Loch Kemp Storage

Loch Kemp Storage

Vision

Hydroelectric schemes have played a critical role in delivering energy across the Scottish Highlands over the last century, becoming familiar features in the landscape. They tell a story of vision, engineering, and landscape all working together.

Pumped storage hydro will continue to provide energy security to the area, whilst helping to secure the UK’s transition to a Net Zero future

600MW Capacity
15HR Duration
1Million Homes Powered

The challenge

Climate Change is driving the need for an urgent reduction in carbon emissions. As a result, the UK Government has committed to a decarbonised electricity network by 2030 and a Net Zero economy by 2050.

To deliver these ambitious targets the Scottish Government has targeted a five-fold increase in offshore wind energy generation by 2030. This growth is underway, with the Scotwind leasing programme supporting up to 28GW of offshore wind projects in the coming years.

Renewable energy generation is low cost and carbon free, but its availability is intermittent and constantly fluctuating, making the job of balancing the electricity grid ever more challenging.

In a renewable energy led future, the challenge comes from matching energy supply with demand.

Up to

28 GW of offshore wind projects supported by Scotwind leasing programme in coming years

The opportunity

Loch Kemp Storage will be able to help the National Grid balance the daily fluctuations caused by the intermittent nature of renewables by storing the excess energy as raised water. Pumped storage hydro capacity provides a medium duration storage solution, by storing and exporting electricity to the National Grid when required.

Loch Kemp Storage will draw on the Highlands' natural landscape and engineering heritage to store energy at scale. If built out the scheme would increase the existing UK pumped storage hydro capacity by over a fifth, suppling over 1 million homes with instantaneous clean electricity for up to 15 hours. Pumped storage hydro will play an essential role in achieving Net Zero targets and delivering energy security to the UK.

600MW is equivalent to

20 % increase in the overall UK pumped storge hydro capacity

The Loch Kemp pumped storage hydro approach

The Loch Kemp pumped storage hydro storage approach.

The site

The Proposed Development site is located on the southern shores of Loch Ness, between Fort Augustus and Inverness. The pumped storage hydro technology would use Loch Kemp as the upper reservoir and Loch Ness as the lower reservoir. The scheme would be connected to the Foyers National Grid substation via an underground cable – providing power to run the project as well as return the generated electricity to the grid.
Vision.

About us

Who is Statera?

Statera is a UK-based energy company that develops, owns and operates flexible generation, battery storage, pumped storage hydro and green hydrogen projects which will all provide critical grid balancing support in a future renewables-led system.

These assets will help the UK build more renewable energy, more quickly, by providing the flexible capacity needed to balance the future grid during periods of extended shortfalls and excesses in renewable generation, due to the variability of wind and solar output. In turn, this technology will lower carbon emissions and deliver best value for energy users.
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