UK’s first battery-powered hotel now operational in Scotland

Risky business [image credit: safetysource.co.nz]

Well, partly battery-powered to be more exact. Government subsidies play a part in the economics of this, as the article shows. Battery purchase and installation costs are not stated, nor is the expected lifetime. Then there’s the insurance bill for a lot of fire-prone lithium in or next to a building.

The Gyle Premier Inn in Edinburgh is trialling a new 100kW lithium-ion battery supplied and installed by E.ON at its 200-room site in a bid to improve energy efficiency, secure power supply and enable onsite energy cost savings.

The battery is 3m3 in size and weighs approximately five tonnes, reports PEI.

It can run the hotel – including powering meals cooked at its restaurant – for up to three hours.

The battery takes two hours to fully charge and will be used for at least two-to-three hours per day, depending on the needs of the National Grid.

As well as powering the hotel, the trial of the new battery storage system allows the Premier Inn to avoid increased peak-time energy costs and generate revenue by offering energy support services to the National Grid.

The installation is expected to save the hotel £20,000 per year in energy savings alone.

E.ON will remotely manage the battery’s workload and efficiency from its energy management centre in Glasgow.

The hotel is owned by Whitbread, which plans to cut its carbon emissions in half by 2025 and has already installed solar panels at 169 of its UK sites.

Continued here.