Solar panels and batteries could cut electricity costs in Europe by 40% — under one condition

Coordination matters more than scale

Europe could cut the total cost of running its power system by up to 40% by the 2030s — but only if solar generation and storage are deployed in a coordinated way. This is the conclusion of a report by the Schneider Electric research institute (SERI), presented at the UN climate summit COP31, as reported by Euronews. The institute's team modeled 40,500 scenarios with different combinations of costs for solar generation, batteries and the grid, to find out whether the growth of distributed energy resources (DER) would raise or lower total costs.

What the calculations showed

DER are small-scale decentralized technologies: rooftop solar panels, energy storage systems, electric vehicles and smart household appliances. According to SERI's model, with coordinated DER deployment alongside electrification, system costs fall as technologies scale up, and by 2030 the savings could add 0.8% to global GDP. Battery deployment turned out to be one of the most significant factors affecting total costs, since it reduces load during peak periods. The flip side: if the balance is disrupted, a mismatch in battery duration across different types of assets could raise the total cost of the system by up to 35% above the current benchmark — this is SERI's warning, cited in the publication.

Context: solar is already saving money, but demand is needed

The impetus for the calculations was the rapid growth of solar energy. According to data from the association Solar Power Europe cited by Euronews, since the start of the US-led war against Iran in 2026, the use of solar energy has saved the EU €43.7 billion on gas imports. However, the expansion of generation has exposed a shortage of storage: without it, clean energy is lost when production exceeds demand. SERI's Executive Vice President for European Operations, Laurent Bataille, put it this way: 'Solar energy is the fuel, the battery is the power plant.' According to him, the system only becomes cheaper when these elements 'work in harmony,' and the priority should be 'accelerating electrified demand' and more flexible consumption in order to 'flatten the load curve and free up capacity.'

Electrification as a COP31 theme

The report was released amid discussion of Turkey's 35-by-35 initiative: the summit's co-chair country announced back in June its intention to raise the share of global energy demand met by electricity from the current roughly 23% to 35% by 2035. A study published on November 12 showed that an electrified world would lose 61% less energy for the same level of services — partly because a significant portion of the energy from burning fossil fuels is wasted as useless heat. At the same time, critics warn: if the final text does not explicitly state that electricity must come from clean sources, the initiative would allow governments to count the expansion of gas generation as progress on electrification, which, they say, would 'seriously undermine climate goals.'