storage

New Octopus Energy makes first investment to develop UK’s largest battery  

Octopus Energy Group has launched its new renewables fund Octopus Energy Development Partnership (OEDP) which has just made its debut investment in renewables developer Exagen to build new green energy and rapidly grow the UK’s energy storage capacity.
New Octopus Energy makes first investment to develop UK’s largest battery  
Courtesy of Octopus Energy.

The 220 million euro OEDP focuses on investing in early stages of building new green energy, vital to help reduce Europe’s dependence on gas imports and to lower energy bills in future.

Managed by Octopus Energy Generation, OEDP is targeting solar, onshore wind and energy storage projects in the UK and the rest of Europe. There’s also potential to optimise assets through KrakenFlex, Octopus’ rapidly growing flexibility and trading platform, which currently manages 1,300 MW of green energy assets.

This latest multi-million pound deal sees OEDP take a 24 percent stake in Exagen, which is working on large-scale solar and battery facilities, partnering with farmers, landowners and local communities to build projects that help bring energy security.

This deal includes the option to purchase one of the UK’s largest batteries at 500 MW/1 GWh located in the Midlands, England, scheduled to be operational by 2027. This standalone battery would be the UK’s largest, and with the capacity to export the equivalent electricity usage of 235,000 homes in a single day. Batteries provide grid-balancing services by storing cheap green energy when it is abundant, and releasing it when it is needed.

As part of the agreement, OEDP has also acquired three solar farms with batteries on-site in the Midlands and North East of England, which Exagen is currently developing. The solar farms have a combined capacity of approximately 400 MW. Exagen already has 2 GW of solar and battery storage projects in their pipeline, which Octopus will be able to invest in once they’re ready to build.

Octopus Energy Generation, one of Europe’s largest investors in renewable energy, already manages £4.4 billion of renewable energy assets across Europe. For years they’ve been backing renewable developers, and in the last year alone invested in floating offshore wind developer Simply Blue, onshore wind developers Wind2 in the UK and NorGen in Finland, and solar developer Gridsource in the UK.

“This fund is helping to unlock huge amounts of new renewable energy across Europe, turbocharging the journey to greater energy security” said Zoisa North-Bond, CEO of Octopus Energy Generation. “The more new green power we can build, the faster we can reduce our dependence on gas imports and drive down energy bills for people in the UK and the rest of Europe.”

Alex Brierley, Co-head of Octopus Energy Generation’s fund management team, added that making the first investment from this new renewable development fund is a major milestone for Octopus Energy and that the company has got more coming up.

“Working with Exagen, there’s a massive opportunity to scale solar and battery storage projects - and these will play an absolutely integral role in the flexible renewable energy system of the future” said Mr Brierley.

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Octopus Energy

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