Family-owned British energy company RES Group has become a significantly larger player in service solutions for the renewable energy sector following last month’s acquisition of Spanish company Ingeteam’s services division.

RES Group was already large in project development and construction as well as asset management, but the acquisition will significantly strengthen the services business.

At the same time, the often long-term service agreements, where cash flows are more familiar, will contribute to more stable revenue streams in the group going forward, says Matilda Afzelius, CEO of RES Group’s Nordic business, in an interview with MarketWire.

”With the acquisition of Ingeteam’s services business, we have gained 1,500 new colleagues, bringing the total number of employees to 4,500. Hopefully, this will give us a more stable revenue. Project development goes up and down a lot due to permitting and whatever other challenges there are in that area, but with the service business we can balance the fluctuations in the group,” says Afzelius.

The acquisition of the services business expands RES’ operations to 24 markets, making it the largest independent renewable energy service provider in the world. Globally, RES now has over 40 gigawatts of operations and maintenance (O&M) and asset management contracts.

RES usually enters into long-term asset management contracts when, after project development - but typically before construction - it sells the projects to new investors. The fact that RES employees remain with the projects once they are completed is seen as a major strength in project development.

”It’s important for the local community to see that we’re in it for the long haul. We bring in investors along the way, but it’s the RES people they will meet for many years to come. They know this when we present a development project, and this is definitely a strength we have in our project development,” says Afzelius.

However, she also sees good opportunities to grow in services for projects that RES has not been involved in developing.

”Of course, we have a lot of key customers. Everyone has good relations in the market and we can see that they feel they can trust us. We’ve done some studies with DNV and can prove that wind farms that have been serviced by RES actually have a 1% better production.”

”It’s a signal that things are working well when we provide service - and a strong message to our investors, who therefore also take us to other wind farms that have been developed by others. But we also offer pure third-party contracts,” says Afzelius.

So far, RES has primarily focused on asset management in relation to services, while wind turbine manufacturers often tie an operation and maintenance (O&M) agreement to the tail end of a wind turbine contract.

”With the acquisition of the service part of Ingeteam, we have now also taken on O&M, where we can compete with the wind turbine manufacturers. But the main part of what we do is the overall management of the wind farm,” says Afzelius.

Translated using DeepL with additional editing by Kristoffer Grønbæk