Polski
Energy Storage Is Gaining Momentum, While Grids Learn to Defend Against Hackers
This week's industry roundup highlights two seemingly distant yet closely linked trends: European renewable energy developers are accelerating the build-out of energy storage systems, while on the other side of the Atlantic, lawmakers are closing gaps in the protection of power grids against cyberattacks. Both threads share a common thread – a growing awareness that a stable, secure power grid requires investment in both hardware and security procedures, with the market and regulators responding to these needs in parallel.
01 · Energy Storage
European Energy Accelerates Energy Storage Expansion in Northern Europe
Danish renewable energy developer European Energy has summed up the first eight months of 2026, and the results are worth boasting about – the company has commissioned 167 MW/545 MWh of new energy storage capacity across seven sites spread throughout Denmark, Lithuania, and Latvia. Importantly, all of the BESS installations were co-located with already operating wind and solar farms, allowing the company to make the most of existing grid connection infrastructure, shorten project timelines, and reduce investment costs compared with building storage facilities from scratch at new sites [1].
European Energy has no intention of slowing down. The company has announced further expansion of its energy storage portfolio, explicitly naming Poland, the United Kingdom, and Germany as its next markets. The company's reasoning is simple and well known to grid operators across Europe – energy storage reduces curtailment of renewable generation and smooths out price volatility on wholesale energy markets, delivering real benefits for both generators and end consumers alike [1]. For the Polish market, where the issue of grid constraints and renewable curtailment regularly resurfaces in industry debate, the announcement that a large, experienced BESS developer is entering the market signals that co-locating storage with existing renewable installations could become one of the standard investment models of the coming years – and that competition for attractive grid connection sites will only intensify.
While renewable developers are counting megawatt-hours, on the other side of the Atlantic, lawmakers are counting incidents – and there were an unusually large number of them over the past year.
02 · OT Cybersecurity
US Congress Closes Gaps in Power Grid Cybersecurity
The US Congress is close to passing a package of bills aimed at strengthening power grid cybersecurity. The legislation under consideration includes the SECURE Grid Act and the Rural and Municipal Utility Cybersecurity Act – regulations targeted specifically at smaller grid operators, namely energy cooperatives and municipal utilities, which often have limited budgets and staffing to defend against cyberattacks, yet are responsible for critical infrastructure serving local communities [2].
The pressure on lawmakers didn't come out of nowhere. Federal agencies have warned about the activity of Iranian hacking groups that have manipulated industrial control systems within US critical infrastructure, gaining access to systems governing real physical processes. There's also a hard numerical argument behind this – in 2025, more than 3,500 incidents, both physical and cyber, targeting the power grid were recorded [2]. That's a scale that demands viewing OT/IT cybersecurity not as an add-on to infrastructure investment, but as an integral part of planning for every project – a topic just as relevant for operators in the United States as in Europe, where regulatory pressure, including through the NIS2 directive, is moving in a very similar direction.
Summary
Summary
Both of this week's stories, though they concern different continents and different corners of the energy sector, ultimately point to the same underlying mechanism – the grid of the future must be flexible thanks to energy storage and resilient thanks to OT/IT cybersecurity. How to combine both of these goals in practice is a conversation you can have with experts, developers, and technology providers at Energetica Expo – the Trade Fair for the Power Industry and Transmission Infrastructure. Stay tuned for the next installments of our weekly industry roundup, and be sure to visit the trade fair, where energy storage and critical infrastructure security will be among the main themes on the agenda.
Invitation
Want to see energy storage systems and grid cybersecurity solutions live and in action? Visit Energetica Expo – the Trade Fair for the Power Industry and Transmission Infrastructure – and talk to BESS developers and OT/IT security providers. It's where investors, grid operators, and critical infrastructure cybersecurity experts come together.
Energetica Expo 2026Footnotes
[1] Renewable Energy Magazine — https://www.renewableenergymagazine.com/storage/european-energy-expands-battery-portfolio-with-545-20260914[2] The Washington Times — https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2026/sep/23/grid-security-gap-congress-close-year/