Balance Power’s Coylton Battery Sits Beside a 150MW Park

Balance Power’s 29.9MW Coylton battery sits west of a Statkraft site now consented at 150MW beside the same East Ayrshire substation.

East Ayrshire Council issued the consent on 4 March 2025 after a unanimous vote and a legal agreement. In May 2025 the developer said the store would run by summer 2026. No public notice of that switch-on has followed.

Eighteen Battery Units South of the Substation

Balance Power Projects Ltd won permission for 18 battery units on 2.67 hectares south of Coylton substation, on land between Ochiltree and Drongan. The company said the plant would store power when wind and solar run high and send it back when demand rises, enough on its figures to support about 16,200 homes.

Those figures are a power rating. Balance Power did not publish how many megawatt-hours the cabinets hold, so the homes line cannot be read as hours of supply. A neighbour on the same node, Statkraft’s first phase, is specified as 50MW with a 2-hour duration and a 275kV tie-in.

On carbon, Balance Power put the annual saving at about 11,050 tonnes of CO2, equal on its conversion to about 7,900 cars or 17,700 trees. Oli Pettersen, then connections manager, tied the scheme to jobs and local supply.

We are proud to have secured unanimous approval for this project from East Ayrshire Council and are grateful for the support we’ve received from local community throughout the process. As well as advancing local and national net zero goals, this battery storage site is set to make a positive impact on Coylton and the surrounding area, creating local construction and operation jobs and bolstering its energy security and reliability.

Oli Pettersen, Connections Manager, Balance Power

The planning committee first backed the scheme on 19 April 2024, with no public objections and no statutory consultee objections on the record, then held the decision until a legal agreement was signed. Councillors were told construction would last 12 to 18 months and that the plant would run for 40 years before the land went back to its former use.

Statkraft Is Commissioning the Plot Next Door

The Balance Power cabinets sit on land immediately west of Statkraft’s Coylton Greener Grid Park. That park is the scheme that is actually in the ground.

East Ayrshire Council approved Statkraft’s first 50MW phase on 29 February 2024. Construction started on 8 July 2024. On 12 August 2026 Statkraft said that phase was in the final stages of commissioning, and that Scottish ministers had given consent for an additional 100MW inside the same fence, lifting the park to 150MW.

The extra cabinets stay on the existing compound. Statkraft’s project team describes the kit as batteries plus grid-forming converters that hold voltage and frequency, a different product from a simple arbitrage box. The first phase was bid into National Grid ESO’s Stability Pathfinder Phase 2.

Securing consent to expand our pioneering Coylton Greener Grid Park scheme will bring significant benefits, by supporting a more flexible electricity network, and allowing the further expansion of renewables like wind and solar schemes.

Sarah Tullie, Greener Grid Parks Project Manager, Statkraft, 12 August 2026

Statkraft puts the site about 1.8km north-east of Drongan, 3.5km west of Ochiltree and 4.8km east of Coylton. It already runs a £20,000-a-year Drongan and Ochiltree Green Community Fund for projects within 5km of postcode KA6 6NF. That fund belongs to the Norwegian utility’s park, not to Balance Power’s plot.

THE COYLTON BATTERY CLUSTER

Taken together, one rural node now holds a 29.9MW local consent beside a 150MW ministerial consent. The smaller number is the one that still needs a public start date.

Why the 29.9MW Scheme Stayed With the Council

Scottish planning splits battery stores by megawatts. Guidance issued on 19 March 2026 states that planning authorities decide 50MW or less, while schemes over 50MW go to Scottish ministers under Section 36 of the Electricity Act 1989. Balance Power’s 29.9MW is 20.1MW under that line, so East Ayrshire Council was the decision maker.

The 50MW cut comes from a Chief Planner letter of 27 August 2020, which treats a battery as a generating station. At 20MW or more the same store is also a Major Development, which brings statutory pre-application consultation. Coylton cleared that bar. It did not clear the ministerial bar.

HOW SCOTLAND SPLITS BESS CONSENTS

• 50MW or less: The local planning authority decides under the Town and Country Planning (Scotland) Act 1997.
• Over 50MW: Scottish ministers decide under Section 36, with deemed planning permission usually attached.
• 20MW or greater: The scheme is a Major Development and must consult the community before it files.
• Storage over 50MW: National Planning Framework 4 lists it under National Development 3, the strategic grid class.

Statkraft used both tracks on the same land: a 50MW local consent, then a Section 36 uplift. Larger Scottish stores go the second way. Ministers have already signed off a 200MW battery storage project on that route, while other developers still file under 50MW with councils, including a separate Aberdeenshire battery storage approval.

