Wood Mackenzie Highlights Industry Uncertainty And Opportunity At Its 19th Annual Solar & Energy Storage Summit In Denver

Wood Mackenzie recently hosted its nineteenth annual Solar & Energy Storage Summit in Denver, Colorado, gathering more than four hundred executives and industry experts to examine the challenges, opportunities and uncertainties surrounding the solar and energy storage sectors. The summit also introduced a new stream, the North American Power & Renewables Forum, which broadened the conversation to include the wider energy mix, rising load growth and the complexities of integrating increasing levels of renewable generation into the grid.

The event took place at a time when unprecedented investment potential is intersecting with significant policy, market and technological uncertainty. Discussions ranged from strategies to meet rapidly increasing data-centre electricity demand to the expansion of distributed energy resources through virtual power plants. Throughout the summit, urgent capacity requirements dominated conversations, accompanied by concerns over affordability, supply-chain pressures and evolving regulatory frameworks.

Transmission emerged as one of the most critical barriers to industry progress. Grid infrastructure across the United States is ageing and was originally designed for predictable, stable demand patterns. Today it must accommodate rapid demand growth, rising renewable penetration, the retirement of coal and gas plants and the growing severity of extreme weather. While interconnection reforms have improved project quality and reduced speculative activity, they have also revealed that bottlenecks in grid development have merely shifted rather than disappeared.

Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Order 2023, with its stricter financial commitments and milestone-based advancement criteria, has helped streamline queues. Yet data from the Midcontinent Independent System Operator show that seventy gigawatts of projects with completed interconnection agreements remain unbuilt, and another forty gigawatts face delays tied to financing and permitting challenges rather than interconnection processing.

This situation underscores the need to transition from reactive grid management to proactive, scenario-based planning with greater visibility for developers. Without faster transmission build-out, more consistent regional coordination and clearer long-term signals, renewable deployment will continue to stall, even with efficient queue reform.Another major topic was the growing role of automation in solar project delivery.

Robotics, once considered supplemental tools, are now approaching commercial scale, including fully autonomous systems. These technologies have the potential to improve project timelines and ease common engineering, procurement and construction constraints. However, the pace of adoption will depend heavily on EPC partners. Many US solar projects must meet strict deadlines between 2027 and 2030 to secure the full 30 percent tax credit, and EPCs are reluctant to invest in unproven automation technologies that have so far been deployed only on limited portions of projects.

The heightened risks of delays and contract renegotiations make widespread near-term adoption unlikely during the final years of safe-harbour qualification.Despite these hurdles, several trends continue to make robotics an increasingly attractive solution. Rising temperatures are reducing worker availability, labour costs are increasing and Tier 1 EPC firms are prioritizing data-centre and gas projects over solar, creating shortages of skilled labour. As a result, interest in automation is growing even if adoption will be gradual.

The initial integration will focus on the most repetitive and physically demanding tasks, but the greatest long-term efficiency gains are expected once equipment, workflows and project designs are re-engineered to take full advantage of AI-driven autonomous robotics.