UK water utility Northumbrian Water is to pilot the use of battery storage units at a number of its sites under a new revenue-sharing partnership with developer Argonaut Power.
The terms of the agreement will see Argonaut oversee the installation of second-life Renault EV batteries, with all engineering work conducted by Connected Energy. Argonaut and Connected Energy announced their ongoing partnership in September, with Connected’s specialties including the production of E-STOR, storage system architecture based on the repurposed Renault batteries.
Argonaut Power is to act as the operator and manager of the completed projects, and will fully fund the installations under an installation and revenue sharing contract that is expected to be signed in the next fortnight.
The utility serves around 4.4 million people in the UK with water and wastewater treatment, supplying just over 1 billion litres of water each day.
Meanwhile, Ikigai Capital, a strategic advisor for the project, has been responsible for creating the pilot scheme’s financial structure.
While no specific details around the size, scale or number of installs has been released, a spokesperson for Argonaut parent Ingenious confirmed to our sister site Solar Power Portal that the parties are investigating the potential for storage at nine particular sites and the batteries are expected to be in the megawatt scale. All installs are expected to complete by autumn 2019.
Roberto Castiglioni, managing director at Argonaut, said: “We believe we have created something unique and innovative through a combination of technical and financial engineering. As far as we know, we’re the only fully-funded solution offering 30-year storage installations to C&I customers under a revenue sharing agreement, boosting site profitability.”
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