Blathnaid O'Dea

The Syrian Electricity Company (SEC) has signed three agreements with Saudi's Al-Harfi Construction company to develop 760 MW of solar and 1,077 MWh of battery energy storage (BESS) capacity.

Following months of hard work on their solar cars, the winners of the Electrek American Solar Challenge 2026 were honored at a special awards ceremony held in Amarillo. Tesla is a long-time sponsor of the event, which is open to engineering students globally.

Carlyle-backed developer Revera's 200 MW/400 MWh Windyhill battery is the first of three energy storage projects to enter construction. It is targeting commercial operations by early 2028.

The solar coaster came to Ireland this week as EirGrid recorded an all-time high peak generation followed two days later by generation lows of 8 MW during the historic solar eclipse on August 12.

Investor Capital Dynamics has several long duration energy storage projects in the planning pipeline in I-SEM, including the 1,200 MWh Islandmagee BESS in Northern Ireland

Long duration energy storage capacity combined with better system flexibility and low-cost electrification uptake could reduce Irish home energy costs by 20% by 2035, according to Aurora Energy Research. Adding sufficient LDES would require government offtake floors, however.

Grid-scale solar farms generated 1.1 GWh of electricity in 2025, 4% of the total and a 51% increase compared with 2024. Electricity storage output from pumped hydro and batteries contributed a small share. Coal fired power plant generation, meanwhile, decreased its share by 52% from 2024.

The results of Ireland's sixth Renewable Electricity Support Scheme (RESS 6) are due to be announced on December 2.

“With continued investment in solar – across homes, farms, businesses and large grid-scale projects – Ireland is building a growing source of homegrown, clean electricity, and strengthening our energy security,” said Ireland's Minister for Climate, Energy and the Environment, Darragh O'Brien following the milestone.

Volta Foundation's July 2026 report ‘Where Batteries Can Win in Data Center Applications' shows the two areas where battery energy storage systems (BESS) are winning, four where it is competing and two areas where it's losing out to other technologies in the data center market.