Solar PV is already a mainstream generation technology. The challenge for 2026 and 2027 is integration: connecting projects faster, managing periods of excess production, shifting energy to higher-value hours and giving customers a clearer commercial reason to invest.
That puts battery energy storage systems — BESS — at the centre of the story.
Solar is moving from expansion to optimisation
The EU installed 65.1 GW of new solar PV in 2025, a slight 0.7% decline from 65.6 GW in 2024. It was the first annual contraction since 2016. SolarPower Europe expects installations to decline again in 2026 and 2027 before recovering later in the decade.
That is not the end of Europe’s solar opportunity. It is a change in its shape.
Residential demand has cooled as energy prices normalised and several support schemes were reduced or withdrawn. At the same time, grid congestion, permitting delays, low or negative midday electricity prices and weaker captured revenues are making standalone generation harder to finance in some markets.
The response is a more integrated proposition: solar with storage, smarter energy management, flexible demand, stronger grid services and clearer routes to revenue.
Spain shows both sides of the market
Spain’s self-consumption fleet reached 9.3 GW in 2025 after adding 1,139 MW during the year. New additions were 3.7% lower than in 2024, according to UNEF.
The detail matters. Residential installations fell 17%, while the industrial segment remained broadly stable and added approximately 674 MW. In other words, the market did not stop; the centre of gravity moved toward larger systems with a clearer consumption profile and business case.
Spain’s updated National Energy and Climate Plan targets 76 GW of solar PV, 19 GW of self-consumption and 22.5 GW of energy storage by 2030. The storage figure includes batteries, pumped hydro and solar thermal storage, so it should not be read as a pure BESS target.
For 2026–2027, the commercial question is increasingly simple: what value can a project create beyond generating another unit of electricity at midday?
BESS: from supporting technology to core infrastructure
Europe’s annual battery additions have accelerated sharply.
Year | New European BESS capacity | Status |
2023 | 17.2 GWh | Actual reported in 2024 outlook |
2024 | 21.9 GWh | Actual reported in 2025 outlook |
2025 | 36 GWh | Actual in 2026 outlook |
2026 | More than 50 GWh | Forecast, medium scenario |
Sources: SolarPower Europe 2023 review, 2024 review and European Battery Market Outlook 2026–2030. Successive outlooks may restate historic datasets, so the table preserves the headline figure issued for each year rather than presenting a single audited time series.
Even with that methodological caution, the change in scale is dramatic. Annual additions are on course to move from 17.2 GWh in 2023 to more than 50 GWh in 2026 — close to tripling in three years.
The composition is changing too. Utility-scale projects supplied more than half of Europe’s new capacity in 2025 for the first time. By 2030, SolarPower Europe expects utility-scale batteries to represent around 75% of the operating fleet.
This shift is being driven by several overlapping use cases: renewable-energy shifting, wholesale arbitrage, ancillary services, congestion management, capacity mechanisms, resilience and hybrid solar-plus-storage projects. The most bankable assets will rarely depend on only one revenue stream.
BESS as a key feature
AI monitoring
Engaging technical content
Six trends to watch through 2027
1. Solar-plus-storage becomes the default conversation
Storage will increasingly be considered at the beginning of project design rather than added later as an optional extra. Co-location can improve grid utilisation, reduce curtailment and move energy into more valuable hours.
2. Utility-scale leads, but C&I becomes more strategic
Large grid-connected projects will drive volume. Commercial and industrial customers, however, offer a different opportunity: reducing peak demand, increasing self-consumption, protecting critical loads and optimising energy costs behind the meter.
The C&I market will reward companies that can explain the full financial case rather than only battery specifications.
3. Revenue stacking becomes a core capability
A battery may participate in several markets over its lifetime. Forecasting, optimisation software and route-to-market partnerships will become as important as the hardware. The proposition is shifting from capacity sold to value orchestrated.
4. Safety, interoperability and cybersecurity move forward in the sale
As systems become connected and software-controlled, buyers will ask harder questions about thermal safety, warranties, degradation, data ownership, remote access, standards and long-term service.
These are no longer topics for the technical appendix. They are part of brand trust.
5. The channel needs education, not just leads
Installers, EPCs, distributors and commercial partners are being asked to sell more complex systems. The brands that win will make their technology easier to specify, explain, install and support.
Training, configuration tools, partner portals, local case studies and responsive technical content can become meaningful competitive advantages.
6. Proof replaces green abstraction
The energy transition does not need more vague sustainability language. It needs specific evidence: output, savings, availability, response time, safety performance, project economics and service capability.
The strongest marketing will make complexity understandable without pretending it is simple.
Electric-car adoption: Spain accelerates, but the gap remains
EV adoption is a useful indicator of how quickly electrification is moving into everyday consumer behaviour. To keep the comparison consistent, the table below uses battery-electric vehicles only — not plug-in hybrids or conventional hybrids — as a share of new passenger-car registrations.
Market | BEV share of new cars, 2024 | BEV share of new cars, 2025 | 2025 BEV volume growth |
Spain | 5.6% | 8.8% | +77.1% |
Portugal | 19.9% | 23.2% | +25.1% |
France | 16.9% | 20.0% | +12.5% |
EU | 13.6% | 17.4% | +29.9% |
Source: Opal calculations from ACEA’s full-year 2025 registration tables, using BEV registrations divided by total new-car registrations. Percentages are rounded.
Spain’s BEV registrations jumped from 57,376 in 2024 to 101,627 in 2025. That is real acceleration. Yet the 8.8% market share remained below half the level seen in France and Portugal.
Portugal is the most revealing comparison. It is smaller in volume but significantly further ahead in adoption, with almost one in four new cars fully electric in 2025. France reached one in five. Spain is catching up from a low base, helped by new models and incentives, but charging availability, purchase price and policy consistency will continue to determine the pace.
The first half of 2026 strengthens the broader trend: BEVs reached 20.7% of new EU registrations, up from 15.6% a year earlier, according to ACEA.
The players shaping the conversation
The market is too broad for a single league table. Different companies lead in different layers of the system, and positions can vary by geography and segment.
Huawei Digital Power and Sungrow compete across inverters, energy management and storage platforms. Sigenergy has gained attention in distributed residential and commercial systems through a highly integrated product approach. BYD and CATL bring battery-scale manufacturing and storage capability. Tesla and Fluence remain prominent references in grid-scale systems and optimisation.
In Spain, utilities and developers including Iberdrola, Endesa, Naturgy and Acciona Energía are part of the deployment landscape, alongside a growing ecosystem of EPCs, aggregators, software providers, distributors and specialist developers.
This is not an exhaustive ranking, and being large in batteries, inverters, project development or residential systems does not mean leading every category. The more useful observation is that competitive advantage is moving toward integrated ecosystems: hardware, software, service, finance and channel capability working together.
What this means for energy brands
The 2026–2027 market will be large, but it will not be easy.
Solar growth is becoming more selective. Storage is scaling faster. Buyers are more informed, the channel is more demanding and the commercial model is becoming more sophisticated.
That raises the standard for marketing. A single global message cannot serve a homeowner, an installer, a distributor and a utility-scale investor equally well. Each audience needs the right level of technical depth, commercial proof and local context.
The brands that stand out will not be the ones making the biggest claim. They will be the ones that make the transition feel credible, useful and possible.
