Energy storage system developer Dispatch has started construction of a 45MW/90MWh battery storage system in the Netherlands, with Macquarie Group as one of the investors in the project, according to foreign media reports.
A few days after Dispatch announced the start of construction via LinkedIn, DNV congratulated Dispatch on completing the project's financing and released photos of the 6,000-square-meter project site as well as a group photo of the partners at the groundbreaking ceremony.
These partners include Fluence, a battery storage system provider and integrator, and Equans Energy & Infra, which is responsible for engineering, procurement and construction (EPC), and will provide services including civil works and grid connection.
In 2022, French builder Bouygues acquired Equans Energy & Infra from ENGIE.DNV acted as technical advisor to Dispatch during the due diligence phase and as technical advisor to the lenders.
The project, called Amethyst Battery Energy Storage, will be commercially operational in early 2026. Dutch utility Eneco will further optimize the asset's market operations based on market forecasts provided by data analyst EnAppSys.
Dispatch and Eneco announced plans to deploy the project in mid-June, according to industry press reports.Dispatch's financing partners are Belgian infrastructure investment fund EPICo² and Macquarie Capital, while ABN AMRO is one of its lenders.
The companies plan to collaborate on the development and deployment of a portfolio of up to 3GWh of battery energy storage projects in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany over the next seven years.
The 45MW/90MWh battery storage system, planned in partnership with the local government, will be built using 144 modular Fluence Cube battery storage units with a site layout that optimizes space utilization, Dispatch said. In addition, the local permitting process has been “streamlined” to speed up development.
More energy storage projects to be deployed in the Netherlands, but land availability and grid connection challenges remain
While the Amethyst battery storage project is the largest energy storage project under construction in the Netherlands to date, more battery storage projects of comparable or larger size are expected to be deployed in the country in the coming years.
The 30MW/68MWh Pollux battery storage project is the largest battery storage project commissioned to date in the Netherlands, which was brought online by developer and owner SemperPower by the end of last year.
Equans is developing a 35MW/100MWh battery storage project for ENGIE, which will also have a battery storage system supplied and integrated by Fluence, and will be deployed in conjunction with a solar farm, albeit with a higher storage capacity than the Amethyst battery storage project.
Meanwhile, Lion Storage and Giga Storage, both energy storage developers, have said they will begin deploying battery storage projects in the Netherlands by the end of this year, with a combined installed energy storage project size of more than 300MW/1,000MWh.
In September this year, energy storage developer LC Energy applied for approval of its planned deployment of the 500MW/2000MWh Groningen standalone battery storage project, with construction scheduled to begin in 2026.
The Dutch battery storage market has been opened up through grid tariff reforms, says Friso Huizinga, managing director of LC Energy.
Huizinga noted that it would have been difficult to obtain financing for any project deployed in the Netherlands without these reforms, which have reduced the cost of connecting a battery storage project to the grid by about 65%.
However, deploying large-scale battery energy storage projects remains challenging in the Netherlands due to the country's dense population, scarcity of land, and legal restrictions that prevent projects from being deployed on agricultural land. In the Netherlands, many of the substations where battery energy storage systems are connected to the transmission system are usually located in rural areas.
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