(Alliance News) - Altea Green Power Spa announced Friday that it has embarked on the construction of a new 1 GW Bess Storage - Battery Energy Storage System, electricity storage - project in Italy, called Black Bess.

The Black Bess project, which will consist of four sites located in central-southern Italy, will be completed by the first half of 2024 and will complement the Green Bess, Blue Bess and Yellow Bess projects, whose combined capacity reaches 2 GW and for which the company is already in advanced negotiations for co-development with two major international investors.

In July 2022, the note says, the company had signed a contract with the Irish fund Aèr Soléir for the co-development of a project with a capacity of 0.5 GW. The authorization process for this project is at an advanced stage, and Altea expects to be able to target the first authorizations as early as the first half of 2024.

Altea Green Power in the area of Bess Storage has well-defined plans: by 2026 the company expects to reach a capacity of 5.5 GW throughout Italy.

In fact, Black Bess will be followed by White and Pink Bess, respectively with a capacity of 1 GW each. Ninety percent of the company's projects will be developed between central and southern Italy, with the remaining 10 percent in the north.

Giovanni Di Pascale, chief executive officer of Altea Green Power, commented, "We are very pleased with the steps we have taken in Storage at the national and international level. We are convinced that this market is the natural outlet and boost for renewable energy and that it has wide margins for evolution and growth. By 2026, in Italy, we aim to reach 5.5 GW by making available all our engineering know-how gained over the years, thus consolidating our role as a key player."

Altea Green Power has chosen to distinguish its storage projects by naming them based on the colors that connote Altea's logo - Blue, Green, Yellow, Black and White - to give an additional specific detail of recognizability. These are then joined by Pink, an acknowledgement by the company, which is very attentive to issues of sustainability, inclusion and gender equality, to the contribution made by the female professionals in the Altea team, who - as stated in the first Sustainability Report prepared by the company - represent 39 percent of Altea Green Power's human capital.

Altea Green Power's stock is down 2.7 percent at EUR4.37 per share.

By Chiara Bruschi, Alliance News reporter

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