On Wednesday, Blackstone Energy Partners—the energy-focused private equity arm of alternative assets giant Blackstone Group—announced the acquisition of NRStor C&I L.P., a distributed energy resource platform and former subsidiary of NRStor, the Toronto-based developer of clean energy battery storage solutions.
The sellers were Fengate Asset Management, a specialized Canadian real assets alternative investment firm that focuses on private equity, infrastructure and real estate, managing on behalf of the multi-employer LiUNA Pension Fund of Central and Eastern Canada. along with venture capital investor Lake Bridge Capital.
Price and terms of the deal were not announced. The new acquisition will add to a $16 billion existing equity portfolio for Blackstone Energy Partners across multiple industry sub-sectors.
“Energy-as-a-service”
Per the official announcement, NRStor C&I LP has over 200 MWh of projects in the battery storage market, having expanded from a dominant market position in its home province of Ontario into the growing United States market for distributed energy resources. The company offers a turnkey “energy-as-a-service” platform that requires no capital outlay or operational expertise on the customer end. The platform’s end clients are commercial, industrial and institutional customers, as well as North American utility companies.
In September of last year, NRSTor C&I partnered with Honeywell to launch the Experion Energy Program, North America’s largest behind-the-meter (BTM) energy storage deployment to date. The scope of that project matched the total North American BTM energy storage deployment for all of 2018.
“Battery storage will play an important role in the North American power grid and be critical to achieving ambitious renewable targets,” said Bilal Khan, Senior Managing Director, Blackstone Energy Partners. “NRStor is a pioneer in energy storage and we look forward to helping the leadership team further build out the company’s platform to reach new markets and opportunities.”
“We are extremely excited about the new partnership with Blackstone and the opportunity to further accelerate our growth and solidify our mission to provide end users and utilities with innovative storage solutions,” said Moe Hajabed, Founder and CEO of NRStor. “Blackstone brings both the scale and the deep understanding of the renewable power and utility markets that will help us significantly expand our platform and deliver reliable, clean energy to more communities across North America. We look forward to this new chapter of our growth.”