Infrastructure investor InfraVia Capital Partners has bought a majority stake in Giga Storage, a Netherlands-headquartered BESS developer which is building a 2.4GWh project in Belgium.
Paris-headquartered InfraVia announced the deal yesterday (15 May) which will see the founder-led management team retain a ‘significant’ stake in the company and continue to lead activities.
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Giga Storage has built up a near-term pipeline of 2GW of battery energy storage system (BESS) projects in the two countries, with operational projects in the Netherlands including what was, at the time of its November 2022 commissioning. the largest BESS there at 24MW/48MWh.
Since then however its focus has shifted towards neighbouring Belgium which industry sources say has a much more storage-friendly policy and market environment. It is developing separate 300MW/1,200MWh and 600MW/2,400MWh BESS projects there, with the latter recently approved for construction which should start this year.
Athanasios Zoulovits, partner at InfraVia, said: “We are thrilled to welcome GIGA Storage into the InfraVia family. This partnership underscores our conviction that BESS is an enabler to the decarbonisation of the European power market.
Ruud Nijs, CEO of Giga Storage and a previous guest blog contributor on Energy-Storage.news, added: “Our ambition is to have a multiple of GWs of installed energy storage power in Europe in the years to come.”
Energy-Storage.news heard last week that new grid connection and grid fee arrangements could slash grid opex costs for operators, significantly improving the business case and leading to more deployments than previously forecast (Premium access).
The acquisition of Giga by InfraVia follows a trend of the biggest BESS developer-operator also being bought by large investment firms in the UK and Germany, explored in a recent analysis piece (also Premium access).
