From ESS News
Large utilities including Enel, RWE and Iberdrola were the first movers in European BESS more than a decade ago for strategic and technical reasons, not commercial ones. These companies utilized their significant corporate balance sheets and existing in-house capabilities across engineering and project construction, power market trading and asset management to develop and operate the first generation of battery storage projects.
This has allowed utility storage to become an established investible asset class suitable for private institutional capital. Consequently, infrastructure funds are now acquiring and/or establishing scalable BESS developer platforms with advanced route-to-market capabilities. By backing nimble, optimization-focused operators, these sponsors enable institutionalization and faster scale-up across fragmented markets.
Sponsors often acquire stakes in developer platforms to gain access to project pipelines and then provide construction or brown-to-green financing to build out assets. Macquarie Asset Management’s May 2025 acquisition of Island Green Power, a UK-based solar and BESS developer, is a pertinent example of this trend in action.
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