Recently-formed energy storage developer Ingrid Capacity is building a 70MW battery storage facility in Sweden for a delivery date as early as H1 2024, the largest planned in the Nordic country.
The company is planning the one-hour system for an interconnection point managed by utility E.ON, the German-headquartered company, in Karlshamn, on the southern coast. It is being planned for the first half of 2024 but the timeline is potentially subject to change.
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It will use lithium-ion battery cells and although the company has not firmed up its chemistry or supplier of choice, lithium iron phosphate (LFP) is thought to be likely.
At 70MW/70MWh, the battery storage system is considerably larger than the biggest operational facilities in Sweden today which have a power rating of around 5MW, including Vattenfall’s 5MW/20MWh system in Uppsala and Primrock’s 5.4MW unit in Falkenberg on the eastern coast.
More, larger systems are being planned including a 10MW/11.9MWh system from Alfen but Ingrid Capacity’s is the largest publicly-announced one. The driver for these projects is a growing amount of intermittent generation on the Swedish grid, which is managed by transmission system operator (TSO) Svenska kraftnät.
Balancing services have historically been provided by the country’s large pumped hydro energy storage (PHES) portfolio but balancing needs have begun to outgrow this, creating a need for easier-to-build flexibility assets like energy storage.
“Energy storage with batteries is absolutely crucial to meeting the need for an electrified society where fossil-free energy sources, such as wind and solar energy, must make up the majority of the energy mix,” said Nicklas Bäcker, chief strategy officer at Ingrid Capacity.
He added that with the deployment of a system this size, Svenska kraftnät’s “…need to create balance in the national main grids is also facilitated. The electricity grids are stabilised by storing energy in batteries at low power consumption and then pushing to energy at power peaks, locally, regionally and nationally.”
The battery storage system will provide grid balancing services like frequency response, energy trading services on the market, and local flexibility services to help distribution system operators (DSOs) optimise the local grid.
Electricity demand is also set to grow substantially in Sweden as the country electrifies industries like transportation. Local grid operator Karlshamn Energi said the locality has no current capacity problems but expects the peak power requirement to nearly double from 22MW to 38-40MW in 2040.
Bäcker told Swedish media outlets that Ingrid Capacity plans to deploy around 2GW of energy storage in the Nordics. The company’s shareholders include property developer Engelbrekt Utveckling and investment firms Springbacka and Neptunia.
