The utility-scale battery storage market in Italy is drawing huge interest and development activity, writes Solar Media Market Research analyst Josh Cornes.

Technology provider Polar Night Energy and utility Lahti Energia have partnered for a large-scale project using Polar’s ‘Sand Battery’ technology for the latter’s district heating network in Vääksy, Finland.

A week of claimed first-of-their-kind advances in Germany’s BESS market, including the combination of monitoring, diagnostics and energy trading on one platform, an optimisation deal allowing multiple companies to trade one asset, and a law change accelerating permitting.

In a major week for European BESS deal-making, project acquisition and financing deals have been done in the Poland, Germany, Finland, the UK and Romania for grid-scale projects totalling well over 1GW of capacity.

Utility and power firm LEAG has partnered with Chinese system integrator HyperStrong for a 400MW/1,600MWh BESS in Saxony, Germany.

BESS and flexible generation provider Statera Energy has secured £235 million (US$309 million) in debt financing for its 680MW/1,360MWh Carrington BESS project in Manchester, UK.

State-backed power firm PPC Renewables has launched construction on its a large-scale BESS in Greece, for which Trina Storage will supply the energy storage technology.

Nearly 70% of the 4.5GW/12.7GWh of grid-scale BESS that came online across the globe last month was in China.

Two Finland BESS project announcements, with Exilion ordering grid-forming energy storage technology from Merus Power and Nala Renewables ordering units from Sungrow for 2-hour systems.

The low-carbon subsidiary of German energy company LEAG is constructing Europe’s largest single-site battery storage project, in partnership with Fluence.