Germany

Germany Roundup: 500MW BESS and Data Centre Transaction, Seven-Year Toll and 370MW Pipeline Secured

Source: Energy Storage News


The BESS with which ju:niz Energy will enter into a toll with Next Kraftwerke. Image: ju:niz Energy

A trio of German grid-scale BESS news items, with Next Kraftwerke and ju:niz Energy agreeing a seven-year toll, Alpiq announcing a 370MW pipeline, and WBS Power selling the country’s largest solar-plus-storage project and planning a data centre on the same site.

Germany has this year become a hotbed of battery energy storage system (BESS) project announcements and deal-making, driven by its substantial revenue opportunities as Europe’s largest electricity market and a looming August 2029 deadline for getting projects operational to avoid charge-discharge grid feesSee all recent coverage here.

WBS Power sells solar-plus-storage project, plans data centre

Developer WBS Power has sold the 150MW solar, 500MW/2,000MWh BESS Project Jupiter in Brandenburg, Germany, to investor Prime Capital.

WBS acquired the site for the clean energy project in 2022, and the project will require €500 million (US$583 million), with construction expected in late 2026/early 2027. Both technologies will share a 380kV grid connection in the area of TSO 50Hertz. The acquisition is subject to Project Jupiter reaching ready-to-build (RTB) status.

The transaction also establishes a joint venture to co-locate a hyperscale data centre of up to 500MW in power demand in the same area.

WBS Power said there is growing demand for data centres in Germany, which are highly energy-intensive and benefit significantly from direct access to renewable power and grid stability.

“By integrating Germany’s largest co-located BESS and Solar PV project with a hyperscale data center, we are creating a unique platform that supports both the energy transition and digital transformation,” said Maciej Marcjanik, CEO of WBS Power Group.

Alpiq secures 370MW Germany pipeline

Switzerland-based energy firm Alpiq has expanded in Germany with a 370MW BESS pipeline the company has ‘secured’, in partnership with developer SPP Development. The projects in Brandenburg and Saxony-Anhalt are expected to reach RTB status in 2026.

Lukas Gresnigt, Head International and member of the Executive Board of Alpiq said that Germany is a competitive and complex market for BESS, with many projects are queuing for grid access and permits, and the partnership combined Alpiq’s financial strength and SPP’s local expertise.

Last week, Energy-Storage.news reported on Alpiq entering into a long-term toll for a BESS in Germany owned and operated by Eco Stor. Alpiq has acquired projects in France and Finland, where it recently commissioned a 30MW/36MW project.

Shell and EQT companies agree Germany BESS toll

VPP operator Next Kraftwerke, acquired by Shell in 2021, has concluded a Germany BESS toll with BESS platform ju:niz Energy, acquired by investor EQT in 2024.

The seven-year toll is for a 20MW/40MWh project in Vöhringen, Bavaria, and Next said it is one of the first operational contracts of its kind in Germany, live since 1 November.

Next Kraftwerke will pay ju:niz Energy a fixed monthly fee per installed MW for the use of the BESS capacity. The model offers stable revenues for the operator (ju:niz) and flexibility for the optimiser (Next Kraftwerke). The toll is 80% fixed remuneration and 20% merchant, Next said.

(By Cameron Murray)


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Germany BESS ‘Firsts’: Integrated Software, Multi-Party Optimisation, Privileged Permitting

Source: Energy Storage News


Germany BESS ‘firsts’: Integrated software, multi-party optimisation, privileged permitting

A week of claimed first-of-their-kind advances in Germany’s BESS market, including the combination of monitoring, diagnostics and energy trading on one platform, an optimisation deal allowing multiple companies to trade one asset virtually, and a law change accelerating permitting.

In summary:

· Investor Dynamic is deploying a BESS where digital monitoring, battery analytics and diagnostics, and energy trading are combined into one single, coordinated system: an industry-first according to the analytics provider Volytica

· Optimisation platform Terralayr has enabled three optimisers – Entrix, Suena and The Mobility House – to virtually trade portions of one single BESS asset

· The German Federal Parliament (Bundestag) has passed a law simplifying the development of energy storage projects, and expressly granting them privileged status

 

Dynamic’s Tangermünde project’s ‘first-of-its-kind’ integration

Investor Dynamic has partnered with digital monitoring and asset management solutions firm Amperecloud, battery analytics and diagnostics provider Volytica and optimiser Enspired for a 15.8MW/32MWh battery energy storage system (BESS) in Tangermünde, Saxony-Anhalt.

Volytica said it is the first project to “…combine monitoring, battery diagnostics, and energy trading into a single, coordinated system. These features are integrated to simplify operations and ensure competitiveness in today’s energy market”.

The analytics provider said the initiative addresses the common BESS industry challenge of fragmented digital tools for operational control, battery condition monitoring, and commercial optimisation. By integrating their platforms, the partners aim to enable continuous, data-driven system management, from performance monitoring to market participation, it said.

A spokesperson for Volytica said that, normally, you have individual software tools for asset management to operate and maintain the BESS, one tool for trading, one tool to access BMS data and one tool for analytics and monitoring, with no connection between providers.

