Broad Reach Power has joined the ranks of companies active in the US battery storage industry to announce financing raises in excess of US$100 million in the past few weeks.
The clean energy project developer and independent power producer (IPP) said yesterday that it has secured US$160 million towards a portfolio of 18 operating battery energy storage system (BESS) projects.
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Of those 18, 17 are in Texas and one is in California, both markets where Broad Reach Power is already active. They total 390MWh capacity, are all front-of-meter grid-scale assets in development and are equipped with lithium-ion batteries, which the company said come from a “diverse pool of manufacturers”.
Big names in mainstream finance Deutsche Bank, via its New York branch, and MUFG acted as Coordinating Lead Arrangers and Joint Bookrunners on the financing round. Broad Reach Power’s senior VP for financing and M&A Nitin Gupta described it as a “marquee debt financing transaction in the battery storage sector”.
It comes shortly on the heels of system integrator FlexGen raising US$100 million investment led by Dutch energy trading company Vitol and another system integrator, Powin Energy, raising US$135 million. Interestingly, Broach Reach Power CFO Josh Prueher was a founder of FlexGen and formerly its CEO, while Broad Reach Power’s CTO, Doug Moorhead, was previously FlexGen’s CTO and president.
Other recent big moves in US energy storage financing include the acquisitions of front-of-the-meter energy storage developers East Point Energy and esVolta by Norwegian state-owned energy company Equinor and US sustainable infrastructure investment group Generate Capital respectively, both for undisclosed sums.
Energy-Storage.news first reported on Broad Reach Power in June 2020, as the company embarked on building a fleet of 10MW/10MWh battery energy storage system (BESS) projects in Texas. At the time, Broad Reach said it was also developing two 100MW/100MWh projects in the state to participate in the ERCOT wholesale market. It’s a fairly common strategy in the US to build projects of increasing size once roots are laid down in a particular state or regional transmission area’s wholesale market.
The company made good on that promise quickly, beginning construction of that 100MW pair in September of that year, before bringing them online just over a year later.
It expanded into California with a 100MWh project acquisition from Enel in November 2020, while supplier contracts it has publicly announced include a 118MWh supply deal from SYL Battery for its California project as well as a 900MWh deal with CATL for batteries for its Texas projects and a deal with Sungrow for power converters for the same Texas portfolio.
Broad Reach Power was valued at more than US$600 million late last year as asset management group Apollo’s affiliate Apollo Funds bought a 50% stake in the company. Apollo is also an investor into FlexGen.
