NESO Says Battery Skip Rates Fell to 38% in the First Half of 2026
Britain's grid operator NESO reports that batteries were skipped less often in the first half of 2026. Average battery skip rates fell from 49% in the first half of 2025 to 38%, according to ESS News, which published the figures on 14 July.
What a skip is
When NESO's control room balances the grid, it sometimes picks a more expensive asset for an action that a cheaper one, such as a grid-scale battery, could have delivered. That is a skip. NESO's data portal describes its all-balancing-mechanism skip rate as a measure of avoidable skips. Some skips are unavoidable because of system limits, asset availability or network conditions.
The figures
Skip rates across all technologies were 9% lower in January to June 2026 than a year earlier. For batteries the average fell from 49% to 38%, and for pumped storage from 59% to 49%. NESO credits operational changes and grid code changes approved by Ofgem, including better communication protocols for how batteries report availability, introduced in November 2025.
NESO says the easy improvements have already been made, though it expects further gains from changes to systems, processes and methodologies. Great Britain's grid-scale battery fleet reached 7.5 GW by the end of 2025, and the government targets 23 to 27 GW by 2030.
What NESO plans next
With Ofgem, NESO is working on balancing and dispatch reform, network constraint management and stronger locational price signals. Possible changes include lowering the capacity threshold for mandatory balancing mechanism participation and adjusting trading deadlines.
NESO will also look at high skip rates for consumer-led flexibility behind thermal constraints, and says it will publish skip rate figures for this in the third quarter of 2026. That is the part most relevant to households, and we could not find those numbers yet.
Why home battery owners might care
These figures are about large batteries, not home systems. But the same rules decide how easily flexible demand and small batteries can be used by the grid. If you are interested in how household batteries can be pooled, read about virtual power plants and whether home batteries are a grid problem or solution. For rules that apply to you, see the UK country guide.
Sources
- Energy Storage (ESS News): Lower skip rates for UK battery storage but NESO plans further reform
- NESO data portal: Skip rate, in merit, all balancing mechanism (July 2026)
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