Octopus, Britain’s largest electricity provider, has signed a record-breaking battery leasing deal with Gresham House Energy Storage Fund plc (GRID), employing the energyco’s Kraken platform to unlock the benefits of the green grid.
Believed to be the biggest deal of its kind in the world, the contract will connect just over 50% of GRID’s large-scale batteries to Octopus’ technology platform Kraken. Kraken’s unique AI and machine learning optimisation will charge GRID’s batteries at times of renewable energy glut and discharge them when Britain’s National Grid is under stress.
Such intelligent flexibility reduces wasteful instances of ‘curtailment’ or jettisoning cheap clean power when too much electricity – both low carbon & thermal – swamps Britain’s transmission & distribution networks.
‘Curtailment’ left UK energy bill payers with a staggering £800 million of costs in 2022.
Launched in 2018, Gresham House is the largest battery investment fund in the UK, owning around one-fifth of UK utility-scale storage. Octopus will take over half of GRID’s British-based large-scale battery fleet for the next two years.
Those 14 large-scale amp hotels & coulomb crèches can store in excess of 900MWh of electricity – enough to power 1 million homes for an hour, or a city the size of Birmingham.
Its deal with Gresham House follows hot on the heels of Octopus reaching 1GW worth of shiftable load – the largest virtual power plant in the UK – through its electric vehicle (EV) tariff, Intelligent Octopus Go.
The supplier’s head of flexibility Kieron Stopforth said: “Every year the UK loses hundreds of gigawatt-hours of clean energy because our system isn’t flexible enough to keep it – PLUS have to pay for this senseless waste.
“Batteries unlock the clean and cheap energy system, storing green energy when it’s plentiful and providing it back to the grid when energy is expensive – and work even better with brilliant tech to manage that optimisation,
“Through this landmark deal with Gresham House Energy Storage Fund, we’re not only increasing the size of our virtual power plant to over 1.5GW, we’re also unlocking the power of flexibility, aiming to drive down grid costs.”
Ben Guest, fund manager of Gresham House Energy Storage Fund plc & MD of Gresham House New Energy, said: “These new contracts with Octopus Energy secure revenues which are above those currently being achieved in the national market, demonstrating the value batteries can provide in balancing supply and demand for retail and wholesale market players.”
