The scale of the task
The European Commission estimates that the EU will need 200 GW of storage capacity by 2030, compared with around 55 GW installed at the beginning of 2026. The Commission says an indicative pace of 30 GW a year will be needed to meet the system's 2030 storage requirements — a build-out rate roughly six times the current installed base over the remainder of the decade.
Policy is being aligned behind the target
Institutional support is moving in parallel. The EU's first tripartite agreement for energy storage, signed in June, aligns public and private actors to accelerate deployment. In July, the Commission published its Electrification Action Plan, which links greater use of clean electricity with lower costs, stronger competitiveness and less exposure to imported fossil fuels. The plan sets an indicative objective for electricity to reach 46% of final energy consumption by 2040, and estimates this could reduce the EU's fossil-fuel import bill by €260 billion a year.
Where the returns go
As storage capacity scales, early revenue pools such as ancillary-service premiums and price spreads tend to compress. Returns become less dependent on owning capacity and more dependent on forecasting, trading and dispatch across markets and timeframes. Forecast deviations create imbalance exposure; slow execution misses intraday opportunities; fragmented systems make it harder to manage assets across bidding zones, exchanges and balancing regimes. Curtailment and price cannibalisation add further pressure. Together, these forces are pushing forecasting, trading and dispatch into a single digital operating layer.
The software layer
TokWise is one company providing optimisation and market operations solutions for renewable energy and battery storage assets. Its GuardianTrade platform supports portfolio optimisation across European power markets and automates market operations.
TokWise CEO Krasimir Kolev says the platform helps asset owners make faster, better-informed commercial decisions "without giving up control", with strategy and execution staying with clients' own teams.
Others keep the function in-house: Germany's energy cooperative Prokon is cited as an example of the in-house approach to market operations. The choice between outsourcing optimisation and building it internally now shapes the commercial profile of a storage asset as much as its chemistry or duration — and with 30 GW a year still to be built, that choice will be made repeatedly across every EU market.
Source: DQ India, citing European Commission data
This article was assisted by AI analysis. Please refer to the original source for official information.