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Braintree District Council has approved Push Power's 16.5MW solar farm paired with a 22.5MWh battery in Essex, the latest sign that new solar consents now come with storage attached as standard

The Kentishes project is one of six grid-connected solar-plus-storage developments Push Power now operates in the UK, and research cited alongside the approval ranks the UK as Europe's second most attractive market for co-located solar and battery projects.

8 August 2026 · Source: Solar Power Portal

Braintree District Council has granted planning consent for Kentishes, a 16.5MW solar farm with a 22.5MWh battery attached, developed by Push Power. The council's reasoning was straightforward: the scheme's energy and biodiversity benefits were judged to outweigh its limited impact on the local surroundings. On its own that's a routine planning outcome for a mid-sized solar farm, the kind that gets approved somewhere in the UK most months.

What's worth flagging is the pairing, not the panel count. A decade ago a project this size would likely have gone in as solar only, with storage bolted on later if at all. Kentishes went to committee as a single solar-plus-storage application, which is now close to the default rather than the exception. Push Power already operates six grid-connected solar and storage projects in the UK, and industry research cited alongside this approval places the UK as Europe's second most attractive market for co-located solar and battery development, driven partly by the Contracts for Difference scheme rewarding projects that can firm up their own output.

This connects directly to the grid-connection story this site has been tracking since Ofgem's DNO penalty reform proposals and the South East England connection delays covered in previous briefings. Every solar-plus-storage project of this size that reaches consent joins the same regional connection queue that's already under pressure, and Essex sits on broadly the same DNO patch as parts of Kent. More utility-scale projects clearing planning doesn't create the queue problem, but it's a contributing factor worth tracking alongside the reforms Ofgem is trying to push through.

There's no direct action for a homeowner here, this isn't a grant, tariff or scheme you can apply into. What it's useful for is context: when a domestic MCS install in Sandwich takes longer than expected to get a grid connection confirmed, projects like Kentishes are part of why the queue looks the way it does. Worth watching whether Ofgem's connection reforms actually shorten these queues once the utility-scale pipeline keeps growing at this rate, or whether reform and demand simply run in parallel.

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

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