Nippon Koei Co Limited, via its 100 per cent owned subsidiary Nippon Koei Energy Europe BV, and Aquila Capital, a sustainable investment management and asset development company, headquartered in Hamburg, Germany, hvea 25MW/100MWh grid-scale battery energy storage system (BESS) located in Ruien, Belgium.
Nippon Koei Co Limited, lead developer of the project, and Aquila Capital have reached an agreement to jointly finance the procurement, final development and operation of the BESS, which is one of the first projects of this type in Europe that meets all the relevant ESG standards and has a strong focus on sustainable construction and operation. YUSO BV, who had instigated the project in 2018 and worked alongside Nippon Koei as co-developer has been appointed optimiser for the BESS for the next 10 years.
The completion of the project is foreseen in Q4 2022 and it will be the largest connected to the Belgian high-voltage grid as well as one of the first four-hour long duration BESS units in the EU. The project targets to deliver ancillary services to the Belgian HV grid as well as to operate on the short-term electricity markets. The project will be realised on the site of a former 800MW coal fired power plant, constituting a good example on how to drive the energy transition forward by embedding flexible BESS assets in a market with an already elevated penetration of renewables in the production mix.
Hiroyuki Akiyoshi, Representative Director and Vice President of Nippon Koei, says: “The Ruien project takes advantage of the fast response and easy scalability of batteries and applies BESS technology as a key factor in the effective integration of VRE sources into power systems. For the Ruien project, we plan to connect this large unit to a nearby 70kV substation to provide the services necessary for system operation, based on our experience in the development and construction of BESS. The Joint Venture with Aquila Capital also highlights the value investment managers attach to the flexibility required to embed even more renewables to the power system of the future and the ESG compliance with the sustainability standards of such energy transition project.”
Roman Rosslenbroich, CEO and Co-Founder of Aquila Capital, says: “We consider batteries as a crucial asset class for the energy transition by balancing the power grid and enabling the integration of renewables. Our first battery investment is dating back to 2015 and storage will be a very important pillar of our activities in the coming years. We are aiming to play a key role in the build-out of this asset class in Europe and APAC. The investment for our clients in this project and our cooperation with Nippon Koei and Yuso is an important milestone in this journey.”
Bart Pycke, MD of YUSO, says: “Having initiated the RES project in 2018 and having worked closely with Nippon Koei since the start of the project and with Aquila in the past months, we are delighted to have reached the milestone of the financial close. The appointment of YUSO as ‘route-to-market’ provider for the project illustrates our expertise in the area of BESS optimisation and our know-how on how this innovative technology can embedded into the existing energy and ancillary markets. Ruien Energy Storage is the first project of this size for YUSO and we look forward to developing additional BESS projects together with our partners in the Ruien Project, Nippon Koei and Aquila Capital in the future.”
