Eni Plenitude has launched a 15MW battery storage project in Italy

Eni Plenitude, part of the large oil and gas major Eni, has put into operation a 15MW/9MWh battery storage unit in Italy.

The utility arm of the large firm announced the project in Assemini, Cagliari, was operational today (7 June). It shares grid connection infrastructure with an existing 23MW PV plant that Eni Plenitude owns nearby.

With an installed power rating of 15MW and an energy storage capacity of 9MWh giving a sub-1-hour duration, the LFP battery system is most likely one of the fleet of projects that won awards in the Fast Reserve auction of 2020.

That auction saw five-year contracts handed to some 230MW of battery storage projects for 2023-27 delivery. The first of these came online in March, a 9MW/8MWh project in Liguria from Renantis, formerly Falck Renewables. The auction’s biggest winners were multinational utilities Enel, which is based in Italy, and Engie, headquartered in France. However, the auction is unlikely to be repeated, and most battery storage projects’ business cases in Italy are being built mainly around capacity markets and energy arbitrage, according to Kilian Leykam, director of Investment Management Battery Storage at Aquila Clean Energy EMEA. The grid-scale battery energy storage market in Italy is set to become one of Europe’s most active in the coming years having been largely non-existent until now. Enel recently started construction on 1.6GW of projects for 2024 commercial operation dates (COD) recently, mainly for its capacity market contract wins in early 2022. Those wins came at a time when the industry expected continuous downward trajectory in capex costs which did not materialise last year, an executive from UK developer Field, who we also interviewed for the feature, said.