Volytica CEO Claudius Jehle posted in more detail on his LinkedIn about the concept when Volytica announced the project.

The spokesperson said the integrated approach saves time and money, improves efficiency and competitiveness, and erases blind spots and increase transparency.

The project appears to already be operational, with a photo provided showing BESS units from Trina Storage, though the release did not refer to this.

 

Terralayr’s multi-optimiser BESS arrangement

BESS optimisation and virtual aggregation platform Terralayr has also claimed an industry-first, software-related asset management breakthrough.

It said its latest commercialisation model creates the “world’s first, risk-adjusted portfolio-effect for storage operators”.

The firm’s virtualisation set up allows multiple optimisers to trade a slice of one or multiple physical assets. The solution is live on Terralayr’s assets, will be rolled out to all future ones as well and available to asset owners in Germany.

Every asset owner has one contract per physical asset and that asset would be disaggregated into virtual batteries. Each virtual battery is then optimised by one different optimiser. As a result, one physical asset is optimised by multiple optimisers in parallel, a spokesperson explained.

A hypothetical arranagement is visualised in the infographic the firm provided below, with the BESS sliced into three virtual assets, 50MW each for Entrix and Suena and 100MW for The Mobility House (for example).

The model is called ‘Enhanced Trading of Flexibility – ETF’, and Terralayr claimed that it drives market efficiency, lowers revenue volatility, and creates a more stable risk-return profile for operators.

It also described an additional benefit called the “netting-off effects”, which regularly occurs when optimisers’ dispatch schedules offset each other, saving battery cycles and reducing degradation.

Terralayr’s platform bundles all optimiser dispatch and ancillary service signals and allocates them to the physical asset, while guaranteeing adherence to all technical restrictions and manufacturer specifications.

The firm launched in 2022, and has onboarded big-name energy firms in Germany including RWE and Vattenfall to its virtual BESS aggregation and optimisation platform as offtakers. Terralayr is deploying its own, smaller grid-scale BESS projects, at least partially to provide capacity for, and prove out, its platform.

 

Parliament in Germany adopts faster permitting for storage

In related BESS industry news, the German Federal Parliament (Bundestag) passed an amendment to the Energy Industry Act and the Federal Building Code which significantly simplifies the development of energy storage projects, law firm Evershed Sutherlands said in a note.

In a nutshell, the reform elevates legal certainty regarding the privileged treatment of thermal storage facilities, hydrogen storage facilities, and large-scale BESS in outside areas (Außenbereich), the firm explained: such projects are now expressly granted privileged status. The reform aims to accelerate energy storage permitting and deployment.

It creates a major simplification of future permit procedures, whereas previously energy storage was subject to considerable legal uncertainty.

Most grid-scale development in Germany is currently focused around projects that will come online before August 2028, when a three-year exemption from grid fees for charging and discharging ends. The government is discussing a more long-term solution, but whether this new change will benefit projects that can be deployed within the next three years is unclear.

(By Cameron Murray)


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RWE Starts Building Germany’s Largest BESS

Source: Energy Storage News


RWE and stakeholders groundbreaking on its Gundremmingen BESS project, the largest in Germany. Image: RWE.

Power firm RWE has launched construction on a 400MW/700MWh BESS project in Bavaria, Germany, the largest being built in the country.

The Germany-headquartered firm announced the start of construction on the project yesterday (29 October), in a ceremony attended by Bavarian Minister-President Dr Markus Söder (pictured above, second from left).

The 1.75-hour duration battery energy storage system (BESS) project is being built alongside the Gundremmingen nuclear power plant, which is undergoing decommissioning, and will use the plant’s existing grid connection.

RWE is investing around €230 million (US$267 million) in the BESS, which will comprise 200 container units and 100 inverters, and is expected online in 2028. It will take the title of largest BESS online from Eco Stor’s 103.5MW/238MWh Bollingstedt, commissioned earlier this year, as well as Eco Stor’s pipeline of 300MW/600MWh projects.

Söder commented: “Gundremmingen remains a key location in the Bavarian energy supply. In addition to the new battery storage facility, a 55-hectare solar park and a gas-fired power station are also set to be built. With an output of 400 MWand a capacity of over 700MWh, the battery storage facility will stabilise the grid when there is no wind or sunlight.”

Germany has emerged in the past few years as one of Europe’s most attractive markets for large-scale BESS investment, with large opportunities in its wholesale energy market (Europe’s deepest) and helpful regulatory changes including an exemption from charge-discharge grid fees for BESS projects put into operation by 2029.

Those opportunities are set to grow as the country deploys more wind and solar, and solar trade body BSW-Solar recently called for 100GWh of BESS deployments by 2030.

We recently caught up with German BESS platform Terra One to discuss the market drivers, regulatory challenges and the trade-offs when opting for a merchant or toll-based strategy in the country.

(By Cameron Murray)


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Register Now to attend, free before Oct 31, 2025.

Read more: https://en.cnesa.org/new-events-1/2026/4/1/apr-1-apr3-the-14th-energy-storage-international-exhibition-amp-expo

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