Periodic notes from Endura on technical, commercial and contractual matters affecting renewable energy and storage assets. New articles are added when there is something material to add to the conversation, not on a schedule.
SolarPACES examines how the EU's ReFuelEU aviation rules, which require 35% of fuel at EU airports to be synthetic fuel made from air-captured CO2 and water using renewable energy by 2050, create the first legally established market for solar fuels, and why concentrated solar with thermal storage suits the high-temperature thermochemical route. Xavier Lara argues that the binding quota makes solar fuel plants financeable for the first time, that the next step is a first commercial plant with long-term offtake from an airline or fuel supplier, and that sunbelt regions such as the Atacama, Western Australia, the US Southwest, the Middle East and even Morocco, can supply Europe through imports.
"Technology was never the bottleneck for solar fuels; bankability was."
Xavier Lara, CEO of Endura Energy
By Susan Kraemer · SolarPACES, CSP News & Analysis, with comments from Xavier Lara.
Diari de Tarragona profiles two Endura Energy developments: Dark Sky Energy Park in Nevada, combining solar, batteries and dispatchable technologies to supply AI data centres around the clock, and Ibitú, the 500 MWh storage and 100 MWp solar project in Chile's Atacama Region. Xavier Lara compares the Nevada design to what the planned AI gigafactory in Móra la Nova is asking for: round-the-clock renewable supply, long-term contracts and battery storage.
By Joel Medina · English translation hosted on Endura. Originally published in Spanish.
pv magazine's market feature on Chile's solar and storage boom looks at how the 2024 capacity payments reform unlocked battery development next to utility-scale PV in the north, with national BESS capacity expected to pass 6 GW by the end of 2026 and storage absorbing solar that would otherwise be curtailed. Ibitú, the 500 MWh BESS and 100 MW PV project developed by GT4 Energía, Tambo3 and Endura Energy in the Copiapó commune, is featured among the country's hybrid developments.
Xavier Lara explains that Ibitú was conceived around making renewable electricity available "when consumers and the grid actually need it", combining solar generation and large-scale storage into a dispatchable asset. José Lobo, Endura Energy Chile country manager and CEO of Tambo3, sets out the project's local dimension in one of Chile's key mining, industrial and renewable energy regions.
By Blathnaid O'Dea · pv magazine, July & August 2026 edition, Market & Trends, pp. 18–21.
The conversation is no longer about whether to deploy renewables. It is about firmness — the ability to deliver clean power when industry, data centres and electrified loads need it. The piece argues for evaluating storage by Total Plant Cost rather than LCOS, for technology-neutral long-duration storage policy above twelve hours, and for treating thermal storage and demand flexibility as core infrastructure rather than ancillary additions.
By Xavier Lara Serra · English translation hosted on Endura. Originally published in Spanish.
The areas below summarise the technical, commercial and regulatory questions Endura is engaged with through advisory work and published commentary.
Renewable and storage transactions are increasingly priced on operating performance, not nameplate capacity. The diligence questions that actually move valuation are technical — equipment lineage, performance trajectory, contractual exposure under degradation, and the commissioning assumptions still embedded in the financial model.
The contractual exposures owners under-price are rarely in the headline price. They sit in interface management, change-order mechanics, availability definitions, the treatment of force-majeure and grid events, and the precedence rules between technical schedules and the commercial body. Discipline at signing avoids dispute at commissioning.
U.S. tax-credit qualification under the IRA, and the evolving Domestic Content, FEOC and Material Assistance frameworks, are reshaping equipment selection, supplier strategy and project cost stack. The right answer is now as much regulatory as engineering.
Hybrid PV and BESS plants are too often designed for a market that no longer exists by the time they reach commercial operation. The design discipline that pays back is sizing, augmentation strategy and dispatch logic that anticipate the price-volatility regime of the asset's operating decade, not its development year.
Under-performance in renewable and storage assets typically combines four distinct causes — operational, contractual, design and external. Separating them cleanly is the precondition for any credible turnaround plan, and the discipline owners most often shortcut.
Long-duration storage earns its value where intermittent supply meets continuous demand — data-centre baseload, industrial heat, grids with limited dispatchable capacity. The case for LDES is no longer a thermodynamic curiosity; it is a procurement question.
These areas correspond to Endura's published service practice. See Services for engagement detail.
A short selection of interviews and published commentary from prior to the founding of Endura.
Interview by Protermosolar covering the European Climate Pact role, hybrid CSP-PV plants, the Spanish PNIEC trajectory, molten-salt thermal storage at scale, and the comparison with battery storage.
Read interview →Interview with the IEA SolarPACES network on the auction design choices required to meet Spain's CSP capacity target under the PNIEC.
Read interview →Extended interview on the technical and commercial dimensions of the DEWA Phase IV project at the time of award.
Read interview →Endura is happy to discuss specific technical, commercial or contractual questions in confidence — whether on a topic we are preparing to write about or one we are not.