In April 2025 Balance Power also won a 49.5MW consent in South Staffordshire, another figure that sits a fraction under a 50MW national cut. Coylton is smaller still. The planning papers do not spell out whether 29.9MW was a grid offer, a field size, or a choice to stay with the council. The legal effect is the same: Holyrood never saw the file.

Scotland’s Pipeline Already Tops the 2030 Storage Need

Coylton is a crowded node, and it sits inside a crowded national queue. Action to Protect Rural Scotland, working from the UK government’s Renewable Energy Planning Database, counted 421 Scottish battery applications as of the second quarter of 2025.

A Freedom of Information reply on NESO modelling, cited in that research, puts Scotland’s need at 5.9GW to 6.4GW of battery storage by 2030, then 6.4GW to 7.6GW by 2045. Against that, APRS logged 24.8GW in the planning pipeline in June 2025 and 13.5GW already consented. The group called that four times the 2030 maximum.

SCOTLAND’S BESS STACK, APRS FIGURES

• 2030 need: NESO modelling, via FOI, 5.9GW to 6.4GW of battery storage in Scotland.
• June 2025 pipeline: 24.8GW still live in local and ministerial systems, including builds and consents.
• June 2025 consented: 13.5GW, already above the top 2030 NESO band.
• By November 2025: a further 4.74GW over 50MW consented, taking the consented total to 18.2GW.

APRS also found that the Energy Consents Unit had not refused a stand-alone battery over 50MW in the set it reviewed, and that none of a 26-site sample of just-under-50MW local consents had been required to do an environmental impact assessment. The Scottish Government’s March 2026 guidance now tells planners to weigh cumulative effects where stores cluster around substations. Coylton is that pattern in one field.

Ochiltree Took Solar Panels Ahead of the Cabinets

Balance Power’s community offer was not a cheque to the council. The company installed rooftop solar at Ochiltree Community Hub, a village charity on Main Street, and Pettersen called it a targeted way to back the centre’s work with cleaner, cheaper power.

The hub is already the room both developers use. Statkraft held its Section 36 information day there on 19 September 2024 and ran earlier exhibitions in the same hall. The battery plots sit closer to Ochiltree and Drongan than to Coylton village, even though the substation carries Coylton’s name.

That geography matters for who lives with the compound. APRS, mapping postcodes across 350 Scottish battery sites, found 227 in data zones more deprived than the median and 123 in zones less deprived. East Ayrshire’s coalfield parishes are the kind of place that mapping flags. The Balance Power file still drew no public objections at committee.

InfraVia Folded Balance Power Into Supernova

The name on the Coylton consent is already historic. On 1 April 2026 InfraVia Capital Partners said it had bought majority stakes in Balance Power Projects and Mercia Power Response and merged both firms into Supernova Power, a UK flexible-power platform.

In May 2025, when Coylton was announced, Balance Power said it had taken 36 energy projects to planning consent since 2017 and held over 2GW in development. By the April 2026 sale notice the founder-owned firm had delivered 39 projects and held a pipeline of over 1.4GW of battery storage. Mercia brought 262MW of operating gas peakers and batteries plus over 400MW of battery sites in development. InfraVia holds the majority; both management teams kept minority equity. Deal value was not disclosed.

The sale does not rewrite the East Ayrshire decision. It does change who funds a build. Coylton was sold as a developer’s consent. It now sits inside a platform built to construct, run and finance a stack of stores, not to collect permissions and stop.

Construction Has a Three-Year Start Clock

The consent is live. It is not, on the public record, a working plant.

COYLTON DATES

1. 27 August 2020: The Chief Planner tells councils to treat batteries as generating stations.
2. 29 February 2024: East Ayrshire Council grants Statkraft’s 50MW park.
3. 19 April 2024: The same committee backs Balance Power’s 29.9MW scheme, subject to a legal agreement.
4. 8 July 2024: Statkraft starts construction.
5. 4 March 2025: Balance Power’s consent is issued.
6. 20 May 2025: Balance Power announces the approval and a summer 2026 start.
7. 19 March 2026: Scottish Government publishes battery planning guidance.
8. 1 April 2026: InfraVia forms Supernova Power around Balance Power and Mercia.
9. 12 August 2026: Statkraft’s 50MW phase is in final commissioning; ministers consent another 100MW.

East Ayrshire’s decision requires construction to begin within three years of consent, which runs toward March 2028. The permission then lasts 40 years from grid connection or from 18 months after work starts, whichever comes first. Landscape planting is due within six months of the build finishing. After that life, the company said, the kit comes out and the field goes back.

Statkraft’s first 50MW is the plot that has used its head start. Balance Power’s 29.9MW remains a granted scheme on the west side of the same substation, with a summer 2026 date that passed without a commissioning note from the new owners.