2026 Agenda

Europe is adding record levels of solar, but critical storage buildout is lagging behind. As curtailment risk rises and flexibility markets mature unevenly, what will it take to close the storage gap? Examine the economics, regulation, and capital flows needed to scale storage at pace with solar deployment.

• What’s holding back deployment – policy, permitting, or financing?
• How hybrid solar+storage projects stack up against standalone BESS in value creation.
• Investor perspective: what derisks storage as a mainstream asset class?

An EPC, Developer, Asset Owner, Utility, TA and a Law Firm walk into a bar…

Once solar portfolios pass the 1GW threshold, execution, operation, and risk management change fundamentally. This panel brings together an EPC, an asset owner or investor, and a utility, technical advisor and a lawyer to examine which practices no longer work at scale, and what replaces them across construction, operations, and long-term asset performance.

• What delivery and operating practices break at portfolio scale
• How ownership, O&M, and risk allocation evolve beyond 1GW
• What lenders and legal advisors see fail repeatedly in large operating portfolios

This case study examines a utility-scale solar project retrofitted or built with co-located battery storage to address curtailment, price cannibalisation, and grid constraints. The focus is on what changed financially and operationally once storage was added, and what the asset owner would do differently today.

• Why storage was added
• Curtailment exposure, capture price erosion, or grid compliance requirements
• How the revenue stack changed: Energy shifting, ancillary services, downside protection, and volatility reduction
• Capital and performance outcomes: Capex uplift, IRR impact, payback period, and lessons for future hybrid projects

AI tools are everywhere in solar delivery and operations. Some are already saving time and money. Others add noise or risk. This presentation cuts through the claims and looks at what asset owners and operators actually keep, pause, or walk away from when portfolios scale

• Where AI delivers value today across design, construction, and operations
• Where results look promising but evidence is still thin
• What remains dependent on human judgement, accountability, and experience?

European solar and storage projects now operate in markets defined by price cannibalisation, negative pricing, curtailment, and frequent market intervention. This panel examines how developers, investors, and lenders are structuring revenue and risk in power markets where volatility is structural, not cyclical.

• Corporate PPAs, utility PPAs, CfDs, floors, collars, and hybrid revenue stacks and where each breaks down
• Managing exposure to negative prices, curtailment, capture rate erosion, and congestion
• What banks and equity now require to underwrite projects in high-renewables systems

Recent years have exposed structural pressures in global solar manufacturing. Module oversupply, collapsing margins, and price intervention have reshaped procurement strategies, contract structures, and procurement cycles. At the same time, ambitions for transparent, low-carbon supply chains in Europe have struggled to translate into scalable manufacturing capacity. This panel examines what responsible sourcing means in 2026.

• How prolonged oversupply and margin pressure are changing procurement behaviour
• What transparency and low-carbon sourcing look like in practice, beyond legislation
• Whether a credible manufacturing base in Europe is achievable under current market conditions

Grid access has become the defining constraint on Europe’s solar growth. As connection queues lengthen and curtailment risks rise, developers are rethinking project design, hybridisation, and revenue models. This session explores how new grid planning rules, storage integration, and flexible connection agreements are reshaping the economics of large-scale solar.

• Developments in digital grid management, flexibility markets, and dynamic connections
• How regulators are responding – mapping reforms in grid allocation and capacity rights across the continent
• Pricing grid risk into asset valuations

Market Deep Dives by Table

• Permitting timelines
• Grid access reality
• Where capital flows next
• Power demand
• Power prices

Markets of  focus: Italy, Germany, Spain, Poland, Romania, United Kingdom, Ireland, Portugal

As co-located solar and storage projects scale across Europe, developers are navigating vastly different market rules, grid behaviours, and revenue opportunities. This session explores how to optimise hybrid project design and operation in the real world, practical strategies for constraint management, and how co-location supports risk diversification and better utilisation of existing assets.

• How market rules shape dispatch strategy and revenue stacking across countries
• Using storage to manage constraints, curtailment, and grid compliance in real time
• Where co-location delivers value and where it fails to justify added complexity

This session examines how solar and storage developers are evolving as risk, revenue, and system responsibility move upstream.

• Will development margins continue to compress?
• What changes when developers retain assets and manage dispatch?
• New skill gaps. Trading, asset management, grid compliance, and data
• How storage accelerates the shift from build and sell to own and operate
• Trade offs between capital intensity, risk exposure, and returns

• The current state of grid reinforcement, digitalisation, and flexibility programmes across Europe
• How TSOs and DSOs are changing connection rules, queue management, and access to capacity
• Where congestion, curtailment, and redispatch remain structural
• How storage is being positioned as a system tool rather than an optional add on

As Europe races toward electrification, new energy-intensive sectors – from hyperscale data centres to HGVs and heavy industry – are reshaping demand curves and project economics. Solar developers and grid planners must rethink timing, flexibility, and interconnection to align deployment with the next generation of electricity consumers. How will this impact site selection, offtake structures and grid expansion priorities?

• How weather volatility, heatwaves, and system stress test asset performance
• The role of solar plus storage in frequency control, congestion relief, and recovery
• What asset owners are now required to deliver during system stress
• Design and operating choices that improve system support
• Why resilience is becoming a condition for social license and political support

• A practical toolkit of PPA structures that work in 2026
• Red flags that signal unbankable or fragile offtake
• Clear guidance on where flexibility improves deal closure
• A sharper view of what corporates will sign and why

As solar portfolios become increasingly digital – via remote monitoring, SCADA integration, inverter connectivity, and third-party data platforms – the risk profile for asset managers is changing fast. Cyber incidents now have the potential to impair performance, disrupt revenue, compromise data integrity, and trigger contractual or regulatory liabilities.

How are asset managers strengthening operational resilience, managing vendor-related cyber risks, and ensuring secure, reliable plant performance across diverse and maturing portfolios?

• Power demand growth by geography, with focus on industrial zones, data centres, manufacturing, and electrification hubs
• Live signals on permitting timelines by market, based on projects that reached construction
• Grid queue reality checks – which TSOs and DSOs have usable capacity versus headline reform?
• How investors weigh land availability against grid strength across the region
• The real scale of co-location. Where solar plus storage improves connection outcomes and revenues

How to balance cost with reliability, performance guarantees, and digital monitoring in long-term service contracts.

• What is driving the move toward tolling and hybrid structures, and why has confidence in pure merchant exposure cooled?
• Revenue frameworks that capital providers now view as bankable for multi-hour storage
• How tolling structures distribute risk and stabilise cashflows for investors
• Why tolls have become a standout route-to-market in 2026, and how this differs from earlier cycles
• What emerging tolling providers bring to the table that fixed-price or merchant-only contracts cannot deliver

Extreme weather events – from heatwaves to hailstorms – are becoming a major operational and financial risk for solar portfolios across Europe.

How can developers, asset owners, manufacturers, and insurers work together to build and operate climate-resilient projects? From design and component choice to post-damage assessment and insurance claims, identify best practices to reduce exposure and accelerate recovery.

• Understand how climate risk is evolving across Europe’s solar regions
• Learn what can be done during development and operations to mitigate extreme-weather impacts
• Explore how insurers and financiers assess weather-related risk