How Eneco is accelerating the transition to 2035

Storage14 MWh

power7 MW

yearly CO2 savings2.6 kT

lifetime CO2 savings40 kT

Climate neutral by 2035. That is Eneco's ambition, and it takes a bold approach. Their decision? Scaling up with battery storage. Together with iwell, the first Mega Cube was installed in Utrecht: 14 MWh of power that absorbs peaks, reduces gas consumption, and cuts CO₂ emissions by 2.6 kilotons annually, comparable to the electricity consumption of more than 2600 households.

About Eneco

For Eneco, everything revolves around a specific goal: becoming climate neutral by 2035. This applies both to their own business operations and to the energy they supply to millions of customers. To achieve this, Eneco has opted for radical electrification, acceleration of sustainable heating, and large-scale battery storage.

The challenge

The energy transition requires radical choices. Eneco wants to use less gas in Utrecht, but at the same time intelligently manage peak loads and grid congestion. Traditional grid expansions are expensive, slow, and often simply not possible.

That is why Eneco sought a scalable solution that:

reduces gas consumption,
makes optimal use of green electricity,
and makes the electricity grid more stable.

But that is not easy. Phasing out gas sounds simple, but in practice there are plenty of obstacles. Eneco was faced with three specific questions:

How do we cope with peak demand without immediately turning on the gas tap?
How do we make maximum use of solar and wind energy?
How do we keep the grid stable without costly expansions or long waiting times?

“The advantage of using a battery system is that its efficiency is much higher compared to installations that use fossil fuels such as gas and gas-fired power stations, which means you save energy.”

Kolijn Venema

Manager new products iwell

The solution

iwell developed and supplied the Mega Cube: a 14 MWh and 7 MW battery system, spread across six containers with three transformers. The Mega Cube:

stores renewable energy locally and supplies it back during peak demand,
makes the power plant less dependent on fossil gas,
and helps Eneco balance production, consumption, and grid capacity.

What the figures mean in concrete terms:

1 Mega Cube = 1400 standard Cubes. Where a Cube serves a building or site, the Mega Cube takes care of the ‘highways’ of our electricity grid.
2.6 kilotons of CO₂ saved per year. That is equivalent to the electricity consumption of more than 2600 households.
Over the battery's lifetime, this results in a reduction of almost 40 kilotons of CO₂.

Thanks to real-time connection to solar and wind farms via FlexiDao, the power plant now first supplies sustainable energy at peak times, and gas is only scaled up later. This means that the system literally runs on the greenest kWh available.

One step closer to climate neutrality by 2035

The first Mega Cube at Eneco proves that large-scale battery storage can make a difference. Not only for local solutions, but also for the backbone of our electricity grid. This brings us one step closer to climate neutrality by 2035. Smarter, greener, and less dependent on gas. That's what energy security looks like today.