Largest battery energy storage project in Sweden planned for H1 2024
Newly formed energy storage developer Ingrid Capacity is building a 70MW battery storage facility in Sweden for a H1 2024 delivery date, the largest planned in the Nordics.
The company is planning a one-hour system for an interconnection point managed by the electricity company E.ON, the German company headquartered in Karlshamn on the south coast. 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.
With 70MW/70MWh, the battery storage system is significantly larger than the largest operational facilities in Sweden today, which have an output of approximately 5MW, i.a. Vattenfall’s 5MW/20MWh system in Uppsala and Primrock’s 5.4MW unit in Falkenberg on the east coast.
More, larger systems are planned including a 10MW/11.9MWh system from Alfen but Ingrid Capacities is the largest publicly announced. The driving force behind these projects is a growing amount of intermittent generation on the Swedish grid, which is managed by the grid operator (TSO) Svenska kraftnät.
Balancing services have historically been provided by the country’s large portfolio of pumped hydro storage (PHES), but balancing needs have begun to outgrow this, creating a need for easier to build flexibility assets such as 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,” says Nicklas Bäcker, head of strategy at Ingrid Capacitance.
He added that with the expansion of a system of this size, Svenska kraftnät’s “…need to create balance in the national grids is also facilitated. The electricity grids are stabilized by storing energy in batteries at low current consumption and then driving it to energy at power peaks, locally, regionally and nationally.”
The battery storage system will provide grid balancing services such as frequency response, market energy trading services and local flexibility services to help distribution system operators (DSOs) optimize the local grid.
Demand for electricity will also grow strongly in Sweden as the country electrifies industries such as transport. Local grid operator Karlshamn Energi said the resort has no current capacity issues but expects peak power demand to almost double from 22MW to 38-40MW by 2040.
Bäcker told Swedish media that Ingrid Capacity plans to distribute around 2 GW of energy storage in the Nordics. The company’s shareholders include the property developer Engelbrekt Utveckling and the securities companies Springbacka and Neptunia.