Vattenfall and Terralayr have formed a partnership to launch the first-known “multi-asset capacity toll” – a pioneering usage agreement for a distributed network of battery storage systems.
The storage systems are developed, built and bundled via a flexibility platform by Terralayr.
Part of the capacity is then managed by Vattenfall in Hamburg via a long-term purchase agreement and optimised in energy trading.
“Tolling” in this context means that Vattenfall “rents” the capacity from Terralayr for a fixed price.
The contract has a term of seven years and covers 55MW of power. This comes from a portfolio of over 100MW, which extends over eight Terralayr storage facilities distributed throughout Germany.
Vattenfall said the offtake agreement shows how storage flexibility can be scaled efficiently without in-house hardware investments.
The operational start for the use of energy capacity from several plants is planned for the end of 2025.
Unlike conventional tolling models, the agreement is not based on a single physical storage system, but on a bundled capacity contract based on several large-scale decentralised batteries.
This makes it possible for the first time to include smaller battery storage systems in large-volume tolling agreements – a step that was previously less feasible with conventional models.
For storage investors and operators, the bundling of assets and subsequent long-term marketing brings stable revenues and thus increases financial viability, which promotes the expansion of storage systems in Germany as a whole, Vattenfall said.
“Due to its decentralised nature, Terralayr’s battery storage network can be ideally integrated into our automated trading processes,” said Honey Duan, director of commodity origination at Vattenfall.
“In this way, we reduce the cost of imbalances in our portfolio and can provide flexibility whenever it brings the greatest benefit to the electricity market.”
Vattenfall said the storage partnership will enable more efficient integration of renewable energies by balancing fluctuations in wind and solar power, thereby reducing costly grid measures.
Terralayr is responsible for the development, construction, financing, and operation of the underlying physical storage systems.
In the next step, the individual storage systems are bundled via Terralayr’s proprietary, cloud-based software platform.