Arenko’s Nimbus software to operate Europe’s first battery co-located with offshore wind

Project overview:

• 300MW/600MWh battery system co-located with Ørsted’s Hornsea 3 offshore wind farm will use the full Nimbus suite of products when it starts operations in Q1 2027

• Software partnership supports Ørsted’s ‘pathfinder’ co-location strategy to optimise grid infrastructure and accelerate large-scale renewables integration

• Arenko expands Nimbus footprint as utilities and Independent Power Producers (IPPs) shift toward automated trading of complex co-located renewables and storage assets

Arenko has been selected to deploy its Nimbus optimisation, asset management and trading platform at Ørsted’s 300MW/600MWh Iceni battery energy storage project, co-located with the 2.9GW Hornsea 3 offshore wind farm in the UK. Iceni is the world’s first utility-scale battery directly integrated into offshore transmission infrastructure. Rather than securing a standalone grid connection, the project will share transmission assets and an onshore grid connection with Hornsea 3 and is scheduled to become operational in Q1 2027.

As one of the UK’s first large-scale ‘pathfinder’ co-location projects under the Offshore Transmission Network Review (OTNR), Iceni is designed to improve coordination between generation and storage assets and maximise the efficient use of existing grid infrastructure.

Under the agreement, Arenko will deploy its full Nimbus platform to manage trading, optimisation and Asset Management of the battery asset.

Iceni is widely regarded as one of the most technically and commercially advanced battery developments in Europe, combining utility-scale storage with the operational complexity of a major offshore wind asset, sharing a single grid connection.

Arenko was selected for its deep expertise in battery optimisation, short-term power markets and flexible asset management.

Iceni has been described by Ørsted and the market as a ‘blueprint for the future’ of co-located energy infrastructure, as a Path Finder project it is demonstrating how shared grid connections between offshore wind and battery storage can increase output, improve system efficiency and reduce the need for additional network build-out.

Arenko’s Nimbus platform is increasingly being adopted to manage and monetise complex co-located projects, having been deployed across 14 large-scale co-location projects to date. Data from existing Nimbus-enabled assets shows that automated trading strategies can enable co-located systems to match – and exceed – the revenue performance of standalone battery projects, with several of these assets performing in the upper percentiles for annualised revenue performance.