Same six months of European BESS notices, 2024 vs 2026: buyers went from 22 to 136, cells and inverters are separate lots, and storage is bought by the hundred.
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The same six months of European procurement notices, 2024 and 2026, read side by side with Tenderlake Analyst.
In June 2026 EnBW published two award notices for its 2026 battery programme. The DC lot, containers and rack cubes, worth EUR 111.2 million, went to BYD, CATL and Xiamen Hithium. The AC lot, central inverter skids, worth EUR 49.3 million, went to Hitachi Energy, Power Electronics and SMA. Two weeks later Enel Green Power España awarded a EUR 214 million BESS supply lot to CATL and a separate EUR 44 million lot to Power Electronics. The cell maker is now a named winner on a European award notice, and the inverter maker is on a different one.
Two years earlier the same search turns up notices like Stadtwerke Karlsruhe’s: one large battery, about 12 MW and 24 MWh, to be planned, procured and installed under a single EPC contract covering batteries, inverters, SCADA, transformer and cabling, with operation and maintenance for up to 13 years afterwards. The largest award of that window, EUR 99.9 million from Red Eléctrica for two island batteries, went to one integrator, NHOA.
That is the change, and it is written in the buyers’ own words. We asked Tenderlake Analyst to compare the same six months of European notices in 2024 and 2026, across planning, contract and award notices, then consolidated rows to buyers before counting. ENEA alone published 33 notices in 2026 for component deliveries and transformers across one storage pipeline; TAURON published 11 across four project companies. Count rows and you get a story about publication habits. Count buyers and you get a story about the market.
| Distinct European buyers, 1 March to 12 September | 2024 | 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Publishing an open contract notice | 22 | 136 |
| Publishing an award notice | 26 | 91 |
Awards grew less than notices, which is the reverse of most categories we look at. Two things are happening. A wave of first-time buyers, mostly Polish municipalities under regional renewable programmes, published notices whose awards will land after the window. And the utility end of the market moved to frameworks, dynamic purchasing systems and qualification systems, which publish once and then call off quietly. At least nine European buyers set one up with BESS in scope in 2026, against two in 2024.
United Utilities is establishing a GBP 40 million framework for “distributed battery storage assets across approximately 225 operational locations” over its next two regulatory periods. Gmina Sandomierz is buying, on behalf of eleven municipalities, 388 sets of storage with hybrid inverters for existing rooftop solar, listed house count by house count. Thüga is prequalifying EPC providers so that every partner utility in its group can build a battery through them. ČEZ opened a CZK 2.04 billion dynamic purchasing system for the construction works behind its renewables and storage pipeline. In 2024 the notices with scale were ESB’s pipeline of 200 to 800 MWh plants and PGE’s 26 distributed installations; everyone else was buying one battery.
EnBW bought the DC side and the AC side in separate frame contracts. Endesa bought the balance of plant for its Spanish batteries as its own contract, EUR 1.79 million to Enitec. Latvenergo bought supply from Hyperstrong, EUR 12.2 million, and construction from Nordes Būve, EUR 22.9 million, in two awards. ENEA Nowa Energia buys storage components “without installation and commissioning” and transformers direct. Associated British Ports bought “a battery for a BESS” from Shenzhen Cubenergy for GBP 2.52 million. In 2024 the standard notice was supply and installation, one winner.
Trianel and Stadtwerke Mosbach want a turnkey 10 MW / 20 MWh system with the grid connection interface included and a long-term service agreement the buyer may set at up to 15 years. Returkraft in Norway titled its notice “battery pack with operational services and market optimisation”. Sala-Heby Energi is buying an Energy-as-a-Service framework for municipal companies that bundles storage, control, solar, EV charging and a diesel generator. Stadtwerke Herford awarded a turnkey battery to Schaper Energies. The whole-system contract has not disappeared; it has moved down the size ladder.
Karlsruhe in 2024 wrote “FCR, aFRR, etc.” and spot-market optimisation. Trianel in 2026 lists Frequency Containment Reserve, Automatic Frequency Restoration Reserve, day-ahead and intraday, asks for two to three hours of duration, and says the system “should preferably be based on lithium-ion or sodium-ion battery technology”. United Utilities wants backup during outages, peak management and flexibility services where appropriate. Infrabel is asking the market how to put a battery and a bidirectional converter into a 3 kV DC railway network.
Prequalification is the gate. BeGreen, ČEZ Energo, DSE Aizpute, Thüga and HBV all run qualification systems or dynamic purchasing systems; United Utilities will call off by direct award or mini-competition. A supplier that is not on the list will not see the call-off as an open notice.
The 2024 winner list is integrators and local electrical contractors: NHOA, Vertesz, Delta, EGEM, HMB Solar. The 2026 list adds cell makers as direct winners (CATL, BYD, Hithium, Hyperstrong, Cubenergy), inverter makers as direct winners (Hitachi Energy, Power Electronics, SMA), a gravity-storage company (Energy Vault, at AIL Lugano), and a long tail of Polish installers taking the municipal lots.
This is our reading, not the notices’. The buyer is now specifying a programme and a supply chain, not a battery.
Tenderlake Monitor reads every public sector notice published across the UK, the EU and the EEA, in the language it was published in, and tells you which ones match what your company sells and why. It works from a plain description of your business, not from keywords or CPV codes.
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