Image: Hazel Capital/Gresham House.

Energy storage investment fund Gresham House has unveiled a new share placing, the proceeds of which will allow it to “grow materially” in the UK energy storage market.

Gresham intends to raise gross proceeds of around £58 million which will be used to pursue both existing and new pipelines of assets in a bid to cement its position as “the most established energy storage fund in the UK”, the company said.

The fund this morning announced a non-pre-emptive placing of up to 56 million new ordinary shares, priced at 103 pence per placing share. Those shares will be ranked pari passu and as such, will be eligible for the to-be-announced dividend for the period 30 June 2019 to 30 September 2019.

The proceeds from the share placing are to be used by Gresham to acquire selected battery storage assets within both its exclusivity pipeline and a further pipeline of assets it is conducting due diligence on.

The exclusivity pipeline of projects is being developed by Gresham House and Noriker Power, and has been well documented by the company previously.

However the further pipeline of assets is new, and comprises four already-operational energy storage systems with a total connected capacity of 95MW. In addition, project rights for a further six projects, with a total connected capacity of 240MW, are included.

The further pipeline has an estimated investment value in excess of £200 million, Gresham said, whilst adding that in pursuing already operational assets, the fund can benefit from income-producing assets as opposed to those that require build-out.

John Leggate, chairman at Gresham House Energy Storage Fund, said that the announcement reflected the investor’s ambitions to “grow materially” in the UK battery storage scene.

“The continuing shift towards a reduced carbon national energy portfolio urgently demands more utility scale batteries. The National Grid outage on 9 August provided confirmatory evidence that investment in energy storage is key to the security of this vital element of the UK’s critical national infrastructure.

“The continued roll out of renewable energy nationally supports our investment hypothesis and the board and Gresham House team remain well positioned to deliver on the objective of creating a portfolio of high performing energy storage projects,” he said.

It constitutes the second placing in six months, after Gresham House sought to raise £75 million in April this year to pursue its initial pipeline of development projects. It has subsequently acquired a stake in development partner Noriker Power in a move which it said consolidated its position in the market.