Procurement support, Contract negotiation and DD for the 500MW Coalburn 1 BESS Project

Published February 2024

Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners asked Everoze to support it in the staged acquisition of the 500MW, 400kV Coalburn 1 BESS project as well as with the parallel procurement and contracting process, to reach Financial Investment Decision (FID).

Everoze worked very closely with the CIP (project owner), Alcemi (developer) and Burges Salmon (legal) teams in the following roles:

  • Staged technical due diligence as various project milestones were met
  • Developing procurement strategy.
  • Producing functional specifications and employer’s requirements to issue to tenderers.
  • Detailed tender reviews and techno-commercial inputs to inform multi-stage down-selection process to preferred contractors, including Q&A and calls with prospective tenderers.
  • Contract drafting and negotiation support, including running interface workshops and managing technical drafting and modifications.

Robin Redfern, project director within the Everoze team working on this, said of our involvement:

“This has been a fantastic, trailblazing project on which to work and we are delighted to have supported it over the last 18 months through sell-down and procurement and to FID. The scale of this project is a step change from the circa 50MW battery projects with which we are all so familiar and we have had to think very differently as a result. Providing both due diligence and owner’s engineering services and working closely with CIP and all the other parties involved has enabled us to get up close to all elements of the project, from procurement strategy workshops, to warranty mechanisms and technical interfaces.”

Everoze worked as part of a close-knit team with CIP and Alcemi, and also with Burges Salmon during contract negotiations. Despite very challenging market conditions at the time of tendering (strong seller’s market and high material costs), the team brought the project to financial close across all contracts on what will likely be the largest BESS in the UK (by MW) when commissioned.

This was achieved in what was a remarkably short timeframe, given the size of the project and the scale of the challenges, and it was a tribute to the cohesiveness, responsibility and trust between all parties involved that this multi-contract solution could be delivered on such a large and pioneering battery project.

Key to the success was being proactive and everyone taking responsibility for their respective parts, particularly during the final contract negotiations, where it was essential that all contracts fitted together from technical, programming, warranty, legal and commercial standpoints.

The project has now entered detailed design and initial civil construction phases, with Canadian Solar providing the batteries and conversion systems and H&MV Engineering providing the balance of plant up to the 400kV connection.