Still Waters Green Technology (SWGT) and Santander UK have reached the £28m financial close on the second phase of the Mannington battery storage project in Swindon.
The battery energy storage system (BESS) asset manager has secured a non-recourse project finance debt facility with Santander UK in support of the construction and operation of the asset.
Scheduled to reach commercial operations in October 2021, the battery asset is on track to become the first operational two-hour duration BESS asset in the UK.
Santander’s project finance team provided finance by structuring traditional project finance debt alongside a debt tranche supported by its Environmental & Social Growth Funding.
With its immediate pipeline of more than 200MW under development, SWGT has accelerated its growth to become one of the UK's largest independent battery storage asset owners, developers and operators.
The Mannington project site houses 50 40 foot containers which integrate lithium batteries and will provide up to 75GWh of annual import and export capacity to the National Grid, a material contribution towards helping to achieve the UK's Net Zero ambition.
Olivia He, chief investment officer at SWGT, said: "As energy storage trading and optimisation evolves, longer duration batteries represent the cutting edge trend in the UK power market.
"Mannington Phase Two financial close allows us to seize this market opportunity at the very beginning of 2021. We were hugely impressed by Mark Cumbo and Santander’s banking teams’ professionalism, expertise and efficiency, making it possible for a highly innovative and complex transaction to be completed expeditiously.
"With the successful launch of the Mannington flagship project, SWGT is ready for scalable and exponential growth that contributes to the green energy transition both locally and globally."
Mark Cumbo, director at Specialised & Project Finance, Santander UK, added: "This agreement further demonstrates our ability to work with ambitious teams like SWGT to deliver complex and innovative funding solutions for projects that trade on a predominantly merchant basis. Battery Energy Storage is an important and fast- growing sector that we are keen to support."
"This was also a key project for the bank as it was our first SONIA linked transaction completed under a project finance structure. This project was delivered alongside our specialist relationship banking team, led by Rakesh Ramana. Rakesh and I look forward to working closely with Olivia and the SWGT team on future projects and positively contributing to the wider climate change agenda."
Santander was advised by TLT LLP (legal), RSM (financial model) and Aon (insurance).
