Birmingham's new 350 MW battery is Britain's second-biggest of 2026

Hams Hall started trading in October and was taking about 200 instructions a day from the control room within a week. Only Coalburn in Lanarkshire is bigger.

A big new battery has just started work on the edge of Birmingham. Hams Hall, in North Warwickshire next to the old power station site of the same name, plugs straight into the 400 kV transmission network. Phase one is 350 MW and 1,243 MWh. When the last 50 MW is added it will be 400 MW.

So how big is it, compared with everything else that has connected this year?

The league table

I went through every battery registered in the Balancing Mechanism and kept the sites that first produced any output in 2026. There are about 20 of them, adding roughly 2.3 GW between them.