How Hacquebord Staal & Buizen extracts returns from a connection that already had everything
Customer
Hacquebord Staal & Buizen
The situation
To become more sustainable, Hacquebord invested heavily in a solar roof with over 7,000 panels. A logical step, but the market had changed in the meantime: on sunny afternoons, the panels generated power precisely when the market was paying the least for it. Sometimes negative prices were charged — Hacquebord had to pay extra to sell the electricity, with, on top of that, imbalance costs.
Hacquebord did not have a connection problem. They had a yield problem.
What was built
The solution: a battery system that moves with the market
Friday Energy installed a 1.3 MW / 3 MWh battery system and connected it to Friday Flex — the AI-driven energy management system that determines what the battery does every fifteen minutes, based on current market prices and its own generation and consumption.
The result
What this changed:
- Using generation at the right moment.
Surplus power from the solar panels now goes into the battery, rather than being fed back into the grid at a negative price. The battery discharges when the price justifies it — not at a fixed time, but during the 15-minute period when the market pays the most for it.
In 2025, nearly half of the days had a price difference of more than €100/MWh between the most expensive and cheapest 15-hour period on the day-ahead market; Friday Flex determines the maximum within that spread every 24 hours and adjusts accordingly if the price situation changes in the hours that follow.
- Moving in tandem with the national grid.
When the power grid briefly experiences a power shortage or surplus, the battery can adjust within seconds. Through Friday Access, Hacqeboard has direct access to the energy and balancing markets. Additionally, as a Congestion Service Provider, Friday unlocks regional congestion markets (GOPACS), where grid operators purchase capacity to resolve regional bottlenecks.
- Room for growth on the existing connection.
The sawing and drilling lines in Drachten are energy-intensive. By absorbing peaks with the battery, Hacquebord does not have to wait for grid reinforcement to expand processes.
What it yields:
Hacquebord is now generating a return from a connection that was already technically sound but underperformed financially. The electricity from the solar panels is used at the moment that is most valuable. The battery contributes to a more stable grid and is compensated for it. And the connection offers capacity that previously seemed unavailable.
That is not a promise for the future — it is operational.