Europe

Germany Roundup: 500MW BESS and Data Centre Transaction, Seven-Year Toll and 370MW Pipeline Secured

Source: Energy Storage News


The BESS with which ju:niz Energy will enter into a toll with Next Kraftwerke. Image: ju:niz Energy

A trio of German grid-scale BESS news items, with Next Kraftwerke and ju:niz Energy agreeing a seven-year toll, Alpiq announcing a 370MW pipeline, and WBS Power selling the country’s largest solar-plus-storage project and planning a data centre on the same site.

Germany has this year become a hotbed of battery energy storage system (BESS) project announcements and deal-making, driven by its substantial revenue opportunities as Europe’s largest electricity market and a looming August 2029 deadline for getting projects operational to avoid charge-discharge grid feesSee all recent coverage here.

WBS Power sells solar-plus-storage project, plans data centre

Developer WBS Power has sold the 150MW solar, 500MW/2,000MWh BESS Project Jupiter in Brandenburg, Germany, to investor Prime Capital.

WBS acquired the site for the clean energy project in 2022, and the project will require €500 million (US$583 million), with construction expected in late 2026/early 2027. Both technologies will share a 380kV grid connection in the area of TSO 50Hertz. The acquisition is subject to Project Jupiter reaching ready-to-build (RTB) status.

The transaction also establishes a joint venture to co-locate a hyperscale data centre of up to 500MW in power demand in the same area.

WBS Power said there is growing demand for data centres in Germany, which are highly energy-intensive and benefit significantly from direct access to renewable power and grid stability.

“By integrating Germany’s largest co-located BESS and Solar PV project with a hyperscale data center, we are creating a unique platform that supports both the energy transition and digital transformation,” said Maciej Marcjanik, CEO of WBS Power Group.

Alpiq secures 370MW Germany pipeline

Switzerland-based energy firm Alpiq has expanded in Germany with a 370MW BESS pipeline the company has ‘secured’, in partnership with developer SPP Development. The projects in Brandenburg and Saxony-Anhalt are expected to reach RTB status in 2026.

Lukas Gresnigt, Head International and member of the Executive Board of Alpiq said that Germany is a competitive and complex market for BESS, with many projects are queuing for grid access and permits, and the partnership combined Alpiq’s financial strength and SPP’s local expertise.

Last week, Energy-Storage.news reported on Alpiq entering into a long-term toll for a BESS in Germany owned and operated by Eco Stor. Alpiq has acquired projects in France and Finland, where it recently commissioned a 30MW/36MW project.

Shell and EQT companies agree Germany BESS toll

VPP operator Next Kraftwerke, acquired by Shell in 2021, has concluded a Germany BESS toll with BESS platform ju:niz Energy, acquired by investor EQT in 2024.

The seven-year toll is for a 20MW/40MWh project in Vöhringen, Bavaria, and Next said it is one of the first operational contracts of its kind in Germany, live since 1 November.

Next Kraftwerke will pay ju:niz Energy a fixed monthly fee per installed MW for the use of the BESS capacity. The model offers stable revenues for the operator (ju:niz) and flexibility for the optimiser (Next Kraftwerke). The toll is 80% fixed remuneration and 20% merchant, Next said.

(By Cameron Murray)


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Register Now to attend, free before Dec 31, 2025.

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Multiple Gigawatts of European BESS Project M&A, Financing and Route-to-Market Deals

Source: Energy Storage News


Verbund, Prime Batteries and Enevo executives signing a Romania BESS project deal. From left to right: Vicentiu Ciobanu (CEO Prime Batteries), Adrian Remus Borotea (managing director of Verbund Wind Power Romania) and Cristian Pirvulescu (CEO of Enevo Group).​ Image: Verbund via LinkedIn.

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.

Romania: Premier buys 400MWh BESS, Verbund enlists

contractors for project

Energy firm Premier Energy Group has acquired a ready-to-build (RTB) 200MW/400MWh battery energy storage system (BESS) in Romania, near Iasi.

Construction on the project will start in 2026, with commissioning anticipated in late 2026 or early 2027. The project will support the integration or more renewables on Romania’s grid with fast-response capacity and grid balancing applications.

Premier is currently in advanced discussions on financing options for the project, with the expectation of securing a long-term structure, it said. The announcement did not say whether it was one of the winning projects from a recent EU-backed capex support scheme.

In related news, Austria-based utility and power firm Verbund’s local arm Verbund Wind Power Romania has enlisted OEM Prime Batteries and engineering firm Enevo Group to supply and integrate a 48MW/76MWh project.

It will be built at Verbund’s Alpha Nord Wind Farm in Tulcea County. The installation will help integrate more renewables but also improve the operational flexibility of the Verbund’s local renewable assets.

