NGEN has commissioned the Wagenham battery energy storage system in Upper Austria and the asset is already operating in the ancillary services market.
Rated at 85 MW with 170 MWh of storage capacity, it is currently Austria’s largest system-critical BESS and one of the larger assets of its kind in Europe, according to Slovenian innovative energy solutions provider NGEN.
The project was delivered within the timeframe the company set for itself at the outset. In late March, NGEN Austria launched the works on the BESS in Wagenham.
Wagenham was delivered by NGEN’s own team.
NGEN noted that every storage asset is first and foremost a financial investment
“Working with our own people means control over the schedule, faster decisions, fewer interfaces between parties and materially lower execution risk, and that translates directly into the financial performance of the asset. It is the reason a project of this scale could be kept on the timeline set at the outset,” the company added.
Every storage asset is first and foremost a financial investment, and time is not a soft parameter: it determines the return, the Slovenia-based company said.
Each week of delay means lost revenue, missed market opportunity and a higher cost of capital, and no amount of technical performance afterwards can recover it.
The battery site sits in Upper Austria, close to the German border
The battery site sits in Upper Austria, close to the German border, a strategic point within the European power system. The asset will absorb and release energy in response to fluctuations in wind and solar generation and support grid stability.
The BESS is now in operation, trading on the market and delivering ancillary services.
Wagenham is integrated into NGEN’s proprietary energy platform
Wagenham is integrated into NGEN’s proprietary energy platform, which combines storage asset management, power trading and the delivery of ancillary services.
The platform continuously monitors the state of the asset, market conditions and system requirements, and optimises charging, discharging and available capacity on that basis, NGEN explained.
Combining large-scale storage infrastructure with in-house capability in software, aggregation and trading is one of NGEN’s core competences. It is what turns storage capacity into an asset that earns across several markets at once rather than a single revenue stream, the company pointed out.
The third step in Austria, and not the last
Wagenham follows NGEN’s earlier Austrian projects in Arnoldstein, Carinthia, and Fürstenfeld, Styria, both of which were the largest systems of their kind in the country at the time of commissioning.
The company noted that Austria is expected to need around 8.7 GW of battery storage by 2040 if it is to integrate its planned renewable capacity, against a fraction of that installed today.
700 MWh of battery storage under management
NGEN has approximately 700 MWh of battery storage in operation, with further projects under construction and in development. The company develops, builds and operates utility-scale storage assets across a number of European markets, including Slovenia, Austria, Germany, Poland, Croatia, Portugal, Latvia and Romania.
Alongside utility-scale systems, NGEN develops residential and commercial storage solutions, proprietary energy management software, flexibility aggregation, and trading in both electricity and ancillary services.
These activities are interconnected: distributed and utility-scale capacity is managed through the same platform and dispatched into the same markets, the company stressed.
