Acacia, Eren launch 500-MW French battery platform to stabilise grid

• Acacia joins forces with Eren Industries to build 500 MW of stand-alone battery storage in France, starting with 200 MW under construction and 300 MW in late development.

French storage developer Acacia has formed a joint platform with Eren Industries to roll out more than 500 MW of stand-alone battery energy storage systems (BESS) across France—a capacity that would lift the country’s existing large-scale fleet by roughly half.

Under the roadmap unveiled on 6 June, about 200 MW of projects will break ground “within months”, while a further 300 MW are already in late-stage development. The partners are targeting commercial operation from 2027, with the early projects designed to offer both frequency-response and capacity-market services to the national grid operator RTE.

Acacia, founded in 2022 to focus on grid infrastructure and large-scale storage, will steer development and construction; Eren—created by the former founders of Total Eren after its 2023 sale to TotalEnergies—will inject capital and commercial muscle. “Acacia is a natural leader in this market and completes our growing storage presence in Italy and Belgium,” noted Eren co-founder David Corchia, adding that the alliance aims to “create a new champion of the energy transition.”

The move comes as France hurries to plug a looming flexibility gap. Grid-scale batteries total less than 1 GW today but are forecast by Aurora Energy Research to treble to 1.5 GW by 2030, leaving ample headroom for new entrants before saturation risks emerge. By concentrating on distributed, stand-alone sites—rather than co-located solar or wind plants—Acacia and Eren hope to capture premium ancillary-service revenues and support regional voltage-control schemes.

Beyond the flagship 500-MW pipeline, the duo say they are already scoping additional projects to ride France’s upcoming storage tenders and EU-wide push for 1,500 GW of storage by 2030. Legal adviser Jeantet, which brokered the deal, described the venture as “a reference player for network support in France”—language that signals ambitions well above the initial half-gigawatt.