Battery Energy Storage Solutions (BESS) has secured £28.5 million of funding from Santander to realise its aim of becoming one of the UK’s largest owners and operators of battery storage.
The company, which was established in March last year, plans to build a 100MW portfolio of operational grid-scale batteries by the end of 2018.
At the beginning of the year, BESS already owned and operated 14MW of grid-scale batteries, either co-located with solar sites or connected directly to the distribution grid. The firm intends to increase the tally to 63MW by the end of this month.
BESS co-founder Nicholas Beatty, said: “The UK’s power system is now the fourth cleanest in Europe. However, the pace of transition to a low carbon power system brings with it challenges for the National Grid in balancing the network and ensuring supply and demand is matched on a second by second basis.
“Such balancing of supply and demand only being possible by the introduction of new technologies like battery storage. We believe our company is uniquely placed to capture that market demand.”
Mark Cumbo, director of infrastructure and renewable energy at Santander Corporate and Commercial, said: “With the combination of both equity and Santander debt, BESS and its highly experienced management team are now able to execute the strategy of becoming one of the UK’s largest independent owners and operators of battery storage asset portfolios, underpinned with contracts with National Grid.”
Earlier this month, VLC Energy completed the installation of the UK’s largest utility-scale battery portfolio to date with a total capacity of 50MW.