ESN Premium heard from executives at battery energy storage system (BESS) firms Rept and Fluence on the EU funding ban on Chinese inverters in solar and BESS projects.

Executives from lithium-ion battery and BESS manufacturer CATL discussed sodium-ion technology at Smarter E Europe today.

We chat to Stephan Lehrke, head of Germany at Second Foundation, a Czech Republic-headquartered energy asset trading firm which is becoming an owner-operator of BESS.

Activity in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) continues to accelerate, with two separate c.600MWh projects completed in Bulgaria by Solarpro & CATL and Sunotec and Sungrow, plus around 800MWh of capacity progressed across Romania, Estonia, Lithuania, and Finland.

Wärtsilä spinning out its energy storage activities and divesting a 50% stake this week reflects difficulties in making the business profitable and synergistic within the wider group activities, analysts said.

Octopus Energy Generation has partnered with ZE Energy to invest in and build one of Italy’s biggest BESS projects, while Eco Stor has secured financing for one of Germany’s, which it is already building. Optimiser Entrix has also won two large contracts in Germany and the Netherlands.

Around 4.9GW/14.6GWh of large-scale BESS came online in May, with a much more balanced regional breakdown than usual.

What is driving and shaping European BESS project financing and M&A this year?

The Czech Republic’s fourth pumped hydro energy storage plant is to be built within an existing hydropower complex, converting convention run-of-river into reversible units, creating 750MWh of energy storage capacity.