Italy's battery storage pipeline is moving from auction design into steel on the ground, with three separate developments underlining how quickly the country's grid-scale segment is maturing.
MACSE delivers 10GWh of contracted capacity
On 1 October 2025, Italian transmission system operator Terna published the results of the MACSE capacity auction mechanism, a scheme focused specifically on battery storage. The auction secured 10GWh of storage system capacity — a volume that gives developers a visible, contracted revenue anchor in a market that has historically relied on merchant exposure.
The MACSE mechanism is widely viewed as the central plank of Italy's efforts to pair its rapidly growing solar fleet with flexible capacity, and the 10GWh outcome signals that the procurement framework is now large enough to support utility-scale build-out rather than pilot projects.
Erchie enters operation in Puglia
Metlen Energy & Metals and Dolomiti Energia have commissioned a 25MW/75MWh battery storage project in Erchie, in the southern region of Puglia. The asset was announced as operational on 25 September and is backed by a seven-year capacity lease agreement, giving the project a long-dated contracted revenue stream rather than pure merchant trading exposure.
Metlen also secured capacity market contracts for both the Erchie system and its 25MW/75MWh San Severo Storage project, reinforcing the pattern of Italian BESS economics being built on top of capacity remuneration rather than energy arbitrage alone.
BW ESS breaks ground on Chignolo Po
In Lombardy, BW ESS has started construction on the Chignolo Po battery storage project, sized at 107MW/515MWh. The project is one of the larger single-phase BESS builds announced in northern Italy and will add substantial dispatchable capacity to a region with heavy industrial demand and limited interconnection headroom.
At 515MWh, Chignolo Po also reflects the shift toward longer duration at the project level: the megawatt-to-megawatt-hour ratio implies roughly 4.8 hours of storage, well beyond the two-hour systems that dominated early Italian tenders.
What the pipeline signals
Taken together, the three developments trace the full Italian cycle — a national auction clearing volume, a commissioned asset with a lease contract, and a large project entering construction. The common thread is contract-backed revenue: capacity market awards, multi-year leases and MACSE offtake all reduce the merchant risk that has slowed financing elsewhere in Europe.
For developers, the question now is execution capacity — grid connection queues, permitting timelines and supply chain delivery — rather than demand for storage itself.
Source: finance.sina.com.cn
This article was assisted by AI analysis. Please refer to the original source for official information.