BYD’s new challenge is not a car, but a large battery
SMA Italia and BYD Italia are joining forces in the field of battery energy storage systems (BESS), which are large-scale batteries used to store electrical energy on an industrial scale. This partnership combines BYD’s batteries with SMA’s conversion and control technologies. The target market is the utility-scale sector, referring to industrial-sized installations designed for use in power grids.
The first common ground is the utility-scale market, with particular attention to the Electric Storage Capacity Provision Mechanism, the system through which the government compensates those who build storage capacity for the grid. BYD Italia brings its expertise in batteries and electric mobility. SMA Italia contributes with its power conversion solutions and plant control systems.
What the agreement entails
The two companies will work on jointly validated configurations designed to make batteries, inverters, control logic, and operational procedures compatible with each other. In practice, they aim to standardize BESS solutions and provide operators with a coordinated approach, rather than allowing them to assemble components from different suppliers without any guarantee of compatibility.
"The energy storage sector is evolving rapidly and requires increasingly integrated, reliable architectures that can adapt to the diverse needs of projects," said Attilio Bragheri, CEO of SMA Italia. BYD’s Country Manager, Alessandro Grosso, spoke of a collaboration that "arises from the desire to combine complementary technical expertise."
Among the already validated architectures is one based on SMA Sunny Central Storage systems combined with BYD batteries, capable of connecting up to six 1P420S racks to a single inverter. This configuration manages BYD Haohan containers, described in a detailed article on BYD’s Haohan storage batteries, through a 40-foot SMA Twin Skid system. For applications with prolonged discharge times of 6 to 8 hours, integrating three Haohan containers with a Twin Skid MVPS 8800-10000 system achieves a total capacity of up to 43.68 MWh.
BYD Blade Battery
Photo by: BYD
A market growing across Europe
The agreement comes as electrochemical storage is growing rapidly. In Europe, 36 GWh of new BESS capacity was installed in 2025, bringing the total operational capacity above 100 GWh. Within the European Union alone, 27.1 GWh of new storage systems came online. Utility-scale projects accounted for 55% of that new capacity.
Italy also holds a prominent position: by the end of 2025, the country had approximately 18 GWh of installed electrochemical storage capacity and over 7 GW of total capacity. BYD is already a key player in this area. The Chinese manufacturer has recently surpassed Tesla in the production of storage systems, a field where the two companies have long competed, as evidenced by the comparison between their respective Battery Box systems.
To support this growth, SMA Solar Technology AG has recently opened a new factory worth 80 million euros in Niestetal, near Kassel in Germany. The facility covers 46,000 square meters, of which 20,500 are dedicated to production. Its annual production capacity aims to exceed 60 GW of centralized inverters and storage solutions for the utility-scale sector.
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