Are current trading, optimisation and portfolio strategies evolving fast enough to realise the full potential of hybrid and co-located renewables assets?

As European utilities, generators and IPPs race to build flexibility into their portfolios, adding co-located battery storage to both new and existing solar and wind is becoming one of the most efficient ways to deploy new BESS and capture more value from renewables.

Indeed, in markets where grid congestion represents a major bottleneck to clean energy and storage growth, hybridisation could not only be a commercial masterstroke for portfolio owners, but also one of the most promising answers to Europe’s energy security challenge.

Yes, sharing a grid connection brings complex technical and commercial challenges. However, performance data from early renewables-plus-storage sites – using fully automated trading strategies – shows that they are already matching or exceeding the revenue performance levels set by standalone BESS. Over the winter period spanning December 2025 to February 2026, a co-located renewable-plus-storage project in Great Britain achieved annualised returns of £50k/MW, placing it among the top-performing 2-hour BESS assets nationally.

This raises a set of important questions for the market:

• Is the market making the most of the opportunities offered by co-located battery storage projects, as an alternative to standalone BESS?
• What are the biggest risks to achieving projected returns from co-located assets, and how can developers and investors mitigate them?
• What lessons can be learned from the first generation of high performing co-located renewable-plus-storage projects?
• Are owners of wind and solar building storage into their portfolios at the right scale and speed to realise the commercial benefits of flexibility?
• What are the key ingredients behind successful integration of renewables and storage?
• Is co-location the fastest route to clean energy value capture?

This private Arenko roundtable – followed by an industry report – brings together senior executives responsible for energy trading, commercialisation and portfolio management, to talk openly about the importance of co-located projects in their portfolios, the role of automation, and how the market can overcome complex bottlenecks to accelerate deployment.