Investment funds managed by Swiss Life Asset Managers acquired a 50% stake in BCP Battery, a large-scale electrical battery platform in Germany.
Through the acquisition, Swiss Life Asset Managers, on behalf of two infrastructure funds, acquired a 68 MWh electrical battery project in Germany. The transaction is made alongside B Capital Partners, a Zurich-based asset manager.
The project is in Eisenach, Thuringia, and is currently under construction and is expected to be one of the largest industrial batteries in the German battery storage market once completed. The project is part of a larger pipeline from Smart Power that will be implemented over the next 12 months.
With this acquisition, Swiss Life Asset Managers intend to expand into a new area within the renewable energy sector.
BCP Battery has the right to expand the portfolio to approximately 420 MWh capacity.
“We are very pleased to be entering this exciting sector and to support its growth. Demand for storage will increase to balance the higher proportion of variable, renewable generation in the electricity system. Batteries will increasingly be chosen to manage this dynamic supply and demand mix,” comments Marc Schurch, Head Renewable Energy at Swiss Life Asset Managers.
Recurrent Energy, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Canadian Solar, acquired two standalone energy storage projects from Black Mountain Energy Storage earlier this week. Both projects are currently in development and are expected to reach notice to proceed in 2023 and begin operation in the second quarter of 2024. The projects are in the South Load Zone of the Texas ERCOT market, and each is likely to store up to 200 MWh of energy.
According to Mercom’s Q1 2022 Funding and M&A Report for Storage, Grid & Efficiency, there were five M&A transactions involving Battery Storage companies in Q1 2022. In Q4 2021, there were nine M&A transactions. Year-over-year, there were four Battery Storage M&A transactions in Q1 2021.
