UK Electricity Generation Map

Why is there a battery category? That does not seem to fit with electricity GENERATION but I may be missing something.

A battery is a form generation. Ideally it soaks up power when not being used and then releases at peaks.

A battery is a source of electricity. I think being a source is being conflated with being a generator. A battery does not generate electricity. It stores it.

You asked a question I tried to give you a reply. Most of the industry will classify it as a virtual generator. Happy to argue but not sure why you post a question and then refute answers.

There is both a load and generator resource for a battery and is some markets it will register as such. So no it’s not creating net new but will often but bucketed in a generator category for the purposes of looking at mix.

Im refuting the idea that a battery is a generator. Because its not for the reason I already differentiated.

You’re right that in the strict physics sense a battery doesn’t generate anything new. But in energy markets and system ops, classification is less about first principles and more about how resources interact with the grid. That’s why most ISOs/TSOs register a battery as both a load and a generator, it consumes on charge and supplies on discharge.

So when people talk about the “generation mix,” batteries get bucketed alongside gas, wind, solar, etc. Not because they magically create energy, but because from the grid operator’s perspective they look like a dispatchable generator when discharging.

It’s one of those cases where common-sense semantics (“it’s storage”) diverge from industry practice (“it’s modeled as generation”).

Please let me know what’s confusing.

I appreciate the context. Generation isnt the best name for an input to the grid. Perhaps you are right and it's common in the industry but I wouldn't expect non-industry people to anticipate batteries and connections to the Danish, French, etc. grids to be generators.

And frankly I can't find evidence for the claim that the energy sector uses the term generation for inputs to the grid in general, as opposed to just the things literally generating electricity. Which does not surprise me.

Go look at any of the hundreds of energy dashboards. Batteries are both a source and use when thinking about fuel mix. You might not understand it but for most of the world we understand batteries are not magic.