Italian renewables company Redelfi has launched an energy storage development platform in the US, while US investor Bluestar Energy Capital has entered the European market.
Redelfi, established in 2008 in Genoa, Italy, was established as a vehicle to launch renewable energy developer Renergetica before exiting in 2021. It has created the joint venture (JV) Redelio Renewables with US-headquartered developer Elio Energy Group.
The pair is targeting the development of up to 2.4GW of battery energy storage system (BESS) projects in the US by the end of 2026. Five early-stage development projects totalling 920MW have already been acquired in four states: Texas, Tennessee, Alabama, and Kansas.
Redelfi is listed on the Italian Stock Exchange’s Euronext segment. In addition to developing renewable energy and storage assets, it has a business line in digital technologies for marketing and other sectors.
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It acquired its five initial projects from BESS Power Corporation, a US-based developer that the Italian company founded, together with JV partner Elio and another Italian publicly listed developer, Altea Green Power. Publicly announced project activity has included the early 2023 acquisition of a 400MW project in Texas from Aelius Solar Corp.
Earlier this month, Redelio Renewables approved a US$20 million budget over the next four years for the development of those projects, while Redelfi said the sale and handover freed up BESS Power Corporation to focus on more advanced-stage projects.
Redelio is 50% owned by each of Redelfi and Elio, while the Italian partner holds 65% of BESS Power Corporation to Elio’s 30%, with the outstanding 5% stake held by an Italy-based financial consultant Paolo Siniscalco.
European potential
It’s not perhaps surprising that European players like Redelfi are seeing fertile opportunity in the US, where deployment records across the utility-scale segment are consistently surpassed on a quarterly basis.
Redelfi’s Italian home territory is also a fast-rising battery storage market, and last week, the company said it had added six development projects to its portfolio in the country, totalling 500MW.
It did this through another 50:50 JV, called Ribess, formed with fellow Italian developer InfraLab. The pair target bringing their portfolio online within three years, Redelfi said last Thursday (18 July), the day after it announced the US JV’s progress.
On a somewhat related note, US-headquartered renewable energy investment company Bluestar Energy Capital has launched a new development platform, Noveria Energy, to work on European BESS projects.
Noveria is already putting a pipeline of development projects in Germany, where the platform will initially be focused, through interconnection and permitting processes. Bluestar Energy Capital said the pipeline totals more than 2GWh of projects.
Bluestar Energy Capital (BEC), was founded in 2022, the year Redelfi listed on the Italian Euronext exchange, and to date has been working to develop projects in the US and Australia.
Germany and Italy have been identified by various analysts and industry experts as being among the two European markets likely to see the strongest growth in energy storage deployment in the medium-term.
In the recently-published 2024 edition of the Renewable Energy Country Attractiveness Index (RECAI) from Ernst & Young (EY), Germany was selected as the fifth most appealing BESS market globally, and Italy sixth.
Drivers for those markets include the Italian grid operator Terna’s intention to tender for up to 71GWh of energy storage by 2030, and German regulators opening up day-ahead and intraday electricity trading markets to BESS assets.
