Arenko has been selected to deploy its Nimbus optimization, asset management and trading platform at Ørsted’s 300MW/600MWh Iceni battery energy storage project, co-located with the 2.9GW Hornsea 3 offshore wind farm in the UK. Iceni is a utility-scale battery directly integrated into offshore transmission infrastructure. Rather than securing a standalone grid connection, the project will share transmission assets and an onshore grid connection with Hornsea 3 and is scheduled to become operational in Q1 2027.
Iceni is designed to improve coordination between generation and storage assets and maximize the efficient use of existing grid infrastructure.
Under the agreement, Arenko will deploy its full Nimbus platform to manage trading, optimization and Asset Management of the battery asset, as one of the UK’s first large-scale “pathfinder” co-location projects under the Offshore Transmission Network Review (OTNR),
Iceni is regarded as one of the most technically and commercially advanced battery developments in Europe, combining utility-scale storage with the operational complexity of a major offshore wind asset, sharing a single grid connection.
“Iceni is a highly sophisticated project, coupling a grid scale battery with one of the UK’s biggest offshore wind farms. This creates significant opportunities, but also operational and trading challenges, from forecasting and deciding how and when to allocate capacity in real time, to the technical, data and controls integrations between the two assets,” said Rupert Newland, Arenko CEO.
“We’ve worked closely with Ørsted over time as their thinking around flexibility has evolved, and with projects like Iceni they are taking a pioneering role in bringing truly significant generation capacity and utility-scale storage together. Nimbus is built for that kind of environment, providing the automation and optimization capabilities needed to manage increasingly large and complex assets, across multiple markets,” said Rupert.
“What makes Iceni interesting for us isn’t just the scale of the battery, but how it works alongside Hornsea 3. We are aiming to optimize two very different assets, wind and storage, through a shared connection point, while ensuring that both deliver significant value to the grid,” said Katinka Hussman Palbo, Vice President, Global Trading & Revenue, Ørsted.
Arenko’s Nimbus platform is increasingly being adopted to manage and monetize complex co-located projects, having been deployed across 14 large-scale co-location projects to date. Data from existing Nimbus-enabled assets shows that automated trading strategies can enable co-located systems to match and exceed the revenue performance of standalone battery projects, with several of these assets performing in the upper percentiles for annualized revenue performance.
Originally developed in the UK BESS market, Nimbus is now deployed across more than 1.2GW of utility-scale battery, hybrid and renewable generation assets across the UK, Europe and the US.
More info: arenko.group
