Fluence and Atlantic Green took home two trophies each as our publisher Solar Media hosted the first-ever annual Energy Storage Awards.
The 2023 ceremony was held at a prestigious London venue on Thursday (28 September), with 12 categories judged by a hand-picked panel of independent judges.
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An outright winner was selected for each category, while Highly Commended trophies were handed to runners-up.
Amid the chaos wreaked by the global climate crisis, it was a rare night off and night out for attendees and a chance to celebrate the tremendous progress made by the industry so far, while acknowledging that the real work is only just beginning.
Comedian Jayde Adams admirably kept the excited audience in order and entertained. Some gossip from her appearance on the primetime TV show ‘Dancing with the Stars’ was augmented by plenty of jokes and anecdotes.
Meanwhile, her attempt at asking ChatGPT to write a joke about energy storage demonstrated clearly that, much like when it comes to battery storage asset optimisation, rumours that the role of human ingenuity will soon become redundant have been heavily exaggerated.
The awards were for activities taking place across the past year in the European industry, although it was perhaps no surprise that the Great Britain (GB) market, which leads the continent for deployment by some way, was largely dominant.
However, although system integrator and technology/service provider Fluence and developer Atlantic Green perhaps led with their two award wins each, there was an interesting spread of different names engraved onto the 12 main and runner-up trophies.
We look forward to seeing how the industry dynamic shifts next year, given the growing focus on renewable energy in Europe.
We’d like to thank our esteemed panel of judges for the hours of work put in to choose a worthy set of winners, a task that was not easy given the high standards and high volumes of nominations.
Scroll down to read the list of winners of the inaugural Energy Storage Awards.
Developer of the Year
Winner: Zenobe Energy
Highly commended: Kyon Energy
Winner Zenobe’s remit is providing end-to-end electrification solutions, including smart fleet solutions for electric vehicles (EVs), but it was the company’s activities in designing, financing, building and operating battery energy storage system (BESS) assets that caught the eye of judges this year.
System Integrator of the Year
Winner: Fluence
Highly commended: TrinaStorage
Formed in 2017 but built on more than a decade of work in energy storage by AES and Siemens, the former joint venture partners which launched it, Fluence was a deserving and perhaps unsurprising winner in the prestigious system integrator of the year category.
Outstanding Contribution to Energy Storage
Winner: Alex O’Cinneide, Gore Street Capital
Highly commended: Lars Stephan, Fluence
Gore Street Capital CEO Alex O’Cinneide was rightly recognised for a longstanding contribution to the rapid development of the energy storage industry. From having the vision and early foresight to launch Gore Street Energy Storage Fund to taking the developer-investor into international markets, O’Cinneide has been at the forefront and someone the market looks up to.
Trading and Optimisation Team of the Year
Winner: Habitat Energy
Highly commended: EDF UK
The increasing sophistication of teams behind trading desks and optimisers has underpinned the success of the battery storage industry. Habitat Energy, which like Gore Street is on a wave of international expansion, showed judges plenty of evidence of its success in pairing artificial intelligence and human expertise to maximise revenues of its clients’ portfolios.
Grid-scale Standalone Energy Storage Project of the Year
Winner: Pillswood Battery Energy Storage System (BESS)
Highly commended: Capenhurst 100MW BESS
Harmony Energy’s 96MW/198MWh project in northern England won the standalone project of the year gong. Officially opened in March 2023, the Pillswood BESS was profiled by Harmony operations director Alex Thornton for our quarterly journal PV Tech Power (Vol.35) a few months ago, and you can read all about it in an exclusive extract of the article here.
Product of the Year
Winner: UltraStack, Fluence
Highly commended: Li-Ion Tamer GEN 3 Lithium-Ion Battery Off-Gas Detection System
Fluence’s UltraStack is the company’s (and perhaps the industry’s) first product aimed at the transmission segment. The system integration award winner has identified ‘storage-as-a-transmission-asset’ (SATA) as a high value application, which needed its own high-spec solution, which Fluence launched at the beginning of 2023.
Breakthrough R&D/Innovation of the Year
Winner: EnZinc
One of a number of companies developing stationary energy storage based around zinc chemistry batteries, EnZinc targets applications including data centre and backup power systems.
Newcomer/Startup of the Year
Winner: Atlantic Green
Investor-developer-operator of BESS assets Atlantic Green was formed as a joint venture between private investment group Interland and independent power producer (IPP) Nofar Energy, racing out of the blocks to win the newcomer/startup of the year award.
Challenge of the Year
Winner: Atlantic Green
Atlantic Green’s second win of the night saw the company and its partners recognised for coming through challenging circumstances to successfully deliver a grid-scale BESS project.
Grid-scale Co-located or Hybrid Energy Storage Project of the Year
Winner: EasyPower’s Hybrid EV Charging Station
Greek tech company EasyPower delivered a project in its home country that enabled electric vehicle (EV) charging to take place in a grid-constrained area, through smart combination with solar PV and BESS. One judge said it represented an “interesting application of rapidly in-demand technologies, evidence of innovation and problem-solving in design and execution”.
Distributed Energy Storage Project of the Year
Winner: Elisa Distributed Energy Storage
Finnish utility company Elisa’s virtual power plant (VPP) project, which utilises existing telecommunications network infrastructure to host battery storage and smart energy management solutions, won distributed project of the year.
Grid Operator-led Project of the Year
Winner: ELES Sincro.Grid Project
Slovenian grid operator ELES led the way for this project, which aims to use battery storage to enhance and reinforce operation of the grid in Slovenia and Croatia. A project of major strategic importance for Europe, it looks to be part of a wider effort we can look forward to seeing in the continent and elsewhere as the energy transition progresses.
Winners’ gallery and more information including the judging panel can be seen on the official event site here.
