What is the future for the grid-scale energy storage market in Italy, now that the dust has settled from the country’s long-awaited MACSE auction for BESS?
The topic was in focus on the ‘Life After MACSE: The Green Light for BESS Investors’ panel discussion at the Energy Storage Summit 2026 in London in February, for which the full video is below. The expert speakers on the panel were from major developers, IPPs and optimisers:
- Roberto Castiglioni, CEO & CoFounder, Ikigai Capital (moderator)
- Tancredi Peraino, Senior Project Manager, Enel Green Power
- Mahael Fedele, Partner & CEO, Sphera Energy
- Antonio Montoto, Head of Storage, Greenvolt Power
- Csilla Kohalmi-Monfils, Portfolio Director, Kraken
The summit is the flagship event in our publisher Solar Media’s now 16-strong series of energy storage events globally, which you can see here. We will be posting more of the conference’s session recordings on Energy-Storage.news in the coming days and weeks.
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The MACSE auction in September, covered in-depth by Energy-Storage.news at the time, was a completely new type of state-led, energy storage-specific capacity procurement mechanism which had eagerly been anticipated by the industry.
See the full video of the panel discussion below.
Panellists discussed the implications of MACSE but also reiterated that whether you won or not, there are deep and long-term opportunities in Italy’s energy market. Good optimisation and strong procurement capabilities have emerged as key.
But, panellists aid, the auction had wider industry impacts on:
- BESS prices, both capex and opex, since it drove these down to amongst the lowest figures ever seen in Europe
- warranties around things like round-trip efficiency (RTE)
- the extent to which projects can be de-risked
- the idea of BESS being an infrastructure asset (and returns expectations needing to be adjusted accordingly)
The panel then moved on to discussing operating in the non-MACSE, merchant market, ancillary services, the risks of price cannibalisation, and more.
