Spain Tests First Solid-State Battery for Power Grids

Imagine batteries that never catch fire, last decades longer, and can store enough clean energy to power your whole street.

A team in Spain's Basque Country just turned that dream into reality. Basquevolt and Bcare, two energy research companies, successfully built and tested the first solid-state battery module designed specifically for storing electricity from solar panels and wind turbines.

Traditional lithium batteries use liquid electrolytes that can overheat or leak. Solid-state batteries replace that liquid with solid materials, making them safer, longer-lasting, and potentially cheaper to maintain. Until now, these advanced batteries only existed in labs or small prototypes for electric cars.

The Spanish team went further. They built a full-size module and connected it to a real public power grid to prove it works in the real world, not just on paper.

Energy giant Iberdrola led the project through their ASTRA-CC research initiative, which runs from 2023 to 2025. The Basque Government and European Union funded the work, recognizing that better batteries are essential for running cities on renewable energy.

The module was tested on a direct current power grid, the kind increasingly used to connect solar panels, wind farms, and batteries without losing energy in conversion. It performed exactly as designed.

The Ripple Effect

This isn't just about better batteries. It's about solving renewable energy's biggest problem: the sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow.

Affordable, safe storage means solar panels can power your home at midnight. It means wind farms can save extra energy from Tuesday's storm to use during Friday's calm. Cities could run entirely on clean energy without worrying about blackouts.

Basquevolt plans to start selling the solid electrolytes that make these batteries work by 2027. That gives battery manufacturers worldwide just two years to prepare their factories for this safer technology.

The breakthrough also proves that solving climate change doesn't require waiting for some distant scientific miracle. The tools we need are being built and tested right now in places like Spain's Basque Country.

Other research teams and companies will study Basquevolt's results and build on them. What took years to create in one Spanish lab could spread to power grids across Europe, then the world, within a decade.

The team didn't just build a better battery—they built proof that our clean energy future is closer than we think.