Procuring batteries: The municipality of Amersfoort's story
In 2021 the municipality of Amersfoort prepared and executed two battery procurements for the pilots in Amersfoort within the ACCESS project. We are happy to report that we have successfully found suppliers, and would like to share some success factors and lessons learned from the procurement process.
The goal of the first pilot is to create a small community of 10 consumers that will implement smart systems at home to regulate their energy use and production more efficiently (including a heat battery with a capacity of 0.14GJ per house). This community will then also trade energy peer-to- peer. The supplier of the batteries is Bloemendal Bouw B.V. The second pilot consists of testing the installation and use of two 80 kWh batteries in apartment buildings to act as buffers in the energy grid. The supplier there is Baas. B.V. For all the details and documents for the procurement of the heat batteries click here, and click here for the batteries for apartment buildings.
A success factor was the involvement of trusted experts. Energievan.nu, Starke Energy and Vito helped us with what technical characteristics to ask for and what prices were reasonable, and helped evaluate the offers. Also of great help were colleagues with expertise and experience with procurement to guide the process.
One of the lessons learned is to give enough time for suppliers to submit questions and offers, especially during holidays and vacation times. We had to extend the deadlines after questions about this. Secondly, clear requirements, preferences and relative weight of criteria is very important. We learned that some requirements were unrealistic, such as the delivery time and installation date due to current supply chain issues. Also, making extra clear what should be submitted and what formats should be used by potential suppliers is important, to make sure each submission is valid and can be easily evaluated.
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