This is an extract from a recent report “EU Battery Storage Market Review 2025” published by SolarPower Europe.
EU annual BESS installed capacity 2025
In 2025, battery storage deployment reached a new record high of 27.1 GWh, a 45% increase compared to 2024. This marks a significant acceleration after growth slowed to 23% in 2024 as a result of fundamental shifts in market and policy dynamics. As anticipated, several challenges persisted in 2025, enabling higher annual growth rates but still below 2023 levels of 73%, alongside a completely different market composition. These rapid shifts show how quickly policy and market conditions can influence battery installation levels.
In 2025, utility-scale batteries firmly became the growth catalyst, installing 15 GWh and delivering 55% of total annual installed capacity. Following a breakthrough year in 2024, when 6.5 GWh were installed, deployment rose sharply, more than doubling year-on-year. 2025 was also the year when hybrid solar and storage projects started to come online at a significant scale. Around 15% of new grid BESS installations were paired to solar PV, whereas in 2024, less than 10% of the market was hybrid. Up until 2024, the utility battery segment had a marginal share, as large-scale projects still faced numerous regulatory barriers, grid connection delays, uncertain revenue streams, shortage of skills, and high upfront investment requirements. Italy was the only country to secure a substantial and reliable project pipeline,thanks to the capacity market and the fast reserve instrument auctions. Overall, despite significant investment appetite, framework conditions in EU member states were not yet ready to accommodate a quick increase of grid-scale battery deployment.
Last year, Italy was again the #1 EU utility-scale market as projects coming from previous auctions continued to be commissioned. However, deployment volumes remained on a similar level to 2024 as the contracted pipeline cleared and investors waited for the launch of the first round of the MACSE scheme. Several other European markets gained prominence in the large-scale battery landscape. Germany’s merchant market soared as sizeable projects came online, whilst the grid connection queue further extended. Spain and Bulgaria reached the GWh-scale via CAPEX support programmes using EU funds, and countries like Romania also made significant advancements thanks to public support. The Netherlands and France remained below 1 GWh of new installations, but show very promising signs for rapid growth. Finland and Sweden jointly deployed more than 1 GWh. Greece installed several projects emerging from past auctions amounting to just under 900 MWh, but these assets are still awaiting grid connection permits.
Commercial and industrial (C&I) installations rose by 31% in 2025 to 2.3 GWh but again remained well below their full potential. The segment has consistently grown over the previous years, but it only exceeded the GWh-scale in 2022. Germany remained the biggest market in 2025 with nearly 500 MWh, followed by the Netherlands and Italy with under 300 MWh, while the rest of European countries stayed below 200 MWh. Despite presenting great prospects, the C&I BESS use-case remains rather limited, primarily focused on increasing PV self-consumption and avoiding peak demand charges, alongside specific applications, such as electrifying industrial processes or electric fleets, addressing grid connection capacity constraints, or farming applications. Because installations vary widely depending on the type of economic activity, progress remains slow and final investment decisions often require lengthy negotiations. Some countries like Hungary or Greece introduced funding programmes for businesses, but in general, support frameworks are often insufficient and scattered across geographies. Provision of flexibility services is not yet feasible in most EU Member States, making Sweden one of the only European exceptions, enabling C&I batteries to provide frequency regulation services at scale.
The C&I segment nearly kept its market share in 2025, contributing 8% of the total deployment – still trailing far behind the utility-scale and residential segments. Market developments are not progressing at the speed required given the urgent need to decarbonise, reduce persistent high power prices, and shield European businesses from future electricity price spikes. Lastly, residential installations both for PV and BESS were impacted again by the dynamics from 2024: falling electricity prices relative to the height of the energy crisis; and support schemes being either scaled down or completely phased out in several markets. In 2024, the residential market shrank by 11%, but at that time home batteries still represented the largest segment with 56%. In 2025, these factors persisted-with a few exceptions like Romania or Hungary, where new support schemes were introduced, and the European residential BESS market declined again by 6% to 9.8 GWh.
However, and despite the fact that financial government support decreased, other incentives to invest in residential batteries improved, somewhat slowing the decline in new installed capacities. In particular, home battery product prices declined significantly, due to fierce competition from Asian suppliers, and PV export tariffs further decreased, triggering an increase in retrofitting rates for solar homes increased in countries like Austria or Germany. Policy frameworks also proved to be supportive after countries like the Netherlands or market leader Germany accelerated the adoption of dynamic frameworks that reward flexibility. 2025 marks the second consecutive year of decreasing installations, signaling the end of a continuous expansion cycle, with nearly 70% of compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) between the end of 2021 and 2025. Since the start of the energy crisis in 2021, nearly 4.5 million EU households have adopted home batteries. This makes the EU’s residential storage fleet the largest worldwide and provides enormous potential for increasing distributed grid flexibility
EU cumulative BESS installed capacity 2025
The battery storage fleet in the European Union nearly reached 80 GWh at the end of 2025. The operating capacity continues to grow at an exceptionally rapid pace, and has further accelerated in recent years. In just four years, the operating battery capacity in Europe has grown tenfold, from 7.8 GWh by end of 2021, and about 150-fold over the past decade, from about 0.5 GWh in 2016. This reflects the first wave of mass adoption of home batteries, and the rise of gridscale batteries as a major contributor.
