The summer solar carried the water - pv magazine Global

Europe’s hydro fleet produced less power in the summer of 2026 than it did in the drought summer of 2022, and reservoir stocks finished the period 7.7% below their eleven-year median with France under its historical floor. Over those same four years solar generation across the affected systems rose by 39 TWh. That surplus is now visibly reorganizing the rest of the fleet: reservoir hydro has withdrawn from the middle of the day, and pumped storage has moved its charging window from the pre-dawn hours into the middle of the day, with the peak charging hour shifting from around 04:00 to between 13:00 and 14:00, and the correlation between hourly solar output and hourly pumping rising from zero to 0.86 in six summers.

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