Investor Wood & Co engages partners to put 145MW of BESS into Nordic electricity markets

Finland: High per-capita electricity consumption

A sub-fund of the investor, Wood & Co Renewables, expanded its portfolio with the acquisition of a 30MW/60MWh project in Äänekoski and a 45MW/90MWh project in Laukaa, both in Central Finland.

Wood & Co described renewable energy facilities as the cheapest and fastest option for new sources of electricity generation, and its increase in Europe is contributing to a corresponding need for electricity storage.

BESS technology is moving from a complementary technology to renewables to a position of being critical infrastructure for electricity systems, the investment group said.     

Both projects were bought from another Czech investor, BHM Group, which is the majority owner of Finnish developer Winda Energy. Financial terms of the deal, which was completed in late March, were not disclosed.

Wood & Co investment director Robert Doucha said the projects are ready for construction and commercial operation planned for the second quarter of 2027. This timeline highlighted the need to engage a partner with local expertise, the director said, with Winda Energy active in the Finnish market since 2011.

Wood & Co noted in its release that Finland is a net importer of electricity and at the same time has some of the highest electricity consumption per capita in the European Union (EU), at about 15MWh per year, compared to a 6MWh per year average.

Sweden: New asset for SE2 bidding zone

This morning, Centrica Energy, which is the energy trading and optimisation arm of UK energy major Centrica, said it had signed an optimisation agreement with Ånge Storage Solutions for its 160MWh project in Ånge, in Central Sweden.

Ånge Storage Solutions is a joint venture (JV) between Wood & Co and Swiss developer Delta Capacity. The BESS project is scheduled for commissioning in the second quarter of this year, supporting grid flexibility in the country and strengthening system stability in SE2, one of four bidding zones in Sweden—in contrast to Finland, which has unified pricing nationally.

Centrica Energy’s announcement today comes just days after parent company Centrica, perhaps best known internationally as the owner of UK utility British Gas, unveiled the start of commercial operations at two of its own BESS projects in Sweden, totalling 40MW.

As with Centrica’s projects, the RTM optimiser will trade and optimise the Ånge project’s stored energy 24/7, leveraging advanced forecasting, real-time market benchmarking and AI-enhanced trading algorithms across wholesale electricity markets and ancillary services to stack revenue streams.

Nordic market’s evolving revenue stack

As mentioned in yesterday’s Energy-Storage.news coverage of the Centrica Sweden projects, the Nordic countries of northern Europe share an ancillary services market that is currently lucrative and leading to the development of BESS assets across the region.

In September 2024, Centrica acquired nine ready-to-build projects in Sweden from Swiss developer Fu-Gen totalling more than 100MW in the Scandinavian country’s SE3 bidding zone.

A Centrica spokesperson told Energy-Storage.news that Centrica Energy optimises its Sweden assets by “continuously benchmarking in real-time where the strongest value lies,” between the ancillary services manual Frequency Restoration Reserve (mFRR) and Frequency Control Reserve (FCR) and wholesale trading in Day-Ahead, Intraday and Imbalance markets.

“In 2025, the mFRR market emerged as the dominant revenue stream for grid-scale batteries across the Nordic region,” the Centrica spokesperson said.

“Structural reforms, including the transition to automated activation and the shift to 15-minute market time units, materially increased activation volumes and price volatility.”

Meanwhile, its customer Wood & Co said it would target a long-term return of around 15% per annum, back in October 2025 as it opened an investment round and announced the acquisition of two BESS asset in Finland and Sweden and said it planned to make further purchases in the region.

While the Nordic market is therefore a hot prospect right now, Centrica did note that, as with ancillary services opportunities in the UK before it, saturation may come sooner rather than later as a growing fleet of assets looks to provide the same frequency regulation services to the grid. This would require agile trading strategies to navigate, the spokesperson said.

“Today market saturation is no longer a future risk, it is already visible in several ancillary services. FCR markets in particular show clear signs of pressure, with declining prices and limited headroom for additional capacity. This shift marks a structural change for battery economics in the Nordics, where relying on a single ancillary revenue stream is no longer sufficient to underpin long-term investment cases.”

Currently, the largest BESS project in construction in the Nordic countries is thought to be the 125MW/250MWh project in Haapajärvi by Swiss developer Alpiq with partners including EPC contractor Nordic Electro Power (NEPower) and power conversion system (PCS) supplier Hitachi Energy. In December last year, Hitachi Energy PCS head Alberto Prieto told Energy-Storage.news that challenges in the Nordic region include its cold environment and stringent grid codes.

Prieto also said that from a technology provider’s perspective, adapting to the evolving revenue stack is a about “software and control upgrades, rather than major hardware changes,” through which “systems can be adapted over time to support additional applications as market rules and price signals evolve.”

“While the exact revenue mix in Finland is still evolving and may differ from neighbouring markets, the overall direction is clear: battery storage will play an increasingly important role in providing fast and flexible grid services,” Prieto said.