54% of respondents cited “energy availability and redundancy” as the single greatest obstacle to successful data center development between now and 2030.

From ESS News

aw firm Foley & Lardner LLP released today its 2026 Data Center Development Report, focusing on the growth and challenges in the data center boom that aims to sustain the growth in AI and LLM usage.

A major focus was on energy, with 54% of respondents citing “energy availability and redundancy” as the single greatest obstacle to successful data center development between now and 2030.

In terms of the right energy mix for data centers, 55% of respondents agreeing that the ideal energy mix to meet the growing power demand of data centers is largely renewables (41%), followed by natural gas (17%), nuclear (16%), and BESS (14%).

Nearly half (48%) of industry participants named advances in energy efficiency (which often includes storage optimization) as the greatest opportunity for development through the end of the decade, and nearly three in four respondents (74%) said advanced energy storage systems like batteries, hybrid solutions, and microgrids are the best way to ensure energy resilience.

Only 14% of developers are actually pursuing modular and small modular nuclear reactors as a viable energy opportunity.

Intriguingly, 63% anticipate a “strategic correction” in the market by 2030, driven by the intense competition for power, with one unnamed banking executive in the report saying, “Once power runs out in 2027 or 2028, that’s where we think deal flow will start to slow down.”

105 U.S.-based respondents were qualified to participate in the survey, including those who had direct experience in data center development, energy procurement, technology delivery, or operations within the past 24 months.

Energy analyst firm Wood Mackenzie identified data centers as one of the five trends to look for in 2026 for global energy storage, and within the past week, a battery storage project decided to give up a grid-connection to a data center and re-tool the batteries, earning revenue without being connected.

What they said:

Daniel Farris, partner and co-lead of Foley’s data center and digital infrastructure team: “There is a Gold Rush mentality right now around securing power. That’s a big part of why people feel there’s a bubble,” said “There’s going to a period in the next two to three years where power at necessary levels is going to be really hard to come by.”

Rachel Conrad, senior counsel and co-lead of Foley’s data center and digital infrastructure team: “Over the next five to 10 years, power providers will need to either grow capacity or increase efficiency to meet the demand fueled by data centers.”

Renewables and storage could reliably power data centers, but success requires active grids, coordinated planning, and the right mix of technologies. Hitachi Energy CTO, Gerhard Salge, tells pv magazine that holistic approaches ensure technical feasibility, economic viability, and energy system resilience.

As data centers grow in size and complexity, supplying them with cheap and reliable power has never been more pressing. Gerhard Salge, chief technology officer (CTO) at Hitachi Energy, a unit of Japanese conglomerate Hitachi, shed light on the relationship between renewable energy and data center operations, noting that while technically feasible, success requires careful planning, the right infrastructure, and a holistic approach.

“When we look at what's happening in the grids, then renewables are an active element on the power generation side, and the data centers are an active element on the demand side,” Salge told pv magazine. “What you need in addition to that is in the dimensions of flexibility, for which we need storage and a grid that can actively act also here in order to bring all these elements together.”

According to Salge, the key is active grids, not passive systems that simply react to conditions. With more renewables, changing demand patterns, new load centers, and storage options like batteries and existing facilities such as pumped hydro, it is crucial to coordinate these resources actively to maintain supply security, power quality, and cost optimization.

“But when you talk about the impact and the correlation between renewables and data centers, you need always to consider this full scope of the flexibility in a power system of all the elements—demand side, generation side, storage side, and the active grid in between,” he said, noting that weak or congested grids would not serve this purpose.

AI data centers

Salge warned that not all data centers are the same. “There are conventional data centers and AI data centers,” he said. “Conventional data centers are essentially high-load systems with some fluctuations on top. They contain many processors handling requests—from search engines or other applications—so the workload is distributed stochastically across them. This creates a baseline load with random ups and downs, which is the typical load pattern of a conventional data center.”

AI workloads, in contrast, rely heavily on GPUs or AI accelerators, which consume significant power continuously. Unlike conventional data centers, AI data centers often run at sustained high load, sometimes close to maximum capacity for long periods.

“AI data centers are specifically good in doing parallel computing,” Salge explained. “So many of them are triggered with the same demand pattern at the same time, which creates these spikes up and down in the demand profile, and they come in parallel all together.”

These fluctuations challenge both the power supply and the voltage and frequency quality of the connected grid. “So, you need to transport active power from an energy storage system or a supercapacitor to the demand of the AI data center. And that then needs to involve really the control of the data center’s active power. What you need is the interaction between the storage unit and then the AI data center to provide active power or to absorb it afterwards when the peak goes down. That can be also done by a supercapacitor.”

