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Hybrid power plants may soon be the industry standard

Published in: Solar, Exclusive Articles, Conference Call

Hybrid power plants may soon be the industry standard image

Providing electricity from solar or other intermittent renewable sources of energy in a grid-serving and consumption-based way is exactly what hybrid power plants can do, provided the source of generation is combined with a battery storage system. This is why, at Intersolar Europe 2025, hybrid power plants were the talk of the event. Both at the Intersolar Forum and the Intersolar Europe Conference, the opportunities offered by hybrid power plants were discussed, particularly concerning innovative business models, though the persistent challenges they face were just as hotly debated.

For the last few years, the speed of the global energy transition has been exceeding all expectations. According to the Global Market Outlook for Solar Power 2024 to 2028 by SolarPower Europe, the cumulated solar power capacity in 2024 was 2.2 terawatts, and think tank Ember’s Global Electricity Review 2024 reported that solar energy covered seven percent of the global power mix.

In mature solar markets, the rapid expansion created structural issues in the energy system, including grid congestion and negative electricity spot prices resulting from generation peaks during times of low consumption and a lack of storage.

‘In Germany, between noon and 2pm, 20 percent of all hours saw negative electricity prices in 2024, meaning that one in five kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity was traded at negative prices on the power exchange,’ explains Kai Becker, Chief Development Officer at Energy2market, a utility company that exhibited at the Intersolar Europe Conference 2025.

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