Fidra Energy has secured funding for its West Burton C battery energy storage project in Nottinghamshire.

Building on the financing and construction of its Thorpe Marsh project in South Yorkshire, West Burton C is a 500MW/1.1GWh battery energy storage project located on the site of the former West Burton coal power station and adjacent to the site selected for the UK’s first prototype fusion energy plant.

West Burton C has been backed by EIG and the National Wealth Fund, and with construction underway at Thorpe Marsh, the announcement marks the latest milestone in Fidra’s UK battery energy storage pipeline, which now exceeds 4GW following the recent acquisition of the 1GW Enderby BESS project in Leicestershire and securing planning approval for the 1.2GW Bicker Fen project in Lincolnshire.

Construction of West Burton C will begin later this year and is expected to become fully operational in 2028 and there is a long-term offtake agreement with Drax Group for 50 per cent of the project’s capacity. In March 2025, the project secured a fifteen-year capacity market award from the UK Government commencing in October 2028.

Oliver Holbourn, CEO of the National Wealth Fund, said: “We welcome this important milestone. As we highlighted in our most recent thought-leadership paper, building out the UK battery supply chain is essential to our national resilience, and storage is vital to a cleaner, more flexible electricity system.”

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