Gore Street, the UK’s first listed fund targeting energy storage specifically, has acquired two battery storage projects from Origami Energy, taking its portfolio to 29MW across four projects.
The 10MW Lower Road project in Essex and the 9MW Port of Tilbury projects have all land rights, planning and other consents and grid access rights in place necessary to start construction and enter operations.
They also have a number of revenue streams already attached to them, including two firm frequency response (FFR) contracts to begin on 30 October 2019, with the construction of both expected to be completed in Q2 next year.
The six-month FFR contracts will be followed by fulfilment of 12- and 15-year contracts secured in the T-4 Capacity Market auction for Port of Tilbury and Lower Road respectively.
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As a behind-the-meter project, the 9MW project will also participate in Triad avoidance at London’s Port of Tilbury industrial port facility. Triad is the UK’s winter peak time-of-use charging for commercial and industrial ratepayers. Origami Energy, a creator of digital platforms and technologies for energy market participation as well as a developer of energy storage projects, will provide real-time monitoring, control and operation of the batteries once completed and will also bid for multiple new contracts to maintain the projects at full utilisation once commissioned.
Gore Street Capital launched the UK’s first listed fund for energy storage projects, Gore Street Energy Storage Fund (GSESF), in March of this year.
Alex O’Cinneide, chief executive of the fund’s manager Gore Street Capital, said: “We are delighted by our progress in deploying our IPO proceeds in building London’s first listed diversified portfolio of energy storage assets.
“The portfolio will provide a reliable and robust income opportunity and grant investors access to a nascent and rapidly growing infrastructure sub-sector that also represents a major new renewable technology market for environmentally conscious investors.
“We continue to see valuable opportunities within our significant pipeline and anticipate updating shareholders with further positive progress in due course. Furthermore, we are in negotiation with potential partners for a significant number of projects under exclusivity that we look forward to funding in due course.”
The brace of acquisitions are Gore Street’s first investment following the acquisition of the two seed assets in June 2018 and the IPO of the fund on 25 May 2018, when the fund secured £35 million (US$46.34 million) of investment compared to a target of £100 million.
As well as the new purchases, the fund’s portfolio includes the 6MW Boulby battery, co-located with an industrial mining complex in Cleveland, North Yorkshire, using battery systems provided by NEC Energy Solutions.
Gore Street also owns 49% of the 4MW Cenin battery located at Parc Stormy near Bridgend, which began operations at the start of February after being unveiled by Kiwi Power.
The two were bought through a special purpose vehicle for a total consideration of £7.3 million, with Gore Street adding that once the new acquisitions are finalised and constructed, over half of its funds will be committed.
