Solar EPC companies are increasingly being asked to build something more complicated than solar plants alone. Sterling and Wilson Renewable Energy (SWREL) has secured more than ₹9.85 billion (about US$118 million) in new orders across India and South Africa, combining a 534.3 MWp utility-scale solar project in Rajasthan with two battery energy storage system projects in South Africa totalling 616 MWh. The combination points to how renewable procurement is changing as grids need not only more generation, but also greater flexibility around when and how that electricity is delivered.
The Rajasthan award comes from an independent power producer and adds another large solar project to SWREL’s Indian pipeline. But the South African contracts are particularly significant for the company’s storage business, representing its second-largest utility-scale BESS undertaking. The two 308 MWh systems reflect a market where batteries are increasingly being deployed alongside renewable generation to help manage intermittency, reduce pressure on power systems and provide electricity when solar generation is unavailable.
That shift is also changing the economics and requirements of renewable EPC work. Moody’s points to fresh order flow for EPC contractors after a period marked by higher equipment costs, tender delays, renegotiations and supply-chain and financing constraints. At the same time, renewable tenders are increasingly moving toward solar-plus-storage, round-the-clock and other firm renewable structures. In India, around 80% of renewable capacity awarded in FY26 was reportedly in RTC, firm or solar-plus-storage formats, with about 22 GWh of storage awarded during the year.
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The reason is increasingly tied to the grid. Adding large volumes of solar can create periods when generation exceeds what the network can absorb, while the same system can face shortages when the sun is not producing. Batteries provide a way to shift some electricity across those periods, making renewable generation more useful to the wider power system. South Africa’s growing BESS procurement reflects the same requirement for grid-scale flexibility as the country seeks to integrate more renewable power while reducing reliance on conventional peaking capacity.
For EPC companies, that creates a broader market than simply engineering and constructing solar farms. Projects increasingly require expertise across generation, storage, grid integration, controls and energy management, while developers and utilities want systems that solve an electricity-system problem rather than simply add megawatts. SWREL’s latest orders in India and South Africa therefore show where renewable construction is heading: the solar plant remains important, but increasingly it is only one part of the project.
