At the 2024 Renewable Energy Revenues Summit, a panel praised National Grid ESO’s role in facilitating the market and suggested that third-party optimization may not be commoditization as some had expected.
Paul Soskin, head of commercial operations at BESS developer and operator Masdar Arlington Energy, said that by criticizing National Grid for being slow to reform the Balancing Mechanism (BM), people are forgetting how much the operator has for the BESS market done.
“It’s not their fault that we have such an overwhelming amount of BESS online, but because they have been so open and enabled so much functionality for BESS. They have done a remarkable job,” Soskin said on television Battery revenue reality panel discussion on day 2.
Optimization has not become a commodity
There was talk of optimization companies, which have been contracted by virtually every BESS project in Britain to tap into electricity markets and maximize revenues. If covered on Energy storage newsSome have said in the past that the widespread use of third-party optimizers was at risk of becoming commonplace.
Head of strategy at another developer operator Field, Alexa Strobel, said: “One thing that’s interesting is that no matter who’s doing it, if you look at the optimizers and what they’re optimizing for, there are so many different trading strategies being used, even varying for the same active from month to month. There was a time when we thought optimizers would become a commodity, everyone would do the same and revenues would bottom out, but we see a huge range of strategies.”
Masdar’s Soskin added: “I love that two batteries can be in the same location, but if they have different optimizers they will have completely different charging profiles and revenue stacks.”
This article is based on an article originally published on Energy-Storage.news (Premium access). The event, which took place from May 21 to 23, was the third edition of the Summit, which brings together buyers, producers, asset owners and financiers in the clean energy market. See the website for more information.
