In Iberia, renewable value is migrating from the panel to the battery.
A record solar build has flipped the economics: generation is abundant, flexibility is scarce — and that gap is where returns now sit.
What we’re tracking today:
Spain logged 397 hours of negative power prices in Q1 2026 — roughly eight times the 48 hours a year earlier, with Portugal at 222. Merchant solar cannibalises its own revenue as capacity floods the grid; uncontracted assets get repriced, and storage moves to the centre of the thesis.
Portugal is building the fix: a new capacity market with a dedicated auction to scale battery storage from 13 MW toward 750 MW, inside a €400m grid package. It puts a revenue floor under flexibility — exactly the signal that makes storage and hybrids bankable.
Capital is still backing the build-out. Actis reached a $2.5bn first close on its $6bn Energy 6 fund, targeting renewables, grids and storage across the Middle East, Africa and beyond — the markets we operate in.
A quiet day for headline deals in our core markets — so we’re reading the structure. At Persimmon Investments, structure is what we underwrite.