Arlington Energy has secured £200 million to help fund its plans to build a 1GW fleet of distributed batteries and gas peaking plants over the next three years.
The company is already installing 60MW and expects to have around 250MW up and running by October 2019.
The full portfolio will be made up of roughly one-third batteries and two-thirds gas reciprocating engines, with sites ranging in size from 5MW to 50MW.
The first tranche will consist of 100MW of batteries and at least 150MW of gas peaking plants which Arlington Energy intends to enter into the next T-4 capacity market auction for delivery in 2022/23. The firm plans to operate the assets for the entire lifespans.
Arlington Energy director Matt Clare said: “We are extremely pleased to be able to deploy so many assets in the UK to support the grid network.”
“The investment is a significant step for Arlington but also for the distributed energy market in the UK, in particular the energy storage industry. As system volatility continues to increase, these assets are perfectly poised to take advantage of such peaks.
“The UK energy storage industry has been a challenging space for a number of years, with battery capex actually rising in the past 12 months due to increased demand worldwide. This highlights the need for the UK industry to embrace the concept of flexible merchant-based assets, or risk being left behind.”