Batteries can store much more energy than supercapacitors, but the latter can ramp smaller energies more frequently. “However, if you put a battery that is smaller than the load, and you really need to cycle the battery through its full capacity, the battery will not survive very long with your data center, because the frequency of these bursts is so high, then you are aging the battery very, very quickly, yeah, so supercapacitors can do more cycles,” Salge emphasized.

He also noted that batteries and supercapacitors are both mature technologies, but the optimal setup—whether one, the other, or a combination with traditional capacitors—depends on storage size, number of racks, voltage levels, and overall system design.

Managing AI training bursts

Salge stressed the importance of complying with grid codes across geographies. “You need to become a good citizen to the power system,” he said. “You have to collaborate with local utilities to make sure that you are not infringing the grid codes and you are not disturbing with the data center back into the grid. A good way to do this, when renewables and data centers are co-located, is to manage renewable energy supply already inside the data center territory. Moreover, having a future-fit developed grid is a clear advantage. Because you have much more of these flexibility elements and the active elements to manage storage and renewable integration and to manage the dynamic loads of the data centers.”

If the grid is not future-fit with modern, actively operating equipment, operators will see significantly more stress. “With holistic planning, instead, you can even use some of the data center flexibility as a controllable and demand response kind of feature,” Salge said, adding that data center operators could coordinate AI training bursts to periods when the power system has more available capacity. This makes the data center a predictable, controllable demand, stressing the grid only when it is prepared.

“In conclusion, regarding technical feasibility: yes, it’s possible, but it requires the right configuration,” Salge said.

Economic feasibility

On economics, Salge believes solar and wind remain the cheapest power sources, even when accounting for the grid flexibility needed to integrate them with data centers. Solar is fastest to deploy, wind complements it well, and both can be scaled in parallel.

“Any increase in data center demand requires investment, whether from renewables or conventional power. Economics depend on the market, and market mechanisms, regulations, and technical grid planning are interconnected, influencing energy flow, pricing, and system stability,” he said.

“We recommend developers to work with all stakeholders—utilities, technology providers, and planners—from the start to ensure reliability, affordability, and social acceptance. Holistic planning avoids reactive fixes and leads to better long-term outcomes,” Salge concluded.

During testing at Estonia’s 100 MW Kiisa battery park, both EstLink 1 and EstLink 2 tripped, triggering the most severe disturbance to the regional power grid since desynchronization from the Russian electricity system. As a result, nearly 1 GW of capacity was lost within seconds. The park’s owner has since publicly pointed to the battery manufacturer.

From ESS News

A disturbance in Estonia’s power system on Jan. 20 forced both EstLink interconnections between Estonia and Finland offline, cutting roughly 1,000 MW of capacity, equivalent to about 20% of the Baltic region’s winter electricity load.

The shortfall was initially covered by support from the continental European grid, as the 500 MW AC connection between Poland and Lithuania operated at double its rated capacity to compensate. Later, reserve capacity within the Baltic states was deployed.

The oscillations were triggered by a 100 MW/200 MWh battery energy storage system in Kiisa, just south of Tallinn, one of the largest battery storage systems in the Baltics. The incident occurred during final grid connection testing, which caused the DC cables to trip.

The €100 million facility, developed by Estonian company Evecon in partnership with French firms Corsica Sole and Mirova, features 54 battery containers supplied by Nidec Conversion.

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Solar Energy Expo 2026, Poland’s flagship PV-plus-storage trade fair, returned this month with a small show-floor footprint but a sharp focus on flexibility and market reform, as well as the storage, inverter and grid-forming technologies shaping the nation’s next phase of grid integration.

Solar Energy Expo 2026 opened to visitors from Jan. 13 to 15 at Ptak Warsaw Expo, an exhibition center in the southwestern suburbs of the Polish capital. The sprawling complex – bordered on one side by an expressway and on the other by dense forest teeming with wild boar – only opened two halls for Poland's premier storage and solar event this year, leaving wide stretches of empty or partitioned‑off floor space.

That said, the slimmed-down affair – relatively low-key by global trade-fair standards – still held its own as one of Central and Eastern Europe’s most important regional renewables events – a claim backed by numbers. According to the event organizer, the fifth edition of Solar Energy Expo attracted 20,176 industry visitors, up 11% year on year, including 2,087 from foreign countries. It featured 315 exhibitors across 40,000 m² of exhibition space.

