Battery storage is booming, but the engineering layer that holds it all together is struggling to keep pace. According to the US Energy Information Administration’s Electric Power Monthly report published in February 2026, utility-scale battery storage in the United States grew by 58.4% in 2025, adding 15,775 MW. Planned additions for 2026 total another 24,268 MW. Yet as deployment accelerates, a less visible problem is becoming harder to ignore: how to coordinate dozens of subsystems: solar inverters, battery containers, protection relays, power meters, into one coherent, grid-compliant operation.
Every hybrid solar-plus-storage installation depends on an Energy Management System, or EMS – the control layer that decides when batteries charge, when they discharge, and how the plant responds to grid conditions in real time. Without well-designed EMS logic, even expensive hardware cannot guarantee stable output. Arkadi Port spent years as a hands-on automation engineer before becoming an independent consultant in EMS architecture. During that time, he developed the first structured EMS control methodology for utility-scale solar-plus-storage systems in Israel, a framework that solved the problem of integrating intermittent generation into the commercial grid and has since been implemented across more than fifteen operating plants. His experience offers a practical lens for the US market, where similar integration challenges are now multiplying at a much larger scale.
Port’s career in energy systems grew out of industrial automation. Before moving into renewables, he worked on control system modernizations at large facilities — migrating legacy HMI platforms, replacing aging PLC architectures, and configuring communication networks across DeviceNet, ControlNet, and Modbus protocols. That work demands an engineer who can hold the full system in mind: not just the code inside one controller, but data flows, fault conditions, and timing dependencies across an entire plant.
“A cement plant and a solar-plus-storage facility seem like different worlds, but the engineering principles overlap more than people expect,” Port explains. “In both cases, you coordinate multiple subsystems that must respond predictably under variable conditions. Reliable operation depends on how well your control architecture accounts for those interactions.”
When he transitioned into renewable energy, Port found that the hardware was already available, but no one had built the system-level logic to make it work as a whole. Vendor documentation covered individual components; what was missing was a unified control framework tying inverters, batteries, and grid interfaces into a single operation. Rather than rebuilding control logic from scratch for every installation, he defined a repeatable EMS methodology: standardized operational behavior, power balancing logic, export limitation controls, and fault-handling mechanisms – adaptable to different vendors and configurations.
One of the earliest projects where Port implemented his unique EMS architecture was publicly described as Israel’s first commercial grid-connected hybrid solar and battery storage system. Combining several megawatts of generation with tens of megawatt-hours of storage, it required precise charge-discharge coordination and grid compliance from day one, with no off-the-shelf integration template at that scale. After that initial deployment, the same methodology was carried forward to additional sites. Across roughly fifteen installations totaling approximately 150 MWp of solar capacity and 300 MWh of storage, the structured approach reduced implementation uncertainty and shortened adaptation cycles between projects. Beyond solving immediate operational challenges, this body of work represents a tangible contribution to the broader energy storage industry – offering a structured integration path where none previously existed.
“Each site has its own characteristics – different inverter models, different storage capacities, different grid requirements,” Port notes. “But if your control framework is structured correctly, you don’t start from zero every time.”
As battery storage deployment continues to surge, EIA projects renewables, including storage, will add 62% more capacity in 2026 versus the previous year. Demand for competent EMS design will only intensify. Much of the industry conversation focuses on battery chemistry, supply chains, and permitting. Comparatively little attention goes to the control system layer that actually makes these assets function as part of a living grid.
“The industry is building hardware faster than it can integrate it at the system level,” Port says. “Engineers who understand both industrial control and energy systems will be critical over the next decade.”
Whether the sector heeds that warning may depend on how quickly project developers recognize that reliable storage is not a hardware problem – it is a control problem. And controls, by nature, require the kind of structured, system-level engineering that no amount of additional megawatts can substitute.
Carlos is an engineer with strong expertise in technical and industrial topics. He previously worked at international companies such as Siemens and speaks Spanish, German, English, and Italian.
