VivoPower is conducting a feasibility study for a battery energy storage system at its 41.5 MW Mo i Rana data center in
VivoPower PLC, a B Corp-certified developer of data center infrastructure for AI applications, announced on July 6, 2026 that it is advancing a formal technical and commercial feasibility study for integrating a battery energy storage system at its Mo i Rana facility in Northern Norway. The study aims to unlock incremental annualized EBITDA of approximately USD$4 million through BESS-enabled participation in three additional Nordic reserve products—FCR-N, FCR-D, and FFR—that are not economically accessible to the data center's compute load alone due to endurance, symmetry, and response-speed requirements.
The targeted incremental EBITDA of up to USD$4 million annually would be derived from capacity payments under these three reserve products, valued at prevailing 2025–2026 Nordic clearing prices. The payments accrue on a pay-for-availability basis, with additional activation payments accruing separately, subject to prequalification, feasibility outcomes, capital availability, and market conditions.
Mo i Rana's location in Norway's NO4 bidding zone provides a significant competitive advantage, with day-ahead power prices averaging approximately USD$0.009 per kilowatt-hour in 2025, compared to USD$0.05–0.077 per kilowatt-hour in southern Norway and continental Europe. Combined with the site's participation in the Nordic Balancing Model, this structural cost advantage positions Mo i Rana as one of Europe's most attractive locations for industrial demand response and co-located battery storage.
Beyond ancillary services revenue, a co-located BESS is expected to enhance the site's suitability for modern AI compute workloads. AI training and inference applications exhibit power draw characteristics that differ materially from traditional enterprise or hyperscale cloud workloads. A well-designed BESS layer could improve the operating envelope available to tenants without changing the site's underlying power capacity or grid connection profile, offering tenant-facing benefits including improved voltage stability, frequency regulation support, and reduced latency constraints.
The feasibility study will assess electrical headroom at the point of connection, transformer and switchgear capacity, protection coordination, metering and settlement architecture, the prequalification pathway with Statnett, and interactions between BESS dispatch and tenant service level agreements. Any final investment decision remains subject to completion of the study, Board approval, tenant consultation, and applicable Norwegian regulatory and grid-connection approvals.