Gresham House to Buy First Scottish Storage Project

Gresham House Energy Storage Fund has conditionally agreed to acquire a 30MW battery project in Scotland, its first in the country.

Byers Brae, which is located near Wester Dechmont in West Lothian, is part of the pipeline described in the fund’s prospectus published on 10 November.

It is a battery-only site with about 30MW/30MW export/import capacity which is currently expected to be commissioned in the second quarter of 2021.

The project is expected to generate revenues primarily from asset optimisation, whereby it imports and exports power to earn income from the wholesale market and the National Grid-administered Balancing Mechanism, together with frequency response services.

Byers Brae will be acquired from the developers Gresham House DevCo and Noriker Power.

Once completed, the acquisition will increase the total capacity of operational utility-scale battery storage projects in the fund's investment portfolio to 345MW.

In addition, the fund has a 25MW project in the advanced stages of due diligence, and shortly expects to commission a further 10MW of capacity at its Glassenbury project.

Fund manager and head of Gresham House New Energy Ben Guest said: “Byers Brae is our first project in Scotland and is expected to help National Grid balance wind generation in the north with power demand in the south.

“It is located at a point between Edinburgh and Glasgow where physical constraints exist in the transmission system and is therefore expected to benefit from additional revenue System Actions in the Balancing Mechanism.”