A growing project pipeline and regulatory reviews suggest Norway’s battery market could be reaching a turning point but tariff barriers and limited revenue opportunities currently hold back deployments.
From ESS News
Norway’s battery storage market is gaining regulatory momentum but remains constrained by grid access and weak project economics, according to analysis from Norwegian consultancy Multiconsult.
Hassan Gholami, a senior consultant on solar and storage at Multiconsult, told ESS News that developments in Norway’s battery storage market this year have pulled in opposite directions.
He explained that the market is beginning to gain positive regulatory attention, with the Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate (NVE) publishing its first dedicated assessment of batteries in the power system in March, alongside a new application guide for battery projects. Since then, Norway’s Ministry of Energy has instructed NVE to review the purpose and need for licensing battery installations, and to identify where the energy regulations need clarifying, by October. The Norwegian Energy Regulatory Authority (RME) is also running a parallel review of battery-related regulations.
“This is the first coordinated regulatory work on storage in Norway and it is the thing to watch this autumn,” Gholami said.
Meanwhile, state-owned transmission system operator Statnett implemented a volume cap on prequalification of regulating objects connected below 110 kV in April. Gholami explained the cap, effectively meaning 66 kV and lower, applies per defined area to FCR and FRR, including aFRR.
“Statnett’s stated reason is observability – most of the sub-110 kV network is not in its network model, so it cannot monitor or manage congestion there,” Gholami explained. “Whatever the intent, the effect lands squarely on the segment where a Norwegian storage business case was starting to form: distribution-connected standalone batteries, hybrid solar-plus-storage and aggregated flexibility.”
He added that double grid tariff exposure, already identified as a central obstacle to Norway’s battery market, also remains unresolved, meaning batteries can pay grid tariffs as a consumer when charging and again as a producer when discharging.
Gholami told ESS News that Norway has no comprehensive public register of installed battery energy storage system capacity. “The closest thing to a hard number is prequalified capacity in Statnett’s reserve markets, and that only captures batteries that actually trade,” he said. “It misses behind-the-meter peak shaving, backup installations and the ferry-charging batteries that are Norway’s most established storage use case.”
Based on available data, Norway’s installed battery capacity is smaller than its neighbours. Gholami pointed to a 2025 report prepared for RME which put Norway’s prequalified battery capacity at 13.2 MW in FFR and 2 MW each in FCR-N and FCR-D as of Jun. 1, 2025, compared to more than 600 MW prequalified for FCR in Sweden.
Gholami cited Norway’s hydropower fleet, which supplies around 90% of the country’s electricity, as the structural explanation for low battery numbers.
“Regulated hydropower delivers the balancing that batteries provide elsewhere in Europe, which suppresses day-ahead and intraday volatility and has historically kept Statnett’s balancing costs low,” he explained. “Norway is the one European market where the arbitrage case for storage is weak on fundamentals rather than on policy. That is shifting slowly as balancing costs rise, particularly in mFRR, but it remains the first-order explanation for why Norway lags.”
On the project side, Gholami said a project described as Norway’s largest industrial battery is due for delivery this autumn with commissioning set for October. The 4.9 MW/12.2 MWh system is being supplied by Hitachi Energy to regional utility group Ren Røros, which took an around NOK 60 million ($6.4 million) investment decision on the project in February.
A more substantial pipeline is shaping up around storage projects co-located with solar or wind, Gholami added. Norway’s largest solar project under development has been given a license to integrate a 6 MW/12 MWh battery, while the already-operational 7 MW Furuseth solar plant has been approved to add a 5 MW/13.5 MWh battery. Other approvals include a 12.2 MW/22.4 MWh battery for the 94.6 MW Måkaknuten onshore wind farm.
Gholami also noted that Norwegian companies are investing their money and expertise in other Nordic countries. “Hafslund and Cloudberry are building a 48 MWh system in Sweden and Statkraft is optimising large-scale batteries in Finland,” he explained. “The competence exists in Norwegian companies; they are deploying it where the revenue stacks work.”
Looking ahead, Gholami said two variables could change the picture shaping Norway’s battery market in the future, namely NVE’s licensing review and whether the volume caps are relaxed once Statnett improves visibility of the sub-110 kV network.
“If both move constructively, 2027–28 could look materially different,” Gholami said. “If neither does, Norway continues to be the Nordic market where batteries make technical sense here and financial sense somewhere else.”
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