Dan Levy is keen to talk about the benefits of the new battery farm, about to be built on the Black Country green belt.

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“This project will be pivotal for balancing out the supply and demand of renewable energy as the UK transitions to net zero and these sources become an ever-growing segment of our national energy mix," he says.

The site, a six-and-a-half acre field next to a pub in a semi-rural idyll six miles out of the centre of Dudley, will soon be home to the Hinksford Bess, an electricity storage site that will provide power to almost 27,000 homes.

Sites like the Bess, or battery energy storage system to give it its full title, are going to be an increasingly common sight in years to come. Indeed, during the past two years, South Staffordshire Council has received no fewer than 10 planning applications relating to battery storage sites, Shropshire Council has received eight in the past three years.

Only this week another such scheme was approved in Wombourne, little more than a mile from the Hinksford site. And earlier this month, the Planning Inspectorate overturned Dudley Council's decision to refuse permission for a 12.5-acre battery farm in the village of Illey, near Halesowen - about a mile from another scheme which had already been given permission.

Essentially large pounds filled with giant batteries, it is these sites which will make renewable energy a viable reality - storing solar and wind power from when the sun shines and the wind blows, to be used on the all-too-frequent days when neither happens.

The Bess's operator, Balance Power, says that by boosting the use of renewable energy, it will reduce carbon emissions by 20,000 tons a year, equivalent to taking 13,200 cars off........

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