Transmission

The scope of the National Energy System Operator - or NESO - has expanded from running the electricity system to planning Britain's whole energy system across electricity, gas and hydrogen, all while delivering connections reform and steering toward Clean Power 2030. That transformation is reshaping everything from how Britain plans its grid 20 years out to how it keeps the lights on tonight.
Ed Porter is joined by Kayte O'Neill, Chief Operating Officer at the National Energy System Operator (NESO), for a wide-ranging conversation on the biggest changes in the GB power market: grid connections reform, the battery storage queue, zero-carbon grid operation, and the next wave of electricity market design.
They cover:
Connections reform and the UK grid queue — how NESO has cut the 800GW queue down to a deliverable pipeline and what Gate 2 means for developers over the next 12 months.
The battery storage connections queue and how NESO is thinking about attrition, bay sharing and co-location.
Zero-carbon operation of the GB grid and why gas plants still run on windy, sunny days (stability services, inertia, grid-forming inverters)
NESO's expanded whole-system role - strategic planning across electricity, gas and hydrogen, and the Strategic Spatial Energy Plan (SSEP)
Reformed National Pricing, data centre demand connections, AI in the control room, and the £40bn/year investment unlock at stake.
Ask Ko, Modo Energy's AI energy analyst, your questions on UK grid operations and BESS markets: Sign up here
Transcript available here
Hosted by Ed Porter, Director EMEA & APAC at Modo Energy.
Chapters:
00:00 - Intro: what people get wrong about NESO
04:15 - NESO's new role in gas security of supply
05:49 - The summer outlook and GB's low-demand operability problem
07:48 - Why gas still runs on the GB grid on windy, sunny days
09:49 - Stability services and the path to zero-carbon grid operation
11:03 - The 97.7% zero-carbon record on 1 April 2025
12:40 - Stability pathfinders, inertia markets and grid-forming inverters
17:04 - The winter challenge: gigawatts vs terawatt-hours
21:33 - Connections reform: from 800GW to a deliverable grid
23:54 - What connections reform means for developers next
26:01 - The skilled-labour bottleneck behind grid build-out
30:32 - Battery queue attrition and the BESS oversupply problem
33:51 - The Strategic Spatial Energy Plan (SSEP)
38:59 - Co-location and bay sharing: the unfinished reform
44:35 - Reformed National Pricing and GB electricity market reform
49:13 - Data, digital and AI in the NESO control room
51:44 - The 2026 Operability Strategy Report and Markets Roadmap
52:24 - A contrarian case for connections reform
Music licensed via Artlist.

Three years ago, the best price for a ready-to-build solar project in Spain was €200,000 per megawatt — today it is €50,000. Batteries have moved the opposite way, with ready-to-build prices climbing to around €100,000 per megawatt and a 30GW pipeline now stacking up behind them.
Ed Porter sits down with Carmen Izquierdo Serrano, founder of nTeaser, the renewable energy marketplace where many of Spain's BESS, solar, and co-located deals are transacting, to unpack what those numbers actually mean for investors entering the Spanish power market and how the post-blackout urgency, and bottlenecks in financing and labour will shape who wins the next phase of Spain's energy transition
They cover:
Why Spanish solar ready-to-build prices have collapsed from €200,000 to €50,000 per megawatt while battery prices have climbed to ~€100,000 per megawatt in the space of three years
How the 30GW Spain BESS pipeline stacks up against the ~3.5GW expected to be operating by 2030, and why Carmen thinks that operating-asset forecast is conservative
Where the real bottleneck is for delivery - not developers or permits, but bank financing and the skilled labour needed to construct the projects
Why Italy's BESS market has slowed after the first MACSE auction while Spain has accelerated, and what that means for capital allocation across Southern Europe.
How buyer expectations on arbitrage revenues are likely to be cannibalised as more batteries enter the market, and which revenue streams banks will actually finance against
Want to go deeper on Spanish BESS revenues? Ko, Modo Energy's AI analyst, can walk you through asset-specific forecasts: https://modoenergy.com/sign-up?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=youtube&utm_campaign=carmen_izquierdo&utm_content=ko_signup
Chapters:
0:00 - Spain solar prices crashed from €200K to €50K per MW
1:10 - Why the Spain BESS market is misunderstood
2:35 - Spain's 30GW battery storage pipeline explained
3:25 - Inside nTeaser: Spain's renewable energy M&A platform
5:00 - Is the 3.5GW Spain battery forecast for 2030 too low?
7:50 - Spain BESS bottlenecks: bank financing and labour
10:00 - Who is buying Spanish battery projects in 2026
12:50 - Spain vs Italy BESS: the MACSE auction setback
15:00 - Data centres and behind-the-meter co-location in Spain
18:00 - When Spain battery projects become bankable
19:30 - Spain capacity market timing and revenue impact
20:30 - BESS arbitrage cannibalisation and revenue stacking
21:45 - Poland, Romania, and BESS expansion across Europe
23:30 - How nTeaser is changing European renewables M&A
Transmission is a Modo Energy podcast hosted by Ed Porter, Director EMEA & APAC at Modo Energy.

