Battery Energy Storage Solutions Ltd (BESS) has secured £28.5 million in funding from Santander to help it in its strategy to become one of the largest owners and operators of battery storage assets in the UK.
London-based BESS was established in March 2017 and has a short-term aim of building a 100 MW energy storage portfolio by the end of 2018. It believes that the UK’s rapid transition to low carbon energy sources is creating opportunities for flexible energy storage solutions.
“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,” said Nicholas Beatty, co-founder of BESS. “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.”
BESS has already developed a portfolio of 14 MW of grid-scale batteries. A further 49MW of grid connected batteries will be connected and operating by the end of January 2018, bringing the total portfolio to 63MW across eight sites.
