Nordic BESS Day
a trip to sunny Gothenburg for some Big Batteries
Issy gives us the low down from last months’ event by our friends at the West Coast Battery Forum in Sweden.
Ever since I first met the West Coast Battery Forum team, it has been on my list to make it to one of their events. So when I read the schedule for the ‘Nordic BESS day,’ packed with interesting speakers talking on topics I wanted to learn about, I bought my ticket and packed my bags.
The energy did not disappoint. I arrived to Spike brewery, 1 tram stop north of the central station in Gothenburg, at 8:30 in the morning to a gloriously Swedish sunny day. The bare brick building was already half full of earnest battery discussion, so I collected my name tag and a coffee, and dived straight in.
Bo Normark, Swedish energy legend behind the European Battery Alliance, opened the event with a keynote that walked through the whole battery landscape. The biggest market for batteries is EVs, but the fastest growing market is stationary storage. He described how Chinese battery success has come from consistent industrial support, with 2% of their GDP given in state support, but 90% of that support coming from regional governments which causes competition within China. In contrast, Sweden spends 1% of its GDP in subsidy, but mostly to subsidise electricity for industry and not to produce stuff. In China, the competition is extremely fierce, with 170 Chinese EV brands now down to 109 in the past few years.
Then he moved onto talking about the grid, how the BESS revenue stack is evolving, V2G from both AC and DC charging as well as distributed energy examples like balcony solar power exploding in Germany and how the grid has gone from 0 to 30% generated by local PV panels in Pakistan. It set us up well for the rest of the day’s discussions.
After a coffee break, there were talks from Lex Energy, who design and build scalable & modular charging hardware with batteries and a grid connection. Their product is covered in wooden panels to help the infrastructure integrate into the built environment. Then it was CheckWatt, an aggregator who gathers assets and manages energy virtually in a virtual power plant, who advocate for in front of the meter storage that is visible to the grid. Next up was a talk from consultancy firm Sweco, who discussed the merits of colocating BESS with solar/wind behind the meter to do energy arbitrage, which can give up to 10-40% operating savings on a large energy project. This tension between advocates for front of the meter for distributed energy vs behind the meter for individual control was super interesting, with each playing a slightly different role. Finally, there was a talk from KanEL, which is a platform that trades individual energy storage assets on the market, with a dashboard showing the different revenue streams.
With that it was lunch, which was several trays of delicious focaccias and festival style parmesan chips. It was dry, so we sat outside, but the famous Gothenburg weather did its very best to blow away every napkin on each table.
After lunch, we kicked off again with a talk from Vattenfall, who operate 158 MW of BESS assets with 121 MW under construction. They contract companies like Return or Terralayr to build BESS projects, and they themselves focus on optimisation and steering. Next on the stage was Stockholm’s own Flower, who are an energy trading company that trade both their own assets and partner owned assets. Their speaker hammered home the point that EU energy prices are not competitive for industrial energy, and only solar and wind provide sufficiently cheap options, but with intermittency as a problem. Until now, the volume risk of intermittency was shared across the sector rather than mitigated, but this is where BESS assets are stepping in to mitigate that risk. Finally, a BESS builder Capture Energy took to the stage, talking through how the market is growing and evolving, with today being all about revenue value stacking.
The last session of the event was a series of start up pitches from:
Rivus Batteries, who do flow batteries with organic molecules instead of vanadium based systems,
Ertzy, who develop EMS and PCS in a chemistry agnostic way,
Drev, an industrial vacuum cleaner for gigafactories,
Energy Node, who have plans to coat cells in their material to help the heat management,
Echion Technologies, who make high power anode material,
Westra, developers of PFAs free binder polymer,
and finally Endre, who make digital twins which help plan assets around real world behaviour.
Overall, this event was great fun. I chatted to industry veterans, people looking for advice and others just up for sharing stories, and it was the perfect size of conference for me with around 50 attendees. The name tags didn’t have companies on them, which I actually felt made for better discussions, encouraging you to lean in to getting to know who someone was rather than staring intently at their badge trying to piece some of it together yourself.
The energy at this BESS event felt lively, excited and like there was lots happening in the industry. If you ever get the chance to go to a West Coast Battery Forum event, I cannot recommend it more highly. Thanks to my gracious hosts!
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