Hydro storage plants could host 25 GW more renewables, says Ember

Energy think tank Ember said hydropower plants across Austria, Bulgaria, France, Italy, Portugal, Romania, and Spain could host an additional 25 GW of wind and solar capacity by connecting the new generation behind the same grid connection point, a practice known as hybridization. The seven countries account for 93 GW of the European Union’s 131 GW of hydropower capacity.

London-based Ember said hybridization could allow the seven countries to integrate 18% of the new renewable capacity anticipated by 2030 without using additional grid capacity. The organization said hydropower plants eligible for hybridization currently operate at an average of 19% of their maximum output, leaving substantial unused grid connection capacity that wind or solar could share.

The analysis draws on hydropower plant data from Global Energy Monitor’s Global Hydropower Tracker and 2025 dispatch data from ENTSO-E’s Transparency Platform. Ember excluded hydropower sites near protected areas from its analysis, finding that around 28% of large hydropower capacity across the seven countries is eligible for hybridization.

Ember said only Spain and Portugal currently have dedicated regulatory frameworks supporting hybrid renewable projects. Spain’s Royal Decree-Law 7/2026, published in March 2026, sets out the legal obligation for Renewable Acceleration Zones and explicitly includes hybrid projects.

Ember pointed to the Tâmega wind farm in Portugal – developed as a hybrid project sharing a grid connection with the Tâmega hydroelectric complex – and the Lazer floating solar plant in France, which uses more than 50,000 panels on the reservoir of the Lazer dam, as examples of hybridization already underway.

The report follows the European Commission’s AccelerateEU initiative, published in April 2026 in response to the Strait of Hormuz shutdown. Ember said maximizing the use of existing grid infrastructure has become a matter of urgency.

Hybridization has been gaining traction across the industry as a way to stretch existing grid capacity – a related opinion piece published earlier this year argued that combining solar, wind, and storage at shared connection points also produces more stable, bankable energy products. Earlier research on floating solar paired with hydropower found similar system-level benefits, including reduced curtailment.