigapark be granted consent, construction is planned to start in 2027 and will last for about 18 months, with the intention of connecting to the National Grid by 2028.
Share your views
We welcome your feedback on our proposal and any questions you may have about battery storage.
Where possible and appropriate, we will look to incorporate your comments on our evolving proposals. This information will assist in informing the final scheme for our planning submission.
Feedback can be provided either using our online questionnaire or by the following means:
Address: FAO Teesside Gigapark,
Freepost SEC NEWGATE UK LOCAL
Phone: 0204 599 7991
Email: teesside.bess@natpower.uk
If you are interested in job or contracting opportunities on this project, please get in touch.
Teesside Project Contact
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