A total of 1,420MW/2,840MWh of battery energy storage system (BESS) projects were awarded planning consent over the course of April 2025, the data shows, slightly less than the 1,590MW/3,179MWh that were approved the previous month.

Planning consent is not a guarantee of project deployment, but is a crucial step, particularly in light of the ongoing reshuffle of the grid connection queue, which will prioritise projects that have planning consent in place.

April was the busiest month of 2025 so far for planning applications, with 925MW/1,849MWh submitted, meaning a total of 31,168MW/63,640MWh is in the planning process. May is, however, being relatively slow on both planning applications and decisions relative to previous years.

Meanwhile, the only major grid-scale BESS project that came online during the month was the 57MW/138MWh Native River BESS, owned by Varco Energy, reported on by our sister site Solar Power Portal. That leaves the UK with 6,424MW/9,160MWh of operational grid-scale BESS capacity as of the start of May.

Ethical Power provided balance of plant (BOP) and independent connections provider (ICP) works for the project. Varco Energy meanwhile is funded by investor Adaptogen Capital, one of the signatories of an open letter recently signalling the short-duration BESS industry’s opposition to the UK government’s cap and floor support scheme for long-duration energy storage (LDES).

There remains around 7.6GW/17GWh of BESS under construction in the UK, roughly similar to previous months in 2025.

Solar Media Market Research analyst Charlotte Gisbourne wrote a piece for Energy-Storage.news last month about how the UK BESS market is regionally structured, and how this differs for projects that are online and in the pipeline.