Vitreous LabsEnergy transparency

Winchester (WNCHB-1)

19 MW, about 38 MWh (2 hours, from the capacity market de-rating class) in Somerset and Wessex. Everything on this page is read from published data for the 364 days to 27 September 2026, or is labelled as an estimate.

What it is

Registered power19 MW balancing mechanism registration
Storage duration2 hours capacity market de-rating class
Charging zoneSomerset and Wessex
Connection siteWinchester
PostcodeSO21 2UZ
Balancing mechanism unitE_WNCHB-1

Who owns it and who trades it

Traded byCONRAD ENERGY (TRADING) LIMITEDruns several sitesconfirmed, Elexon's register
Owned bynot published anywhere we can read

Market registers name the party that sells into the market, which for a battery is usually an optimiser under contract rather than the owner. Elexon's balancing mechanism unit register names the seller here and the name is checked against it on every build. How we tell them apart

What it earned

Line364 days to 27 September 2026
Balancing mechanism£14k
Response and reserve auctions auction implied£607k
Capacity market£92k
Three lines together£713k

Balancing is offer revenue and does not net off the cost of the power. The response and reserve figure is the value implied by the published auction results, award quantity times clearing price times the length of the delivery window, and not a settled payment. Capacity market income is the cleared price raised for inflation where the auction set a base period, split by month on EMRS's weights. Method

Outside the balancing mechanism, derived from the meter

Elexon publishes what this unit's meter recorded every half hour. Take away the balancing volumes NESO accepted and what is left is the position the unit ran outside the balancing mechanism: its wholesale trading, its frequency response delivery, and its losses, together. This unit held a frequency response contract in 1,231 of those half hours. The energy the contract asked of it, contracted megawatts times NESO's published delivery curve at the measured grid frequency, is taken out of the position and valued at the imbalance price, because it sits outside the unit's declared position and that is the price Elexon settles it at. What remains is the traded position, valued at the market index. In 1 half hours a contract was held but the grid frequency is not yet held, so those are left in the traded position. The volumes are measured. The prices are public benchmarks, not this unit's trades. The product is derived, and is shown apart from the three measured lines above. 88 days to 12 September 2026, 32 of them still provisional in Elexon's settlement runs. Method and caveats

LineMWh or £
Metered export, what crossed the meter out3,793 MWh
Metered import, what crossed the meter in4,512 MWh
Equivalent full cycles, everything sent out over one full charge99.8 over 88 days, 414 a year at that rate
Apparent meter to meter efficiency84%, an ordinary battery: round trip losses alone
Balancing offers accepted195 MWh
Balancing bids accepted167 MWh
Position outside balancing, export3,727 MWh
Position outside balancing, import4,475 MWh
Of which expected response delivery, net−69 MWh 270 out, 339 in
Traded position, net−679 MWh 3,601 out, 4,280 in
Traded position at the market index, sold£542k
Traded position at the market index, bought£393k
Traded position, net, at the index£149k
Response delivery, net, at the imbalance price−£12k −£9k at the index
Balancing and outside balancing together£146k £31.81/kW/yr

When it moved, against when power was dear

Across every half hour this unit was metered the market index averaged £116.56. What it sent out was worth £150.44 a megawatt hour at that same index, 1.29 times the average. What it took in was worth £91.84, 0.79 times. Selling above one and buying below one is a unit positioned into the dear half hours and out of the cheap ones. It measures the half hours it chose, not the price anyone paid it, which is not published.

What it paid to buy energy back

When NESO accepts a bid, this unit delivers less than it had already sold, or takes more in. It pays for the energy it no longer delivers, and that payment is most of what makes the balancing figure above negative. Whether that is a cost or a margin depends on the price it paid. Across 167 MWh of accepted bids it paid an average of £110.64 a megawatt hour. The market index averaged £152.96 across those same half hours, so it bought back at £42.32 a megawatt hour below the going price.

Price it paidVolumeAverageCash
below zero12 MWh−£27.17£335 received
£0 to £257 MWh£10.52£72
£25 to £505 MWh£31.07£155
£75 to £10011 MWh£93.51£987
above £100132 MWh£133.05£18k

On 12 MWh the price was below zero: NESO paid this unit an average of £27.17 a megawatt hour to take energy, £335 in all. That is a constrained network with more generation on it than it can move.

The other direction, offers, is much smaller here: 195 MWh where NESO asked for more, paid at an average of £141.85 against an index of £79.87.

Checks this unit did not pass cleanly. Published anyway, because a flagged figure with its flag is more use than a blank.

  • only 88 of 364 days metered

Where it stands

Balancing incomewhole fleet, £/kW/yr62nd percentile98 units
Balancing incomeEngland and Wales peer group46th percentile70 units
Balancing income2.0 hour duration cohort48th percentile61 units
All three measured lineswhole fleet, £/kW/yr64th percentile229 units
Energy sent outhours at full power12th percentile96 units
Energy taken inhours at full power4th percentile96 units

Percentiles, so 90 means better than nine in ten of the cohort named beside it, on that measure alone, over the same 364 days. Rates are pounds per kilowatt per year, annualised over the days the unit has been on the system, the same figures the performance league ranks on. A high position in the taken-in table is not a fault: a constraint asset is paid to charge, and charging is its job.

The nearest comparables

The five nearest in size in England and Wales, and this battery among them, ranked by what each was paid for every kilowatt it holds over the 364 days to the same date. They run for about the same length of time. Same market, same rules, same weather.

BatteryMWHoursMeasured, per kW
Oldham BESS202h£81.1/kW/yr
Carnegie Road 1202h£54.9/kW/yr
Farnham BESS202h£45.5/kW/yr
Swindon192h£42.2/kW/yr
Hawkers Hill Battery202h£38.0/kW/yr
Winchester (WNCHB-1)this battery192h£37.6/kW/yr

See it on the map

Open the operating map here

Every figure on this page traces to a published file. If something here is wrong about your asset, the methods section says how to tell us.