Batteries can save Europe’s solar and wind power from being wasted. But are they a blackout risk?

Batteries have been touted as a “crucial technology” in the EU’s clean energy transition, but have recently been hit with concerns over blackouts.As the bloc’s share of renewable energy is estimated to reach around 69 per cent by 2030 and 80 per cent by 2050, the need for flexible storage is rapidly increasing.Europe already wastes millions of euros worth of wind and solar energy due to grid constraints and their inflexible nature. When supply outstrips demand, this can trigger negative electricity prices.Many experts have identified battery energy storage systems (BESS) as a silver-bullet solution to this issue. The logic is simple: batteries can store electricity produced by renewables during the day (when consumption tends to be low) and release it to households when demand increases in the evening.It’s why Europe installed 36 GWh of new BESS in 2025, bringing total operational capacity beyond 100 GWh for the first time. This is enough to power roughly 75 million homes.“Across Europe, battery storage is helping integrate growing volumes of renewable energy, strengthen energy security and improve power system resilience,” says trade association SolarPower Europe. “As the continent seeks to reduce its dependence on costly fossil fuel imports, accelerate electrification and meet its climate goals, storage can no longer be viewed as a supporting technology. It is becoming a strategic asset, instrumental to strengthening Europe’s resilience, competitiveness and energy sovereignty.”Has the battery boom gone too far?Last week, British newspaper The Telegraph published an article headlined “Britain’s battery boom ‘risks overwhelming the grid’” – claiming that back-up systems supporting wind power could trigger “the blackouts they are trying to avoid”.The article follows a recent report from the Panel of Technical Experts, an advisory group of independent consultants appointed by the UK government to advise on technical aspects of electricity market reform. “The PTE continues to consider that some thought needs to be given to the way BESS is likely to behave in a Capacity Market Notice (CMNs) situation, as storage may then have an incentive to charge in advance to fulfil their CM obligations,” the report reads.“This may result in a fast descent into a stress event. This additional demand may need to be more explicitly modelled when estimating the peak demand in a stress event.”A CMN is a signal four hours in advance that there may be less energy generation available than system operators expect they will need to meet national demand. However, the report is not saying that batteries will destabilise the grid and does not explicitly express concern over blackouts. Instead, it is simply highlighting the need for modelling on how batteries react to a CMN. Is Europe’s battery boom risking blackouts?Fears that batteries could trigger blackouts across Europe mainly revolve around the fact that grid operators cannot see and cannot control lots of small, distributed installations. It means if they all operate in unison, it would be difficult to manage.“This is the same challenge we have been managing with solar power for the last 20 years,” Adrian Hiel, director of the Electrification Alliance tells Euronews Earth.“We have steadily gotten better and better at ensuring that [installations] improve the grid rather than harm it. Realistically this only becomes a blackout risk if we ignore the fact that we are installing millions of batteries annually. No one is interested in doing that.”The main solution for dealing with the “tiny risk” posed by batteries is better modelling, Hiel says. This will allow grid operators to anticipate how battery fleets behave in certain situations.“We can expect relatively large margins of error in their modelling in the next couple of years but then the models will get more and more precise and accurate – just as they did with modelling how rooftop solar will behave,” he adds.“The other solution for managing batteries on the grid will be aggregating control by a third party. So instead of a household managing how their individual battery operates, a company will bring together tens or hundreds of thousands of batteries and run them for the maximum household value and the maximum grid benefit.”This idea is already being rolled out with smart electric vehicle (EV) charging in many countries. Hiel describes it as a “logical next step” for batteries too – as it means that a grid operator can contact the battery aggregator to either start consuming quickly, by charging, or start discharging quickly to meet sudden demand increases.Are batteries really ‘very expensive’?An industry voice quoted in the article also claims that “batteries are very expensive” but no data is provided to back this up. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), average battery costs have plummeted by 90 per cent since 2010 due to advances in chemistry and manufacturing.A recent report from energy think-tank Ember found that by 2030, utility-scale batteries could deliver short-term flexibility in the EU at 20 per cent lower cost than new gas plants. It also found that in the next four years, EU batteries could deliver in a single hour more than 80 per cent of the power that all EU gas power plants combined can generate in the same period.“Clean flexibility is here,” says Beatrice Petrovich, a senior energy analyst at Ember. “Rapid growth in batteries, EV smart charging and heat pumps can reduce reliance on gas for grid balancing and ease grid strain. The task now is not innovation but execution: remove barriers, reward flexibility and scale these solutions fast enough to avoid locking in unnecessary fossil backup.”Should Europe just go back to fossil fuels?The Telegraph interviewee suggests that potential cost barriers and blackout risks mean that countries should halt the clean energy transition and keep their reliance on fossil fuels.“Claiming that we shouldn’t build intermittent generation because of this tiny risk from batteries is a bit like telling a morbidly obese person that they shouldn’t lose weight because they will have to buy new clothes,” Hiel says.“The inconvenience of managing the impact of these millions of batteries is infinitesimally small compared to the benefits of maximising the cheapest sources of energy the world has ever known at a time when the countries who sell us gas talk about dominating Europe energetically and threaten to withhold that gas if we don’t do as they say.”The UK’s Department of Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) refused to comment when asked whether it was concerned about blackouts from the battery boom. It did not answer any questions asked by Euronews Earth – providing the same quote it gave to The Telegraph.“Our capacity market ensures security of supply while providing value for money for consumers,” a spokesperson said. “We’ve cut VAT on electricity to give families breathing space and our focus is working to bring bills down for good.”