Transmission

Two thirds of industrial energy demand is heat, not electricity, and most of it still runs on gas. Thermal storage converts cheap electricity into heat, stores it in concrete, and dispatches it when the factory needs it, undercutting the gas bill even though gas is cheaper per unit on average.
Alex Robertson, CEO of ENERGYNEST, joins Ed Porter to explain how a thermal battery works, why it competes with lithium-ion on cost, and why grid connections - not the technology - are the real constraint on industrial decarbonisation.
They cover:
- Why thermal storage functions like a battery on the energy markets but stores heat one-way in optimised concrete.
- The medium-temperature "frying, drying and applying" range (roughly 150 to 300C) that sits above heat pumps and below cement and steel.
- How decoupling thermal demand from the electricity price typically can cut the gas bill by around 50%.
- Why a 20-foot-container module stores about two megawatt hours, stacks three high, and loses only around 2% of capacity per day.
- Why a flexible, interruptible asset is exactly what congested grids need - and why Germany still lacks the flexible connection framework the Netherlands is rolling out.
Ask Ko, Modo Energy's AI analyst, any question from this conversation: https://modoenergy.com/sign-up?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast_apps&utm_campaign=Alex Robertson&utm_content=ko_signup
Read the companion article: https://modoenergy.com/transmission-podcast/80ce6824-59a1-495b-9e94-0a38bdb9572e?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast_apps&utm_campaign=Alex Robertson&utm_content=article_page
Modo Energy's solar and battery forecasts are live at modo.energy.
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.
Chapters
0:00 - Introduction
0:11 - Industrial heat demand and the gas problem
1:13 - One thing everyone gets wrong about thermal storage
3:14 - How the concrete thermal battery works
4:08 - Medium temperature heat and the customer profile
6:56 - Why gas boilers still dominate German industry
7:52 - Using storage to beat the gas price
10:09 - Concrete versus lithium-ion: cost and supply chain
13:10 - Degradation and the 25-year thermal capacity
16:02 - Scaling up: module size and storage capacity
16:40 - Daily cycling and storage duration economics
19:50 - Seasonal variation and running gas in winter
23:33 - Cost, savings and the five-year payback
24:36 - The ideal customer and the grid connection test
25:46 - Data centres, demand queues and grid congestion
28:02 - Flexible connection agreements and the system design gap
30:10 - Grid utilisation versus grid buildout
33:34 - Heat as a service and unlocking investment
36:04 - A contrarian view on industrial decarbonisation
Music licensed via Artlist.

Germany's battery storage market is booming - but a saturation crunch is coming, and most investors aren't ready for it. The question is which revenue streams hold up, and which collapse the way they did in GB, Texas, and Australia.
Ed sits down with Till Stehr, German Research Analyst, and Cosima from the Advisory Services Team at Modo Energy, to map the real structural drivers, and risks, behind German BESS returns.
They cover:
Why German battery saturation is closer than the market thinks - FCR is already saturated, with aFRR close behind.
• Why German battery revenues near €200,000/MW/year for a two-hour system are more about timing than structure.
• What makes Germany's intraday market the most liquid in Europe and the €1,000+/MWh spikes batteries feed on.
• How flexible connection agreements are quietly reshaping returns, from ramp rates to export caps.
• What German grid fees look like after the 2029 exemption and why dynamic fees are locational pricing through the back door.
Got a question about the German BESS market? Ask Ko, Modo Energy's AI analyst: https://modoenergy.com/sign-up?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=youtube&utm_campaign=till_cosima&utm_content=ko_signup
Chapters:
00:00 – An Introduction tGermany's Battery Storage Market
00:50 – What Investors Get Wrong About Germany
02:33 – Why Ancillary Services Saturate Fast
03:47 – German Battery Revenues: €200k per MW
05:24 – Structural Value: Solar and Intraday Trading
06:30 – Redispatch Costs and Locational Pricing
08:04 – FCR and aFRR Explained
09:37 – Battery Saturation and the Overbuilt Ratio
14:08 – Europe's Most Liquid Intraday Market
18:50 – Battery Interconnection: Friend or Foe?
21:52 – Negative Power Prices in Germany
25:36 – Flexible Connection Agreements Explained
32:19 – Battery Inertia and Grid-Forming Inverters
35:53 – German Grid Fees: What's Announced
40:37 – Contrarian Views: DSOs and Locational Pricing

Most battery revenue projections stop at the day-ahead auction. But the optimisers running multi-gigawatt BESS portfolios argue that's where the money is being left on the table - re-trading a battery through intraday, balancing, and ancillary services can add 50% or more to revenue, and battery offtake structures like floors, tolls, and swaps only make sense once you understand how that value actually gets captured.
In this episode of Transmission, Ed Porter sits down with Brian Lonn, Head of UK Flexibility at Statkraft, to break down how a multi-gigawatt battery optimisation desk actually trades batteries and the offtake structures it offers on top.
They cover:
How battery re-trading works in practice.
How Statkraft scaled its GB flex portfolio from 22MW of intraday-active battery volume to ~4.5GW under contract and why this scale is the precondition for offering offtake at all.
Why the battery optimisation market could consolidate and what that means for smaller optimisers and asset owners.
How battery floors, tolls, and day-ahead swaps differ in tenor and purpose, with a working £/MW ballpark for each on a 2-hour battery.
Brian's contrarian view on Clean Power 2030: why the real question for the GB power system is megawatt-hours, not megawatts.
Want sharper answers on battery storage markets? Ko is Modo Energy's AI analyst, built on our underlying data and research. Ask Ko anything: https://modoenergy.com/sign-up?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=youtube&utm_campaign=brian_lonn&utm_content=ko_signup
Read the companion article: [COMPANION ARTICLE URL — TBC]
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.
00:00 Introduction
01:06 What everyone gets wrong about battery asset optimisation
05:14 Statkraft's GB flex portfolio — scaling to 4.5GW
07:24 Inside a battery trading desk — the operational reality
10:02 Re-trading explained — and the £100 to £150 worked example
16:49 How algorithmic intraday battery trading has evolved
19:50 Re-trading uplift — 50%+ over day-ahead-only battery revenue
22:14 The balancing mechanism and NESO's role in battery dispatch
29:58 Battery offtake structures — floors, tolls, and day-ahead swaps
37:35 Co-location — solar and battery storage in the GB market
45:36 How to break into battery asset optimisation and energy trading
49:04 Brian's contrarian view — megawatts vs megawatt-hours
50:03 Why battery augmentation matters for Clean Power 2030
Music licensed via Artlist.

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.