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Ed Porter

@edporter.bsky.social
1.7K followers 650 following 1.1K posts

Solar, wind, batteries and the energy transition. European host for Transmission. Head to Modo Energy's Terminal for more info.

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Ed Porter @edporter.bsky.social · 2h
Poland: adding 15-minute intraday and mFRR capacity to the battery stack lifts a 50 MW, 2-hour unit to €109k/MW/year across 2027-2050, 12% above July. The 4-hour gains just 2%. Intraday adds a similar euro amount per MW to both, so it's a bigger share of the shorter battery's total.
Chart: 01 revenue 50mw july october
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Ed Porter @edporter.bsky.social · 2h
Germany: for BESS, the last hour before delivery carries most of the value. A one-hour schedule freeze on a 2-hour battery cuts total revenue by 12%. Stretching that to four hours adds 14.8 percentage points more, taking the total hit to 26.8%. DSOs are writing blanket freezes into FCAs.
Chart: pr1394 oct final freeze duration curve 2h4h
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Ed Porter @edporter.bsky.social · 5h
NEM: South Australia solar led the market in August at $69k/MW/year. By September it fell to a third of that, with prices negative from 10 AM to 4 PM and 46% of available output curtailed. Spring demand dropped as solar kept dispatching into an already crowded midday.
Chart: 01 solar revenue per mw
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Ed Porter @edporter.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
🎧 Transmission: Poland is skipping the pilot phase. First projects start at 200 MW, a size Germany took five years to reach. And with central dispatch, two identical batteries in different locations earn very different amounts. Over 2 GW expected by 2028 in a grid that peaks near 25 GW.
Transmission podcast: Poland's Battery Market is Skipping the Pilot Phase - Entrix
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Ed Porter @edporter.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Poland's solar CfD has paid less than merchant sales for five years running. At the ceiling a farm earns about PLN 201/MWh against PLN 297 merchant, because the top-up settles on the daily average, not what solar captures. Yet developers keep bidding, treating it as a floor.
Chart: pl solar cfd floor illustration
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Ed Porter @edporter.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Australia: the pitch is that data centre REGO obligations rescue green certificate prices. They won't. New centres add 21 TWh of demand by 2035, but the LRET sunset in 2031 removes 30 million certificates of mandatory surrender while legacy plant becomes eligible to issue. The surplus widens.
Chart: rego new build supply demand 2028 2035
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Ed Porter @edporter.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
NYISO: NYSERDA's first storage solicitation targeted 20% of capacity from 8-hour projects. Eight such bids came in, and none won. The one that got there, Lighthouse, did so by reconfiguring after selection, from 250 MW over 4 hours to 140 MW over 8. The duration target didn't clear on price.
Chart: nyiso isc 3 lighthouse bid vs contract
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Ed Porter @edporter.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
CAISO: merchant battery revenues are on track to settle at $40/kW in 2026, the lowest on record. Yet the investment case holds, because capacity contracts, Resource Adequacy plus offtakes, now account for 80% of BESS revenues in California. The floor is doing the work, not the spread.
Chart: Capacity contracts make up 80% of battery revenues in California
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Ed Porter @edporter.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
The ESEM Regional Reference PPA settles against the reference fleet, not the individual asset, so basis risk stays with the seller. In the backcast, the most exposed wind sites carried liabilities up to $73k/MW/year. Solar tracks the fleet more closely and sees steadier downside support.
Chart: fleet capture
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Ed Porter @edporter.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
NEM: energy parks are rising in announcements, but Kennedy remains the only operational project combining wind (43 MW), solar (15 MW), and storage (2 MW / 4 MWh). Its commissioning delays exposed why: connection processes built for single-technology assets don't fit hybrids. The 2024 Integrated Reso
Chart: nem park profiles
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Ed Porter @edporter.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
ERCOT's generation firming penalty costs nothing today. It only triggers when reserves fall below 3,000 MW, which hasn't happened since September 2023. The catch is the sizing: a whole-season output average, and wind and solar produce well below that in the scarcity hours it targets.
