Greenlab Heat Battery

Executive Overview

The Greenlab Heat Battery is a 100 MWh Rondo Heat Battery (RHB) installed at GreenLab Skive, a green industrial cluster in Skive, Jutland, Denmark — Rondo Energy's first European deployment and the first large-scale industrial heat battery in the Nordic region. The system is powered by an 84 MW hybrid wind and solar park and is one of the largest heat batteries in Europe. GreenLab invested 160 million DKK in green infrastructure including the heat battery, which was funded as part of a €75 million project funding package from Breakthrough Energy Catalyst and the European Investment Bank (announced June 26, 2024), covering three European industrial heat decarbonisation projects including Covestro Germany (100 MWh) and an undisclosed food-and-beverage facility. Rondo's storage media production capacity is simultaneously being scaled from 2 GWh per year to 90 GWh per year. GreenLab was established in 2019 as a green industrial park designed for shared utilities and industrial symbiosis.

How It Works & Differentiation

The Rondo Heat Battery stores surplus wind and solar electricity by resistively heating ceramic refractory bricks to temperatures exceeding 1,000°C, then discharges stored heat on demand as industrial process steam and heat for GreenLab's cluster of tenant companies. GreenLab offers green heat to tenants at cost parity with fossil fuel-based heat — removing the price premium that has historically deterred industrial heat electrification. The RHB is integrated into GreenLab's prebuilt utility infrastructure, which provides water, nitrogen, hydrogen, compressed air, and heat as shared, plug-and-play services for the industrial cluster. This shared-utility model means Rondo's heat serves multiple tenants simultaneously rather than a single industrial offtaker, distributing both utilisation rate and revenue risk.

Commercialization & Traction

The Greenlab deployment is Rondo's first European project and establishes the company's Nordic regional hub. The deployment is part of a coordinated European rollout alongside Covestro Brunsbüttel (Germany, 100 MWh) and a third undisclosed facility, all underpinned by the €75 million EIB / Breakthrough Energy Catalyst funding package. The EIB/EU-Catalyst partnership was authorised to deploy up to €420 million; Horizon Europe committed €200 million and the Innovation Fund committed €220 million to the broader programme. Rondo also has an EDP partnership financing up to 2 GWh of heat batteries for commercial and industrial customers in Europe alongside up to 400 MW of new wind and solar projects.

Scalability & Strategic Context

Industry accounts for approximately 25% of energy-related carbon pollution globally, with 74% of industrial energy use tied to heat. GreenLab's shared-utility model is particularly relevant for industrial clusters where multiple SME-scale tenants share heat demand — a market segment that single large-plant heat battery deployments do not address. GreenLab's model positions the RHB as a heat utility infrastructure asset rather than a single industrial process unit, which may create a replicable financing and operating model for industrial parks across Scandinavia and Northern Europe.