Irish energy trading and services company ElectroRoute, a subsidiary of Mitsubishi, has announced it will expand its London-based team and expand into the UK.
It already operates 1.9GW of assets in Ireland, including more than 250MW of energy storage, and now plans to significantly expand its UK operations in the coming months. It says it is eyeing the co-location market for solar and storage assets as a key long-term growth opportunity.
Industry forecasters of solar/storage build-out have highlighted a sharp increase in applications for co-located storage with a medium-term market capacity of more than 20 GW.
ElectroRoute will provide clients with a range of trading and risk management services, including asset optimization, route-to-market and balancing services and revenue protection structures. It uses an in-house trading platform, ElectroRoute CORE, an AI-powered virtual power plant (VPP).
Commenting on the announcement, Caoimhe Giblin, co-CEO said: “ElectroRoute is steadfast in our mission to help solve the commercial challenges of a carbon-free energy system and we view the UK market as a strategic platform for us as we plan our medium-term plans . growth, both here and in Europe.
“Our trading activities in the UK are long established through our energy, gas and biomethane trading activities and we are excited to develop these further with the announcement of our renewable energy and storage optimization activities.”
Giblin also mentioned “a number of exciting opportunities in the late-stage negotiations,” although no further information is available on what form these could take.
The UK government’s increased focus on renewable energy growth is credited with encouraging the expansion. The increased budgets for clean energy projects in Britain are promised as a boost to private investment, without which even the record-breaking sixth auction round (AR6) of the Contracts for Difference (CfD) program would not be sufficient to finance the targeted capabilities . 2030.
Modo Energy’s analysis shows that 5 GW of the 9.6 GW of renewable energy capacity allocated in AR6 could be suitable for, or has already unveiled plans for, co-located battery storage. As a result, as much as 1.4 GW of BESS capacity could be created as part of new renewable energy projects arising from the AR6.
Furthermore, National Grid ESO’s Future Energy Scenarios (FES) 2024 estimates that Britain will have an installed energy storage capacity of between 22 and 34 GW by 2030. The benefits of storage could be realized through commercial installations of the technology: a report from energy services provider Joulen suggests that 0.1% of UK businesses could supply the equivalent power of both Hinkley Point C and 130 grid-scale battery sites through battery install energy storage.
