Moving now on storage: Behind-the-metre solutions

Dr Graeme Hutchison, Managing Director at Eclipse Power, discusses the potential of the EU’s tripartite agreement on energy storage, arguing that behind-the-meter deployment will facilitate the rapid connection of batteries

Bringing together European Union (EU) Member States, industry, and financial institutions behind a shared commitment to accelerate deployment is precisely the type of alignment that Europe needs for large-scale battery rollout. This is why the tripartite agreement on energy storage is a welcome signal, pointing toward a more secure, flexible, and decarbonised electricity system that should ultimately be cheaper for those businesses and people paying the bills.

But a ‘signal’ is far from a solution. It is worth noting that the agreement is non-binding and its targets – having 45 GW of new storage capacity between now and 2028, growing to 200 GW by 2030 – are aggressive. Turning on-paper aspirations into broken ground and energised battery assets will require significant will from all stakeholders. Likewise, the European Investment Bank’s supporting finance, which extends the €1.5 billion it has already committed in its grid manufacturing support package, is meaningful but modest compared to the scale of what a continent-wide storage rollout will actually cost.

None of this is a criticism. It is a reminder that ambition requires action. Ultimately, I’m confident that private funding will crowd in and Member States and industry will install large sums of battery capacity. Storage has earned its reputation as central to our clean, flexible and decentralised energy future, meaning the argument for deployment is no longer in question. If it were, there’d be no tripartite agreement. What is in question is how fast all this new battery storage can be connected.

Agile deployment models are essential

Connection reform in the UK has been key to accelerating connection dates for almost 8GW of energy assets by an average of six years. In Europe, similar reforms could equally well accelerate new battery projects.

However, what’s also proven essential to the UK’s connection speeds has been its Independent Distribution Network Operator (IDNO) model. Independent networks in the UK have shown that projects can be connected and energised faster when developers, network owners and off-takers are given commercial and technical latitude – whether that’s through design or supply-chain flexibility. The UK has the largest battery fleet in Europe; in the pipeline is a similar independent model planned for transmission.

Europe doesn’t need to wholesale copy and paste the IDNO model to capture its benefits. Without getting too philosophical, aside from being an unnecessarily slow route to battery deployment, it would be very hard for there to be a Europe-wide IDNO-like model where network operators could build, operate, and recover costs across borders. On top of this, many Member States already have the raw ingredients. The Netherlands, Germany, and Italy, for example, all have comparable electrical infrastructure operator models that allow for faster connections. The kernel at the heart of them is connecting demand and storage assets behind single connection points.

Behind-the-metre solutions for accelerated battery roll-out

The need to reinforce the grid and build new transmission infrastructure is one of the biggest constraints on battery deployment. However, behind-the-metre and co-located solutions offer a way around that bottleneck by pairing battery storage with a generation or demand asset (a data centre, a solar farm, an industrial site) behind a single connection point.

Rather than installing utility-level standalone battery assets that discharge to balance the grid across large geographical distances, behind-the-metre batteries can balance supply and demand locally, behind the grid connection point. This could reduce the net capacity a connection needs, and as such, the smaller connection can be faster, cheaper, and less disruptive to the wider grid. These solutions can still shave gross peak demand, too. They do it by reducing demand locally.

Reducing connection times better enables the EU to meet its battery storage targets. And pairing batteries with large energy users doesn’t depend on any substantial regulatory change. What’s more, the tripartite agreement is encouraging these types of solutions.

In reality, the hardest part of solutions like these is getting everyone behind a connection point to agree commercially on how it will work. But it is possible: we’ve seen several successful co-location and behind-the-metre connections in the UK, with the same now happening on active projects in Germany, France and other EU markets.