BESS owner-operator BW ESS and developer ACL Energy have expanded their development pipeline in Italy to 2.9GW.
The additional 14 projects totalling 2.5GW of battery energy storage system (BESS) capacity the pair have committed to co-developing builds on the existing 395MW of capacity, spread across three projects, announced in February 2024.
The 14 projects are spread throughout the country and all have grid connections and land secured and are now looking to obtain construction permits, BW ESS said. Seven of the projects, totalling over 1GW, are under review by the Ministry of Environment and Energy Security (MASE).
BW ESS said its projects in the North would target participation in the capacity market scheme, while those in the South would aim to bid in the Mechanism for Procuring Electricity Storage Capacity (MACSE), Italy’s new, energy storage-specific capacity procurement scheme. The North is where a lot of Italy’s main demand centres are while the South is where most solar generation will be built.
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Italy’s transmission system operator (TSO), Terna, forecasts that the country will need 8.875GW/71GWh of storage to integrate its growing renewable energy generation fleet. That figure is in addition to distributed energy storage resources – a large segment in Italy – and grid-scale projects already procured through previous capacity market and ancillary service auctions. The average 8-hour duration is split across BESS and pumped hydro projects, with most BESS announced having 4 to 6-hour durations.
BW ESS CEO Erik Stromso discussed the firm’s broad strategy and the Italian market in an interview earlier this year (Premium access).
See all recent Italy energy storage news here, including recent grid-scale projects from technology providers Energy Dome, Energy Vault and NHOA.
