Ofgem advances 16 long-duration storage projects under cap-and-floor regime

Ofgem published its minded-to decisions for Window 1 of the long-duration electricity storage (LDES) cap-and-floor regime on 26 June, advancing 16 projects to the next stage. The regulator is now seeking stakeholder views on those decisions before they are finalised. The cap-and-floor framework targets technologies with durations beyond the reach of standard merchant BESS economics (think compressed air, flow batteries, and hydrogen-coupled storage) by setting a revenue floor that limits downside and a cap that limits upside.

The UK move lands against a broader European backdrop. Reuters reported on 23 June that grid-scale battery storage deployment across Europe is expected to accelerate significantly into 2030, driven by falling cell costs and tightening capacity adequacy requirements across multiple bidding zones. No specific GW figure was available from the headline alone.

In Italy, distributed storage is already reshaping system dynamics. Italia Solare secretary Federico Brucciani told pv magazine that 80% of new residential PV systems now ship with co-located batteries. He flagged that flexibility market frameworks, essential for aggregating that distributed capacity into grid services, are rolling out slowly, limiting monetisation for C&I and larger assets despite the country's rapidly growing installed base.