Flexibility will be a critical piece of the grid of the future and energy storage will play a central role in that, keynote speakers said at Solar Media’s Energy Storage Summit Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) 2024 today.

Real estate developer ERNE Gruppe and architecture firm FlexBase are hoping to start construction on a data centre project in Switzerland next year, which will include a ‘non-flammable and non-explosive’ 500MW energy storage unit.

The German government has opened a public consultation on new frameworks to procure energy resources, including long-duration energy storage (LDES).

A coalition of battery storage developers, including Zenobē, Eelpower, Harmony Energy and Field, has penned a letter to the UK government and National Grid Electricity System Operator (National Grid ESO).

Investor Return has acquired an energy storage development platform in Germany, Swedish optimiser Flower has bought another large-scale BESS project, while Romania’s CIS Group has revealed a flurry of solar and storage projects.

Three-quarters of the lithium-ion battery supply chain could have exposure to forced labour, contravening US and EU laws and potentially leading to products being blocked from those markets, a report said.

ESN Premium speaks with representatives of Lunar Energy and Nomad Power Systems, respectively targeting the tricky VPP and mobile power markets with energy storage-backed solutions.

DNO and IPP Electrica has received €3.4 million (US$3.8 million) in EU grants for a c.70MWh BESS project it will build in Romania.

It was a busy week of news in the UK’s grid-scale energy storage market last week, with BESS projects put into operation by Eku Energy and Harmony Energy Income Trust (HEIT), and projects in the gigawatt-hour scale announced by ESB and Apatura in Scotland.

News from the Nordics and the Baltics, with BESS projects launched in Sweden, Denmark and Latvia by Centrica, Nordic Solar and Niam Infrastructure and Evecon.