Italy’s electricity system, right now

The seven zones

Reading the zones.

The zones as a table

Where the power is coming from, and where it is going

Reading the system.

The batteries

Reading the batteries.

Terna publishes what the batteries in each zone are doing as one series per zone, every quarter hour. The 26 operating sites the public record names, 1.6 GW, are listed with the zone they sit in on the projects page.

The largest batteries, unit by unit

Reading the units.

Terna publishes the output of every unit of 100 MW or more one by one, but the regulation allows it five days after the day, so this figure is never live: it shows the newest whole day Terna has published, midnight to midnight Italian time. Each row is one battery on the same scale, sending out above its line and taking in below it. The dotted lines mark the unit’s rated power from Terna’s register of units.

The last 24 hours

Generation by source, stacked, with the load Terna had to meet drawn over it. Beneath it, on the same clock, what the batteries did: above their line they are sending power out, below it they are taking it in. Where the stack sits below the load line, the gap is what came in over the borders.

The borders

Physical flow on each border this quarter hour. Imports into Italy to the right, exports to the left, in megawatts.

Every figure is Terna’s, published on the ENTSO-E Transparency Platform under Regulation (EU) 543/2013: actual load and actual generation per production type by bidding zone every quarter hour, physical flows between zones and across borders, and, five days behind, actual generation per unit for units of 100 MW or more. Terna reports a zone’s batteries as a production type of their own, so the fleet needs no estimate here. Terna’s newest quarter hour can arrive part filled, so the page reads the newest quarter hour every zone has reported in full. Italy publishes no live frequency. Nothing on this page is modelled; where a reading is missing the panel says which. The batteries by name