• Thrive Renewables is offering Bristol Energy Co-operative up to 20% investment in its new 20 MW battery storage project located on Feeder Road in Bristol.

• This will be the first commercially owned standalone battery project in which an owner has offered a local community group an opportunity for co-investment.

• The battery is currently being commissioned and will start providing vital flexibility and balancing services to the grid shortly.

• Thrive has now funded over a third of Bristol's total renewable electricity generation and storage capacity (37%), investing a total of £29 million in three projects in the city, including England's largest onshore wind turbine which is owned by the local community in Lawrence Weston.

Bristol-based renewable energy investment company, Thrive Renewables PLC, is teaming up with community energy group, Bristol Energy Co-operative (BEC), to give local residents the opportunity to own a share of its new 20 MW battery project.

Thrive has offered BEC an opportunity to co-invest into the project located on the industrial and residential area of Feeder Road in Bristol – which means local good causes will be able to benefit from a share of any revenues generated. This is the first commercial project of its kind where an owner has offered the local community an opportunity to co-own a standalone battery asset.

The battery is currently being commissioned and will have the capacity to store and deliver 1.5 hours or 30MWh of electricity to the national and local grid.

Matthew Clayton, Managing Director of Thrive Renewables, said:

"Thrive was set up nearly 30 years ago to power the UK's clean energy transition by connecting people to clean energy – offering co-investment to community groups helps us deliver that. To ensure a just transition, we need the benefits of renewables to be local, giving everyone the opportunity to access cleaner energy, cheaper bills and new green jobs.

"Battery storage is a critical technology for the UK to reach net zero, storing electricity when renewable power is abundant and making it available during peak times when consumption is at its highest. We're thrilled to be working with the local community on this project, which not only supports the UK's net zero goals, but Bristol's ambition to become a carbon neutral city by 2030."

In total, Thrive has invested £29 million in Bristol's clean energy infrastructure. In addition to its 8.2 MW wind farm in Avonmouth, which it built in 2013 and still operates, the company provided a £4 million loan to Ambition Community Energy in 2022 to fund the construction of England's largest community-owned onshore wind turbine. Bristol currently has 144 MW of clean electricity projects, including storage, that are either operational or in construction. Thrive has funded over a third of this (37%)^[1], with its Bristol-based projects providing 32.4 MW of clean capacity.

The local community have been heavily involved since the start of the project, with the site originally destined to be a diesel-fuelled STOR plant in 2020. A group of residents from St Phillip's Marsh formed Residents Against Dirty Energy (RADE) to fight against the plans, and the planning application was rejected.

Andy O'Brien, co-director, Bristol Energy Cooperative, said:

"Community energy gives people agency to take practical action on climate change in their local community. This project is a perfect example of how the community coming together can bring about real change. People power fought off a highly-polluting diesel scheme and replaced it with the storage technology we need to help us go net zero."

Stuart Phelps, core member at RADE said:

"8 years ago, RADE formed to fight 48 Diesel Generators 100m from the Nursery School. We've come full circle and welcome a battery storage scheme on the same site. If the Diesel scheme had gone ahead, it would have been like 100 double-decker buses idling outside the school..."

With construction now complete, Thrive has also developed a landscape plan for Feeder Road that will help protect and enhance the site's biodiversity, with a focus on providing a variety of animals with more places to nest and shelter. This includes installing bird, bat and invertebrate boxes, as well as planting trees, hedgerows, species rich grassland, shade scrub and native ferns that will strengthen local habitat corridors and provide wildlife with food, nectar and pollen. Once the work is complete, Thrive will have invested an additional c.£100,000 in biodiversity improvements.

The Feeder Road project brought together a number of Bristol-based businesses including developer, Aura Power, as well as renewables consultancy, Everoze, which acted as a technical advisor on the project.

G2 Energy carried out the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract, while Trina Storage supplied the physical battery system.

In total, Thrive has funded and built 32 clean energy projects which, since 1994, have generated over 2 million MWh of clean electricity, enough to power over 508,000 average UK homes, and delivered emissions reductions of 917,517 tCO2e.

^[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/renewable-energy-planning-database-monthly-extract

*Based on non-combustion renewables including wind, solar and battery storage, excluding anaerobic digesters and energy from waste.