Hill Top and Hole House are two of very few operational gas storage sites in the UK, representing high strategic importance for the deliver of energy across the nation. They have the ability to deliver up to 11% of the UK’s flexible gas capacity, if called upon.
The facilities are located approximately 2 kilometres to the north of Crewe in Cheshire, United Kingdom, an area with rich salt reserves and a history of extraction dating back to the Roman period. Both Hole House and Hill Top are working farms with cattle, sheep and crops. Interconnecting pipes and cables are buried along clearly marked routes, below the depth at which normal farming activities occur.
Hole House and Hill Top are both operated from a common control room, sympathetically designed to blend in with traditional farm buildings. Connection into the gas National Transmission System (NTS) is through a pipeline, with two separate connection points, the Elworth-Mickle Trafford feeder and the Wheelock feeder.
5
Caverns in use
4
Caverns currently suspended
2067 / 2096
Lease expiry
Hill Top
Status: In operation
Hill Top was developed by British Salt Ltd for the purpose of brine extraction over a total of ten caverns. Subsequently, the site was developed for gas storage, with a design life of 30 years. The first three caverns have been operational since 2014 and a further two caverns were added in 2018, taking the working gas capacity to 17.8 million therms. The caverns are cycled together and operated prior to Kistos ownership within a pressure envelope of 32-45 barg.
In 2024, Kistos completed the final phase of a pressure relaxation trial, reducing the minimum operational pressure envelope to 29barg. This resulted in an increase of working gas capacity by 24% to 22 million therms, significantly increasing the revenue potential of the site from both intrinsic seasonal trades and extrinsic trading.
Hole House
Status: Non-Operational
Hole House was developed specifically for gas storage in 1997 and was operational from 2001 through to 2018 when a period of re-brining the caverns was commenced. Three out of the total four caverns are now brine filled, with cushion gas sold to market, and the remaining cavern will also be re-brined over the short-term.
Kistos is currently evaluating all available redevelopment opportunities and the associated economics to bring the site back into operation. Hole House requires approximately one-third as much cushion gas as Hill Top for the same amount of working gas and thus is a more efficient site to operate.
Alternative uses
Both gas storage sites have the potential to be repurposed for future energy storage uses, including the storage of compressed air or hydrogen.
Compressed Air Energy Storage has demonstrated its potential for clean storage, high lifetime scalability, low self-discharge, long discharge times, relatively low capital costs, and high durability. Possible government support could potentially help reduce the cost of meeting the UK’s net zero targets by storing excess low-carbon variable renewable electricity for longer periods of time, helping to manage the variation in renewable energy generation.
In 2021, a Geostock study concluded that the site’s caverns could meet the requirements to store hydrogen with a lower subsurface cost than alternative options and no requirement for new drilling. Any possible hydrogen storage development would support the new HyNet cluster , a new net-zero industrial cluster situated approximately 25 kilometres from the site.