Chris Stark is Head of UK’s Mission for Clean Power, As Head of Mission Control at DESNZ, no one sees the constraint costs, grid bottlenecks and reform of National Pricing trade-offs more clearly.
The UK is building a clean power system at a pace not seen since the 1960s, connecting record volumes of wind and solar while transmission, storage and gas all reshape around them. Constraint costs have hit £1.7 billion, gas is being squeezed off the system, and the government has just rewritten the rules of the wholesale market.
Chris joins Ed Porter to break down what Mission Control is actually delivering, where flexibility and storage fit into the 2030 plan, and what Reformed National Pricing means for investors, generators and consumers.
They cover:
Why building UK transmission lines takes 8-10 years — and why bringing two projects forward by a year is worth £4bn to consumers.
Why the UK chose to build the grid and the generation simultaneously, and the risks that creates.
Why the strategic spatial energy plan is the biggest energy decision coming in the next 12 months and how it sets up a "build it once" network for the future.
The reform of National Pricing decision, what the wholesale CfD means in practice and how electricity is being de-linked from gas.
Why flexibility is the "forgotten third child" of the energy transition and how dunkelflaute, long-duration storage and household batteries fit into the 2030s system.
Chris's contrarian take on carbon pricing - why he thinks the Treasury's decision to remove the Carbon Price Support from gas signals carbon pricing is "coming down the list of things that matters.”
Want to model how Clean Power 2030, REMA and the wholesale CFD reshape GB power prices? Ko, Modo Energy's AI analyst, is built for exactly these questions. Free sign up: https://modoenergy.com/sign-up?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=youtube&utm_campaign=chris_stark&utm_content=ko_signup
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⏱ CHAPTERS
00:00 - Introduction
01:09 - What everyone gets wrong about Mission Control
03:00 - Constraint costs as a UK grid health metric
04:30 - Why the £7 billion constraint cost forecast may not land
09:18 - The biggest UK transmission build since the 1960s
10:36 - Sea Link, Norwich to Tilbury and the £4 billion question
15:29 - Building a UK grid ready to double electricity demand by 2050
17:59 - From centralised transmission to flexible, dynamic networks
21:16 - Reform of National Pricing: why the UK said no to zonal
28:48 - Wholesale CfDs and decoupling UK power from gas prices
37:13 - Flexibility, batteries and the forgotten third pillar
42:16 - Markets versus state intervention in UK energy
47:28 - Long duration energy storage and the battery technology race
49:35 - Managing the UK gas fleet down to 5% by 2030
53:21 - Chris's contrarian view: the end of carbon pricing?
55:42 - Closing thoughts
You can watch or listen to new episodes every Tuesday. Transmission is a Modo Energy production. Your host is Ed Porter - Director EMEA & APAC at Modo Energy.

