Australia’s Westpac and Singapore-headquartered UOB have teamed up to provide a debt financing package for one of Europe’s largest operational BESS projects, located in the UK’s southern county of Hampshire.
The two banks will each contribute 50% to a debt facility for UK-based developer BW ESS’ flagship Bramley BESS facility, rated at 100MW/313MWh.
“As Westpac continues to build its international presence supporting our global customers, we’re delighted to support BW ESS in its first UK project financing and look forward to replicating this success more widely across Europe and Australia,” said Sarah Heavey, Westpac’s Head of Energy, Infrastructure & Resources.
“Bramley is a flagship asset in our growing UK portfolio. We were nonetheless encouraged by the exceptionally high level of interest the project generated from the lending community,” said CFO of BW ESS, Marc Weisser.
BW ESS holds a seven-year fixed-price tolling agreement with Shell Energy Europe, which trades the Bramley BESS in the UK’s ancillary services and wholesale electricity markets.
One of UK’s “longest duration” BESS assets
Since being cleared for commercial operations in February, the Bramley BESS project “has been consistently one of the largest single sources of energy storage capacity available to the UK grid”, according to BW ESS.
“This is an important milestone in longer duration energy storage, providing additional resilience to the UK’s grid as the country makes further progress on its strategic energy transition journey”, said Heavey.
BW ESS’ Bramley project utilises technology from Sungrow and is the first in Europe to showcase the Chinese BESS suppliers PowerTitan 2.0 units. This is the same technology to be deployed at Zen Energy’s 111MW/291MWh Templers battery in South Australia, which is expected to come online within the next few months.
The three hour discharge duration of the Bramley project highlights the trend of companies moving away from two hour duration lithium-ion based-batteries, not just in the UK and Australia, but around the world.
Looking even further beyond durations of three hours, California-based energy storage company Energy Vault recently acquired a project in NSW and plans to deploy its 8-hour lithium iron phosphate (LFP) technology at the site located near Narrabri.
Energy storage facilities with the ability to discharge for eight hours or more will play a vital role in Australia’s electricity grid, as the country gradually shutters its aging coal fleet.
With this in mind, the NSW State Government this month launched its fourth tender for long-duration storage assets able to come online by 2034, in order to fill the dispatchable capacity void left by the retiring fossil fuel fleet.
CMS served as legal advisor for BW ESS, whereas Ashurst advised lenders WestPac and UOB. In terms of technical and market support on the deal, Everoze and Baringa advised on each, respectively.
