EDF Renewable Energy Unveils New Distributed Electricity & Storage Business Unit

EDF Renewable Energy has commissioned a new business unit focused on Distributed Electricity and Storage that will focus on distributed solar and storage projects up to 30 MW in size.

The creation of the new business unit focused on the intersection of the grid and storage highlights the increasingly important role grid-scale batteries and other energy storage will play in the grid of the future.

This move builds on EDF RE’s acquisition of groSolar in April 2016 and is supported by the addition of industry veterans Tom Leyden, former CEO of Solar Grid Storage, and Felix Aguayo, former Managing Director at SunEdison.

Unpacking the reasoning behind the creation of the new business unit, Tom Leyden shared that he believes “C&I and utility customers are missing the opportunity to increase their reliability and reduce costs by not taking a more holistic approach to their energy procurement and asset utilization.”

The newly inaugurated unit plays a critical role at the junction of many of EDF RE’s existing businesses, serving to both better integrate renewable energy products into the grid while also providing a nice bolt-on addition from a sales perspective.

The global grid-scale battery market is primed to take off, with Tesla making headlines and blowing up on Twitter with potential deals in the hundreds of megawatts in Australia and Ukraine — with others presumably popping up any day … or any minute.

EDF RE is well established and primed to capitalize on the boom. As one of the largest renewable energy companies in North America, the team has vast expertise in wind, solar, bioenergy, and storage projects, with 9 GW of capacity in production in the US, Mexico, and Canada and over 300 MW of storage projects.

Image Credit: Kyle Field | CleanTechnica