LONDON (Reuters) – The Green Investment Group (GIG), owned by Macquarie Asset Management, will launch a new platform to develop battery storage capacity across the world, it said on Monday.
The platform, called Eku Energy, will have 190 megawatt hours of flexible storage capacity under construction on completion of the launch and a further pipeline of more than 3 gigawatt hours of capacity under development in Australia, Britain, Japan and Taiwan.
Eku Energy will initially start operations in Britain and Japan and widen to other countries when regulatory approvals are completed.
No financial details were disclosed.
Increased battery storage capacity is needed to store excess intermittent renewable energy produced when there is oversupply and then feed it to the grid when there is a shortage or more demand.
By 2030, it is forecast that global battery storage capacity is expected to increase to 411 gigawatts (GW) from 46 GW last year.
The GIG was acquired by Macquarie Asset Management in 2017 from the UK government. It has a total of 45 GW of clean energy projects under development.
(Reporting by Nina Chestney, editing by Ed Osmond)