Major BESS route-to-market (RTM) deals have been announced in Poland, by Greenvolt and Entrix, and in Italy, by Zelestra and BKW.
Greenvolt and Entrix 1.3GW/5.2GWh tie-up
Optimiser Entrix has signed an exclusive agreement with independent power producer (IPP) Greenvolt to trade five large-scale battery energy storage system (BESS) projects in Poland, totalling 1.3GW/5.2GWh of capacity.
Entrix will manage the multi-market optimisation of Greenvolt’s BESS assets, maximising its revenues in the electricity market via participation in balancing services, such as Frequency Containment Reserve (FCR) and Automatic Frequency Restoration Reserve (aFRR) and day-ahead and intraday trading.
The first two are already under construction and are scheduled to go live in the first half of 2026.
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Greenvolt’s Poland BESS portfolio accounted for the lion’s share of BESS technology’s capacity market (CM) auction wins in 2023. The firm’s firm’s deputy commercial director for Europe Jan Kloczko discussed the wins with Energy-Storage.news at the Energy Storage Summit Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) 2024 in Warsaw last year. The next edition of the event will be held at the end of this month.
In March, Greenvolt ordered BESS technology for the first two of these, presumably the same first two mentioned by Entrix, from Chinese EV and BESS giant BYD.
The CM is the bedrock of the business case for large-scale BESS in Poland, but is still likely to only account for a minority of overall revenues. Greenvolt and Entrix’s deal is the first optimisation deal of this scale that we are aware of.
Zelestra and BKW sign Italy toll
In similar news, IPP Zelestra has signed a long-term tolling agreement with power firm BKW for up to 2GWh of BESS in Northern Italy.
The deal will see Zelestra make part of its projects’ capacity available to BKW, which will manage and optimise their activity in the electricity market, and could be the first long-term toll in Italy. Construction on the BESS will begin in 2027 with commercial operations scheduled for 2028.
Northern Italy has high demand from industrial consumers, growing renewable penetration and an expected phase-out of thermal plants, Zelestra said.
Italy has its own CM too, with BESS increasingly winning a large share of contracts for new capacity.
The CM will provide long-term guaranteed revenues for BESS in Northern Italy, while in the South BESS projects’ business case will be built around the MACSE scheme (Meccanismo di Approvvigionamento di Capacità di Stoccaggio Elettrico). The scheme sees projects’ capacity handed over to Terna for use in a time-shifting platform serving renewable asset owners, and will provide up to 80% of revenues according to analyst estimates. The first auctions for MACSE are this month.
