Regulation

The government has approved Beacon Fen Energy Park, a 400MW solar farm with 600MW of co-located battery storage in Lincolnshire, the first project of its kind signed off by new Energy Secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh since she succeeded Ed Miliband

London-based developer Low Carbon's scheme went through the Development Consent Order route used for nationally significant infrastructure, having been submitted to the Planning Inspectorate in April 2025 and accepted the following month. It will be bigger than any solar farm currently operating in the UK, with construction on the transmission-connected site expected to start in 2027.

27 August 2026 · Source: pv magazine

We spend most of our time on this site talking about rooftop-scale solar, what a household in Sandwich or wider East Kent can install and what it saves them, so it's worth stepping back occasionally to look at the scale a project like Beacon Fen operates at. 400MW of solar generation paired with 600MW of battery storage is not a comparison to any domestic system, it's closer to the output of a mid-sized power station, and the co-located battery is the detail that matters most for understanding where the whole industry is heading.

That pairing of solar and battery on the same site, rather than as two separate projects, has become the standard approach for a reason. A standalone solar farm generates power when the sun shines and has to sell most of it into the grid at whatever price is available at that moment, often depressed because every other solar farm is generating at the same time. A co-located battery lets the developer store surplus generation and release it later, when demand and prices are higher, which is the same logic behind a home battery smoothing out a household's own solar generation, just applied at grid scale.

The approval is also notable as a signal of continuity. This is the first project of its kind waved through by Miatta Fahnbulleh since she took over the Energy Secretary brief from Ed Miliband, and the fact that a scheme this size cleared the Development Consent Order process, the planning route reserved for nationally significant infrastructure, on a broadly similar timeline to projects approved under the previous minister suggests the underlying policy support for large-scale solar plus storage hasn't shifted with the change in personnel.

None of this changes the maths on a household install directly, but it does bear on the SEG export rates we track regularly on this site. The more grid-scale storage capacity comes online, the more the grid can actually absorb and later use solar power exported by households and grid-scale projects alike, which is part of what determines how much suppliers are willing to pay for that exported electricity in the first place.

Read the original: pv magazine. Commentary is Sandwich Solar's own editorial view; the original reporting is credited to its publisher.

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