Ansarada has supported dealmakers across the energy transition for two decades, spanning generation, storage, grid and transmission assets.
In March 2026, a Belgian developer called Storm closed a €330 million financing for two battery parks: 200MW/800MWh at Ruien, 100MW/400MWh at Langerlo. Stibbe advised on the legal side. The money came from a syndicate that tells its own story: infrastructure funds I4B, PMV and TINC, alongside a bank consortium spanning Belfius, ING, KBC, Rabobank, Santander, Societe Generale and Triodos. Ten separate institutions, underwriting an asset that generates no electricity at all.
That's the detail worth sitting with. A battery park doesn't add a single new watt of clean power to the grid. It exists purely to hold power steady, charging when there's a surplus, discharging when there's a shortfall, smoothing a system that's under more pressure than it's ever been. Ten years ago, that would have been a hard sell to a bank credit committee. Now it's a €330 million syndicated deal.
What changed
The earlier piece in this series on grid connections covered why congestion has become the binding constraint across the UK, Belgium and Australia, driven by data centres, EV charging and industrial electrification all adding demand faster than networks can absorb it. Storage is the direct response to that pressure. A grid operator facing a congested substation has, broadly, two options: spend years and billions building new physical capacity, or install storage that can absorb and release power at the moments that matter, buying time and flexibility without waiting for a full network upgrade.
That's why storage financing is increasingly being underwritten with the same seriousness as generation, sometimes more. RenewCo Power's growth capital raise, backed by the Scottish National Investment Bank and SSE and advised by Marathon Capital, explicitly spans wind, solar, storage and green hydrogen in a single raise, not as an afterthought bolted onto a generation story, but as a core part of the same platform. Capital providers are underwriting flexibility as its own asset class now, not a feature of someone else's asset.
Why banks and infra funds could be comfortable with this
A battery park's revenue doesn't come from selling megawatt-hours the way a wind or solar farm does. It typically comes from a mix of services: absorbing excess power when it's cheap and releasing it when it's expensive, providing frequency response and other grid-balancing services to the system operator, and in some markets, earning capacity payments simply for being available when needed. That's a different risk profile to underwrite than a generation asset, more contracts, more counterparties, more moving parts to get right at financial close, which is exactly why a ten-institution syndicate makes sense on a deal like Storm's. Spreading a novel risk profile across more balance sheets, rather than concentrating it, is standard practice once an asset class matures past its early, higher-risk phase.
What this means for the rest of the transition
Storage doesn't solve the grid connection problem covered in the previous piece, and it doesn't solve the visibility problem the next piece in this series covers. What it does is buy time, converting a hard physical constraint (not enough grid capacity, right now, in this location) into a financeable asset that can be built and connected faster than the underlying network upgrade it's compensating for. That's precisely why it's gone from optional to load-bearing in the space of a few years, and why the financing behind it is starting to look like project finance for a mainstream asset class, not a speculative bet on new technology.
Storage deals close faster when the room is ready before the syndicate arrives. Open a free data room and start preparing today.
Read more articles in the Energy Series
1. Why the Energy Transition Now Runs Through the Grid, Not the Turbine
2. The Data Centre Effect: What AirTrunk and a 95MW Solar Farm Have in Common
3. When Grid Connections Become the Asset
Common questions
What is a grid-scale battery energy storage system (BESS)? A BESS is a large installation of batteries connected to the electricity grid that stores power when supply exceeds demand and releases it when demand exceeds supply, helping to balance the grid without needing to burn fossil fuels for backup.
Why is battery storage now considered critical grid infrastructure rather than optional? Rising and more volatile electricity demand, driven by data centres, EV charging and industrial electrification, is outpacing the physical capacity of many grids. Storage absorbs that volatility faster and more flexibly than building new transmission or generation capacity, making it central to keeping grids stable during the transition.
How is battery storage typically financed? Increasingly through syndicated project finance combining infrastructure funds and bank consortiums, similar in structure to how large generation assets are financed, reflecting growing confidence in storage's revenue model from grid-balancing services, arbitrage and capacity payments.
Disclaimer: This article reflects publicly available information as of the publication date and the personal analysis and views of the author. References to specific companies, transactions, and figures are drawn from the public sources cited; Ansarada has not independently verified these details beyond what is publicly reported, and does not claim any business relationship with, endorsement by, or involvement in the transactions of the companies named, except where explicitly stated. Nothing in this article constitutes financial, investment, legal, or other professional advice, and should not be relied upon as such. Views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily represent an official position of Ansarada.
