Under the goal of energy transition, among emerging markets, TrendForce has taken stock of markets with fast growth and obvious volume trends in 2024 and found that Italy has performed well this year.

Due to the imminent delivery of the large-scale storage project in the capacity auction and the launch of the MACSE auction mechanism, Italy's energy storage has strong growth potential. It is expected that the installed demand from 24 years will be largely inclined to large-scale storage projects.

In 2024, the construction progress of large storage projects will be accelerated and household savings demand has slowed down.

The early growth of energy storage in Italy was mainly due to the high subsidy (110%) for household storage, which slowed down as tax credits gradually faded and credit transfer was blocked.

With the acceleration of the construction of large storage projects in 2024and a budget support of 17.7 billion euros, the energy storage auction mechanism (MACSE) is expected to be launched in 2024. The energy storage market in Italy will quickly switch to a market structure dominated by large storage.

According to TrendForce's analysis, the installed demand for household storage has dropped sharply due to the decline of Super Bonus 11. In the absence of new subsidy policies, the installed demand for household storage will shrink further, but the status quo of photovoltaic + storage as the main installed capacity type remains unchanged. In the future, the growth momentum of distributed distribution may shift to industrial and commercial savings.

In terms of large storage, the main reason for the sharp year-on-year increase in new installed capacity in 24 years is that most of the large storage projects with 3-4 hours of energy storage time will enter the construction stage in 2024.

As of Q1'24, only 120MW of the 2.1GW of energy storage projects awarded through capacity auctions were operational, while only 122MW of the 230MW of energy storage projects awarded through fast reserve auctions were operational.

Energy storage analysts at TrendForce said that the energy storage market in Italy is expected to enter the peak period of large storage grid connection in the second half of the year. Italy's new energy storage capacity is expected to reach 2.5GW/6.2GWh in 2024, +25%/61% year-on-year.

Policy support has been strengthened and the construction of large reserves will explode.

After experiencing a high increase in renewable energy installations during the energy crisis, European countries are facing a growing problem of wind and solar curtailment rates. As a result, various countries released policies and provide more financial support for energy storage in order to further help the construction of energy storage.

In December 2023, the European Union approved Italy's €17.7 billion energy storage plan to assist the country in building more than 9GW/71GWh of energy storage facilities. The plan, which will run until the end of 2033, will provide annual payments to energy storage developers, in the form of renewable energy auctions. Besides, after the project is completed, government will guarante fixed price and  ensure that the government will subsidize the market price of electricity below the execution price, and return excess returns when it is higher.

In February 2024, Italy approved the National Recovery and Resilience Plan, investing 6.3 billion euros in digitalization and energy transition, and establishing new energy and energy storage projects in the south. It is expected that Italy's energy storage construction capacity will increase significantly in 24 years.

Source: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/IvPnakuhiNcpGf11uKE2Mw