Gresham House Energy Storage Fund PLC (LON:GRID), the UK’s largest operational utility-scale battery storage fund, has conditionally agreed to acquire a c.30MW battery project located near Wester Dechmont, Livingston in West Lothian, Scotland. The Project is part of the pipeline described in the Fund’s Prospectus published on 10 November 2020.
Byers Brae is a battery-only site with a c.30MW/30MW export/import capacity which is currently expected to be commissioned in Q2 2021. The Project is expected to generate revenues primarily from asset optimisation (whereby it imports and exports power to earn income from the wholesale market and the National Grid-administered Balancing Mechanism), together with frequency response services.
The Project will be acquired from Gresham House DevCo Limited and Noriker Power Ltd.
Current Portfolio
Once completed, the acquisition increases the total capacity of operational utility-scale battery storage projects in the Fund’s investment portfolio to 345MW.
| Project | Location | MW |
| Staunch | Staffordshire | 20 |
| Rufford | Nottinghamshire | 7 |
| Lockleaze | Bristol | 15 |
| Littlebrook | Kent | 8 |
| Roundponds | Wiltshire | 20 |
| Wolverhampton | West Midlands | 5 |
| Glassenbury | Kent | 40 |
| Cleator Moor | Cumbria | 10 |
| Red Scar | Lancashire | 49 |
| Bloxwich | West Midlands | 41 |
| Thurcroft | South Yorkshire | 50 |
| Wickham | Suffolk | 50 |
| Byers Brae | West Lothian, Scotland | 30 |
| Total | 345 |
In addition to the above portfolio, the Fund has a 25MW project in the advanced stages of due diligence, and shortly expects to commission a further 10MW of capacity at its Glassenbury project.
Ben Guest, Fund Manager and Head of Gresham House New Energy, said:
“Byers Brae is our first project in Scotland and is expected to help National Grid balance wind generation in the north with power demand in the south. It is located at a point between Edinburgh and Glasgow where physical constraints exist in the transmission system and is therefore expected to benefit from additional revenue System Actions in the Balancing Mechanism.”
Gresham House Energy Storage Fund plc owns a portfolio of utility-scale operational energy storage systems (known as ESS) located in Great Britain. The portfolio has a total capacity of 315MW. The Company is managed by Gresham House Asset Management Limited under the leadership of Ben Guest. The Company was admitted to trading on the London Stock Exchange (Specialist Fund Segment) on 13 November 2018 having raised £100 million of gross proceeds from investors. Including issuance under the Placing Programme, it has now raised a total of approximately £358 million of gross proceeds from investors.
The Gresham House New Energy team has a proven track record in developing and operating energy storage and other renewable assets having developed 234MW of Energy Storage Systems and approximately 290MW of predominantly ground-mounted solar projects. Gresham House Asset Management currently manages approximately 232MW of solar and wind energy projects.
