The new battery storage facilities worth £900 million in Scotland will improve resilience during downtime, according to Michael Matheson, cabinet secretary for Net Zero, Energy, and Transport.
Matheson applauded Amp Energy's plans to construct Europe's largest green energy storage complex across three Scottish locations, the first of which will be in Ayrshire.
"Amp Energy's battery storage facility in Hunterston highlights our progress toward achieving a net-zero nation by 2045," Matheson added.
Addressing the challenge of maintaining system resilience during periods of low renewable output is critical. Amp's investment in its Scottish Green Battery Complex will contribute to this by enabling grid-scale storage of renewable electricity for use when needed, Matheson said.
The cabinet secretary met with Amp Energy's Ben Skinner to review progress on the multi-million-pound Scottish Green Battery Complex, which is scheduled to commission in 2024 and will be comprised of two 400 MW battery facilities.
Hunterston has been chosen as the site for the first phase of construction, with subsequent sites planned in Kincardine, Fife, and Windyhill, just outside Glasgow.
Each site will have the capacity to power around 800,000 homes in Scotland, for up to two hours, when required.
The plant is expected to become "an important enabler of Scotland's booming renewable energy sector" and future energy grid.
It is claimed the complex will provide reliable grid stability services and power management across the central belt of Scotland, including Glasgow and the Scottish capital.
It will also help consumers save money on their energy bills by avoiding the need to make constraint payments to renewable energy generators (where National Grid ESO needs to pay generators to turn off wind farms during periods of low demand) and instead storing renewable energy for later use.
Edinburgh-based Amp X, Amp Energy's proprietary digital energy platform, will utilise its proprietary AI-enabled Asset Life Management architecture, to manage and optimize the state of health of each battery module allowing for optimal operating and dispatch performance while extending the life of the cells used in the complex, it said.
The newly released draft Energy Strategy and Just Transition Plan consultation from the Scottish Government emphasizes the importance of increasing Scotland's utility battery storage capacity.
According to a new report on Scotland's green energy and renewables industry, Scotland has the potential to become a green energy powerhouse, producing up to 385,000 jobs, improving Scotland's economy by up to £34 billion per year by 2050, and permanently cutting energy bills.
Scotland can boost its green energy output by more than five times the current rate, raising Scotland's current capacity of 12 GW to more than 80 GW by 2050, the report suggests.