NextEnergy and OnPath Break Ground on UK Battery Push as China Extends HVDC Lead
UK private capital is adding battery storage across multiple sites, but planning bottlenecks and China's HVDC dominance complicate the longer-term build.
NextEnergy Capital acquired three operational UK battery storage sites totalling 107 megawatts on Tuesday (2026-08-18), the same day OnPath Energy began ground works on a combined solar and battery project in South Yorkshire — a pair of moves that illustrate the incremental reality of the UK's current storage build-out.7
The NextEnergy acquisitions span three sites: 40 MW in Maldon, 28 MW in Basildon and 39 MW in Loudwater. The group said the sites were chosen for proximity to major demand centres and key grid infrastructure. Together they bring NextEnergy UK I's total battery capacity to 165 MW, and the fund has now built and acquired a 1 GW portfolio of UK-based energy assets since launch, Energy Voice reported.7
OnPath's South Yorkshire project is smaller but moving. The developer broke ground on Tuesday (2026-08-18) on a 49 MW solar park at its Common Farm site in Dinnington, with 50 MW of co-located battery storage under construction alongside it, targeting 2027 operations. Progress to date covers piling, cable trenching, access roads and fencing for the solar element. UK Power Q+1 reached £128.89/MWh in Tuesday morning (2026-08-18) trading; the Cal+1 contract was at £94.75/MWh, price levels that make merchant battery revenue viable alongside any contracted income the projects secure.7
The broader consent environment has been generous. North Lincolnshire Council approved Lightrock Power's 800 MW Sweetbriar Energy Park battery project near Ulceby in July (2026-07-14), one of the larger single-site storage approvals in the UK, Energy Voice reported. The site shares land with a 39 MW solar farm that Lightrock received consent for in early 2024. That solar farm has not been built. The gap between consent and construction, now more than two years at Sweetbriar's solar component, is an execution risk that appears across the UK pipeline more broadly.6
Masdar and RWE received a Development Consent Order from the UK Energy Secretary in June (2026-06-02) for the 3 GW Dogger Bank South offshore wind project, Asian Power reported. The consent pipeline has been moving. Whether the build rate catches it is a different calculation.3
Renewable companies told Montel in July (2026-07-01) that planning and Contracts for Difference timelines are out of sync. Projects receiving consent too late can miss the next CfD allocation round and must wait for the following cycle, compounding pre-construction carrying costs and putting Clean Power 2030 targets at risk.4
UK storage additions measured in dozens and hundreds of megawatts look smaller against China's trajectory. Asian Power reported in May (2026-05-22) that China is expected to lead global high-voltage direct current converter station capacity through 2031, driven by government energy policy and grid modernisation programmes. HVDC is the technology underpinning long-distance transmission from large-scale renewables, a segment where Chinese state utilities have accumulated a manufacturing and deployment lead that European grids are some distance from matching.2
The scale contrast is also visible in corporate capital allocation. Statkraft announced plans in May (2026-05-21) to invest Nkr80 billion (around €8.5 billion) in Norwegian hydropower over ten years, positioning the company as one of the largest contributors to new industrial activity in mainland Norway, Power Technology reported. That capital is flowing into established hydro at a scale that UK BESS transactions are not yet approaching.1
Britain has roughly 1,700 existing hydropower schemes with about 2 GW of installed capacity, according to OilPrice. Eleven pumped storage hydro projects were under development in the UK by 2025, targeting combined capacity above 10 GW and 200 GWh, roughly 25 per cent of national power demand. Imperial College London modelling puts the potential savings from 4.5 GW of new pumped storage with 90 GWh of capacity at up to £690 million a year by 2050. Those projects remain largely on paper.5
A 107 MW acquisition and a groundbreaking for 99 MW of combined solar and battery capacity on Tuesday (2026-08-18) represents real capital moving. Lightrock's unbuilt Sweetbriar solar farm, consent secured in early 2024 and still idle, captures the persistent distance between what UK planning approves and what actually gets built. With the next CfD round approaching and planning-timeline mismatches already identified as a threat to Clean Power 2030 ambitions, the speed at which consented capacity becomes operational capacity is the metric that counts.6,7,4