JLEN, the London-listed environmental infrastructure fund, has announced the acquisition of Yorkshire Hydropower Holdings for a total consideration, including working capital, of £4.3m.
Image: The acquisition was funded by the group’s internal cash resources. Photo courtesy of rawpixel from Pixabay.
YHHL owns 100% of the equity in Yorkshire Hydropower Limited (“YHL”), which in turn holds the rights to two operational hydro projects and an operational battery storage system.
This represents the Company’s first investment in two new sectors – run-of-river hydro and battery storage, further diversifying the Company’s portfolio of environmental infrastructure projects including, wind, solar, anaerobic digestion, waste and wastewater.
YHHL has been acquired from a group of high-net-worth investors, which provided the original funding under the Enterprise Investment Scheme.
The Yorkshire-based projects acquired, are:
- Kirkthorpe hydro, a 500kW single turbine hydro project located on the River Calder, which was commissioned on 21 November 2016
- Thrybergh hydro, a twin screw 260kW hydro project located on the River Don, commissioned 26 October 2015; and
- a 1.2MW battery co-located at Thrybergh, commissioned in January 2018.
Both hydro projects are accredited under the 20-year Feed-in-Tariff scheme. The battery storage project at Thrybergh is currently dedicated to a Firm Frequency Response contract.
This acquisition increases the total capacity of renewable energy assets in the JLEN investment portfolio to 281.16MW.
The acquisition was funded by the group’s internal cash resources.
Richard Morse, Chairman of JLEN, said: “We are pleased to make our first investment into two new asset classes in run-of-river hydro and battery storage. These projects have a proven operational history, benefit from strong contractual revenues and broaden the diversification within the JLEN portfolio. Furthermore, they demonstrate the synergistic benefits of co-locating renewable energy generation and storage technology.”