Britain Is Turning Air Into a Battery — The World's Biggest One Is Being Built in Manchester
The British Blueprint
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Britain Is Turning Air Into a Battery — The World's Biggest One Is Being Built in Manchester
In 2018, a plant beside a landfill site near Bury became the world's first grid-scale liquid air energy storage plant. Now, about ten miles away at Carrington in Greater Manchester, Highview Power is building one with twenty times more storage: 300 MWh, delivering 50 MW for six hours, on the site of a coal power station that closed in 1991.
The idea is simple: use spare electricity to turn air into a liquid at around −160 °C, store it in insulated tanks, then let it expand about 700 times to spin a turbine when the grid needs power. This video looks at the six things behind the plan — curtailed wind, the physics, molten salt heat storage, off-the-shelf parts, old power station sites and grid inertia — and at what is still unproven. Round-trip efficiency is currently around 50–55% (Highview figure), the liquid air system at Carrington is expected in 2027, and no liquid air project was among Ofgem's first 16 provisionally selected long-duration storage projects in June 2026.
Chapters:
0:00 The first liquid air plant
1:33 The honest part
2:37 The cold pioneers: Dewar and Dearman
4:06 Who is paying
5:00 #6 The waste: curtailed wind
5:59 #5 The trick: air shrinks 700 times
6:59 #4 The heat battery: molten salt
7:51 #3 The parts
8:37 #2 The location: old power station sites
9:41 #1 The spin: inertia and the 2019 blackout
10:54 The world is watching
11:48 The number: forty
12:27 How the pieces lock together
13:01 What comes next
Sources:
Highview Power: Carrington project and Hunterston FAQ (March 2026) — technology, efficiency, tank size, design life, curtailment figures
Highview Power: world's first grid-scale LAES plant at Pilsworth (June 2018)
UK Infrastructure Bank / National Wealth Fund: £300m Carrington funding (June 2024)
Ofgem: Long Duration Electricity Storage cap and floor, Window 1 minded-to decision (June 2026)
Ofgem: 9 August 2019 power outage report
Royal Institution: James Dewar's vacuum flask (1892); liquid hydrogen (1898)
Carrington Power Station history (closed 1991)
Dinorwig power station (1984)
Figures and timelines are as of October 2026. Plans, targets and dates may change.
#LiquidAir #EnergyStorage #Britain #Engineering #Manchester
Britain Is Turning Air Into a Battery — The World's Biggest One Is Being Built in Manchester
The British Blueprint
68 views
Britain Is Turning Air Into a Battery — The World's Biggest One Is Being Built in Manchester
In 2018, a plant beside a landfill site near Bury became the world's first grid-scale liquid air energy storage plant. Now, about ten miles away at Carrington in Greater Manchester, Highview Power is building one with twenty times more storage: 300 MWh, delivering 50 MW for six hours, on the site of a coal power station that closed in 1991.
The idea is simple: use spare electricity to turn air into a liquid at around −160 °C, store it in insulated tanks, then let it expand about 700 times to spin a turbine when the grid needs power. This video looks at the six things behind the plan — curtailed wind, the physics, molten salt heat storage, off-the-shelf parts, old power station sites and grid inertia — and at what is still unproven. Round-trip efficiency is currently around 50–55% (Highview figure), the liquid air system at Carrington is expected in 2027, and no liquid air project was among Ofgem's first 16 provisionally selected long-duration storage projects in June 2026.
Chapters:
0:00 The first liquid air plant
1:33 The honest part
2:37 The cold pioneers: Dewar and Dearman
4:06 Who is paying
5:00 #6 The waste: curtailed wind
5:59 #5 The trick: air shrinks 700 times
6:59 #4 The heat battery: molten salt
7:51 #3 The parts
8:37 #2 The location: old power station sites
9:41 #1 The spin: inertia and the 2019 blackout
10:54 The world is watching
11:48 The number: forty
12:27 How the pieces lock together
13:01 What comes next
Sources:
Highview Power: Carrington project and Hunterston FAQ (March 2026) — technology, efficiency, tank size, design life, curtailment figures
Highview Power: world's first grid-scale LAES plant at Pilsworth (June 2018)
UK Infrastructure Bank / National Wealth Fund: £300m Carrington funding (June 2024)
Ofgem: Long Duration Electricity Storage cap and floor, Window 1 minded-to decision (June 2026)
Ofgem: 9 August 2019 power outage report
Royal Institution: James Dewar's vacuum flask (1892); liquid hydrogen (1898)
Carrington Power Station history (closed 1991)
Dinorwig power station (1984)
Figures and timelines are as of October 2026. Plans, targets and dates may change.
#LiquidAir #EnergyStorage #Britain #Engineering #Manchester