Battery Storage on Tunisia’s Energy Agenda: HAVEN Presented at SITE 2026 in Tunis
HAVEN reached Tunisia’s energy transition community on 2 October 2026, when Paolo Cutrone of RES4Africa gave the keynote of the energy storage panel at SITE 2026, the International Energy Transition Fair (Salon International de la Transition Énergétique). The fourth edition ran from 1 to 3 October at the headquarters of UTICA, the Tunisian Union of Industry, Trade and Handicrafts, in Tunis. It was organised by the Chambre Syndicale du Photovoltaïque (CSPV) with UTICA under the theme “Accelerating the energy transition: Invest, Innovate, Act”.

Battery Costs and the HAVEN Approach
Paolo Cutrone opened the panel on electricity storage with a keynote on the potential, benchmarking and costs of battery energy storage systems (BESS), and presented HAVEN to the audience. The project is developing a hybrid energy storage system (HESS) that pairs high-energy and high-power batteries so that a single installation can provide several services to the grid, from peak shaving to backup power.
From Pumped Hydro to Regional Interconnection
The same panel set batteries alongside other ways of storing and moving electricity. A green hydrogen expert spoke on hydrogen storage, the Tunisian dams authority and KfW on pumped-storage plants, and STEG, the national utility, on smart grids and the ELMED interconnection project. The first day had covered national renewable energy programmes, financing and the self-consumption scheme for solar PV, with speakers from the energy ministry, STEG, the national energy agency ANME, the World Bank and the African Development Bank.
Why the Tunisian Debate Matters for HAVEN
Storage came up on both days of SITE 2026, from STEG’s programme to reduce the risk of load shedding to the World Bank’s support for a large-scale storage project. Speaking at the fair put HAVEN in front of the utility, agencies and lenders who will decide how batteries are deployed in Tunisia.
The keynote is part of RES4Africa’s role in the project, which is to bring HAVEN’s results to energy stakeholders across Africa through its network on the continent.
Find more information about RES4Africa’s role in the project here: https://havenproject.eu/consortium
Funded by the European Union under grant agreement 101137636. Views and opinions expressed are, however, those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or CINEA. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