The 2026 edition of the solar fair was also held in tandem with the fifth PIME Storage Energy Summit, a pairing that shifted the week’s focus squarely onto storage policy, flexibility markets, and system‑planning debates. The storage summit has grown into one of Poland’s most influential energy‑system forums, and this year’s program reflected a sector in transition.

Poland’s solar market continues to expand at one of the fastest rates in Europe. The country surpassed 20 GW of cumulative PV capacity at the end of 2024 and reached 21.8 GW by the first quarter of 2025, according to the Instytut Energetyki Odnawialnej (IEO), Poland's leading independent think tank specializing in renewable energy. Annual PV additions hit 3.7 GW in 2024, with the IEO projecting similar growth in 2025 and 2026 as utility‑scale projects take a larger share of the market.

Meanwhile, Poland’s energy‑market reform drive is gathering real momentum as electrification accelerates across transport, heating and industry. Consulting firm Arthur D. Little projects national electricity demand rising from 154 TWh in 2024 to as much as 210 TWh to 230 TWh by 2040 – a structural shift that tightens the screws on a system already strained by coal retirements. That surge is forcing policymakers and system operators to confront the limits of the current market design and move beyond incremental fixes, accelerating reforms that can unlock flexibility, scale storage and modernize the mechanisms that keep the grid balanced.

Against that backdrop, summit panels examined the evolution of national energy policy, the impact of EU‑level flexibility mandates and the technical requirements for integrating storage into a grid increasingly shaped by variable renewables. Speakers framed storage as essential infrastructure for system security, balancing and resilience.

Unlike past editions of the conference, the panelists avoided speculative capacity claims. Poland currently has no official national storage target, though upcoming EU flexibility‑market rules will require the government to assess and plan for its storage needs. The panel discussions primarily centered on whether Poland should prioritize large centralized assets or accelerate distributed deployments, and how flexibility requirements will influence investment decisions.

Market‑mechanism reform emerged as a second major topic of discussion. The panelists dissected grid‑forming capabilities, flexibility products, connection‑cost adjustments and the qualification processes facing aggregators.

Several contributors argued that current reforms still fall short of enabling new entrants, while others pointed to slow permitting and grid‑connection procedures as a bottleneck for the scale of storage Poland will require. Business‑side concerns surfaced as well, with observers noting the dominance of Asian suppliers and warning that cost‑driven procurement could undermine long‑term system stability without stronger design standards and cybersecurity oversight.

On the trade‑show floor, exhibitors reflected a market diversifying across scale and technology. Utility‑scale developers and engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contractors – including PGE Polska, Greencells, Photon Energy, BayWa re, Statkraft, Northland Power and Axpo – signaled continued momentum behind large PV and hybrid projects.

Battery and storage‑technology suppliers formed another major cluster. LG Energy Solution showcased its focus on upstream manufacturing, while Alpha ESS promoted its modular Storion systems for commercial and industrial (C&I) customers alongside utility‑scale offerings. Inverter and hybrid‑system makers such as BT Storage, Growatt, Fox ESS, Deye and Sigenergy also showcased solutions spanning the residential to C&I segments.

Systems integrators and balance‑of‑system specialists were out in force, with CORAB and SL Rack promoting their mounting‑system engineering solutons, while Wamtechnik and Elsta.pl showcased their expanding roles in battery energy storage system (BESS) integration. Ingeteam and Rawicom rounded out the segment by promoting their control-system know-how through energy management system (EMS) and battery management system (BMS) platforms designed for the increasingly complex demands of hybrid projects.

Smaller players such as Byotta, Volt Power (Soleos), SunSynk and Eenovance brought niche components and integration services to the table. And domestic PV brands were also out in force, with ML System, MarvenSolar.pl, Polak PV, Proton Solar, Paneclaw, Marstek Keno, Volvetia, Grodno, Runergy and Dome Solar showcasing modules, mounting hardware and distribution offerings tailored to Polish installers and EPC contractors.

Across conference rooms and exhibition aisles, the message was consistent: storage is shifting from a promising add‑on to a central pillar of Poland’s energy transition. Regulatory clarity, market access and flexibility compensation remain unfinished business, but even with a smaller footprint, the expo revealed an industry pushing ahead – cautious about policy gaps, confident in long‑term demand, and increasingly aware that the next phase of growth will hinge on how effectively storage is integrated into the national system.