In the first week of January 2018, Elestor will move to its new premises on ‘Industry Park Kleefse Waard’ (IPKW) in the city of Arnhem. “The direct motivation for this move was our growing need for more laboratory space”, says Guido Dalessi, Elestor’s CEO. “The choice for IPKW was almost too obvious, and then I am not only referring to the building itself, but also to the (personal) support of IPKW and the proactive attitude in thinking along with us in order to create the required conditions for a longer period of time.”

Battery cluster 

Kevin Rijke, Managing Director of IPKW: “Already during the past years we noted an increase of activities around storage. This initially took off with several startups, who have now entered the scale up phase, to eventually become mature companies. We are ready to invest in the present cluster of companies, because we believe that storage, together with hydrogen technology, is one of the spearheads putting Arnhem clearly on the map. These technologies offer solutions for the most important energy issue we will have to deal with in the near future.”

IPKW already has a lot of in-house knowledge and works closely together with Han University of Applied Sciences (HAN), amongst others in the field of clean mobility. As such the Clean Mobility Center had been established with a group of companies and educational institutes. Rijke: “It is a logical next step to create a large project around the subject of storage, and this is why we interconnect parties as well as physically bring these parties together on our industry park. Companies located all over Arnhem and on the industry park are very enthusiastic about forming such cluster, with a central hub under one roof. A party like Elestor, already located in Arnhem and who we consider the flagship in its field, specifically chose for this cluster at IPKW.”

Dalessi: “The concentration of parties, all active in storage and/or hydrogen, creates a clear synergistic effect on technology developments and places the ‘storage technology flag’ on IPKW in Arnhem. With our move, our mission to contribute to the energy transition will be realized by building large scale hydrogen flow batteries on IPKW, as the first in Europe.”

Mutual goal
The cluster does not limit itself to the boundaries of IPKW and several connections exist with companies like DNV GL and DEKRA. These kinds of cooperation are necessary, as Rijke emphasizes. “Different parties work on different technologies, but the essence is the same for all: How do we accomplish sustainable and efficient energy storage ? With this mutual goal, we also hope that test and certification companies will join us in Arnhem. Only together we can make huge progress and develop this cluster into an Energy Storage Expertise Center.”