We caught up with the CEO of owner-operator BW ESS, Erik Strømsø, about the firm’s next deployment plans, tolling trends, procurement and LDES, with its 11.5-hour Bannaby BESS in Australia further proof of lithium-ion’s long-duration potential.
BW ESS was founded in 2021 by parent firm BW Group, a Singapore-headquartered shipping and energy company. It is interesting to follow as one of the most international pure-play large-scale battery energy storage system (BESS) platforms around. There are not many companies building or operating projects in four countries or more, that aren’t big power firms like RWE, Engie etc.
Its first two markets with operational projects have been the UK and Sweden, where it acquired project platforms of developers Penso Power and Ingrid Capacity, respectively, in 2023-24. In Australia, it has some notable projects in development, including an 11.5-hour BESS called Bannaby and a 480MWh system currently in commissioning, while its next markets it will enter are Germany, Spain and Italy, where it is already building one.
Read on for a write-up and full video recording of our sit-down interview with Strømsø at the Energy Storage Summit 2026 in London this week. Shortly after that, he took part in the ‘Shaping Bankable Storage: Market-Tested Insights‘ panel discussion, the first of the event.
