The European Union (EU) has launched the Clean Industrial Deal and Affordable Energy Action Plan, which dedicate at least €100 billion towards boosting industry, manufacturing and speeding up the rollout of renewables and energy storage.

As Europe’s BESS industry matures, project owner-operators are taking on more control – and risk – when it comes to procuring technology and services for their projects.

IPP E energija Group has started building what it claims is the largest ‘private’ BESS project in Lithuania, a few weeks after the Baltic region decoupled from Russia’s electricity grid.

European lithium-ion OEM Northvolt has sold the division in which its ESS manufacturing plant in Poland sits, as it continues to divest non-core assets amidst its ongoing Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

Latvia state-owned utility and power generation firm Latvenergo intends to deploy 250MW/500MWh of BESS in the next five years.

A fire broke out at an under-construction BESS project in Essex, England, on 19 February and was brought under control and then handed back to site management a day later.

Commercial operation has started on the 100MW/331MWh Bramley battery energy storage system (BESS), a project in the UK deployed by owner-operator BW ESS, developer Penso Power and BESS provider Sungrow.

The CEO of ‘All-iron’ flow battery manufacturer ESS Tech Inc (ESS Inc) has resigned, one of a number of steps the company has taken to ‘position it for the future’ after slower-than-expected growth.

Germany and the UK are currently Europe’s ‘hottest’ markets for battery storage, but others present exciting opportunities, too.

Despite a 12% year-on-year fall in the capacity of newly submitted planning applications in 2024, there is still a strong interest in the UK energy storage market as a whole.