Financial backing to support early development phases in battery storage and renewable energy projects has been found by Momentum Energy Storage Partners, a project development company launched by DNV GL’s former energy storage lead for the North Americas region.
Davion Hill launched the ‘Battery performance scorecard’ at expert and accreditation group DNV GL in 2017 and acted as lead expert on technical reports into the battery storage fire at utility Arizona Public Service’s McMicken battery storage facility in Suprise, Arizona. At the beginning of this year, he became one of two co-founding partners along with Ed Rode, another energy expert with a background in renewables, at Momentum Energy Storage Partners, headquartered in Ohio.
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The pair’s new company has formed a partnership with Leyline Renewable Capital, an investor in “promising renewable energy projects” across the US which invests in anaerobic digestion, landfill gas, solar and wind projects as well as battery storage. Leyline offers pre-construction debt and equity capital to develop clean energy projects.
The deal gives Momentum the “capital needed to support the development of up to 2GW of standalone battery storage and solar, plus storage projects representing US$2 billion in capital investments,” according to Leyline CEO Erik Lensch.
The funding will help Hill and Rodes’ company to progress a number of renewable energy projects including some already under development in the Texas ERCOT market and the Pennsylvania, Jersey and Maryland (PJM) Power Pool service area.
“The time is now to invest in energy storage – renewables and the growing threat of climate change are going to require energy storage, and lots of it,” Davion Hill said.
Leyline will help finance pre-construction activities for its partner, from land contracts and permits to interconnection agreements and other activities, before Momentum can then get long-term investors to finance construction. The developer will provide performance guarantees and revenue contracts as well as long-term operations and maintenance (O&M) services via its presumably extensive network of partners.
“Leyline provides us not just the funding we need, but additional development experience to help us grow our business. This partnership with Leyline accelerates our business to larger scales. We look forward to utilising the teams' collective knowledge to enable more renewables and fight climate change,” Momentum co-founder and partner Ed Rodes said.
