Gresham House Energy Storage Fund plc announced that fourteen of its projects, representing 568MW/920MWh, have secured fixed price contracts with a subsidiary of Octopus Energy (Octopus), which provides attractively priced, two-year fixed-price contracts for approximately half of the Company's 1,072MW target portfolio starting in a phased manner from 1 July 2024. For the term of these arrangements, Octopus will pay a fixed fee per MW on these projects in return for the use of each project's batteries. The fixed fee rate is determined by the duration of the asset (expressed in hours) and excludes Capacity Market payments which the projects will continue to receive separately.

Including the Company's Capacity Market revenues across its full portfolio, the majority of which are for 15 years index-linked to CPI, the Company expects to have annual contracted revenues of c.£43 million during the tolling arrangement. This contract underpins GRID's revenues and provides a greater degree of certainty over the Company's cash flows. For the portion of the portfolio contracted with Octopus, the Company has secured a higher price than recent weak performance at the start of the year, and at a competitive price for underlying battery economics.

Following this agreement, which allows time for assets to be onboarded by Octopus and allows GRID to complete the construction and/or augmentation of certain projects, the end-of-2024 portfolio is expected to be c.50% hedged: 568MW/920MWh of the target portfolio will be contracted under the agreement while 504MW/776MWh will continue to operate under existing optimisation agreements. These fixed price contracts will provide greater confidence in restarting a dividend at the appropriate stage in 2025.