Competitive Landscape
An independent pure play BESS 'originator to operator' accelerating clean energy transition.
Invester confidence at an all-time high
Prior to 2022 the primary barrier to entry in the UK’s Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) market was access to capital. The result of which has seen continual consolidation as well as portfolio acquisition by a small number of Investment Funds.
These constraints have seen a small number of UK players working actively to bring BESS sites ‘on line’ and then rapidly disposing of these assets at a healthy premium to Investment Funds who then hold them long term. The developers then redeploy their funds in building out a subsequent pipeline. These assets are generally operated by third party energy traders (BESS Optimisers), who provide route to market to the assets and charge 6-7% of gross battery revenue for providing those services.
In the UK market, the majority of utility scale battery assets have been developed by the likes of Noriker Power, Anesco, Zenobe, RES to name a few.
Upon commissioning these assets are offloaded to listed Investment Funds at a premium. Investment Funds such as Gresham House PLC are the biggest player in the space and have accrued 425 MW of installed capacity till date and a have a growing pipeline of further 1200 MW capacity. The next on the list is Gore Street Capital who have approximately 230 MW of operational battery assets and further 1000 MW of assets in the pipeline. Harmony Energy Income Trust was formed in Q4 2021 and since then have energized 100 MW of BESS and have a further 200 MW under construction.
In the last few months, investor confidence has risen in BESS as an asset class and institutional investors are aggressively supporting BESS development either through dedicated development arm such as Downing LLP, Armstrong Capital, Quinbrook Partners etc or by backing established developers such as by Macquarie Group, Triple Point.