Chart: prc sub3000 days by year
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Ed Porter @edporter.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
NYISO's BELL process ties firm service for large loads directly to the supply they bring. A 1,000 MW site earns 600 MW firm on its own, 700 MW with a network upgrade, and full firm only if it pairs with a co-located or contracted Partner Resource. Bring your own generation or accept curtailment.
Chart: bell firm nonfirm outcomes
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Ed Porter @edporter.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Spain's final capacity market order splits co-located batteries from standalone ones. A standalone unit just needs to be available during stress hours. A co-located battery with no grid charging rights must actually dispatch firm capacity, relying on solar.
Chart: The Spanish methodology would lead to similar de-rating values to those in the latest auctions in other capacity markets
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Ed Porter @edporter.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
🎧 Transmission: GB gas network: decommissioning viability is set by network topology, not customer count, and Cadent's Sam Wilson says we're nowhere near that point. Transmission runs at 90 bar and steps down to roughly 30 millibars at your boiler.
Transmission podcast: Why Britain Can't Simply Switch Off Its Gas Network - Cadent
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Ed Porter @edporter.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
NEM: the Nelson Review's Regional Reference PPA settles against a fleet index, not your own output. On the illustrated Victorian wind farm, it cut month-to-month revenue volatility by two-thirds from 2022 to 2026, but at the cost of total revenue in the strongest merchant months.
Chart: ref settlement chart
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Ed Porter @edporter.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
NEM: utility-scale solar merchant revenues fell 21% month on month to $50.8k/MW/year in August, even with 11% more generation per MW. The midday RRP dropped from $41 to $30 as rooftop solar climbed and the coal fleet bid lower to stay on. More supply, weaker capture.
Chart: 01 solar revenue per mw
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Ed Porter @edporter.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Great Britain: NESO's Ten Year Outlook assumes new batteries average 1.6 hours from 2029, but 90% of everything commissioned since the start of 2025 has been 2 hours or longer. The build we're seeing already contradicts the duration they're forecasting.
Chart: neso tyo 2026 02 offshore wind path
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Ed Porter @edporter.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Netherlands: the operational BESS fleet sits where renewables are, with 25 of 34 projects sharing a grid connection with wind, solar, or thermal. The 3.2 GW / 12.0 GWh pipeline inverts that. It's 91% standalone and follows grid headroom instead. Groningen holds 46% of pipeline MW.
Chart: nl bess buildout q3 2026 03 operational map congestion
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Ed Porter @edporter.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Illinois: CRGA gives distribution-connected BESS a retail revenue stack with no PJM interconnection needed. A 5 MW, 4-hour battery gets a $5M upfront rebate, then up to $300k a year from net metering and scheduled dispatch. Capacity and transmission credits arrive from 2028/29.
Chart: comed crga bess 1 revenue stack
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Ed Porter @edporter.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
MISO absorbed two extreme weather shocks in three weeks, but they moved battery spreads in opposite directions. The August 11 derecho knocked out over 1 million customers, cutting demand and collapsing TB4 spreads 90% to $54/MW-day. The heat dome then lifted them to $5,971/MW-day.
Chart: miso derecho heatdome spread map
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Ed Porter @edporter.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
🎧 Transmission: A spinning turbine can throw 5x its rated output to clear a fault, for free, on physics alone. Grid forming inverters manage about 1.5x. Fluence's Ben Braun on where that missing fault current comes from as turbines retire, and why too much of it may be the bigger problem.
Transmission podcast: What The Grid Loses When Turbines Retire - Fluence
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Ed Porter @edporter.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
NEM: AEMO's 2026 ESOO Step Change forecast for data centre demand came in up to 50% higher than last year's, now sitting between Modo's central and high cases. The driver is a larger project pipeline, 67 GW against 38 GW a year ago. Speed to power, not price, is the binding constraint.
Chart: 05 power vs revenue
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Ed Porter @edporter.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Italy: Sardinia batteries earned €149k/MW/year in H1 2026, well ahead of the North at €95.5k. But even the top zone sits below German and Spanish benchmarks. Italy pays for activated energy only, no separate availability payment, so batteries there run one revenue stream short.
Chart: italy bench 12 monthly revenue across europe
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Ed Porter @edporter.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
This is very cool. A new option for better battery storage risk management has emerged.
