Credit: Camille King, Flickr Creative Commons
Commercial and industrial sector energy storage projects in Canada are set to go into high gear. The Swiss investment group SUSI Partners signed a deal for US $94.22 million (C $120 million) with Toronto-based energy storage project developer and owner NRStor Inc.
The investment comes from the SUSI Energy Storage Fund, which offers institutional investors opportunities in proven energy storage technologies and business models, with a preference for OECD countries.
NRStor’s C&I-focused subsidiary, which signed the agreement with SUSI on November 17, aims to lower electricity costs for customers and help them reduce their carbon footprints at the same time. According to SUSI and NRStor, the new financing will facilitate behind-the-meter energy storage for commercial, industrial, and institutional customers’ sites in Canada.
The new projects will include “a number of Tier 1 lithium ion battery manufacturers” and will “have broad exposure to a wide variety of customers,” SUSI Partners said in a press release about the deal.
As Energy Storage News’ Andy Colthorpe points out, SUSI Partners’ SUSI Energy Storage Fund made headlines last year by providing third-party project financing for 12 MW of Canadian energy storage projects with US-Canadian developer Convergent Energy + Power.
Meanwhile, NRStor C&I envisions potentially growing its portfolio to over 300 MW in behind-the-meter energy storage projects for C&I customers. Colthorpe writes that the new C&I projects should help balance the network, deal with intermittent or variable generation for the integration of renewable energy sources as well as aid with peak demand management.
“This [agreement] is a major milestone in the development and expansion of the Canadian energy storage market,” Annette Verschuren, chair and CEO at NRStor said in a public announcement about the deal. It allows NRStor C&I to accelerate the deployment of behind-the-meter commercial, industrial, and institutional energy storage solutions, she added.
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