As Great Britain’s electricity system becomes highly renewable and increasingly electrified, it will need far more flexibility to balance supply and demand across hours, days and seasons. Long-duration energy storage (LDES), technologies such as pumped hydro, flow batteries, and compressed or liquid air energy storage that can discharge for eight hours or more, is one prominent candidate. But it is not the only one: LDES competes with interconnectors, gas generation, hydrogen and demand-side flexibility. National Energy System Operator analysis suggests 2.7 to 7.7 GW of LDES could be needed by 2035, and to help projects secure finance despite uncertain revenues, the government has introduced a Cap and Floor support scheme administered by Ofgem, with the first application window closed in 2025.
Whether, where and how much LDES is actually built therefore depends less on technical potential than on market design, policy incentives, investor confidence and local acceptance. These are precisely the factors that today’s electricity system models represent weakly. Most models identify cost-optimal storage capacity but say little about how investors perceive risk, stack revenues across multiple markets, or weigh storage against competing options. They also say little about communities near proposed sites, whose acceptance increasingly shapes planning outcomes as local opposition to battery developments grows.
This project opens those models up to the people they claim to represent. It works with two types of contrasting models of the GB power system: an agent-based model that simulates how heterogeneous investors bid and combine revenue streams, and an optimisation model that minimises the system cost as a central planner. Comparing the two shows where their assumptions about storage value, investment incentives and social impacts diverge from market and community reality.
Inclusion is central to the research design. Insights gathered from workshops are intended to inform the agent-based model, in which community actors may support or oppose projects and alter their effective deployment costs, and acceptance-based adjustments in the optimisation model, so that public preferences can shape modelled technology mixes. Where the findings support it, the project will also offer practical guidance for modellers on incorporating equity and diverse perspectives into model structures and assumptions.
The project is embedded in the UCL Centre for Net Zero Market Design, whose advisory board includes representatives of DESNZ, Ofgem, NESO and industry, providing a direct route into live policy debates on LDES and electricity market reform.
In the later phase of the research, we are convening two participatory workshops in London, expected in May/June:
No modelling background is needed for either workshop. If you are keen to participate, please contact Dr Pu Yang with a short note on your role or your connection to a proposed storage site.