Battery storage farm plans at new homes site

A battery storage farm could be built next to an old Black Country quarry earmarked for 270 new homes.

The facility could be built on nearly two acres of land at the former Edwin Richards Quarry in Rowley Regis.

A move to fill the quarry and build 270 new homes there was first approved in 2018 and signed off by Sandwell Council last year.

Now, an application to seek permission to install 56 storage containers and other infrastructure has been submitted. The site would store surplus energy for later use and would be in place for 40 years before being removed.

The planning application has been made by Downing Renewable Developments and submitted to Sandwell Council.

The work would have the country meet energy and climate change targets, and would have no significant residual adverse impacts for the community, it said.

The homes would be built in the next six to eight years, applicant and landowner FCC Environment said, and would include a mix of one-and-two-bed flats and two-to-four-bed homes – of which 11 would be ‘affordable’ homes.

A multi-million-pound plan to transform the former Edwin Richards Quarry was revealed a decade ago.

The scheme included hundreds of new homes, a waste plant and a promise to fill the quarry with 12 million tonnes of imported materials across at least 30 years.

The quarry had a more than 100-year history of extracting dolerite, known famously as Rowley Rag and used extensively for building roads, before closing in 2008.

This news was gathered by the Local Democracy Reporting Service which covers councils and other public service organisations.

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Sandwell Council