Gresham House Energy Storage Fund, which invests in utility-scale battery energy storage systems (BESS), saw revenues dip during the first half of the year.
According to the group’s half-year results for the period ending 30 June 2023, underlying operational portfolio revenue fell 31.9% to £20.5m and EBITDA stood at £13.8m, down compared to the same period of 2022, when it was £22.7m.
In addition, the fund saw its net asset value dip slightly from 841.7m in 31 December, 2022, to £841m. However, this was still up compared to 30 June 2022 when it was £785.4m.
Gresham House blamed the declines on weaker trading driven by low power price volatility; lower demand caused by higher energy bills and increased supply from rising renewable energy generation.
The fund also noted that it had 590MW in operation across 21 projects on 30 June 2023, which rose to 640MW across 22 operational projects as of 31 August 2023 (up from 425MW and 500MW at respective 2022 dates).
An additional 387MW across six projects have also been built, with grid connection works expected to be completed this year and into H1 2024 with delays attributed to ongoing industry grid connection challenges.
Further deployment results in a target portfolio of around 1.3GW/2.5GWh, at an average duration of 2 hours, by mid-2025.
Chair of Gresham House Energy Storage Fund John Leggate said: “While we currently face a more challenging electricity market, the Manager’s track record and our leading position in BESS in Great Britain position us solidly to take advantage of the market’s recovery.
“In particular, strong dividend cover in 2021 and 2022 has allowed us to maintain our committed dividend increase for 2023, despite reduced revenues this year. As more projects come online and installed capacity increases later in 2023 and into 2024, we expect full run-rate dividend cover to return.
“Looking to the longer term, we firmly believe that BESS are a strategic cornerstone globally which uniquely will enable the transformation of the energy sector towards carbon neutrality. Renewables are the cheapest form of incremental energy generation and batteries the cheapest and most efficient way of addressing intermittency. These are the two fundamental pillars to delivering a zero carbon future.”