Prime Batteries Technology and Enevo Group will deliver the full engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) scope, including design, equipment supply, system integration, installation and commissioning.

Construction is scheduled to begin in February 2026 with commissioning set for September 2026.

Prime Batteries made headlines last year when it integrated a BESS for owner Monsson with an emphasis on locally manufactured technology.

Germany: Eco Stor project toll and Ingrid Capacity enters market

Project owner-operator and EPC Eco Stor has entered into a long-term toll with energy firm Alpiq for a 103.5MW/238 MWh BESS in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany.

Alpiq will partner with optimisers Enspired and Entelios to manage the BESS project’s activity in the electricity market.

It is Eco Stor’s second major grid-scale project in Germany, and identically sized to its first which came online in June this year, in Bollingstedt. The project with Alpiq in Schleswig-Holstein will come online in mid-2026.

The announcement coincided with one from Sweden-headquartered BESS owner-operator Ingrid Capacity, revealing it has partnered with developer Energiequelle for 200MW of grid-scale projects in Germany.

Energiequelle will develop the projects while finance, operate, and optimise the assets using its in-house trading and optimisation platform. The projects are expected to reach RTB in 2026. Ingrid has so far been active primarily in Sweden and Finland.

Italy: Ric Energy buys 200MW BESS

Spain-headquartered Ric Energy Group has acquired a 200MW BESS in the Apulia region of Italy. The firm’s development pipeline in Italy now stands at 942MW, it said announcing the post on LinkedIn.

It didn’t provide more details about the project in its post. Italy is currently a hotbed of activity, with the long-awaited first auction of its MACSE scheme concluded with 10GWh of BESS handed long-term revenue contracts. Many investors and owner-operators were waiting for the auction before taking FIDs and proceeding to construction.

Our publisher Solar Media will host the Battery Asset Management Summit Europe 2025 in Rome tomorrow and Wednesday (2 & 3 December), where MACSE and Italy will undoubtedly be big talking points.

Netherlands: Giga Storage toll with Vattenfall

BESS owner-operator Giga Storage has entered into a long-term toll with energy firm Vattenfall for its Project Leopard, a 300MW/1,200MWh BESS in the Netherlands.

The toll covers 100MW, one-third of Leopard’s total capacity. It will provide Giga with a fixed, long-term income stream that supports the project’s financing. Vattenfall will optimise the contracted portion of Leopard’s capacity for services such as grid stability, portfolio balancing, and electricity trading.

RTM deals for grid-scale BESS in the Netherlands are characterised by portioning a project’s capacity into different slices with different tollers and offtakers to spread risk, the same strategy adopted by other major BESS owner-operators there including Lion Storage and SemperPower.

UK: RWE to build 700MWh BESS, two optimisation deals announced

Germany-headquartered power firm RWE has made a final investment decision (FID) on a 350MW/700MWh BESS in Wales, called Pembroke Battery Storage. It is part of the wider Pembroke Net Zero Centre project combining renewable generation including green hydrogen production.

The project received planning consent in January 2025 and also won contracts in the UK’s most recent capacity market (CM) auction. Construction will start in 2026 with commissioning and commercial operation in H2 2028, ‘subject to receiving an updated and timely grid connection’, RWE said. That probably alludes to the ongoing grid connection queue reshuffle.

The news follows hot on the heels of two BESS optimisation announcements in the UK, both covered by our sister site Solar Power Portal.

China-based Ganfeng Lithium has enlisted power firm EDF to provide RTM and optimisation services for its 50MW/160MWh Kintore BESS project, while EP Group has contracted optimiser GridBeyond to do the same for its 50MW North Baddesley BESS.

(By Cameron Murray)


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RWE Starts Building Germany’s Largest BESS

Source: Energy Storage News


RWE and stakeholders groundbreaking on its Gundremmingen BESS project, the largest in Germany. Image: RWE.

Power firm RWE has launched construction on a 400MW/700MWh BESS project in Bavaria, Germany, the largest being built in the country.

The Germany-headquartered firm announced the start of construction on the project yesterday (29 October), in a ceremony attended by Bavarian Minister-President Dr Markus Söder (pictured above, second from left).

The 1.75-hour duration battery energy storage system (BESS) project is being built alongside the Gundremmingen nuclear power plant, which is undergoing decommissioning, and will use the plant’s existing grid connection.

RWE is investing around €230 million (US$267 million) in the BESS, which will comprise 200 container units and 100 inverters, and is expected online in 2028. It will take the title of largest BESS online from Eco Stor’s 103.5MW/238MWh Bollingstedt, commissioned earlier this year, as well as Eco Stor’s pipeline of 300MW/600MWh projects.

