MILAN (Reuters) -Enel and Abu Dhabi’s Masdar are in preliminary talks over potentially jointly developing energy storage capacity in Italy, Flavio Cattaneo, the CEO of Italy’s biggest utility, said on Friday.
The Italian and Emirati companies already have a partnership for a portfolio of renewable energy assets in Spain and are exploring options to extend their alliance to more countries, Cattaneo said at a business conference in Milan.
He said there was a common understanding with Masdar “to move forward also in other geographies including Italy, where they are interested in batteries and storage systems and we are very happy to have partners”.
As Italy increases its capacity to produce energy from renewable sources, it also needs to develop battery storage systems able to release power when solar and wind energy are not available.
Italian power grid operator Terna is due to launch an auction to buy energy storage capacity at the end of September.
(Reporting by Elvira Pollina. Writing by Francesca Landini. Editing by Gavin Jones and Mark Potter)
