2024 Year in Review and Hopes for 2025: Reflections from our CEO, Phil Thompson
With January behind us, we’ve had time to reflect on the transformative year that was 2024. Balance Power CEO Phil Thompson looks back at 2024—a year that brought significant developments in grid connections, battery storage, and planning processes. The challenges and milestones of the past year have provided valuable insights and laid a strong foundation for what promises to be an even brighter year ahead.
The Industry Landscape in 2024
Connections Reform: 2024 marked a critical turning point for grid connections. Connections reform has started taking shape, offering a pathway to optimise grid connections for projects in the queue and those yet to come. The momentum gained this year is vital for ensuring new clean energy projects can progress without unnecessary delays.
Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) Progress: Despite a year of lower-than-expected revenues for BESS, significant cost reductions in project build cost have led to a more optimistic forecast for 2025. In December, high wholesale prices, the launch of Quick Reserve and enhanced utilisation of batteries in the balancing mechanism are just a part of the best month for BESS in nearly 2 years. These developments point to better returns and greater flexibility in energy management moving forward.
Geopolitical Uncertainty: The energy sector has not been immune to global uncertainty, highlighting the need for robust domestic policies to ensure resilience, stability and continued progress towards net zero.
Challenges and Lessons Learned
While 2024 brought great progress, it was not without its challenges:
- Planning Delays: Although we had a 100% success rate in planning approvals in 2024 there wasincreased timelines to secure planning permission. This continues to hinder project delivery.
- Grid Connection Uncertainty: Delays and lack of capacity in the grid remain the biggest barriers to clean energy development.
- Economic Pressures: Market challenges required adaptability and resilience.
Through these challenges, we gained valuable insights that have underscored the importance of focusing on high-quality projects that deliver maximum impact.
Balance Power’s Highlights in 2024
At Balance Power, 2024 was a year of growth, resilience and success. We made significant strides as a team, achieving new milestones and strengthening our position as a leading clean energy developer.
Key Achievements:
- Team Growth: We welcomed 9 new team members, adding to our expertise and capabilities in-house.
- Project Success: Achieved 100% planning approval in 2024 with 4 projects going through the pipeline successfully, giving us a record number of 220MW.
- Acquisitions: We purchased two new projects from third parties, further expanding our portfolio.
- Behind-the-Meter Solutions: Made significant progress in delivering behind-the-meter generation, offering solutions that will help businesses lower their costs and decarbonise operations.
Our commitment to quality and innovation shines through in our 100% planning success rate this year. This achievement reflects the solution-driven, collaborative and passionate values that define our team.
Team and Culture
One of the most rewarding aspects of 2024 has been watching our team grow and thrive. This year, we focused on building strong foundations for the future – enhancing our processes, refining our use of technology, and fostering a culture of excellence. These efforts have already improved the way we work and deliver projects, yet we know this is just the beginning of this part of our journey.
With a growing, capable team focusing on delivering real solutions, we are ready to tackle the challenges ahead and play a pivotal role in the UK’s journey towards net zero.
Focus for 2025 – Delivering on IPP
Balance Power’s 2025 strategy is centred on becoming an Independent Power Producer (IPP), allowing us to build, own and operate our projects. This commitment is evident as we advance procurement on the St Austell 50MW project, aiming to reach financial close (FC) during Q2 2025, and prepare to begin construction on our Roborough solar farm in early Q2 2025.
By the end of 2025, we hope to achieve financial close on as much of our BESS and solar portfolio as possible. This will focus on two key areas:
- Front-of-the-meter, DNO-connected projects
- Behind-the-meter solar farms for large commercial and industrial (C&I) customers
Our DNO connected portfolio continues to grow and mature. We’ll be making more announcements in the coming weeks, but we currently have 320MW at the ready-to-build stage and around 500MW of projects awaiting planning decision.
Our behind-the-meter projects represent a significant growth opportunity. Helping businesses reduce energy costs and meet their decarbonisation goals is both rewarding and essential to expanding our reach and pipeline.We look forward to advancing projects as we continue working with businesses to support their net zero goals.
Achieving Net Zero
Through 2025 we know that urgent milestones must be reached if we are to stay on track for net-zero goals:
- Reformed Grid Connections: CP30 promises to be a fresh start for the grid connections process. This must now be executed into a system that works efficiently to connect projects faster and at lower costs.
- Public Messaging: Improving awareness and understanding of the importance of clean energy infrastructure. The new government have started their term by promising to beat the NIMBYS. Whilst this is crucial, we must get communities on time.
- Action on Grid Infrastructure: Initiating the planning and land rights processes now to ensure new net-zero infrastructure is physically in place by 2028. The timeline is tight, so there is no room for delay.
From all of us at Balance Power, we thank you for your continued support. As we start a new year of innovation and growth, we look forward to delivering a greater impact, accelerating the transition to net zero and building a more sustainable future.
Here’s to a sustainable and impactful 2025.