When Fidra Energy acquired a 55-acre (22-hectare) patch of northern England countryside in 2023, its plan to transform it into a 1.45 gigawatt energy storage facility – Europe’s largest once completed – was far from a done deal.
“We were struggling to make the economics work,” Chris Elder, the Edinburgh-based company’s CEO, told Reuters. But that was before the lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries being used in the project, which were already recording significant improvements in performance, roughly halved in cost in a period of just 18 months. Fidra now plans to start installing battery units for its 600-million pound ($800-million) Thorpe Marsh project next year.
LFP batteries are fuelling a boom in energy storage projects that – in percentage terms – now outpaces electric vehicle sales growth. UBS bank estimates total storage capacity must grow eight-fold by the end of this decade and 34-fold by 2050 to keep up with the renewable power expansion.
For the rest of this article: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/energy-storage-boom-drives-battery-shift-leaving-nickel-cobalt-behind-2025-05-21/