Battery barons Gresham House snap up 30MW of Scots storage, expands fleet to 425MW

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Britain’s biggest investor in utility-scale batteries Gresham House Energy Storage Fund (GHESF) today announced its first buy in Scotland, paying £15.6m from its subsidiary and a partner for a new 30MW unit near Livingston.

Sparked up last month, Byers Brae at Wester Dechmont, an industrial estate in the Edinburgh-Glasgow corridor, is a battery-only site – i.e. without on-site generation. It has a fast-in, fast-out 30MW/30MW export-import capacity.

Today’s acquisition brings GHESF’s fleet of operating batteries to 425 MW across 16 sites, it confirmed to investors:

Project Location MW
Staunch Staffordshire 20
Rufford Nottinghamshire 7
Lockleaze Bristol 15
Littlebrook Kent 8
Roundponds Wiltshire 20
Wolverhampton West Midlands 5
Glassenbury* Kent 50
Cleator Moor Cumbria 10
Red Scar Lancashire 49
Bloxwich West Midlands 41
Thurcroft South Yorkshire 50
Wickham Suffolk 50
Tynemouth Tyne and Wear 25
Port of Tyne Tyne and Wear 35
Nevendon Essex 10
Byers Brae West Lothian, Scotland 30
Total   425

*inclusive of 10MW extension

Ben Guest, head of Gresham House New Energy, observed, “Byers Brae’s …location makes it well placed to ease… bottlenecks in the physical network between UK wind generation in the north and power demand in the south”.

Gresham House launched with an IPO in October 2018.  Reporting net asset value of £205.9m in April 2020, Guest and chairman John Leggate opined that Britain’s 1GW of batteries then in operation needed to be expanded tenfold as soon as 2024.

Today’s announcement coincides with Gresham House’s solar distribution division inking a revolving credit deal worth £18m with Virgin Money.

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