Battery energy storage system (BESS) capacity in Italy reached 587MW/1,227MWh in the first three months of 2022, of which 977MWh is distributed energy storage, according to the national renewables association, ANIE Rinnovabili.
Like Germany, Italy’s BESS market is currently dominated by the residential and commercial & industrial segments.
ANIE said that 20,832 DER BESS units – Elettrochimico Distribuito in Italian – were installed from January through March, totalling 123MW/264MWh. That brings the total installed power and capacity of DER BESS units in the country to 527MW/977MWh.
Plus grid operator Terna’s own BESS units totalling 60MW/250MWh, Italy has a total of 587MW/1,227MWh of BESS.
ANIE’s bulletin said that 97% of the DER BESS units, which now stand at 95,869 in total, are combined with a solar PV system and 97% are residential. 98.2% are lithium-ion-based with lead-based, flywheel batteries and supercapacitors making up the rest.
Some 95% of them are smaller than 20kWh in size with only six of the 95,869 coming in larger than 500kWh, it said.
A handful of wealthy northern regions account for around half of the DER BESS market, mirroring their share of the wider economy. Lombardy, where Milan is, is the largest with around 22% of the market with Veneto second at 16%, Emilia-Romagna 10% and Piedmont accounting for around 9%.
ANIE said that the impressive deployment numbers for Q1 2022, which stood at 60% of 2021’s full-year figure, were thanks to new rebate schemes for deploying residential and commercial storage systems alongside PV.
The number and capacity of utility-scale BESS projects operating in Italy should grow in the coming years with several large systems set to come online in 2023, and Terna recently awarding 1.1GW of capacity contracts to energy storage assets for delivery in 2024.
Next year will see Spain-based energy conversion equipment specialist Ingeteam recently supply a 340MWh in the north to serve Terna’s grid while global system integrator Fluence will deliver a portion of 250MW of projects that won contracts to provide Fast Reserve service back in 2020.
