Developer Dispatch has begun construction on a 45MW/90MWh battery energy storage system (BESS) project in the Netherlands, with Macquarie among its backers.
Dispatch’s Project Amethyst, in the municipality of Dordrecht, was described by certifications and standards group DNV as the northern European country’s biggest standalone BESS project to date.
DNV congratulated Dispatch on achieving financial close for the project last week, a couple of days after the developer announced via LinkedIn that construction had begun, posting pictures of the 6,000m2 site and project partners at a celebration event.
Those partners include the BESS technology provider and system integrator Fluence with engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) by Equans Energy & Infra, which offers services including balance of plant, civil works and grid connection.
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Since 2022, Equans has been owned by French construction company Bouygues, which acquired Equans from fellow French multinational ENGIE.
DNV acted as the developer’s technical advisor during the due diligence phase and will serve as the lender’s technical advisor throughout its lifetime.
A grid connection has been secured, which has been one of the big challenges for developers on the congested power grid to date. The BESS will charge from the grid at off-peak times and when solar PV and wind generation are abundant, outputting energy when needed during peak demand.
Project Amethyst is due to go into commercial operation in early 2026, and the energy trading arm of Dutch utility Eneco will optimise the asset’s market operation to market forecasts provided by data analytics company EnAppSys.
The project was publicly announced by Dispatch and Eneco in mid-June, as reported by Energy-Storage.news.
Dispatch’s finance partners are Belgian infrastructure investment fund EPICo² and Macquarie Capital, while Dutch bank ABN AMRO is a lender.
Dispatch said in June that the project marks “the first of many in a strategic alliance” that the developer has formed with Australia’s Macquarie Capital. The pair intend to collaborate on up to 3GWh of battery storage projects over the next seven years in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany.
According to Dispatch, the 2-hour project was designed in collaboration with local authorities. The modular design of the 144 Fluence Cube BESS units and site layout have enabled it to optimise space utilisation. The company also said the local permitting process was “streamlined” to expedite development.
Netherlands: More projects to come, but land and grid remain challenges
While the claim to be the largest project in construction to date in the Netherlands holds true, Project Amethyst looks set to be joined by many standalone and hybrid BESS projects of smaller or similar scale and a handful of much larger projects in the coming years.
The country’s largest operational BESS to date, the 30MW/68MWh ‘Pollux’ project by developer-owner SemperPower, went online just before the end of last year.
Equans is working on a 35MW/100MWh project by its former owner ENGIE, also to be supplied and integrated by Fluence, which while having a larger storage capacity in megawatt-hours than Amethyst will be paired with a solar PV plant.
Meanwhile, two developers, Lion Storage and Giga Storage, are both hoping to start construction on projects in the country which will each be over 300MW/1,000MWh before the end of this year.
In September, ESN Premium spoke with representatives of developer LC Energy, which won an irrevocable permit for a 500MW/2,000MWh standalone project in Groningen, scheduled to begin construction in 2026.
Friso Huizinga, managing director of LC Energy—a joint venture (JV) between the UK’s Low Carbon and Dutch engineers QING—said that the battery storage market has been unlocked by reforms to grid fees.
Without those reforms, which lowered costs levied onto battery projects connecting to the power grid by about 65%, no projects were able to achieve financial close in the Netherlands, Huizinga said.
However, it remains challenging to develop large-scale BESS projects due to the scarcity of land in the densely populated country and zoning laws that make it difficult to site projects in mostly agricultural areas. Many substations where batteries could connect to the transmission system in the Netherlands are often in rural areas.
