Saturday, 12 September 2026

Newly installed battery storage capacity in Italy dropped 58% year on year over the 12 months to June 2026, according to ESS News.

Excluding pumped hydro, the country held roughly 19 GWh of installed storage capacity and 8 GW of power as of June 30, ESS News reported.

The residential segment carried much of the decline. Installed residential capacity fell 36% in Q2 2026, the 11th consecutive quarter of year-on-year contraction, per ESS News.

Grid-scale procurement points the other way. Terna has already awarded 10 GWh of new storage capacity under the first Macse auction, for completion by 2027, ESS News reported. The next Macse auction is scheduled for Nov. 24.

Even so, the awarded volumes leave a gap. Anie said around 24 GWh of additional storage would still need to be developed by 2030 if all awarded and planned volumes are delivered.

NeoVolta has secured credit carrying a 10% annual interest rate, maturing March 3, 2028, according to ESS News.

The company is building a 210,600-square-foot battery energy storage system (BESS) manufacturing facility in Pendergrass, Georgia, with joint venture partner LONGi, ESS News reported.

The plant is expected to launch with up to 2 GWh of annual production capacity, scalable up to 8 GWh, per ESS News.

Cell supply is already contracted. SK On signed an agreement with NeoVolta to deliver 9 GWh of lithium iron phosphate (LFP) pouch cells between 2027 and 2031, according to ESS News.

Alongside the debt, the financing includes five-year warrants struck at USD 3.30, with 1.45 million shares issued at closing, ESS News reported. The loan terms set a 10% annual interest rate and a March 3, 2028 maturity.

Rabot Energy, a Hamburg-based digital utility, launched a standalone home battery aimed at apartment renters in June 2026, according to ESS News.

The product, branded the Rabot Flow, is a 2.12 kWh plug-and-play module that charges from the grid when prices are low and discharges when dynamic prices spike, ESS News reported. No solar array is required.

The underlying hardware is the Marstek Venus A, an indoor lithium-iron-phosphate device that retails at EUR 400 and plugs directly into standard household wall sockets, per ESS News. Marstek was the only manufacturer willing to build a dedicated cloud API connection allowing Rabot Energy to steer the storage remotely.

The commercial case for customers without a smart meter runs through the app rather than through arbitrage. Connecting the Rabot Flow unlocks a guaranteed flat-rate saving of EUR 120 per year credited directly to the user's account, ESS News reported.

Installation sits inside a relaxed German rule set: small-scale residential storage under 800 W can be installed without a certified electrician. That removes the electrician visit that normally gates a tenant's access to behind-the-meter storage.

Germany's distribution layer remains fragmented, with the country split among roughly 800 distribution system operators, according to ESS News. Schade said Germany experienced roughly 1,000 hours of negative or zero electricity prices in 2023, the price signal that a grid-charging battery is built to capture.

A 900-megawatt battery storage facility is planned for the site of the decommissioned Isar 2 nuclear power plant at Niederaichbach in Bavaria, according to RenewEconomy.

Munich-based investment firm Advisum is behind the plan, RenewEconomy reported. The same firm intends to build a 100-megawatt data centre on the site alongside the battery.

Bavaria's economy minister Hubert Aiwanger described the project as a "key component" of the state's energy transition.

Grid work at the location is already under way. A substation near the former nuclear plant is being expanded to handle renewable electricity carried by the SuedOstLink transmission line, according to RenewEconomy.

RheEnergise has built and operated a dense-fluid pumped hydro installation at Cornwood in Devon, constructing an upper and a lower reservoir and installing pumps, pipes and generating equipment for the system.

The company also manufactured hundreds of cubic metres of its proprietary high-density fluid, pumped that fluid uphill and ran it back down through the equipment, according to CleanTechnica.

CleanTechnica's assessment is that the technology works, and that scaling it is the problem.