Zenobe secures ‘ground-breaking’ £25 million funding from Santander to pursue further growth

• UK battery storage firm Zenobe has secured £25 million in funding from Santander as it looks to continue its growth.

The funding is a non-recourse £25 million debt facility from Santander Corporate & Commercial.

The capital raised from the debt facility will allow Zenobe to invest in behind-the-meter services offered to commercial and industrial customers, and finance the construction and/or purchase of new grid scale battery storage projects.

In May, Zenobe launched its end-to-end EV solution for bus fleets, with up to £120 million to go into the scheme. The new funding will also allow Zenobe to provide this service, which includes the design, ownership, operation and financing of stationary batteries and charging infrastructure with associated software as a service. This also includes financing the buses batteries and providing this as a service to operators.

In August, 34 electric buses were launched in London under the scheme in collaboration with bus operator Abellio. EV schemes in Guildford and Newport are also being run by Zenobe.

Nicholas Beatty, founder director at Zenobe, said the funding demonstrates Zenobe’s “continuing leadership” with its focus on “innovation within the technology, operational and financing sides of the business”.

PwC’s Debt and Capital Advisory and Corporate Finance teams advised on the debt raise, which is being lauded as “ground-breaking”, with Zenobe “one of the UK’s first battery storage companies” to successfully raise debt financing for projects that trade predominantly on a merchant basis.

Zenobe has 73MW of operational grid-scale battery capacity, and recently partnered Open Energi for the automated trading and optimisation of its Hill Farm battery.

It raised £35 million of equity from Japanese power giants JERA and TEPCO in February.