Discover how Dale Power Solutions leads the way in sustainable energy with our onsite Battery Energy Storage System (BESS). See how it’s helping us cut costs, lower emissions, and power the future.
Our Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) offer our customers cheaper, greener, and more sustainable energy. Installing a BESS at your commercial or industrial facility can bring you:
Up to 60% savings on your electricity bills
A potential 90% reduction in your CO2 emissions
All with zero initial outlay.
And what better way to show our customers how a BESS can completely transform a business than to install one at our Head Office site in Scarborough.
The purpose of this project was to design and install a BESS to support our manufacturing facility in Scarborough. Our objectives were to:
Significantly reduce our energy bills
Shrink our carbon footprint
With a BESS, you can charge your battery modules up overnight when energy from the grid is at its cheapest. This alone has huge potential to reduce your bills.
But what a lot of people don’t know is that electricity sourced from the grid overnight has an added benefit - It comes from renewable sources.
So not only will having a BESS reduce your bills it will also slash your CO2 emissions.
Another green element of the project was the plan to install solar panels. This would mean we could source our own clean energy. Plus, we could store any excess electricity in our BESS, ready to use at another time.
A BESS also helps to future-proof our business as we continue to grow. We’re seeing a lot of organisations starting to struggle with grid connection as they expand their provision. But getting an upgrade to your grid connection can be tricky, often coming with a 10-year lead time.
With a BESS, you can avoid this long wait. For us, it was an easy decision to make. So, the project, headed up by Dale’s Lead Engineer for Energy Storage and Renewables, Hannah Magowan, got into full swing in April 2024.
Hannah and her team analysed Dale’s half-hourly data to understand yearly consumption. This way, they could make decisions about the required size of the BESS to cover the site’s needs during busier times.
The team worked in partnership with researchers at the University of Sheffield to look at their findings about solar energy generation. The University’s data was averaged out over different regions of the UK so Hannah and the team could estimate how much energy the solar panels could generate at different times of the year.
Using the analyses of our current consumption and the University data projections, we could identify where the overlaps would be and size the BESS accordingly.
Our BESS was to be a 100 kW, 400 kWh battery, meaning it would give out 100 kW of power for four hours. We decided to size the battery so that even during our highest consumption days, it would support our factory for a full afternoon.
Afternoon is when energy prices are at their highest. So, our plan was to use energy straight from the grid in the morning, when it’s cheaper, and then use our stored energy at the more expensive times.
The first phase of the installation was to install the BESS. We sourced our batteries to suit our strict criteria, having them delivered to the site pre-built. Once they arrived, we brought them into the factory for rigorous testing.
We then dug a series of trenches for the ducting to run through and placed a concrete plinth for the units to stand on.
Once the concrete had set, we pulled the cables through the ducting and into our distribution. We also installed four 22kW EV charging points, which will be available for our fleet of hybrid vans and for our staff to charge their electric vehicles.
The second stage will be installing the solar panels, due for completion in early 2025. Once these are in place, we will change how we use our BESS. Once we have solar generation, we can use that energy for as long as possible and then switch to our stored energy when it drops off.
We have also sized our battery according to our capacity for solar panels. If a customer’s site has more room for panels, they could go for a bigger battery.
The Benefits of having a BESS OnsiteWe can’t underline enough the benefits having an onsite BESS will bring to our business. The huge savings on our energy bills will mean we can divert that extra budget to other areas of our business. Plus, the huge reduction in our carbon footprint helps with hitting our ESG targets.
Even without our solar panels, simply having a BESS would reduce our energy bills.
Being able to buy electricity from the grid overnight when it is cheaper and storing it to use during the most expensive times of day means huge savings.
Once our solar panels are installed, our bills will be reduced even further. Sites like ours that can install solar panels can see a much quicker return on investment.
Storing electricity from the grid overnight is not just cheaper - it’s better for the environment.
This is because the carbon intensity of the grid overnight is much lower than during the day. So, when you buy electricity overnight, you’re accessing energy from renewable sources like wind.
In comparison, during the day, when demand is higher, the grid needs to access power stations and rely on energy generated from fossil fuels.
Operations continue seamlessly thanks to our battery energy storage system. It means there’s no difference in performance or production in our facility than there would be if we were accessing all our electricity directly from the grid.
All our battery units communicate through our energy management system, which we can access via touch screen. We can also remotely monitor it. It has regular reporting so we can analyse our consumption and adjust where necessary.
There are also multiple safeguards in place. We will receive alarms and alerts so we can pre-empt and avoid any issues before they arise.
Our installation of a BESS has increased our capacity.
It’s allowed us to install our EV chargers in anticipation of our vehicle fleet becoming hybrid. They are also available for employees to charge their own electric or hybrid cars. This is not something we would have been able to do with just a grid connection alone.
In the event of a power outage, we could also use our BESS as a backup source of electricity to keep our operations running. It’s an extra layer of protection alongside our UPS equipment and backup generators.
An additional bonus of the BESS we’ve installed is that we can connect our solar panels directly without the need for an inverter.
When you install solar panels, you would normally need an inverter to convert the DC to AC before connecting it to the mains to make the electricity usable.
Our BESS removes the need to buy expensive solar inverters, as the BESS system makes this conversion. So, it’s reduced our hardware and maintenance costs on an extra piece of equipment.
When you have excess energy generated by your solar panels, you can sell it back to the grid. But because this tends to happen at times of the day when the grid doesn’t actually need it that much, you only get a very small payment for it.
With a BESS, you can store that excess electricity and wait until a time when the grid really needs it. And then you can sell it back to them at a higher price.
Soon, we’ll be working with an aggregator to help us identify when the grid is at its greatest need. So, we can supply the grid with our surplus power when we can get the best price for it.
It provides that extra income stream for the business that we can use to invest in development and other growth plans.
To learn more about installing your own Battery Energy Storage System (BESS), get in touch today to talk to our team. Email us at hello@dalepowersolutions.com, or call us on +44 (0)330 999 3000.