Blackstone and Sunotec enter into €250 million partnership – SPE

April 8, 2026
Mark Hutchins

Solar energy and storage project developer Sunotec has announced a partnership with American investment company Blackstone. The latter will invest approximately €250 million in Sunotec, as a structured equity investment financed through its Blackstone Tactical Opportunities activities.

The deal is subject to regulatory approval and is expected to close in the first half of 2026. Under these terms, Sunotec’s founders and leadership will remain the majority shareholders of the company and continue to control its strategy and operations. “With Blackstone as a partner, we will accelerate our expansion across Europe and enter selective new markets,” said Sunotec founder and CEO Kaloyan Velichkov.

An announcement from Sunotec said the investment will support growth in key European markets, citing Germany, the United Kingdom, Scandinavia and Southeast Europe. Expansions into new areas, including network infrastructure, are also reported.

Upgrading networks and integrating energy storage has become a priority for Europe. Securing space to connect projects to already congested networks has become a major sticking point for project developers such as Sunotec, which has installed around 5 GW of solar and 5 GWh of battery systems in various regions over the past two years.

Electricity grid upgrades are proving slow to deliver, with a shortage of key components exacerbating already complex processes in many regions. Earlier in 2026, Sunotec announced that this was the case acquired a majority share in the German substation builder Kaufmann Electricthrough which it is exploring approaches to accelerate the construction of new network infrastructure in the country. As the company wanted to play a bigger role in solving power grid bottlenecks and other challenges, it felt it needed to scale up.

“Projects are becoming larger and more complex, increasingly combining generation, storage and grid infrastructure into integrated energy systems. Scaling this model requires long-term capital, international reach and the ability to operate across the entire infrastructure value chain,” a Sunotec representative said. pv magazine.

The partnership also aims to support Sunotec’s independent energy producer platform, operate and build projects. The representative said this move “reinforces our positioning around ‘energy as a system’, where different components are planned and delivered as a single integrated platform.” In the near term, the company will focus on its existing project pipeline, while also developing its integrated platform and expanding into other high-growth markets.

“We are excited to work with the company as it continues to scale its integrated platform, expand its operating asset base and deepen its network infrastructure capabilities,” Amer Khatoun, senior managing director at Blackstone Tactical Opportunities, said in a statement.