Developers O2X and Ingrid Capacity have started work on two battery storage projects totalling 60MW of power in Sweden.
Renewable energy firm OX2 has started work on the Bredhälla BESS (battery energy storage system) project in the village of the same name, in the southern county of Kronoberg, directly adjacent to a substation run by utility E.ON. Construction will start this month for commissioning in spring of 2024.
The BESS will deliver ancillary services to Svenska Kraftnät, the state-owned transmission system operator (TSO), while also providing load shifting to help balance the grid. It will be located near two of OX2’s ongoing wind power projects although it did not indicate these would be co-located or share any infrastructure.
“The Bredhälla project provides increased security and flexibility for the electricity supply in southern Sweden,” said Michiel van Asseldonk, responsible for system services and energy storage, OX2.
Intermittency is growing on the Swedish grid as more renewable energy sources come online, and the capacity of the country’s existing large pumped hydro energy storage (PHES) portfolio to balance this is being exhausted. Battery storage projects are being launched to make up the shortfall as the country seeks net zero by 2045.
O2X’s announcement comes a few weeks after energy storage-focused firm Ingrid Capacity announced its latest BESS project, a 20MW unit in Vimmerby in Kalmar County. It didn’t provide many details but its last BESS project used lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery cells.
“Through energy storage, society’s transition to renewable energy is enabled. Our systems act on call to even out the difference between production and consumption in the electricity grid at the second level. If there is a deficit of electricity, the battery can discharge to the grid to compensate, and in the same way charge from the grid when there is a temporary surplus,” said Nicklas Bäcker, chief strategy officer at Ingrid Capacity.
The firm made headlines a few months ago when it announced it was building a 70MW BESS for the first half of 2024, the largest announced project in the country. The two largest operational units in Sweden are Vattenfall’s 5MW/20MWh system in Uppsala and Primrock’s 5.4MW unit in Falkenberg while Alfen is delivering a 10MW/11.9MWh system for electricity network company Ellevio in Grums, western Sweden.
Ingrid Capacity has around 500MW of energy storage projects under development in Sweden, it said. It was formed in early 2022 and counts Swedish firms Engelbrekt Utveckling, Springbacka and Neptunia amongst its main shareholders.
The Nordic country is also home to Northvolt, the lithium-ion gigafactory firm which has raised around US$8 billion to manufacture sustainable battery cells in Sweden and Germany and BESS equipment in Poland.
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