Eco Stor Approves 50-MW Finnish Battery, Expanding Nordic Storage Footprint

• Eco Stor and top owner Å Energi greenlight a 50-MW battery in central Finland, enhancing grid flexibility before Finland’s next wave of wind power.

Eco Stor GmbH has reached a final investment decision for a 50-MW grid-connected battery energy-storage system (BESS) in Finland’s Isokangas area, close to the industrial city of Oulu. The project company is majority-owned by Eco Stor’s largest shareholder, Norwegian utility Å Energi, which is backing the venture alongside investment firm Farvatn and Finnish developer AmpTank. Commercial operation is scheduled for 2026, positioning the facility among the first large-scale batteries to enter Finland’s balancing market.

Designed as a one-hour system, the plant will initially provide 50 MWh of storage capacity, with engineering provisions in place to double that duration to two hours as market conditions evolve. The lithium-ion containers will sit next to a Fingrid substation tied into the 380-kilometre Aurora Line, the new high-voltage interconnector linking the Finnish and Swedish grids. Locating the asset beside this node lets Eco Stor soak up surplus wind from northern Finland and discharge power when demand or export opportunities spike.

Å Energi’s controlling stake ensures seasoned trading expertise for the BESS across Finland’s ancillary-services markets, where frequency-containment reserves and congestion management can command premium prices during winter peaks. Farvatn and AmpTank will share minority holdings and provide local permitting, land-lease management and construction support. The consortium says full equity is committed and debt arrangements will be finalised by year-end, keeping capital costs confidential but “competitive with similar Nordic projects."

Eco Stor chief executive Trygve Burchardt frames the Finnish debut as a “logical northern step” after the company’s 103 MW/238 MWh Bollingstedt battery in Germany and its pipeline of multi-hundred-megawatt systems across Scandinavia. Analysts at Aurora Energy Research reckon Finland may need at least 2 GWh of storage by 2030 to cope with a trebling of onshore-wind capacity, making fast-response batteries an essential lever for grid stability and cross-border power trading. With FID secured, site civils are set to begin this summer, creating roughly 120 construction jobs and giving Finland a new flexibility asset by the time the next fleet of turbines spins up in the icy north.