Gresham House Energy Storage Fund has completed the acquisition of the 41MW Bloxwich operational energy storage facility in the UK from a group of investors led by Arenko Cleantech.
The £20.1m (€22.3m) acquisition increases the total capacity of operational utility scale battery storage projects in the fund’s investment portfolio to 215MW.
The project is located on the Bloxwich Industrial estate in Walsall in the West Midlands and was developed by Arenko.
It utilises Arenko’s battery software and controls platform.
Arenko will continue to operate and optimise Bloxwich, which was commissioned in July 2019 and operates in the Balancing Mechanism, European Power Exchange and other ancillary services markets, such as frequency response.
Gresham House Energy Storage Fund chair John Leggate said: “Bloxwich is a further step forward in our ambitions to build Great Britain’s essential renewable power storage infrastructure.
“We’re pleased to welcome Arenko, as one of our partners, to support operational management and trading optimisation at Bloxwich.
“With the operational portfolio now over 200MW for the first time, we continue to make progress executing on our 2020 plan, and we look forward to updating our shareholders.”
Gresham House Energy Storage fund manager Ben Guest said: “We are delighted to have completed this acquisition.
“Arenko is one of only a handful of innovative and technically-capable operators and optimisers of energy storage systems in the market, as demonstrated by their recent announcements.
“We look forward to working with them as the market burgeons in Great Britain.”
Arenko Group chief executive and founder Rupert Newland said: “This is a transformational deal for Arenko as it marks our transition from an asset owner to a software service provider.
“We see batteries and other flexible assets playing a meaningful role in the energy transition and believe intelligent AI software platforms will be a crucial enabler to unlock value from batteries globally.
“We look forward to working with Gresham House in helping them maximise the value of their assets in the future.”