Despite the large number of large-scale projects commissioned over the last two years, residential battery capacity still represented 56% of the total fleet by the end of 2025. This is expected to change in 2026. Over the past two years, the utility-scale segment jumped from 23% to 35% at the end of 2025, and is expected to become the main capacity provider in 2026. The C&I segment remains in the 9% to 11% range of total installed capacity, a share it has maintained since 2021.
Top 5 EU BESS markets in 2025
In 2025, Germany and Italy kept their top positions as leading BESS markets, and Bulgaria emerged strongly, turning into the third largest market in the EU. Spain and the Netherlands completed the top 5 ranking, as Austria and Sweden dropped out. This new geographical distribution of the biggest markets signals an important change: countries without a sufficiently large grid-scale market can no longer make it to the top-5 ranking. In earlier years, when residential installations drove most of the newly installed capacity and gridscale batteries remained limited, the top 5 was formed by the leading residential solar markets. Nowadays, with the decline in household installations, and small growth in the C&I segment, countries have to deploy substantial volumes of grid-scale batteries to reach the top tier. Additionally, 2025 marks the beginning of a new era of capacity deployment, showing stronger diversification as new markets emerge. In 2024, only four EU markets reached the GWh scale, but in 2025, 10 Member States surpassed the GWh mark.
Germany registered last year a new deployment record of 6.6 GWh, and has now deployed 6 GWh or more per year for 3 consecutive years. The expansion speed has slowed down over the recent years, with 8% and 3% respectively in 2025 and 2024 due to dropping household installations and minor growth activity in C&I. The good news is that the promising merchant grid-scale battery market in Germany finally delivered substantial battery capacities.
After nearly topping Germany in 2024, Italy experienced its first market contraction in 2025, gridconnecting 18% less capacity and falling below 5 GWh of annual installations. Despite the strong performance in the grid-scale segment, which has delivered around 3.5 GWh per year both in 2024 and 2025, total installations declined because of the downturn in the residential battery market, which fell 40% year-on-year. The C&I market remained below 200 MWh of annual installations after peaking at 450 MWh in 2023.
Bulgaria became the third largest market in 2025, with 2.5 GWh of grid-connected capacity, and the biggest growth rate in the EU (+1,200% year-on-year). EU funding rounds have catalysed an enormous capital mobilisation for the deployment of grid-scale batteries, leading to their first breakthrough year in 2025. The distributed segment remains largely untapped due to highly regulated electricity markets.
The Netherlands more than doubled its annual market in 2025, bringing 1.7 GWh of battery storage capacity online. The Dutch market has experienced significant changes over the last two years and now shows a very diversified deployment segmentation. Although the rooftop solar market contracted in 2025, the behind-the-meter storage segment added almost 1 GWh in 2025. The upcoming phase-out of the net-metering scheme by 2027 has accelerated the move toward flexible tariffs and storage. Large batteries connected 700 MWh in response to growing congestion and power price volatility, while corporate users (e.g., supermarkets, logistic firms) showed strong interest in storage.
Spain became the fifth largest market in 2025, with nearly 70% annual growth rate and 1.4 GWh installed. Although the residential market shrank by 60% following the expiration of the Next Generation EU funds, the C&I and grid-scale markets expanded rapidly. Large industrial and gridscale projects connected in 2025, mostly due to improved permitting procedures and the use of EU programmes to support capital investments in BESS.
Altogether, the top 5 markets delivered almost two-thirds of the total deployment in 2025, illustrating yet again the high geographical concentration of EU battery installations. However, the top 5 saw it’s share decrease relative to 2024, when almost 80% of BESS capacity was built by the 5 largest markets.
The leading large-scale battery markets – Germany, Italy and Bulgaria – delivered half of the segment’s total buildout, whilst Germany and Italy alone installed 60% of all residential systems in the EU. This level of deployment concentration is also very visible in the C&I segment, as the leading markets – Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain – installed 40% of all C&I capacity in Europe. The 5 largest battery markets have an even larger share compared to annual installations, capturing nearly 70% of EU total capacity. The ranking remains unchanged, with Germany leading at 33% of total capacity, followed by Italy at 24% and Bulgaria, the Netherlands and Spain each at 4%. Together, the top two countries account for close to 60% of the current operating EU battery fleet.
Country highlights
Germany’s BESS market shows moderate growth driven by strong renewables, profitable price dynamics, and supportive regulation, but progress is constrained by severe grid-connection delays and inconsistent permitting. Italy faces a sharp market contraction due to regulatory uncertainty and weak merchant economics, though strong renewable ambitions and interest in MACSE auctions continue to attract competition. Emerging markets such as Bulgaria are experiencing explosive growth driven by renewables expansion, supportive policies, and declining coal, though investment is slowed by unclear market rules. The Netherlands shows strong momentum under rapid renewable growth and high price volatility, but grid fee structures and permitting delays remain critical bottlenecks. Spain’s market is accelerating thanks to national targets, financing schemes, and improving regulatory frameworks, yet progress is hindered by weak household support, financing challenges, and administrative delays.
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