An investment company has revealed plans to develop three pumped hydro storage companies in Scotland with an estimated total capacity of around 1,200MW.
ILI Pump Storage Hydro, part of the Intelligent Land Investment Group, has identified sites near Loch Ness, in the Trossachs, and in the Scottish Borders for the facilities.
To help fund the projects, peer-to-peer finance platform Abundance Investment has launched an offer to invest directly in the company through a three-year secured development bond, requiring a minimum investment of just £5.
Abundance Investment hopes to raise £3.4 million for the storage projects.
Energy storage was identified as one of the key technologies in the government’s clean growth strategy, while pumped storage was central to the Scottish Government’s 2017 Energy White Paper.
Mark Wilson, founder and director of ILI Pumped Storage, said: “We’ve been working to get more renewables into the UK electricity system for the past decade. The opportunity to turn our experience to developing pumped storage was an obvious next step to build on our successes with onshore wind.
“We put great value on involving landowners and local communities in what we do, so partnering with Abundance to raise funds from the general public to help us is another natural progression.”
Bruce Davis, co-founder and managing director of Abundance, added: “This year Abundance has changed up a gear, bringing our customers opportunities to invest in the next generation of renewable technologies, and we’re ending 2017 on a really strong note with this chance to take a stake in developing over 1000 MW of energy storage. As the first step to getting new large-scale energy storage built in Scotland, with the higher risk/reward profile of a development investment, ILI Pump Storage Hydro really is a win-win for green finance.”