Global green power developer Masdar has chosen Octopus Energy’s Kraken platform to manage its £1 billion investment in grid-scale batteries in the UK.
The deal was signed yesterday in Dubai by Masdar’s CEO Mohamed Jameel Al Ramahi and Octopus founder Greg Jackson.
Also pictured – centre – is the investor’s chairman Dr Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, the UAE’s minister for advanced technology. This December Dr Al Jaber will preside over the CoP28 climate talks in Dubai.
The deal will enable Masdar to optimise and expand its energy trading capabilities in Britain, helping to accelerate the rollout of renewables across the country.
In October Masdar bought London-based renewables investors Arlington Energy, and announced its commitment to invest £1 billion in UK battery storage.
Its generation assets here already included the 402MW Dudgeon wind farm off the coast of Norfolk, and the 630 MW London Array, one of the world’s largest wind farms. They are part of Masdar’s 20GW portfolio of renewable projects, spread across more than 40 countries.
Further international co-operation looks set to follow. The parties said they will assess possibilities for joint participation, exploring collaborative opportunities in renewable generation.
Kraken is the core of Octopus’s management of generation and power trades. It is contracted to manage 38,000 green energy assets and 5GW of capacity across in ten countries,
By the end of this year, the company intends Kraken to manage 100,000 devices and 6 GW of capacity.
According to Octopus, state-backed Masdar chose the deep-tech platform for its benefits in low cost, high efficiency management of energy flows and trades. Kraken enables extended analytics, data and real time monitoring for a wide range of distributed power resources, including grid-scale storage.
Masdar’s CEO Mr Al Ramahi said: “We and Octopus Energy share a common commitment to pioneering innovative clean energy solutions that disrupt and transform the energy market.
“As we expand our presence in the UK energy sector through our £1 billion investment, Kraken will provide us with the flexibility we need to scale our business rapidly”.
Octopus CEO Greg Jackson responded: “Masdar has established itself as one of the leading investors in renewable technologies around the world.
“Working together with their infrastructure expertise and Kraken’s world-leading technology, we can make a real difference – driving cleaner, cheaper and more secure energy at scale.”
