Finland’s largest BESS to date will need to cope with “especially challenging” operating conditions and stringent and evolving grid code requirements.

It’s been a busy few weeks in the run-up to Christmas in Europe’s BESS project space, with M&A, final investment decisions (FID) and supplier deals in Germany, Belgium, Portugal, Italy, Finland, Romania and the UK totally around 800MW of capacity.

Estonia-headquartered high-power energy storage startup Skeleton Technologies officially opened two European production plants in November.

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.

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.

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.

A flurry of grid-scale BESS project progress totalling more than a combined 1.5GWh in the past week, from Renalfa in Bulgaria, Engie in Romania, Nala Renewables in Finland and Metlen in Greece.

Chinese lithium-ion OEM Hithium and system integrator BOS Power have signed a supply agreement for 3GWh of BESS deployments in the Nordic region.

Developer Winda Energy will put a 30MW/60MWh BESS in Finland into operation next year, built with technology supplied by European companies.

Developer Merus Power has delivered and commissioned a 38MW/43MWh battery energy storage system (BESS) in Lappeenranta, Finland.