Arlington Energy, a clean energy investment group, has announced plans to build out a 1GW portfolio of energy storage and gas peaker projects across the UK after securing initial funding of £200 million (US$255 million) from an offshore fund of institutional investment.

The sites, ranging from 5-50MW, will be developed over the next three years with the first aiming for completion in July 2019 as part of 250MW slated for completion by October.

Around 40% of the portfolio will be made up of standalone battery storage, with over 100MW anticipated to be in the ground under the first tranche of projects.

While the company has yet to reveal where its projects will be, a 20MW gas site in Chesterfield and a developed 40MW energy storage site in Bedford was recently sold to Arlington Infrastructure, the company set up in May 2018 to build out the portfolio.

Matt Clare, director of Arlington Energy, said: “Securing this level of funding has been a fantastic achievement for us, and for the UK energy sector. We are extremely pleased to be able to deploy so many assets in the UK to support the grid network.”

The company has yet to select its technology partners for the storage projects, and is working with advisory services firm DNV GL to provide technical assistance on procuring and deploying the most suitable assets for the portfolio.

“They will be tendering every top manufacturer and system provider with experience in energy storage globally,” Clare said.

The projects will rely on Capacity Market contracts it hopes in to win in February 2019’s T-4 auction to support a merchant trading strategy in what it sees as a distributed energy market susceptible to system volatility.

This approach was recently called for by a panel of energy storage providers at the UK trade event Solar & Storage Live, which claimed that investors needed to “come to grips” with merchant risk following years of subsidy-backed opportunities.

South Korea’s government is planning for 100MW of battery storage as part of a nearly 3GW hub of solar PV and wind on reclaimed land in Saemangeum, which is an estuarine tidal flat on the coast of the Yellow Sea.

A spokesperson from Saemangeum Development and Investment Agency (SDIA), an agency run under the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, told Energy-Storage.News that the agency will oversee 2.6GW of projects. This will include 2.4GW of solar, 100MW of wind and 100MW of battery storage.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (MAFRA) will oversee 400MW of solar PV.

The project overview was announced this week, but this vision is very much in the early stages and detailed plans are only likely to be brought out at a later date. The projects would be located on reclaimed land at Saemangeum, which the Korean Government is hoping to turn into a global business hub and free trade hub of Northeast Asia, after a major damming operation known as the Saemangeum Seawall Project, completed in 2010, said to be the largest dyke in the world.

Separately, a release from the Jeonbuk Province government announced plans for up to 1GW of offshore windfarms off the coast of the city of Gunsan, as well as plans to build a port behind the offshore wind farm to attract manufacturing companies.

Back in September SDIA issued a release notifying that it had signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Rena International, a foreign investment company established by Korean company, Geumgang ENG, jointly with China-based PV firm Renesola, for them to invest around KRW55.5 billion (US$49 million) in the Saemangeum Industrial Complex from 2018 to 2020, for assembling PV modules and manufacturing energy storage systems, while creating 120 jobs in the process.

Under another MoU, NemoENG would also invest KRW47.5 billion in Saemangeum Industrial Complex (lot 2) to produce floating and mooring systems for solar PV as well as energy storage devices from 2018 to 2022. South Korean state-utility Korea East-West Power Co. (EWP) recently completed a 3.5MW floating solar project at a coal-fired power plant.