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.

A new battery energy storage system (BESS) cybersecurity whitepaper from consultancy firm The Brattle Group and cybersecurity solutions provider Dragos claims that a single 100MW/400MWh BESS outage could result in US$1.2 million in monthly losses.

Last month was the first time since June that both pre-application submissions and full planning consent submissions for grid-scale UK BESS surpassed 1GWh – just before NESO announced the results of its grid connection queue reshuffle.

The UK’s National Energy System Operator (NESO) will offer grid connection offers up to 2035 to 283GW of projects following a reform of the process.

European BESS news from project owners Premier Energy Group, Verbund, Eco Stor, Ingrid Capacity, Ric Energy, Ganfeng Lithium, EP Group, RWE and Giga Storage, securing acquisitions, financings and route-to-market (RTM) deals for multiple gigawatts of capacity this past week.

Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham marked the commencement of construction at Highview’s 300MWh liquid air energy storage facility.

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.

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.

UK BESS projects totalling nearly 4GWh awarded planning consent in October, there is now nearly 22GWh under construction.

Trina Storage has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Pacific Green Energy Group to supply up to 5GWh of battery energy storage systems between 2026 and 2028.