Europe adds 36 GWh of battery storage in 2025, Ukraine enters top five markets

Europe installed 36 GWh of battery energy storage system (BESS) capacity in 2025, according to a new report by the European solar PV and storage sector association, SolarPower Europe. Total operational battery capacity surpassed 100 GWh for the first time, while annual installations grew by 48% year-on-year, increasingly driven by utility-scale projects.

Germany retained its leading position despite registering just a 2% annual expansion, with 6.6 GWh of new BESS systems in 2025. The United Kingdom came second, with 5.2 GWh of new storage, a 64% rise compared to the previous year, while Italy was third with 5 GWh. Ukraine entered the top five markets with a roughly fivefold increase in annual installations to 2.9 GWh in 2025, while Bulgaria took fifth place with 2.7 GWh of new capacity.

“Ukraine is proving that batteries are more than an energy technology; they are a resilience technology,” said Vladyslav Sokolovskyi, chairman of the board of the Solar Energy Association of Ukraine (SEAU). “Our market is also structurally different from the rest of Europe, and that difference sits in the distributed segment. Across Europe, a home battery is typically bought to optimize electricity bills and store rooftop solar power. In Ukraine, it is bought to keep the lights on.”

Overall, the top 5 markets accounted for 62% of all installations in Europe in 2025, while in 2024, top-tier markets accounted for almost 80% of annual deployments. Under different scenarios, SolarPower expects new battery additions to reach 99-179 GWh by 2030, with the total fleet in Europe reaching 437-735 GWh.