smarter E Europe 2025: Key Takeaways
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NEWS
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The smarter E Europe, the continent’s largest renewable energy event, took place in Munich from May 6 to 9. Throughout, Trade Fair Center Messe München’s 18 halls hosted incumbents, facilitators, and startups from across the solar Photovoltaic (PV), Electric Vehicle (EV) and vehicle charging, battery and storage, Energy Management System (EMS), and flexibility service segments.
From our attendance at the event, ABI Research has three key takeaways:
- European Solar Markets Are Maturing: Despite remaining the center of industry excitement, solar markets are—at least in Europe—exiting their accelerated growth phase and maturing.
- Battery Storage Is Taking the Stage: Contrastingly, battery storage products—especially utility-scale systems—are becoming a central focus for the wider renewables and grid management industries.
- Energy Flexibility Service Providers Spy an Opening: While Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESSs) are in the spotlight today, flexibility market operators and service providers—those that facilitate exchanges for trading excess energy, generated or stored by non-utility assets (EV fleets, home batteries, industrial solar panels, etc.) to balance demand—are preparing to seize a rapidly emerging opportunity: commercializing distributed assets.
The BESS Industry Is Fast Becoming the Center of Attention
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IMPACT
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As in previous years, the solar PV industry dominated the smarter E Europe 2025 event; of the 18 exhibition halls, over a third were populated by solar panel producers, PV mounting specialists, solar farm robotics vendors, and other affiliated companies. The largest names in the industry, including giants Tongwei and Longi, were present, alongside numerous specialist vendors adapting PV technology for alternative regional and industrial needs, including floating PV, solar trees, and other forms of flexible and shaped panels. However, despite strong attendance and innovation on display, the real excitement was not about solar generation, but storage.
The smarter E Europe 2025 boasted big names in energy storage. Huawei, BYD, and Hithium all displayed extensive ranges of BESS solutions, while specialist vendors advertised their innovative commercial, industry, and utility-scale batteries, industry-specific storage management products, and accessory services—including built-in EV chargers for industrial BESSs—across the event. Meanwhile, European regulatory and grid operation experts hosted panels during which the pressing need for renewable intermittency mitigation via energy storage systems was the defining talking point.
Evidently, solar markets are not going anywhere. Demand for PV products will continue to grow in Europe, with novel innovations driving further adoption in new industries across the continent. But the rapid growth experienced over the last decade is, at last, slowing as the sector matures. In its place, the BESS industry is emerging as the next big thing as Europe, rocked by resiliency issues across its power networks, becomes a primary market predominantly for Chinese storage manufacturers.
Resilience First
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RECOMMENDATIONS
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Today, European renewable adoptees are putting a premium on resilience. The shift from solar to BESSs reflects this; now that a baseline level of clean generation has been established, asset owners and regional governments are refocusing on ensuring that electricity supply cannot be easily disrupted—a looming risk following the Iberian blackout in April.
Yet, while BESSs are an obvious solution and will receive both the mainstay of attention and demand over the coming years, the smarter E Europe 2025 event also highlighted the prospective importance of energy flexibility for ensuring resilient energy across Europe. Bamboo Energy, Octopus Energy, Kraken, and CyberGrid are vendors that recognize the need for European flexibility markets and effectively advocated for them throughout the event. Likewise, at forums and in presentations, flexibility was a constant topic as developers, regional operators, and industries look to prevent downtime and outages.
The message was clear: as Europe pushes to foster meaningful energy resilience, storage options will be extremely popular—but not sufficient without developed, widespread flexibility markets. While BESSs may have the limelight today, flexibility solutions won’t be far behind.
