Markets

Spain’s Fundación Ciudad de la Energía (Ciuden), a government energy research foundation, has completed operational testing of a 1 MW/8 MWh vanadium redox flow battery (VRFB) system at its Cubillos del Sil technology center, which it says is the largest vanadium flow battery in Europe dedicated to applied research.

UK government plans new obligations for energy suppliers as smart meter deployment slows in Great Britain. Annual additions to smart electricity meter total have fallen each year since 2021. Binding annual milestones expected to come into force from 2027.

Analysis across 16 European countries finds an around 240,000 increase in the number of residential heat pump sales year-on-year. The European Heat Pump Association attributes the upward trend to governments stabilizing subsidy schemes.

Ghana’s Minister for Energy and Green Transition says the country will advertise competitive bidding processes to deploy 200 MW of battery storage across the country. Ghana’s current installed battery capacity stands at 10 MWh.

Brazil’s second Long-term Reserve Capacity Auction (LRCAP) of 2026 has contracted 501 MW of thermoelectric capacity, leaving an estimated 3 GW of remaining demand to be addressed in a forthcoming battery storage auction expected later this year.

Alparslan Bayraktar, Türkiye’s Minister of Energy and Natural Resources, says 2026 will be a record year for renewables in the country after total deployed solar reached 25,827 MW by the end of January.

India’s cumulative installed battery energy storage system (BESS) capacity is projected to reach 346 GWh by 2033 from less than 1 GWh today, according to a white paper by the Indian Energy Storage Alliance (IESA) and Customized Energy Solutions (CES).

Elon Musk, the CEO of both Tesla and SpaceX, raised some eyebrows at this year’s World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, when he predicted “that the lowest cost place to put AI will be space and that will be true within two to three years, three at the latest.” pv magazine reported on Musk’s vision on our global website www.pv-magazine.com on Jan. 26, 2026, and exactly one week later SpaceX announced that it was acquiring xAI “to form the most ambitious, vertically integrated innovation engine on (and off) Earth, with AI, rockets, space-based internet, direct-to-mobile device communications, and the world’s foremost real-time information and free speech platform.”

California-based software provider SiteCapture has launched an AI platform for the US solar market that automates job-site documentation, quality control, and reporting workflows for installers.

The European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity (Entso-E) has published its final root cause report on the April 28, 2025, blackout in Spain and Portugal, finding failures across grid operations, generation, and regulations, and issuing 22 recommendations to strengthen European grid resilience.