Gresham House Energy Storage Fund (GRID) has signed a sale and purchase agreement for the conditional acquisition of a 480MW battery project near Rayleigh, Essex.
This increases GRID’s pipeline of projects from 694MW to 1,174MW. Once built, Rayleigh will be almost five times the size of GRID’s currently largest operational project, Melksham (100MW) and twice the size of the two largest projects in its pipeline (each 240MW).
This is a major milestone in GRID’s three-year plan (set out in November 2024) of achieving £150mn EBITDA.
Being in southern England, it is expected to benefit from negative grid charges (known as TNUoS costs) for at least the first few years of its operational life as it can contribute to supply at peak times which would otherwise be sourced from further afield, reducing the burden on the network.
The project should also complement over 6GW of new intermittent offshore wind power from projects set to be built off the Essex, Lincolnshire and East Riding coast.
Conditions to completion of the acquisition include the project receiving an acceptable ‘Gate 2’ connection offer (expected to be received between September 2026 and January 2027).
Ben Guest, managing director of GRID’s manager, said: “Rayleigh is an exciting project for GRID in terms of its sheer size, strategic location and, of course, potential investment returns and positive expected impact on the company’s NAV per share. This project alone would add almost 50% to the currently operational portfolio’s installed capacity and greatly expands the new project pipeline already announced in our Three-year Plan.
“We have significant flexibility to build this project to a minimum 2-hour, or much longer duration.”
QuotedData’s Richard Williams said: “This represents a significant strategic step for GRID, both in scale and positioning within the UK energy transition. As well as substantially increasing its development pipeline to 1,174MW, it also highlights the company’s shift towards much larger, longer-duration battery assets capable of generating more diversified and potentially resilient revenues. The location of the project in southern England is particularly important, with battery storage near major demand centres in the South East expected to become more valuable.”
