New-build battery storage projects from three developers totalling 357MW awarded contracts in Belgium’s latest capacity market auction.

Netherlands-based developer Giga Storage has announced its first project outside home turf, with a 300MW/1,200MWh transmission-connected BESS planned in neighbouring Belgium.

Dutch utility Eneco is planning a 50MW/200MWh battery storage project in Belgium for commissioning next year, and called for more policy action on storage from its own government in the Netherlands.

Oil and gas firm TotalEnergies has enlisted subsidiary Saft to deploy a 25MW/75MWh battery energy storage system (BESS) at a refinery in Antwerp, Belgium.

Netherlands-based Alfen is deploying a two-hour-plus battery energy storage system (BESS) for Centrica Business Solutions in Belgium, the latter’s first outside the UK.

The Belgium arm of France-headquartered multinational utility Engie is proposing three battery storage projects totalling 380MW.

Some 1.9GW of grid-scale battery energy storage was deployed across Europe last year, of which nearly 85% was in UK, Ireland, Germany and France according to research and consultancy LCP Delta.

One of Belgium’s largest battery energy storage system projects so far has been brought online at the site of a former coal power plant.

A handful of companies are trying to get in early and design and deploy ‘second life’ energy storage units using EV batteries ahead of an expected boom in supply in the second half of the 2020s.