Europe's corporate power purchase agreement (PPA) market is cooling, and standalone solar contracts are taking the biggest hit as negative prices spread. That was the main message from RE-Source 2026 in Amsterdam, where buyers and sellers said battery-backed hybrid deals and careful risk allocation now matter more than headline prices, pv magazine reported.
The event, held on 4 and 5 November and organised by SolarPower Europe and WindEurope through the RE-Source Platform, drew about 1,400 attendees and more than 350 corporate energy buyers.
A cooling market
According to the RE-Source Platform, corporate PPAs have secured 5.9 GW of renewable capacity in Europe so far in 2026, down 9.7% year on year. Francesco Rossetto, policy officer at the EU energy regulator ACER, described "a market that is cooling down a little bit". ACER data shows that the share of hours with very low power prices has risen from 1% to 2% in 2021 to about 10%.
Pexapark said standalone solar PPA volumes have fallen 43% this year, and that Italy has overtaken Spain as Europe's largest PPA market, largely because Spanish activity collapsed. Almost a quarter of Spanish solar output was generated during hours with negative prices. Itamar Orlandi, Pexapark's director of commercial strategy, said solar PPA prices "started to go into free fall about three years ago and that free fall still hasn't stopped".
LevelTen Energy said solar capture rates have roughly halved in Spain and Germany since 2022.
Hybrid deals take centre stage
As solar-only deals lose value, buyers are turning to contracts that combine solar with batteries or other technologies. LevelTen said nearly every request for proposals on its platform this year included a hybrid product in some form, and that hybrid solar-plus-storage PPAs carried a 24% premium over solar-only contracts in the second quarter. Pexapark said multi-technology PPAs have almost doubled.
Silvia Escudero, head of upstream and downstream origination for Iberia at Statkraft, said Spain has recorded about 920 hours of zero or negative prices so far this year. She warned that these contracts are harder to design than they look. "A hybrid PPA is not a solar PPA with a battery, it's much more complex than that," she said.
Grid connections are the new bottleneck
Speakers agreed that access to the grid now shapes the value of projects. "The most valuable asset has now become the grid connection point," said Orlandi.
Domenico Franceschino of Axpo Solutions gave indicative French tolling fees for seven-to-ten-year contracts starting in 2029: about €80,000 per MW a year for a standalone battery, €65,000 for a co-located battery that can charge from the grid and €45,000 for one that charges only from on-site solar. For standalone units, cabling and grid fees cost about €50,000 per MW a year, against about €35,000 for the battery itself.
What it means for European developers
Selling solar output on its own through a long-term corporate contract is getting harder, especially in Spain. Developers with existing grid connections can add batteries to offer firmer, hybrid supply, which buyers increasingly ask for and pay more for. Those still planning solar-only projects should expect lower capture prices and tougher contract terms.
Source: pv magazine
