A round-up of news from Europe’s BESS market, which includes Encavis and OX2 in Italy and Sunotec in Bulgaria.

This year has seen a shift in the financing environment for merchant BESS projects in Germany for the worse.

What led Field to submitting, and winning, 16- to 18-hour BESS projects in the UK’s long-duration energy storage (LDES) cap-and-floor scheme, and what are the next steps? We hear from the firm’s technical director.

The German regulator BNetzA’s latest draft decision on grid fees from 4 August 2029 onwards still leaves uncertainty for energy storage project business cases.

The Spanish Ministry of Ecological Transition (MITECO) has awarded €360 million (US$415 million) to 1.14GW of solar PV co-located with battery energy storage system (BESS) projects.

There is an opportunity for locally designed and manufactured BESS solutions in Europe, with the possibility of future EU controls of Chinese imports, former head of BESS products at Northvolt said. 

IPP Zelestra has agreed a long-term toll for a 99MW/297MWh BESS project in Germany with the trading arm of UK-based power group Centrica.

Elestor claims its hydrogen-iron flow battery delivers 75%+ round-trip efficiency, a 20-25 year lifespan, and 15€/kWh capex for long-duration storage. 

July was a busy month for large-scale battery storage activity in the UK, with Engie commissioning a system, Masdar and Fidra hitting financial close on projects, Eku Energy buying one, project consents for Aura Power and Starlight Energy, and more.

The largest grid-scale battery energy storage system (BESS) project in the Czech Republic has gone online, supplied by a company invested in by lithium-ion OEM CATL.