Britain will set up GB Grid, a publicly owned company that will compete with National Grid, SP Energy Networks, and SSEN Transmission to build onshore transmission lines. Prime Minister Andy Burnham announced it on 29 September, alongside rules that let developers build their own connections, with start-up costs covered by Great British Energy.
The network needs up to £70 billion of investment by 2031, and more than 300 GW has already been cleared out of the connection queue. Britain's answer to slow grid build is to change who does the building.
Ofgem's consultation on competitive tendering closes on 16 October. (pv magazine)
Energy Transition
Poland's batteries sign ten-year contracts
Greenvolt started building a 600 MW, 2.4 GWh battery at Siedlce on 24 September, with BYD supplying the systems and operation due by the end of 2027. Five days later it signed a ten-year tolling deal with Statkraft for two more four-hour projects, Ełk and Turośń Kościelna, 400 MW and 1.6 GWh between them.
Statkraft decides when those batteries charge and discharge. Greenvolt gets fixed income on top of its Polish capacity market payments, in what the partners call the largest such deal announced in the EU.
It is Statkraft's second storage revenue contract this month, after its index swap with SSE. Once all three sites run, Greenvolt will have 1 GW of batteries in Poland, two months after switching on what was then the country's largest. (wnp.pl)
German solar with batteries gets cheaper again
The Bundesnetzagentur awarded 480 MW to 32 projects in its latest innovation tender, which only solar-plus-storage projects can enter. Bids averaged EUR 51.4 per MWh, down from EUR 53.4 in June and EUR 70.9 in October 2024.
Fifty-three bids for 678 MW competed, so the round was about 40% oversubscribed. Bavaria won 177 MW and Brandenburg 94 MW, and adding a battery no longer costs German solar its price advantage. (pv magazine)
Greece's top court stops developers slicing up solar farms
Greece's Council of State cancelled 186 preliminary producer licences and 25 work approvals for 185 MW of solar near Pineios Lake in Elis. One investor had split the project into 186 units to stay under the threshold for environmental review.
The ruling, published on 29 September after local residents challenged the project, tells authorities to check who owns clusters of small farms and to order an assessment when one owner controls them. The precedent could reach other clusters, including a planned complex at Amyntaio in Western Macedonia with 77 solar farms, 22 wind farms, and 12 storage units. (Balkan Green Energy News)
Climate Tech
Reverion raises EUR 154 million for fuel cells that run both ways
Reverion, founded in 2022 in Eresing, Bavaria, closed a EUR 154.2 million ($175 million) Series B led by Kembara, with Allianz and KfW Capital among the new investors. Its solid oxide plants turn biogas, natural gas, or hydrogen into power at 74.2% electrical efficiency and capture the CO2 as a pure stream.
Run in reverse, the same stack turns surplus electricity into storable gas. Seven 500 kW units run at customer sites today.
The money pays for a German factory with 250 MW of annual output, ten times the current scale. The target buyer is the data centre that cannot wait years for a grid connection. (Reverion)
SMA gets the first inverter certified for Germany's inertia market
SMA Solar Technology's Sunny Central Storage UP-S became the first battery inverter certified under version 2.1 of the VDE FNN guideline for grid-forming plants. That certificate is what German transmission operators require before they pay for inertia.
Inertia used to come free from the spinning mass of coal and gas turbines. Since January the four operators have bought it at a fixed price per megawatt registered, and batteries built on this platform can now earn from a service the grid loses every time a thermal plant closes. (Energy-Storage.News)
Policy & Regulation
Germany writes down its fossil exit and keeps its gas plants
Germany's cabinet approved a roadmap on 23 September to move oil, coal, and gas out of energy, industry, buildings, and transport by 2045. Germany is the third country with such a plan, after France and the Netherlands, a week after Brussels declined to set a phase-out date of its own.
Fossil fuels caused over 83% of German emissions in 2024, and net imports cost about EUR 76 billion. The environment ministry concedes that the plan restates measures already decided.
WWF Germany points to subsidies for new gas plants, a weakened heating law, and a renewables reform now before the Bundestag. Germanwatch wants other governments to bring their own roadmaps to COP31 in Turkey in November. (Clean Energy Wire)
Brussels lets small reactors bid for industrial heat money
The Commission published final terms on 24 September for its second Innovation Fund heat auction: EUR 1 billion from carbon market revenue for projects that decarbonise industrial process heat. Bidding opens in early December, and winners get a fixed premium tied to the emissions they cut, paid for up to five years.
Small modular reactors can now bid alongside heat pumps, thermal storage, electric boilers, and geothermal, and the minimum temperature drops to 80°C from 100°C. Process heat accounts for about three quarters of industrial emissions, and the first round picked 65 projects as a pilot for the Industrial Decarbonisation Bank. (European Commission)
ACER finds hydrogen network planning still incomplete
The EU agency for energy regulators published its biennial opinion on 29 September comparing national gas and hydrogen network plans with the EU-wide ten-year plan. Gas planning is well established; for hydrogen, ACER finds incomplete institutional frameworks, uneven transparency, and scenarios that do not line up across borders.
It asks member states for a two-year planning cycle aligned with the EU plan, published project costs, and market consultation on hydrogen demand before pipes get built. Only projects in the EU plan can become Projects of Common Interest, so a national plan that drifts from it can cost a corridor its access to EU funding. (ACER)
Science
Antarctic sea ice stays low for a fourth winter
Antarctic sea ice peaked on 14 September at 17.59 million square kilometres, the third-lowest winter maximum in the 48-year satellite record. It is the fourth year running among the four lowest.
Lettie Roach of Germany's Alfred Wegener Institute called the persistence "concerning". Scientists quoted by Carbon Brief say more observations are needed to separate structural change from variability, and the loss of a NOAA dataset in March has already stopped one model tracking Arctic ice thickness. (Carbon Brief)
One to Watch
How long Brussels delays its methane rules
The Commission said on 28 September it will propose postponing the methane regulation, due to apply from 1 January 2027, after France and the United States pushed for a pause. Energy Commissioner Dan Jørgensen has floated one extra year for the rules on imported fuels. (RTÉ)
Parliament and Council have to agree before January for the delay to take effect. Watch its length, and whether it stops at imports.
Jørgensen puts the EU's extra spending on energy imports at EUR 100 billion, and for now supply security is winning the argument. (Balkan Green Energy News)