NW Group is on a mission to make the energy transition accessible by reaching the rural and peri-urban communities that large-scale infrastructure often leaves behind. Operating across France and the Nordics, NW leads in battery energy storage systems (BESS) with its JBox® technology and is a major player in high-power EV charging with IECharge®.
Through its subsidiaries in the Nordics, the group aims to become the region's leading battery storage platform by 2027 and expand across Sweden and the Baltics. This ambition includes a 1GW/3GWh target, which demands not just strong technology, but the operational infrastructure to support it. The ambition is already well underway: more than 200 JBox® units are already in service in Finland, supporting a grid where over 55% of generation is renewable. These are active assets; balancing supply and demand in real time, integrating wind and solar, softening price volatility, and keeping power flowing to remote communities across the country.
NW’s main challenge is onboarding its growing fleet of distributed assets effectively — and that starts with enabling a grid connection for every unit. Each JBox® unit must communicate its status continuously, not only to NW, but to the grid operators that depend on that data, like Fingrid, Finland's transmission system operator.
Without reliable, real-time data transfer, these battery units can't do their job, with balancing, grid stability, and market participation all depending on signals arriving accurately and instantly. Enabling each grid connection is demanding work in itself: the right signals must be agreed with every DSO, added to the data flow, then tested and validated together before an asset can go live. This requires sustained communication across many DSOs, each with its own processes, systems, and contacts. As deployment scaled from a handful of units to hundreds, across different protocols, operators, and locations, that complexity grew significantly. NW needed a partner with the technical depth, energy market expertise, and established DSO relationships to onboard each asset, build the integration layer, and keep the service running reliably long after go-live.
— Örjan Thorén, VP, Asset Operations, Volue
NW engaged Volue to turn its distributed battery fleet into a connected, market-ready resource, with real-time data exchange at the heart of its Finnish operations. Rather than build and staff DSO engagement itself, NW relies on Volue to agree the right signals with each grid operator, add them to the flow, and test and validate them before a unit goes live. Through Volue’s Realtime Data Exchange, service data from NW's JBox® units flows into Volue's central system via a SCADA integration, and Volue transmits the relevant signals onward to Fingrid and the DSOs. The result is a seamless, automated pipeline that connects each physical asset to the grid operators and markets that depend on it.
For NW, that means every unit becomes visible, readable, and actionable to the operators who depend on it. Volue runs and maintains the integration as an ongoing service, so each new asset onboards quickly and keeps delivering long after go-live, leaving NW free to focus on growing its fleet rather than managing the connections behind it.
Accurate, continuous signals now reach Fingrid and the DSOs from every asset, with those operators relying on NW's batteries as a dependable balancing resource. This is no small thing in a grid that's more than half renewable. Internally, the same data has shifted NW from reactive monitoring to proactive, intelligence-led operations, resolving changing conditions before they escalate.
The same integration also unlocks commercial value, bridging NW's physical assets and the markets they can serve. With every unit represented to operators, NW's BESS now competes in Finland's balancing and ancillary markets, turning real-time signals into revenue. And what works across 200 units is now a repeatable model, and one NW is already extending toward its 1GW/3GWh target.
“NW is an innovative player in the energy sector. With locations throughout Finland, the JBox® is a unique innovation that supports grids with complex and demanding needs — and Volue has been an important partner in that work.”
- Ville Väre, Managing Director Nordics, NW Group
