Huawei used a speech at The Smarter E 2026 in Munich on July 16 to lay out a grid-forming strategy for its solar and battery storage products, and to rename its LUNA energy storage line LUTERRA. Steven Zhou, president of the Smart PV & ESS product line at Huawei Digital Power, told the audience that solar and storage systems must evolve into a primary power source for the grid, not just a supplement to it.
Grid strain as renewables scale
Zhou said wind and solar penetration in Europe is expected to reach 64% by 2030. That growth is straining the grid, he said, pointing to rising dispatching complexity and a shrinking share of traditional synchronous generators, the spinning turbines that have long kept grid frequency stable. In response, Zhou said European markets are raising grid investment, expanding deployment of grid-forming battery storage, writing grid-forming requirements into new grid codes, and shifting the power market away from simple energy arbitrage toward a mix of paid grid services.
What grid-forming storage does
A grid-forming inverter or battery system sets its own voltage and frequency rather than just following the grid. That lets it perform functions such as black start, restarting the grid after an outage without outside power, inertia support, resisting sudden frequency swings, and short-circuit current support, handling electrical faults safely. Huawei said those functions have now been validated across the full range of grid operating conditions and timeframes.
From LUNA to LUTERRA
Zhou traced the rebrand back to 2020, when Huawei introduced LUNA, what the company calls the industry's first smart string energy storage system, named for the moon to reflect storage's job of keeping clean power available after sunset. Huawei's solar inverter carries the name SUN for the same reason, tied to daytime generation. Zhou said Huawei has now renamed the LUNA storage line LUTERRA, after "Terra," the Earth, framing the shift as moving from lighting the night to protecting the planet.
Case studies from Germany and Spain
Zhou cited two commercial and industrial sites in Europe running Huawei's combined solar, storage, EV charger and AI scheduling package. At the AHS business park in Germany, revenue rose 10% after two years on the system, he said. At a Carrefour supermarket in Spain, the same package cut the store's electricity bill by almost 40%, with a payback period of five years, according to Zhou. Huawei has also run demonstrations of the technology in Mongolia and the Philippines.
Zhou said storage business models will keep diversifying, and that Huawei built its platform to adapt to different models through flexible hardware and software.
