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CHELVESTON Renewable Energy & Innovation Park in North Northamptonshire continues to be at the centre of technological innovation. The facility has now partnered with the UK’s largest car manufacturer to use second-life EV batteries to store energy generated from the on-site solar installations. Chelveston Renewable Energy Park currently generates up to around 200GWh from the wind and sun – enough to supply around 24,000 homes with green energy.
Jaguar Land Rover has teamed up with the park’s owner Wykes Engineering to develop one of the UK’s largest energy storage systems comprising second-life car batteries. The scheme will see residual capacity from second-life batteries harnessed to store excess solar energy generated on site, which can then be supplied to occupiers of the on-site Innovation Park or released back into the National Grid.
Used batteries (pictured above) from Jaguar I-PACE vehicles will be combined into large-scale energy storage systems that will be installed at multiple locations across the Park. The initial aim of the initiative is to store up to 7.5 megawatt hours (enough to power 750 homes a day) by the end of 2023.
David Wykes, managing director of Wykes Engineering, said that the partnership with Jaguar Land Rover could present a solution to potentially costly grid capacity issues: “One of the major benefits of the system we’ve developed is that the containers are connected to the Grid in such a way that they can absorb solar energy, that could otherwise be lost when the grid reaches capacity.”
“This excess energy can now be stored in the second life I-PACE batteries and discharged later. This allows us to ‘overplant’ the solar park and maximise the amount of power we generate for the area of land we are using.”
Chelveston Renewable Energy & Innovation Park is located on a former MoD airfield covering some 750 acres in the heart of the Oxford / Cambridge ARC within North Northamptonshire. The park, combines wind, solar, battery storage, green hydrogen generation and future peak lopping grid reinforcement / redundancy technologies to deliver large scale renewable energy supplies to the Innovation Park and National Grid.
Advised and represented by commercial property consultant Prop-Search, the Innovation Park offers bespoke buildings to occupier requirements with a direct wire power feed from the on-site Renewable Energy Park. The Innovation Park can provide for up to 354,145 sq ft (32,900 sq m) of floor space in buildings from circa 50,000 sq ft (4,645 sq m) and is set to become a centre for businesses to accelerate towards a zero-carbon future.
For more information on this project and the opportunities available, contact Prop-Search director Simon Toseland on 01933 223300 or email