Sodium-ion batteries, as a solution for grid-scale storage demands, have spent the better part of a decade described, roughly, as “promising.” It’s a word that’s covered for a lot of unfinished progress and has become somewhat of a warning sign to anyone in this industry trying to separate emerging technologies from commercially ready ones. That distinction is becoming less relevant for sodium-ion.
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Europe’s energy system is entering a decisive transformation. Energy storage is therefore increasingly critical. Short-duration options smooth intraday variability and support hourly and daily balancing. But when imbalances last beyond roughly 8–10 hours, direct electricity storage hits technical and economic limits. At that point, only large-scale, long-duration storage can cover overnight, multi-day, or seasonal stress events. Until now, underground gas storage has been the primary source of large-scale system resilience, and it continues to play a critical role. In a low-carbon system, underground hydrogen storage will take over this role, delivering long-duration flexibility with clean molecules.
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Solar energy systems are designed to generate power consistently, but performance can decline due to factors such as soiling, shading, equipment degradation, and inverter issues. These losses do not always trigger immediate alerts and can go unnoticed, gradually reducing output. Operators rely on monitoring systems to track generation and flag major deviations. While these systems provide visibility, they are designed to catch larger failures, not smaller performance losses that develop gradually and often go unreported across systems.
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As electricity demand grows and costs rise, solar and energy storage are essential to building a reliable, secure, and affordable energy system. These technologies already make up the majority of new generation capacity additions in the United States. Combined, solar and storage accounted for nearly 80% of new capacity added to the grid in 2025. The solar and storage industry plays a critical role in ensuring U.S. energy security and serves an increasingly important role in meeting rising demand. At the same time, cybersecurity threats facing the broader energy sector continue to evolve and grow. It is imperative that the systems, networks, devices, and components that make up the solar and storage ecosystem are secure against cybersecurity threats.
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With renewable energy capacity expanding rapidly, power plants are increasingly using automation and digital tools to handle more complex operations and improve efficiency. Automation in the sector has progressed steadily, moving from basic mechanisation to advanced systems such as programmable logic controllers and supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) platforms. At present, technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), drones, robotics and internet of things (IoT) are enabling real-time monitoring, predictive maintenance and better forecasting of power generation. Automated systems also allow operators to centrally monitor and remotely manage renewable assets across multiple locations, helping reduce downtime, lower losses and improve overall plant performance.
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Data centres are becoming a systemically important electricity demand due to their scale, geographic concentration and fast growth, requiring more active grid management rather than passive absorption. They create challenges because their rapid development often outpaces transmission and generation expansion, and their software-driven, power-electronic behaviour does not always align with existing connection and planning frameworks. This calls for improved demand forecasting, greater transparency on grid capacity, and more coordinated, harmonised connection requirements across Europe, alongside flexible connection arrangements to manage near-term constraints. At the same time, data centres also represent a significant opportunity: their built-in control systems and electrical infrastructure could enable them to provide grid services, support flexibility and contribute to decarbonisation.
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GRID-INDIA has proposed a set of measures to support the adoption of GFM technology in the Indian power system. It is recommended that new BESS installations above 50 MW, particularly in remote or weak-grid areas, incorporate GFM capability. A phased roll-out is suggested, beginning with large pilot projects using BESS-backed GFM inverters. These pilots would provide operational experience and help stakeholders make informed decisions for wider deployment. In parallel, aligning Indian standards with international testing and performance frameworks would help ease the transition. Effective implementation will also require close coordination between technology providers, renewable and storage developers, system operators and regulators.
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The transition towards higher shares of renewable energy across the assessed Mediterranean countries is expected to significantly increase system flexibility requirements between 2025 and 2030. As renewable deployment accelerates, ramping requirements and periods of negative residual load are expected to intensify, with Tunisia facing the most frequent occurrences, particularly in winter when demand is low and renewable output remains high. While solar and wind follow relatively predictable daily patterns, electricity demand varies seasonally, with summer demand creating mismatches between supply and consumption. This increases the need for flexible resources such as energy storage, demand response and cross-border interconnectors to balance the system.
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California’s electricity demand is projected to rise sharply driven by the rapid expansion of large data centres, industrial growth, as well as transport and building electrification. Meeting this demand will require installed capacity additions of over 74 GW and 107 GW, respectively. These additions are also critical to achieving the state energy goals established under the Senate Bill (SB) 100, which mandates a renewables share of 50 per cent by 2026, 60 per cent by 2030 and 100 per cent by 2045. In April 2026, CAISO released its draft 2025-26 Transmission Plan, recommending 38 transmission upgrades with an estimated total cost of $7 billion, phased in over lead times of up to 8-10 years and translating to approximately 0.5 cents per kWh over the life of the projects.
