Finnish battery sector amped up by grant, partnership

The EU Innovation Fund has provisionally promised a 122-million-euro grant for a joint venture to develop an industrial-scale cathode active material manufacturing facility in Vaasa, Ostrobothnia.

The facility is set to have an initial nominal capacity of 30 000 tonnes.

The proposed venture is led by FREYR Battery, a US-headquartered developer of battery and clean energy solutions. The company said last week it expects to meet the various criteria for finalising the grant in the first quarter of next year and, in the meantime, will continue working with its technology licensors, partners, customers and other stakeholders to refine the basis of the venture.

CEO Tom Einar Jensen described the facility as a key to unlock value for shareholders as the company continues to focus on its development in the US.

“We are very grateful to be selected for this grant award from the EU Innovation Fund,” he stated on 24 October.

The venture aligns well with the regional and national objectives of Vaasa and Finland.

Located on the western coast some 350 kilometres north-west of Helsinki, the 70 000-resident town has laid out a plan to create an ecosystem for a green battery industry – a project known as GigaVaasa. Finland, in turn, has set its sights on taking a leadership role in both the battery industry and the green transition, a goal that was the backdrop of discussions at Vaasa EnergyWeek 2024.

Energy supply agreement

Elsewhere, Geyser Batteries has signed a conditional supply agreement with Released Energy, an asset manager promoting long-term energy storage projects in Australia and the UK.

The Finnish company will supply 85 megawatts of proprietary battery technology for a project to develop distributed energy storage systems. Such systems utilise batteries to rapidly remove electricity generated at times of excess supply and discharge the electricity into collocated long-term storage that is able re-deliver the electricity in a base-load format over 8–24 hours.

This facilitates the green transition in two key ways: by reducing the need of solar and wind farms to curtail energy generation in optimal weather conditions and the need to expand the transmission system to accommodate the around-the-clock supply of sustainable energy.

“We are jointly creating the blueprint for an economical, ecological and localised path for the energy transition, which can be adopted by other regions,” envisaged Andrey Shigaev, CEO of Geyser Batteries.

Geyser’s water-based and critical material-free batteries can store energy for the minutes-long interim between generation and the ability of long-term storages to receive the energy.