Renewable energy fund manager Taaleri Energia’s SolarWind III Fund has announced an investment in the 192MW/420MW-hour (MWh) Raudsepa battery energy storage system (BESS) project in Estonia.
The Raudsepa facility is located around 50km south of Tartu.
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Construction of the project is set to begin after a final investment decision was made. The BESS is scheduled to begin full operations by November 2027.
Ownership of the Raudsepa project is now shared between the SolarWind III Fund, a co-investor in the fund, and KJK Fund III, managed by KJK Capital.
Developed by renewable energy company Evecon in partnership with French independent power producer Corsica Sole, the site will be constructed and installed under a turnkey contract by Estonian company Smartecon. Evecon and Corsica Sole were the previous owners of the BESS.
The project will utilise battery storage equipment from LG Energy Solution and inverters manufactured in Europe by Power Electronics.
The Raudsepa BESS is set to operate under a multi-market optimisation strategy targeting both electricity arbitrage and ancillary services markets.
Taaleri Energia energy storage investment director Ville Rimali said: “This investment marks the SolarWind III Fund’s first BESS project in Estonia and underscores our confidence in the market.
“With high power price volatility and the phase-out of oil-fired generation, Estonia represents a compelling battery storage investment opportunity.”
The SolarWind III Fund is Taaleri Energia’s sixth renewable energy investment vehicle. Its investment approach involves acquiring, developing and operating large-scale onshore wind, solar and battery storage assets before eventual sale.
The fund focuses on markets covering the Nordics, the Baltics, Poland, south-east Europe and Spain.
To date, investment commitments from SolarWind III and associated co-investment vehicles total $484.8m (€425m) out of €630m in overall commitments.
Investors include European financial institutions such as Erste Group Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the European Investment Fund and several Finnish pension funds, as well as other European institutional investors.
Support from the EU via the InvestEU Fund and the NextGenerationEU Recovery and Resilience Facility also underpins the fund’s activities. It is classified as an Article 9 fund under the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation.
Taaleri Energia, part of the Taaleri Group, manages €1.4bn in assets and focuses on the development, construction and operation of onshore renewables and battery energy storage projects.
Earlier this month, Masdar and Taaleri Energia inaugurated the Čibuk 2 wind farm with 154MW of capacity in Serbia’s South Banat region, approximately 40km from Belgrade.
