Italy and Spain are set to soar as energy storage markets with multiple gigawatt-hours under construction and much more in the pipeline, but there are questions around the regulatory frameworks driving deployments in each country.

Battery storage played a crucial role in the Baltic region’s switch from Russia over to the Continental European grid over the weekend, coinciding with Lithuania launching a €100 million storage support scheme.

Bids have been received by Latvia’s grid operator AST for an 80MW/160MWh BESS project while developers Corsica Sole and Everon will build a 200MW system in Estonia, as the Baltic region prepares to decouple from Russia’s electricity system in 2025.

Taking the UK’s transmission system and the circumstances which led to a dramatic blackout as a direct example, Javier Cavada and Gary Preece of liquid air energy storage (LAES) systems company Highview Power look at how such events could be avoided, cost-effectively and with lesser environmental consequences.

Some news in brief from around the world of energy storage this week: Dutch grid-balancing act heralds AES’ first Europe installation, Japanese PV inverter company Tabuchi makes bid to become household name in US solar-plus-storage and Solar Impulse takes unscheduled break from spreading clean energy message.