CheckWatt today officially announces its entry into the Polish energy landscape by pre-signing customers and partners to its virtual power plant. With the experience of building the largest distributed VPP of batteries in the Nordics, roll-out of services in Poland is expected to be at a high pace. The introduction, confirmed by the company’s registration with the Polish regulatory authority (URE), marks a significant step in expanding the innovative model for aggregation of distributed energy resources including the quickly growing number of battery energy storage systems across Europe.
Poland is in the beginning of the transformation to an “electrostate” characterized by clean electrical power for society including the transportation and industry sectors, where roll-out of cost efficient electricity generation capacity from solar and wind power is already at a good momentum.
The energy transition however faces several challenges: capacity shortages and rising costs for the electricity grid, high electricity prices when renewable energy is not producing and low revenue for producers when large amounts of solar and wind power are produced simultaneously. There is also a need to ensure system stability with an increasing share of variable renewable electricity. Flexibility — through batteries, flexible consumption and production — is key to addressing these challenges.
“Poland represents a dynamic and strategically important market for CheckWatt”, said Dan-Eric Archer, CEO of Checkwatt AB. “We are excited to empower Polish consumers and businesses to contribute to the energy transition while unlocking new revenue streams from their energy assets. This is a win-win for the customer and the cost efficiency of the Polish energy system.”
CheckWatt specialises in technology for monitoring, controlling and optimizing flexible energy assets such as batteries. By aggregating many batteries in homes and companies, this creates a larger, virtual resource that can provide essential energy system services which creates revenue for the owners of the batteries, who would otherwise not be able to take part in these markets.
Connecting a battery to a virtual power plant enables a wide range of value-creating services. In the Nordic countries, CheckWatt delivers ancillary services to the national Transmission System Operators (TSOs) in order to maintain grid stability, which also provides the largest revenue potential for the battery owners. The case is similar in Poland, where ancillary services procured by the Polish TSO PSE (Polskie Sieci Elektroenergetyczne) during the initial years of the battery build-out, has been and still is the most valuable use case for a battery.
Furthermore, batteries can create value from storing solar electricity locally or from the volatility on the electricity markets, by charging during low prices and discharging during high prices. This can either be done through collaborations with electricity retailers and balance responsible parties or for customers with dynamic electricity price agreements.
About CheckWatt
CheckWatt AB is Nordic’s leading independent aggregator, providing sophisticated measurement, control, and analytics solutions. CheckWatt controls battery systems ranging from a couple of kilowatts to tens of megawatts, from around 30 of the leading inverter manufacturers, as well as solar power, electric vehicle chargers and industrial loads. In total, CheckWatt has connected around 20,000 battery systems with a total capacity of over 350 MW.
CheckWatt offers its services through a network of installers, positioning itself as both a consumer-facing service provider and a technical enabler for partners. CheckWatt acts as a technical aggregator, collaborating with balance responsible parties and electricity retailers to gain market access and at the same time boost their customer value proposition.
Committed to the advancement of renewable energy, CheckWatt plays a crucial role in enhancing grid stability and efficiency, as well as the integration of renewable energy.
