A battery storage subsidiary of maritime company BW Group has committed to investing in Swedish energy storage developer Ingrid Capacity.
Ingrid Capacity said this morning it had secured “around SEK1 billion (US$96.7 million)” of investment from Singapore-headquartered shipping and maritime player BW Group’s BW Energy Storage Systems (BW ESS).
The funding will go towards the execution of a 400MW pipeline of battery energy storage system (BESS) projects, as well as supporting the developer’s growth.
Ingrid Capacity was founded in 2021 with chief strategy officer (CSO) Nicklas Bäcker quoted in Swedish media as saying that the company will aim to deploy around 2GW of energy storage in the Nordic region of Europe, with backing from shareholders including a property developer and investment firms.
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In September last year, the BESS developer announced it was working on Sweden’s largest battery project to date, a 70MW/70MWh system planned to come online in the first half of 2024. This was followed in December by news that it had started work on a 20MW BESS in the country.
At this year’s Energy Storage Summit, held in London by our publisher Solar Media, CSO Nicklas Bäcker spoke with Energy-Storage.news, citing that with between 100MW and 200MW of energy storage likely to come online in Sweden during this year, the country’s installed base will increase three or four times over.
There was around 70MW online in total by the end of 2022, Bäcker said. According to the CSO, Sweden’s electricity system balancing has traditionally been done with hydroelectric power plants. However, demand for electricity is increasing with growing electrification in transport, heat and other areas.
Meanwhile at the same time many of the hydroelectric turbines, particularly in the country’s south, “are old and are not built or optimised for some of the fast response services needed in today’s system,” he said.
Founded on the premise that the Swedish grid “isn’t very smart,” Ingrid Capacity has a 500MW pipeline of opportunities it is targeting in Sweden. Bäcker said in the interview that the developer wants to go for much bigger projects in the range of 100MW or more, but the lack of available grid capacity may be a chief limiting factor on how quickly those can happen.
Investor BW ESS has so far been active in the UK’s already-booming BESS market through a partnership with and investment into UK developer Penso Power, formed in 2021. BW and Penso Power will be joint shareholders in projects developed from a 3GWh pipeline aiming to go into service in the next three to five years.
BW Group is fully funding the pair’s UK projects, and a Penso Power joint venture (JV) was given planning permission in May 2022 for a 350MW grid-connected project in England that could host up to 1,750MWh capacity.
In addition to the UK, BW ESS’ investment focus is on Europe, Australia and the US, while parent company BW Group is the main shareholder in Corvus Energy, a provider of battery technologies for maritime applications.
Read the full March 2023 interview with Ingrid Capacity CSO Nicklas Bäcker, here.
