Thursday, 27 August 2026

Potentia Energy has finished construction of the AUD 190 million Quorn Park solar hybrid in New South Wales, Australia, according to ESS News. The site pairs a 98 MW solar plant with a 20 MW / 40 MWh battery energy storage system (BESS).

ESS News reported the project cost at USD 136.4 million.

What separates Quorn Park from other hybrids is its licensing treatment. ESS News reported it was the first hybrid project in Australia's National Electricity Market (NEM) to win approval for a single hybrid generator performance standard (GPS), meaning the solar array and the battery are dispatched as one unit rather than as two registered assets.

That single-asset treatment covers 160,000 panels and a 16-unit BYD battery system, licensed and dispatched together under the GPS, according to ESS News.

Potentia Energy is a joint venture owned by Enel Group and Inpex, per ESS News.

Revenue is underpinned by a 10-year power purchase agreement with Zen Energy, ESS News reported.

Chinese inverter and energy storage manufacturer Sungrow has begun construction of a battery energy storage system factory in Egypt with a planned annual production capacity of 10 GWh, according to ESS News.

The project carries a USD 50 million investment and will occupy around 50,000 square meters, of which approximately 18,000 square meters is building space, ESS News reported.

A groundbreaking ceremony took place on Aug. 17 at the China-Egypt TEDA Suez Economic and Trade Cooperation Zone in Ain Sokhna, inside the Suez Canal Economic Zone. Production is scheduled to start in April 2027.

The site will assemble battery energy storage systems (BESS) and is expected to create more than 100 direct jobs, per ESS News.

Egyptian authorities have described the plant as the first specialized BESS manufacturing facility in the Middle East and Africa, with output intended for the domestic market and for export.

PowerChina is the construction contractor and said the facility is its first industrial manufacturing project in Egypt.

UniCredit has arranged EUR 218 million of debt and guarantee support for two Greenvolt Power battery projects in northeastern Poland, ESS News reported. The Ełk and Turośń sites add up to 400 MW/1.6 GWh.

The money splits two ways: bridge lending of EUR 153 million and a guarantee line worth EUR 65 million, per ESS News.

Both installations carry identical specifications, at 200 MW/800 MWh apiece.

Commissioning schedules differ. The Turośń Kościelna plant held its inauguration in July. At Ełk, which ESS News notes also carries the name Nowa Wieś Ełcka, the connection to the grid is done and the developer is aiming for commercial operation during the fourth quarter of 2026.

Greenvolt Power puts its European development pipeline at 12.8 GW, with roughly 5 GW of that in battery storage, according to ESS News.

Control of the developer sits with KKR, which secured a majority stake through a takeover launched in December 2023.

Batteries installed during 2026 carry enough capacity to move 34% of new daily solar generation out of daylight hours, pv magazine reported, citing Ember.

The volume behind that estimate is 459 GWh of new storage projected for this year, half again as much as the 307 GWh installed during 2025, according to pv magazine.

Installation costs sit at $140/kWh on a global average basis, down from $2,634/kWh in 2010, a drop of 95% across those years, pv magazine reported.

Solar PV's share of world electricity reached slightly above 10% during the first six months of 2026, compared with 8.9% a year earlier, according to pv magazine.

Country results in 2025 spread widely around the projected global figure. Bulgaria led on the storage-to-solar ratio at 77%, with Chile at 76% and Australia at 60%, pv magazine reported.

Storage added in the United States last year totalled 58 GWh, sufficient to time-shift roughly one-quarter of new daily solar output, according to pv magazine. The European Union trailed the global average, with 27 GWh installed in 2025 and a 16% shift ratio.

In California, solar paired with batteries covered more than a quarter of demand across the 19:00 to 21:00 evening peak on an average day in the first half of 2026, pv magazine reported. The comparable figure for the first half of 2023 was 6.8%.

WestLight Energy said it has received the final piece of funding needed to build what it describes as one of California's largest community microgrids, in the Pescadero community of Northern California, according to a GlobeNewswire release.

The project targets the frequent power outages affecting Pescadero, a rural farming community of 700 people, and is designed to supply energy resiliency there.

The financing stack pairs grant funds with USD 10 million from WestLight Energy and USD 3 million from the County of San Mateo, the company said.

WestLight Energy anticipates construction beginning in mid-2029, with service expected to start in mid-2031.