Söder commented: “Gundremmingen remains a key location in the Bavarian energy supply. In addition to the new battery storage facility, a 55-hectare solar park and a gas-fired power station are also set to be built. With an output of 400 MWand a capacity of over 700MWh, the battery storage facility will stabilise the grid when there is no wind or sunlight.”

Germany has emerged in the past few years as one of Europe’s most attractive markets for large-scale BESS investment, with large opportunities in its wholesale energy market (Europe’s deepest) and helpful regulatory changes including an exemption from charge-discharge grid fees for BESS projects put into operation by 2029.

Those opportunities are set to grow as the country deploys more wind and solar, and solar trade body BSW-Solar recently called for 100GWh of BESS deployments by 2030.

We recently caught up with German BESS platform Terra One to discuss the market drivers, regulatory challenges and the trade-offs when opting for a merchant or toll-based strategy in the country.

(By Cameron Murray)


CENSA Upcoming Events:

1. Dec.4-5 | 2025 China Energy Storage CEO Summit | Xiamen, Fujian

Register Now to attend

Read more: http://en.cnesa.org/new-events-1/2025/12/4/dec4-5-2025-china-energy-storage-ceo-summit

2. Apr. 1-3, 2026 | The 14th Energy Storage International Conference & Expo

Register Now to attend, free before Oct 31, 2025.

Read more: https://en.cnesa.org/new-events-1/2026/4/1/apr-1-apr3-the-14th-energy-storage-international-exhibition-amp-expo

EASE Rebrands as Energy Storage Europe Association for Era of ‘Unprecedented Growth’

Source: Energy Storage News


Energy Storage Europe Association secretary general Patrick Clerens, speaking at the 2025 Energy Storage Summit EU. Clerens' consulting company formed the group with industry stakeholders in 2011. Image: Solar Media.

European Association for Storage of Energy (EASE), which represents 70 member organisations across the industry value chain, has undergone a rebrand.

Now called Energy Storage Europe Association, the change marks “a new chapter for our organisation and the entire sector,” said Patrick Clerens, the group's secretary general, whose consulting group was tasked with launching EASE back in 2011.

“Europe's energy future depends on energy storage. Our new identity will amplify this message to ensure we are at the heart of policy debates,” Clerens said.

Its activities include advocacy in the decision-making processes of European policymakers and regulators; direct participation in European Union (EU) research projects; providing market intelligence, including the European Market Monitor on Energy Storage (EMMES) reports; and networking and media engagement.

EMMES is published annually by the trade association and research consultancy LCP Delta. The most recent edition, EMMES 9.0, found that 11.9GW/21.1GWh of energy storage was deployed across Europe in 2024, including 4.9GW/12.1GWh of front-of-the-meter storage.

Meanwhile, the organisation's advocacy and education efforts include a recent call for common safety standards across European markets and a best practice guide to fire safety for outdoor utility-scale lithium-ion battery energy storage system (BESS) installations.

“In 2025, Europe added new energy storage power capacity at a scale 15 times greater than just five years ago. With this unprecedented growth, a more visible identity was essential to the Association,” Energy Storage Europe Association president David Post said.

“We will continue to represent the entire value chain and all storage technologies, advocating for policies that enable the needed flexibility and strongest deployment across Europe,” said Post, who is also Enel X head of energy storage solutions.

Energy Storage Association Europe's rebrand this week reflects a broader push for increased visibility and stronger representation among industry bodies of late.

The energy storage association is itself part of Europe's Energy Storage Coalition, formed alongside counterparts in the wind and solar PV industry to advocate for a Europe-wide policy action plan on storage.

SolarPower Europe, while a member of the coalition alongside EASE, WindEurope and Bill Gates's VC group Breakthrough Energy, also founded the Battery Storage Europe Platform earlier this year.

That said, Battery Storage Europe Platform is less of a trade association and more of a direct initiative to engage policymakers and regulators, SolarPower Europe said at the July launch.

In the US, the country's only national Energy Storage Association (ESA) merged with a wind industry group in 2021, becoming part of the American Clean Power Association (ACP).

However, ACP then launched its own separate energy storage effort a few weeks ago, called, confusingly enough, the US Energy Storage Coalition.


CENSA Upcoming Events:

1. Dec.4-5 | 2025 China Energy Storage CEO Summit | Xiamen, Fujian

Register Now to attend

Read more: http://en.cnesa.org/new-events-1/2025/12/4/dec4-5-2025-china-energy-storage-ceo-summit

2. Apr. 1-3, 2026 | The 14th Energy Storage International Conference & Expo

Register Now to attend, free before Oct 31, 2025.

Read more: https://en.cnesa.org/new-events-1/2026/4/1/apr-1-apr3-the-14th-energy-storage-international-exhibition-amp-expo

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