What experiences do you have with Rolls-Royce in project management?
Michael Hierholzer: We have tremendous experience in this field. What we deliver to our customers are tailored turnkey solutions, offering access to top-tier hardware suppliers, our proprietary energy management system, and, of course, 110 years of expertise in power generation with our conventional diesel and gas systems. We support our customers every step of the way—from breaking ground to full power, as we say.
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Large storage is not the same as home storage. What functionalities do your customers expect?
The expectations, of course, always depend on the customer, on the storage system operator. What are they using the system for? We see a lot of different business models, for instance energy trading. I buy energy at a lower price, sell it at a higher price. Then come classic grid services, where I offer frequency regulation with the storage system, but also the more traditional integration of renewables into the grid. All of those have quite an impact on the desired functionality, but we accommodate all of them.
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Is it always a multifunctional business case?
Exactly. The more flexible, the better, because ultimately the goal is what we call value stacking – combining several business models and functions. That makes the business case very lucrative if the customers can draw from different value pools.
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Do you offer turnkey solutions? And what happens after commissioning?
We stay with the customer throughout the entire life cycle of the product, from breaking ground to the end of the storage system’s life. We provide extensive support, including availability guarantees and capacity guarantees. To offer this, we use tools such as our remote monitoring centre in Berlin. Another example is intelligent battery analytics, hosted on our automation platform, where we use algorithms to optimise and extend the system’s lifetime.
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How important is the security of the system and the data in your philosophy?
Data is the new gold, and of course, it also has a high security aspect, especially now with acts like the Cyber Resilience Act and other EU regulations take in effect. It's very important for our customers. We have this proprietary developed automation solution in Europe. We emphasize that a lot, and with multiple security layers that we have, we can really guarantee that there is no risk of a criminal entry of concern accessing critical infrastructure on the customer side.
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What are your most important storage markets in Europe?
The most important market, obviously, is the German-speaking region – our home turf – including Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Next are the Netherlands and Italy, which is set to become particularly interesting with the upcoming auctions in September. We also see strong prospects in Eastern Europe, especially in Poland and Romania, where there is significant activity. Recently, we secured a large project in Latvia, thanks to our cybersecurity and automation capabilities.
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Latvia is a front-runner in cybersecurity, is it not?
With rising geopolitical tensions, they naturally want to achieve greater energy independence. What better system to achieve this than a large-scale storage solution?
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Do you have a particularly challenging project you can tell us about?
A particularly interesting project we recently completed was a large-scale installation in Turkey with a storage capacity of 132 megawatt-hours. That’s enormous. The system was implemented to integrate a wind farm and, in fact, stands as the largest project of its kind in Turkey to date. What made it especially noteworthy was the close collaboration with our customer, Pollard Energy, to secure financing through a Hermes export credit. This partnership ultimately made the project a reality and was a significant success for both parties. (HS)
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