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Nearly 30 new utility-scale solar PV manufacturing facilities started production in 2025. There are more than 140 facilities in 30 states that produce primary components like modules, cells, ingots and wafers, trackers, racking systems, among others. In 2025, U.S. module manufacturers commissioned 15 GW of new capacity, with total annual capacity reaching 63 GW – sufficient to meet average demand from U.S. utility solar installations. This represents a rapid increase in manufacturing capacity of more than 1600% in a 5-year period. Total module capability is expected to increase to over 85 GW/year by the end of the decade.
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Southeast Asia’s energy transition is gathering momentum, supported by rising investment, evolving policy frameworks, and closer regional integration. Countries are setting ambitious renewable energy targets, electricity demand is growing, and governments are increasingly recognising that power grids, not just generation, are the critical bottleneck to overcome. The region is expected to drive 25 per cent of global energy demand growth by 2035. As one of the fastest-growing electricity markets, it needs to balance industrial growth, rapid electrification and decarbonisation efforts. With nearly 200 GW of renewable energy potential, project development is accelerating to meet demand from transport electrification, data centres and net-zero goals.
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Spain’s energy transition is increasingly a transmission challenge. Without a significant acceleration in grid expansion and modernisation, renewable growth risks being constrained by congestion, system instability and rising curtailment of clean energy. This urgency is reflected in Spain’s evolving transmission strategy. It marks a shift from incremental reinforcement to systemic redesign, with the proposed EUR13.1 billion investment programme for 2025-30, positioning the grid as a central enabler of the country’s next phase of the energy transition.
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India’s renewable energy sector is undergoing a transformation. The reason AI is gaining traction in the renewables sector lies in the way renewable projects operate. Solar and wind projects are highly variable in their output as they rely on constantly changing environmental conditions. AI, supported by internet of things sensors, advanced analytics platforms and digital twins, provides the computational layer required to process these large volumes of operational data. From improving forecasting accuracy and optimising plant performance to enabling intelligent grid management and supporting project planning, AI applications are now emerging across the renewable value chain.
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America’s economic and national competitiveness depend on a grid that can keep pace with private investment and innovation. The interconnection backlog isn’t just a technical issue — it’s a barrier to growth, jobs, and reliable power. While the studies themselves are necessary, we cannot let them become burdensome red tape that artificially slows grid buildout. Rather, interconnection should be modernized into a smarter, faster process, drawing from best practices across the RTOs and standardizing them at the federal level.
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The importance of interconnections between the EU and its neighbours in the Mediterranean region is the focus of a comprehensive report recently released by Med-TSO. The report presents an in-depth analysis of cross-border electricity interconnections between EU and non-EU countries in the Mediterranean region, focusing on the cases of Italy–Montenegro, Türkiye– ENTSO-E (via Greece and Bulgaria), and Spain-Morocco. It highlights the technical, regulatory, and institutional frameworks that underpin these interconnections, examining how electricity is traded across borders, how transmission capacity is allocated, and how congestion is managed.
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Costa Rica’s electricity sector is undergoing a grid-centric transformation driven by the need for deeper renewable energy integration, enhancing grid stability against climate variability, and supporting rapid electrification of transport and industry. To expand and modernise the national grid to support integration of new generation and handle the new demand pressures, ICE has earmarked USD1 billion between 2025 and 2034 under its latest transmission plan, Plan de Expansion de la Transmision (PET) or Transmission Expansion Plan 2024-34.
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PSP remains the world’s dominant grid‑scale storage technology, with global installed capacity reaching ~189 GW in 2024, according to the IHA’s 2025 World Hydropower Outlook. In 2024 alone, about 8.4 GW of new PSP capacity was added globally. The global PSP development pipeline now exceeds 600 GW, with more than 105 GW under construction, of which over 90 GW is in China. IHA estimates that existing PSP plants can store up to ~9,000 GWh of electricity, providing critical inertia, frequency regulation, and long‑duration storage for high‑renewables grids.
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Data centers and other large loads cannot wait years for traditional generation and infrastructure upgrades. Virtual power plants offer a faster, cheaper, and more flexible alternative. The commercial models proposed in this paper can unlock large load-driven VPPs at scale by more efficiently allocating risk among utilities, VPP developers, and large customers — aligning incentives and unlocking new pathways for rapid deployment. In turn, this could benefit us all — strengthening reliability, lowering costs, and powering the next wave of US economic growth.
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Data center development may come in all levels of power consumption. However, because developers rarely build, install, and commission data centers in a single phase, projects of all sizes need a power supply that can grow and expand with them. When covering the incremental energy demand from a new data center, a large new single firm resource is an unwieldy indivisible capital investment. A modular approach with renewables plus batteries reduces risk and provides better economics.
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Alberta Electric System Operator faces two key challenges that could fundamentally reshape Alberta’s electrical landscape. The province’s swift transition to renewables has created unprecedented technical complexities that could threaten grid stability. As Alberta’s generation fleet increasingly relies on wind and solar power, the power system’s frequency response, system strength, and operational flexibility have diminished. To address these issues, the AESO has outlined comprehensive solutions in its recently released 2025 Reliability Requirements Roadmap.
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