BESS Market

Italy’s newly installed battery storage capacity fell 58% year on year over the 12 months to June 2026. The decline accelerated in Q2 and was driven by the residential segment, which recorded its 11th consecutive quarter of year-on-year decline. Anie Rinnovabili’s Storage Systems Observatory, based on Terna’s Gaudì data, shows a 58% drop in installed capacity and 42% fall in power. Compared with PNIEC targets, Italy has a gap of approximately 2 GWh for distributed storage and 50 GWh for centralized storage. ...

European battery storage installations forecast to jump from 32 GWh in 2025 to 57 GWh in 2026 (78% YoY) per EUPD Research’s EES Report. Falling battery costs, higher electricity prices, and solar-plus-storage adoption driving growth. Residential segment: 11 GWh to 15 GWh (36% YoY). Germany leads, followed by Italy, Netherlands, UK, Austria. https://eupd-group.com/europes-battery-storage-boom-accelerates-as-2026-installations-set-to-jump-78-yoy/

Cannibalized solar revenues in Europe can be partly recovered through co-location with batteries and algorithmic market channel optimization. That’s how I read Gerard Reid’s post in which he highlights the renewables buildout in Europe over the past twenty years, where the goal was increasing installed capacity and support schemes often reduced asset owners’ exposure to capture prices. As we have now reached an impressive buildout capacity, the effects of solar cannibalization are visible: Many hours of negative wholesale prices around midday in several European markets and compression of revenues for solar asset owners exposed to those prices. Low demand and inflexible generation also contribute. ...

In their new white paper, Volue argue that competitive advantage in BESS increasingly depends on algorithmic optimization and trading. Building optimizers myself, I am probably biased. But in my opinion both this white paper and the market trends below paint this as an exciting field to work in. Volue argue that: BESS hardware has become increasingly commoditized: turnkey storage equipment prices fell approximately 81% between 2017 and 2025, excluding EPC and grid connection costs. Alongside grid and market access, trading skill is an increasingly important source of repeatable advantage. The hard part is earning a profit repeatedly while adapting to changes in market rules, revenue streams, and asset makeup. Trading decisions are interconnected. A commitment now changes the opportunities available later. Degradation also means higher revenue today can reduce lifetime value. Volue identify three reasons behind this shift in importance from hardware to algorithm: ...

I’ve been curious about European battery storage buildout figures and forecasts for a while now - so I’ve dug in. For the end of 2025, SolarPower Europe estimates operational battery storage for the EU-27 at 40 GW / 77.3 GWh (1.9 hours). Also for 2025, EMMES 10 reports approximately 49 GW / 81 GWh (1.7 hours) for EU-27 + GB + Norway + Switzerland. When I go to the JRC European Energy Storage Inventory page and select operational electrochemical and EU-27 + UK + Norway + Switzerland I get, as of today, 22 GW / 45 GWh (2 hours). Note that JRC has no Malta entries as of now. ...

Just read an interesting panel discussion among five US battery company CEOs that I think provides an interesting outlook for BESS elsewhere. The scale of the US buildout is pretty striking. 24 GW of new utility-scale BESS is expected this year alone, around 60% more than last year. One of the developers expects the current wave of projects coming through interconnection queues to turn into a roughly decade-long construction boom. ...