How do you ensure quality and performance and mitigate risk when buying BESS equipment? Expert speakers from consultancies, analytics firms and independent power producers discussed the topic in a recent panel discussion.
The ‘Product Selection, Quality, and Underperformance in Battery Storage Projects’ discussion at the Energy Storage Summit 2026 in London in February included the following speakers:
- Cameron Murray, Section Editor, Energy-Storage.news (moderator)
- Elias Garcia Goma, Technical Advisor, STS
- Maria Cuadrado, Global BESS Strategy and Development Manager, ContourGlobal
- George Touloupas, Vice President, ESG and New Services, CEA
- Claudius Jehle, CEO, Volytica
The Summit is the flagship event in our publisher Solar Media’s series of energy storage events globally which now totals 16, which you can see here. This week we published sessions looking at the German and Italian markets, and will be posting more of the conference’s session recordings on Energy-Storage.news in the coming days and weeks.
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See the full video below.
The discussion moved between the steps you can take from the procuring and contracting stage through to product manufacturing and project construction.
It is key to put certain things in a supply contract, like the right to a factory visit. If it’s not in the contract, a supplier can (and often will) simply refuse, CEA’s George Touloupas said.
The executives from STS and CEA then went through all the different things you can do regarding the factory and manufacturing process, assuming it is in the contract.
One audience member asked if there was any argument to go with Tesla, considering that banks are generally comfortable lending to projects using Chinese tech and BESS is, in their opinion, commoditised.
Touloupas and Volytica’s Claudius Jehle both quipped that if you don’t want any quality assurance (QA) or monitoring at all, then go with Tesla. “If a battery is a block box, a Tesla battery is a black hole,” Jehle said.
Challenges in integrating different hardware and software solutions in projects and enforcing warranties also came up in response to audience questions.
