Gresham House Energy Storage Fund plc (LON:GRID), the UK’s largest operational utility-scale battery storage fund, has completed the acquisition of a 25MW battery project located in North Shields, Tyne and Wear. Tynemouth follows GRID’s recent acquisitions of the 50MW Wickham and 50MW Thurcroft projects and was acquired from Enel Global Thermal Generation S.R.L.
Tynemouth is a battery-only site with c.25MW export/import capacity and is connected to the distribution network. It was commissioned in 2018 and generates availability-based contracted revenues from Enhanced Frequency Response services provided to National Grid.
In addition, the construction of the 10MW expansion of the Glassenbury portfolio project in Kent, announced in February 2020, was recently completed and is expected to be commissioned by 31 January 2021. This extension is shown below as Glassenbury B and will increase the operational capacity at the site of the original Glassenbury project to 50MW.
Current Portfolio
Following the commissioning of Glassenbury B the total operational capacity of the Fund’s investment portfolio increases to 350MW, across 13 projects as shown below.
| 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 |
| Tynemouth | Tyne and Wear | 25 |
| Glassenbury B | Kent | 10 |
| Total | 350 |
On 24 December 2020 the Fund announced the conditional acquisition of the 30MW Byers Brae project in Scotland, which once completed, will increase the Portfolio capacity to 380MW.
John Leggate CBE, Chair of Gresham House Energy Storage Fund plc said:
“These latest projects boost operational capacity by a further 11%, to 350MW. These additions to the Portfolio, and the increase in contracted revenues from Tynemouth, are a very positive way to start the new year.”
Ben Guest, Fund Manager of Gresham House Energy Storage Fund plc said:
“We are delighted to have achieved these recent significant milestones. We have observed with great interest the recent wholesale power price short term spikes to above £1,000 per MWh. This has highlighted only too well the urgent need for more energy storage capacity in the UK. We are moving swiftly to deploy the £120 million we raised in November into our near-term pipeline and look forward to updating shareholders on our continued progress.”
