Over €8 million of funding has been secured for a 330 MW energy storage project in Northern Ireland.

The scheme uses compressed air energy storage (CAES) technology and is being developed by Gaelectric on the Islandmagee peninsula near the port town of Larne.

The Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) awarded the €8.28m funding for the project.

The Larne CAES Project was designated as a European Project of Common Interest (PCI) in 2013, and has previously been awarded (in July 2015) EU grant support of €6.5m for front end engineering and design studies. This latest award is for the drilling of an appraisal well, and detailed studies into the design and commercial structure of the project.

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Keith McGrane, Head of Energy Storage at Gaelectric, said: "€8.28 million in additional EU financing is a major boost to the Project and a further validation of the importance and need for the Project, both for Northern Ireland and for wider UK and European energy markets.

"The Project will provide critical generation capacity of 330 MW for periods of up to six to eight hours duration which is enough to meet the electricity needs of over 200,000 homes, and create demand on the system of 250 MW. It will also be the first in a pipeline of CAES projects which Gaelectric is developing across the rest of the United Kingdom and into Europe, each designed to help system operators meet generation needs and the challenges of increasing renewable generation being connected to Europe's power systems. Northern Ireland and Larne will be the vanguards for safe, flexible and technologically advanced energy storage."

(CD/LM)