Germany sits at the centre of Europe's energy transition: over 800 distribution networks, deep intraday markets, and a flexibility gap roughly 40 times its battery fleet. But the real question isn't whether the market is big - it's whether it saturates as battery capacity grows, or scales for years yet.
Philipp Man is co-founder and CEO of Terralayr. He joins Ed Porter to unpack the operational reality of building Germany battery storage at scale, the regulatory tension around grid fees, and the contrarian view that Germany's flexibility market is structurally larger than most forecasts suggest.
They cover:
- Why operating Germany battery storage is harder than capital alone can solve.
- Why Germany's TSOs are positive on BESS, why DSOs are nervous and what regulators need to fix.
- What the Bundesnetzagentur grid-fee review means for the BESS exemption running to August 2029.
- How splitting merchant capacity across multiple optimisers outperforms single-optimiser tolls.
- Why flexibility revenues are convex, dominated by tail events, and structurally larger than forecasts predict.
Want to track Germany's battery storage pipeline, grid-fee changes, or flexibility market data? Ko, Modo Energy's AI analyst, is built for exactly these questions. Free sign up: https://modoenergy.com/sign-up?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast_apps&utm_campaign=philipp_man&utm_content=ko_signup
Transcript available here:
⏱ CHAPTERS
00:00 Introduction
01:01 What everyone gets wrong about Germany battery storage
04:50 Inside Terralayr's 8 GW pipeline
07:00 German grid fees and the 2029 BESS exemption
11:00 Why DSOs are nervous about battery storage
14:30 Nodal pricing, FCAs and the one-price-zone problem
18:30 How layer's virtual battery auction works
24:30 Will Germany's BESS market saturate
35:30 Markets outside Germany — UK, Spain, Nordics
37:00 Advice for new entrants and the coming consolidation
40:30 Contrarian view: flexibility revenues are convex`
You can watch or listen to new episodes every Tuesday. Transmission is a Modo Energy production. Your host is Ed Porter - Director EMEA & APAC at Modo Energy.
Music licensed via Artlist.

Developing battery storage in emerging markets isn't a technology problem - it's a regulatory, offtake, and capital problem. The frameworks, offtake structures, and capital mandates weren't built for storage and that gap is exactly where the risk sits.
Hassen Bali, co-founder and director at Ion Ventures, joins Ed Porter to discuss what it actually takes to develop battery storage projects across markets at very different stages of maturity, from the UK to Southeast Asia.
They cover:
- Why battery storage development demands a different approach to solar or wind and why you have to decide your commercial endpoint before you break ground, not after.
- How project conversion rates in the UK BESS market have dropped from 30–40% in the early days to roughly 10–15% today, and how that affects pipeline management and investor communications.
- Why early-stage BESS markets like Malaysia and the Philippines are still reliant on bilateral offtake and what that means for project bankability.
- Why FCA-regulated investors face hard legal barriers to project finance in sub-investment-grade countries and what that means for who can actually back early-stage BESS projects.
- Hassen's contrarian view: that reform of merit order and legacy thermal contracts is the most direct lever for accelerating energy transition globally even if it means unwinding agreements that investors consider bulletproof.
Want to model BESS revenue across different market structures? Ko, Modo Energy's AI analyst, is built for exactly these questions. Want to model BESS revenue across different market structures? Ko, Modo Energy's AI analyst, is built for exactly these questions. Free sign up here.
Transcript available here:
Chapters:
0:00 Introduction
0:53 What People Get Wrong About Developing Battery Storage Projects
2:41 BESS Project Development Pipeline: How to Manage Investors and Conversion Rates
5:58 Why Ion Ventures Expanded Into Southeast Asia
7:34 BESS Market Readiness in Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia and Brunei
8:32 Replacing Coal and Diesel: What Southeast Asian Grids Look Like Today
11:35 BESS Project Success Rates in Emerging Markets vs the UK
12:39 Why Bilateral Offtake Models Dominate Early-Stage BESS Markets
15:17 Why Long-Term Contracts Can Actually Help Battery Storage Bankability
16:05 Why Country Risk and OECD Classification Block Capital From Emerging BESS Markets
21:02 Can Emerging Markets Leapfrog to Grid 2.0? The Telco Analogy Explained
22:59 How to Build a Battery Storage Roadmap for a Nascent Grid: Lessons from Bangladesh
30:06 How to Avoid Grid Congestion When Scaling Renewables in Emerging Markets
32:17 Contrarian View: Should Merit Order Reform Unwind Legacy Thermal Contracts?
You can watch or listen to new episodes every Tuesday. Transmission is a Modo Energy production. Your host is Ed Porter - Director EMEA & APAC at Modo Energy.