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.

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

“To toll or not to toll seems to be the question. Rather the question you should be asking is with whom and how much,” a panellist at the Energy Storage Summit EU in London said today (19 February).

RWE has commissioned 235MWh of battery energy storage systems (BESS) in Hamm and Neurath, in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany.

Industry experts discussed the varying approaches in Europe to procuring energy storage via long-term support schemes on Day One of Solar Media’s Energy Storage Summit 2025 in London, which kicked off today (18 February).

Germany is currently the “hottest market in Europe today from a development perspective,” according to battery storage developer-investor BW ESS.

We caught up with the CEO and strategy director of ‘green flexibility’, a German BESS operator platform whose management team is largely made up of executives formerly from home energy and VPP firm sonnen.

Energy storage developer-owner BW ESS has entered its fifth international market, partnering with developer MIRAI Power in Germany.

The Gore Street Energy Storage Fund (GSF) was one of the early movers in the UK BESS industry and now has operational assets in Great Britain (GB), Ireland, Germany, Texas and California.

Virtual power plants (VPPs) are networks of small-scale, distributed energy resources, such as solar panels or batteries (and in some instances vehicles) which can together function as a single power plant, providing stability to the electric grid.