DNV expects half of new solar plants to include batteries by the mid-2030s

Roughly 6.6% of new solar installations today are built with a battery attached. DNV expects that share to hit about half by the mid-2030s, with total solar-plus-storage capacity growing a hundredfold by 2049, according to a DNV announcement carried by North American Clean Energy in late June.

That is a forecast about hardware. The operational consequence lands in software. Once every second solar project ships with a battery, the system deciding when to charge, when to discharge and when to sell stops being an optional add-on and becomes core plant equipment, which is the logic behind DNV pairing its forecast with an expansion of the energy management platform from its GreenPowerMonitor (GPM) subsidiary.

The person closest to this shift is the head of asset operations at a developer or independent power producer whose fleet is mostly standalone PV today and will not be in five years. That person gets the call when a battery misses a dispatch window, when a grid operator changes a code requirement, or when an auditor asks how the control network is secured.

The attach rate is the number to plan around

DNV puts today's solar-plus-storage attach rate at roughly 6.6%. Its mid-2030s projection of about half is roughly a decade out, which puts the transition inside the operating life of assets being commissioned now.

For an operator, the useful reading is conditional. A fleet that is entirely standalone PV can treat storage integration as a future procurement question. A fleet already adding batteries to existing sites, or signing hybrid power purchase agreements, is living inside the forecast, and the controls decision belongs in specifications being written this year.

The announcement, as reported by North American Clean Energy, lists the pressures that make hybrid projects harder to run than solar alone: interconnection bottlenecks, stricter grid requirements, evolving electricity markets and cybersecurity obligations. None of those is new on its own. Stacking all of them on one plant is what changes the job.

What GPM added: 400 protocols, two certifications, one console

GPM is expanding its Energy Management System and Hybrid EMS products for solar, storage and hybrid renewable projects, according to the DNV announcement. The platforms support more than 400 communication protocols, integrate with plant SCADA and GPM's Horizon cloud monitoring platform, and are certified to IEC 62443 and ISO 27001, with 24/7 support behind them.

The protocol count is a spec an operator can actually test against. Any competing EMS vendor can be asked the same question, and 400-plus is now the public number to beat.

The certifications sit alongside a regulatory reference point. DNV frames the platforms' cybersecurity credentials against the EU's NIS2 directive, which it names as an example of the cybersecurity requirements developers and equipment manufacturers now face.

Juan Carlos Arévalo, DNV's executive vice-president and director of Digital and Data Solutions for Energy Systems, said in the announcement that the solar-plus-storage surge depends on the industry solving grid access, cyber risk and revenue uncertainty. He positioned GPM's offer as EMS technology combined with DNV's independent assurance and grid-code work.

That combination is the part worth scrutinising. An EMS vendor that also does grid-code assurance could, in principle, shorten the path from control settings to interconnection sign-off. The announcement describes capabilities, not observed results at customer sites, so the reference check is where that claim gets tested.

Where the buying is happening: Asia-Pacific, Chile, Australia and the Gulf

DNV's Energy Industry Insights 2026 survey found 49% of Asia-Pacific respondents plan to increase investment in energy storage, and the announcement names Chile and Australia as markets still rapidly expanding deployment, per North American Clean Energy. GPM's hybrid architecture is pitched as a single platform for operators running across those differing grid codes and market structures.

The Gulf shows the same direction at larger scale. In January, Energy Storage News reporter Jonathan Touriño Jacobo covered DNV's Rise of Renewables in the Gulf Region report, which puts current MENA storage capacity at 36GWh and forecasts a tenfold increase by 2030, a hundredfold by 2045 and 9.5TWh by 2060.

That would lift the region from 1.4% of global installed storage today to 12% by 2060, according to the report as covered by Energy Storage News. Solar is the driver. DNV expects MENA installed PV to go from 76GW in 2024 to 340GW in 2029, with 860GW of new PV added by 2040.

The technology mix in the report is directly relevant to anyone specifying controls. DNV expects lithium-ion to represent 70% of MENA storage capacity by the end of 2026, with co-located solar-and-battery projects overtaking pumped hydro as the region's dominant storage technology. The report expects that lithium-ion share to fall over the following decades as long-duration storage comes online and standalone lithium-ion and vehicle-to-grid grow, with those categories reaching a combined 45% of storage by 2060.

For an EMS, that mix means the controller specified for a solar-and-lithium plant today may need to dispatch a long-duration asset or an EV fleet later. Hybrid architecture is the vendor answer to that. Whether a given platform handles it is a question to ask before the contract is signed, not after.

The 19GWh plant that tests the thesis

The largest solar-plus-storage project announced anywhere is under construction in the UAE: 5.2GW of solar PV paired with 19GWh of battery storage, a US$5.9 billion project developed by state-owned Masdar, according to Energy Storage News. DNV's report says it is designed to deliver 1GW of clean power to the grid around the clock, with completion expected in 2027.

Round-the-clock delivery from a solar plant is fundamentally an energy management problem. The panels produce in daylight. The battery covers the rest. The EMS decides every hour how much goes to the grid, how much goes into storage and how much is sold, and at 19GWh the cost of a poor dispatch decision is counted in megawatt-hours.

Scatec, the Norwegian independent power producer, signed a power purchase agreement in January for 1.95GW of solar with 3.9GWh of batteries in Egypt, one of several hybrid projects it is developing in the country, PV Tech reported, as noted by Energy Storage News.

Ditlev Engel, DNV's Energy Systems CEO, said in the report that Gulf countries are building some of the world's largest solar and storage projects while continuing to supply global oil and gas markets, and that economics is the main driver because renewables now deliver low-cost electricity. DNV's report also notes that developers in the region are pursuing solar-plus-storage specifically for round-the-clock supply and greater system flexibility.

Masdar's 5.2GW and 19GWh plant is due to complete in 2027. According to Energy Storage News, citing DNV's report, the project will enable round-the-clock delivery of 1GW of clean energy to the grid.