Firms scramble for battery power in Spain and Portugal

Firms across Europe have been switching to electricity from fossil fuels for their industrial needs, encouraged by subsidies from EU funds.

While that is helping bring down emissions of climate-warming gases, it has also made firms more vulnerable to power cuts.

And in Spain and Portugal that threat was made painfully clear last year.

On both sides of the border, firms are looking for ways to avoid disruption.

“The industrial sector has been one of the first to look at storage systems, since it can’t have its production drop off too abruptly,” says Miguel Matias, founder of the Portuguese energy services company Self Energy, headquartered in the UK.

“A backup for a few hours, or even minutes, might guarantee that machines don’t get damaged,” he says.

And there have been more recent incidents to spur investment.

At the end of January, Storm Kristin toppled thousands of electricity and telecom poles across central Portugal, cutting power and communications to hundreds of thousands of people – some for weeks.

So, companies and other organisations have been taking action.

In Spain, battery storage capacity has risen almost sevenfold since last April, from about 28 MW before the blackout to 193MW in April 2026, according to the grid operator Red Eléctrica.

And much more capacity is planned.

In December, the IDAE, Spain’s Institute for the Diversification and Saving of Energy, awarded €827m in EU funds to 133 energy storage projects totalling 2,400MW. Around 80% of that is battery storage.

The new capacity will be close to 10 times the amount that Red Eléctrica currently registers on the Spanish grid.

It’s all good news for battery suppliers.

“We are seeing not only an increase in demand, but also a clear evolution in customer requirements,” says Alberto Bodegas, from battery storage company Sungrow.

Traditionally, commercial and industrial clients were looking for partial or full backup solutions, Bodegas says.

Today, Bodegas says customers are demanding more advanced capabilities, such as seamless backup, meaning the switch from grid to backup occurs instantaneously and without any noticeable interruption.

This is particularly critical for sensitive environments such as hospitals and data centres.

Delivery times are also crucial for buyers, currently under tight deadlines linked to EU funding programmes. Battery companies are being pressed to meet increasingly shorter delivery dates, Bodegas says.