A regulatory framework put in place by Italy’s grid operator TERNA has enabled Enel X to aggregate residential energy storage systems to pool their capabilities.

Italy’s electric system operator, Terna, approved contracts for dozens of megawatts (MWs) of energy storage facilities to serve grid-balancing applications each month throughout 2019.

European Commission greenlights €3.2bn research plan by seven major states to turn continent into global battery hub even as it signals it is ready to block imports on environmental grounds.

The colossal solar boom Italy wants to drive in a decade could lie beyond reach if developers do not act to embrace energy storage more decisively, industry players have argued at a recent event.

US-based energy storage technology provider Powin Energy has claimed it has a pipeline close to 500MWh of projects under contract, including recent awards totalling 70MWh for customers in North and Central America and in Italy.

After reporting last week on the findings from EMMES, the European Market Monitor on Energy Storage from Delta-ee and trade association EASE, which demonstrated a big rise in installations by MWh in 2017 across the continent, we delved further behind another record-breaking year with the report’s lead author, Valts Grintals of Delta-ee.

Tesla is negotiating with the government of Armenia over supplying a grid-scale storage system, while Italy’s grid operator revealed it is collaborating with the EV and smart energy tech maker to “study new techniques of energy storage”.

A subsidiary of Enel is jointly developing a large-scale lithium-ion battery system project with wind power developer ENERTRAG, in what will be the multinational utility’s first energy storage project in Germany.

The European electricity storage market has seen an impressive growth over the past two years. Whereas in 2015 some 300MWh of battery storage capacity was newly installed, just two years later in 2017, more than 700MWh was added. Delta-ee’s Valts Grintals gives you some highlights and pinpoints some recent trends across the continent.

While the global energy storage industry has continued its pace of rapid growth during the past year, well-established markets remain highly concentrated in specific regions of the world. Alex Eller of Navigant Research discusses many of the factors influencing growth trends for energy storage at both utility-scale and distributed levels.