Generate Capital has acquired US utility-scale battery storage developer esVolta, marking the sustainable infrastructure investment firm’s first step into the battery market at the front of the meter.
Generate yesterday announced the deal which adds the developer’s portfolio of over 900 MWh of operational and contracted projects in the United States and Canada to the investor’s pipeline.
This includes the 75 MW/300 MWh Hummingbird Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) project under development in California, which is committed to helping the utility Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) reduce its dependence on with respect to peaking gas-fired power stations.
Most of esVolta’s listed completed projects are in California, although the company was behind the largest BESS in Canada at the time of commissioning, an 8.8 MW/40.8 MWh at Stratford, Ontario.
The company’s projects under development are spread across eight U.S. states, including leading energy storage markets like California, Texas, and Arizona, as well as emerging nations like Virginia, Washington, and New -Mexico.
Meanwhile, Generate Capital has invested in a wide range of clean energy and other sustainable infrastructure asset classes since its inception in 2014 by a group of entrepreneurs that included solar industry veteran Jigar Shah. , who now heads the U.S. Department of Energy’s office of loan programs for the Biden-Harris administration.
The company invests in and partners with technology and project developers, in areas such as drinking water supply, waste management, energy efficiency and many more. So far, however, its involvement in battery storage has been limited to the meter, through things like the electrification of buildings and the clean energy retrofit of schools and hospitals.
Last July, Generate Capital secured $2 billion in funding to expand its businessallowing it to add to an existing asset base that is already worth about as much.
Since this fundraising, the group’s investments include a US$240 million stake in American Community and Distributed Solar Developer Nexamp and $500 million for large-scale renewable energy developer Pine Gate Renewables. Both Nexamp and Pine Gate are working on projects that combine solar PV with energy storage; the latter has notably signed contracts for the supply of multi-gigawatt non-lithium battery technologies, with the metal-hydrogen startup Enervenue as well as the zinc battery players Urban Electric Power and Eos Energy Enterprises.
“We have long believed that battery storage is essential to building a sustainable energy system and ensuring grid reliability as we scale up renewables and accelerate the energy transition. That’s why we’ve been investing money and effort to grow this market since we started the company,” said Scott Jacobs, CEO and co-founder of Generate Capital.
“Our partnership with esVolta today highlights the enormous potential of battery storage projects to rebuild our energy system.”
The news comes on the heels of another acquisition of a US grid-scale battery developer by a major player earlier this month. Norwegian state-owned utility Equinor has acquired East Point Energy, which has developed and sold three large-scale projects in Virginia to date since its founding in 2018.
Upon closing of the deal, Equinor said it was looking to quickly establish a foothold in the utility-scale BESS market. Unlike esVolta, East Point Energy only develops projects, it does not own or operate them, and Equinor said adding this capacity would be part of its plans for the company.
esVolta: Quick Look at New Generate Acquisition
esVolta President Randolph Mann described the company’s new owner as the “ideal choice” to support its long-term growth, sharing a vision “of a modernized, decarbonized network and a holistic approach to build it”.
Here is a brief overview of the history of esVolta, as reported by Energy-Storage.news since the company was founded in 2017.
December 2017: Powin Energy sells a 116 MWh portfolio of project assets and future development opportunities to esVolta, helping to fund Powin’s pivot away from development activities to focus on the systems builder role integration and energy storage for which it is best known today. The duo retained co-ownership of some projects in the portfolio.
October-November 2018: Investor-owned California utility (IOU) Southern California Edison (SCE) awards esVolta three projects totaling 38.5 MWh of capacity, which are soon after approved by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) . Together, they will help SCE manage its power grids, serving as wireless alternatives (NWA) to building expensive transmission infrastructure.
July 2019: Wholesale electricity provider Southern Power announced that it was working with the developer on 86 MW/345 MWh from BESS at four sites in California.
February 2020: esVolta closes a senior secured credit facility which the company said was worth “approximately US$140 million” and would be used to develop a California pipeline of projects dubbed “esFaraday”, totaling 136 MW of generation and a capacity of 480 MWh.
April 2020: esVolta is selected to supply a 15 MW/60 MWh BESS to the California Choice Energy Authority (CalChoice), a Community Choice Aggregator (CCA) supplying electricity to several cities in the state.
August 2020: Indian software and data analytics company ION Energy is selected by esVolta to improve the operational efficiency of the developer’s 580 MWh battery storage fleet in California, including assets in operation and under development .
January 2021: Financial services group Macquarie’s Green Investment Group invests an undisclosed sum in esVolta, identifying it has “significant growth potential”. The investment took the form of a bridge loan which was then converted into an equity investment.
March 2021: Appearing at an online edition of Energy Storage Summit USA, hosted by our publisher Solar Media, esVolta President Randolph Mann discussed some of the complexities and potential for solving big energy problems and gaining momentum. money with battery storage.
July 2022: Acquired by Generate Capital.
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