Munich Re asset manager buys 231 MWh battery storage project in North Rhine-Westphalia

MEAG Munich Ergo Asset management GmbH has agreed with SMA Altenso GmbH to buy the shovel-ready 92.5 MW/231 MWh Metelen BESS project in North Rhine-Westphalia.

MEAG is the asset manager for Munich Re and Ergo Group and manages around €345 billion ($373 billion) of assets, of which €61 billion are for private and other institutional investors. The company has been closely monitoring the German battery storage market for more than a year and has invested in the industry for the first time.

SMA Altenso was founded in 2014 as a wholly owned subsidiary of SMA Solar Technology AG and has since implemented around 1.5 GW of battery storage projects and 1 GW of hydrogen facilities. SMA Altenso will remain associated with the large storage facility in Metelen, which is expected to go online in the second half of 2025, as a general contractor and operating service provider.

A blog post by Altenso parent company SMA stated the company had, among other things, “acquired a plot of land in advance, secured a grid connection point, and obtained all the necessary building permits from the local authorities” for the large-scale battery storage facility. The sale of the BESS project, which arose from Altenso’s project development activity, to a strategic investor is an important milestone. Altenso plans to significantly expand its activity in terms of project development and execution.

“We believe that our partnership is beneficial for all parties involved and are firmly convinced that the Metelen project will be a key reference project in the German BESS market,” said Alessandro Materozzi, head of project development at Altenso. MEAG, in turn, said it expected “attractive returns for our investors in this promising business area.”

Lusatia

Elsewhere in Germany, utility LEAG has begun construction of the second large BESS which will be part of its planned €10 billion-plus GigawattFactory site in Lusatia.

The Cottbus-based energy company, which has operated the 54 MWh BigBattery Lausitz, in Schwarze Pumpe since 2020, is installing a 100 MW/137 MWh BESS at the Boxberg energy site in Upper Lusatia, in the state of Saxony.

LEAG’s website states the BigBattery Oberlausitz will feature two strings of lithium ferro-phosphate (LFP) batteries in smaller containers than those used in Schwarze Pumpe.

The site, which will feature two block transformers and two 110 kV grid connection points, is set to be operational “from 2025,” according to a post on LEAG’s LinkedIn social media account.

While offering the grid frequency services of its €25 million, state-of-Brandenburg-funded, lithium-ion sister site, the two battery strings at the Saxony location mean that site can also generate short term energy trading revenue and primary and secondary control power for the grid – absorbing electricity when it outweighs demand and discharging during peak demand periods. Primary control power must be available to the grid within 30 seconds, and for five minutes, and secondary power must kick in within five minutes.

LEAG says it wants to develop a 33,000-hectare GigawattFactory in Lusatia comprising 7 GW of solar and wind power generation capacity and large-scale energy storage.

The utility says the site, to be operational by 2030, will be “the largest center of green energy in Germany.”