SSE has today (Tuesday 28 October) agreed a one-year contract with the National Grid to provide backup reserve of up to 780MW of capacity from its Peterhead power station in Aberdeenshire.
The contract is a result of National Grid's tender for the Supplemental Balancing Reserve (SBR) service, aimed at UK-wide generation plant not otherwise available to the energy market due to the difficult market conditions facing traditional thermal generation plant. The station will be prevented from business-as-usual participation in the electricity market, with capacity available only if called upon by National Grid.
The new contract replaces a pre-existing agreement with National Grid to provide ancillary services in the north of Scotland, announced in May 2014. The previous contract had prevented Peterhead from running unless required by National Grid which means today's announcement requires no change to the station's current operating status, including no adverse impact on jobs.
Today's announcement does not affect the ongoing major investment work at Peterhead to improve the station's flexibility and efficiency, scheduled to continue as planned during 2014/15.
The pioneering Carbon Capture and Storage project at Peterhead, currently being developed by Shell UK with support from SSE, is also unaffected by today's announcement.