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Ed Porter @edporter.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Germany: BESS revenue for a 2-hour battery fell to €191k/MW/yr in August, down 15% year on year. A year ago aFRR capacity was 88% of the stack. It's now half, while day-ahead and intraday supply 31% against 7% last August. The first clear sign of aFRR saturation.
Chart: me bess de revenue stack
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Ed Porter @edporter.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
US data centers: on-site gas runs roughly $125/MWh against $66/MWh from the grid, nearly double. But at Nebius' cloud rates of $20-25M/MW-year, that premium accounts for just 2-3% of revenue. When speed to power decides delivery, paying twice for electricity is a rounding error.
Chart: valuing speed to power 6 gpu cloud revenue per mw
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Ed Porter @edporter.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
South Australia: when available wind falls below 5% of evening demand, median prices between 5-9 PM sit at $184/MWh, against $92 at wind's average share. Its wind fleet now runs 1.6 times average evening demand, so the shortfalls, when they come, are deep enough to firm against.
Chart: wind price 4 evening deficit vs price
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Ed Porter @edporter.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Italy: Terna is procuring balancing services closer to real-time delivery, which has cut ex-ante MSD volumes and shifted value toward the real-time balancing market. For BESS operators, that means the revenue increasingly sits in fast dispatch rather than scheduled positions.
Chart: italy msd 07 service map
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Ed Porter @edporter.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
GB batteries earned £64k/MW/year June-August 2026, identical to summer 2025, despite gas prices 50% higher and average daily peaks up from £105 to £158/MWh. Batteries offered NESO more than twice the volume. NESO took almost exactly the same amount. Dispatch rates are worsening.
Chart: 17 price calendar
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Ed Porter @edporter.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Poland: batteries cleared a T-1 capacity auction for the first time, 80 MW for 2027 delivery. R.Power holds 76 MW of it. The interesting part is the price: nearly twice what their 17-year contracts will pay, because 95% derating factors from 2022 carried forward into this auction.
Chart: poland supp auction 01 price ladder
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Ed Porter @edporter.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
PJM: Real-Time TB4 spreads averaged $317/MW-day in August, up 78% year-on-year, and no temperature or demand record was set. Mean hourly load rose 8.4% to 108 GW while the peak actually fell 0.8%. A higher baseline, not a hotter month, steepened the curve.
Chart: pjm tb4 spread 12m
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Ed Porter @edporter.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
MISO: the North-South battery revenue gap closed to 3% in August, $344/MW-day against $334, after standing at 83% in July. The convergence ran through the day-ahead market, where the Indiana Hub TB4 spread fell 62% to $235/MW-day.
Chart: miso aug2026 c1 daily lmp
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Ed Porter @edporter.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
NYISO: Long Island's BESS reference price hit $129/MW-day in August, overtaking New York City for the first time this year. It was also the only zone to rise year-over-year, up 44%, while every other fell 17-30%. It's a load pocket with limited imports, so local units set the evening peak.
Chart: nyiso icap spot prices
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Ed Porter @edporter.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Modo's 2026 Capex survey: median 2-hour storage costs US$325k/MWh, 4-hour costs US$201k/MWh. Doubling duration cuts per-MWh capex by 38%. Energy stack scales far cheaper than power components.
Chart: bess capex survey 2026 09 capex by region
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Ed Porter @edporter.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
🎧 Transmission: Tem Energy's Joe McDonald puts trading desks, balancing costs and wholesale fees at close to 30% of a UK business power bill, most of it invisible to the customer. Behind the supplier can sit five or six more intermediaries.
Transmission podcast: Automating The Financial Side Of Energy Trading - Tem Energy
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Ed Porter @edporter.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
NEM: the Nelson Review's ESEM shaping swap would let a battery sell its spread forward to a central buyer, turning merchant revenue into contracted cashflow for lenders. The catch is the settlement basis. A block nominated each morning from predispatch won't track how a battery actually optimises.
Chart: opener day
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Ed Porter @edporter.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
Loved the chance to dig into energy markets with the redefining energy team. - What are the exciting markets? Where can you get over €300k/MW/year? - In the phases of battery markets, where have revenues fallen away, and what should investors do about it?
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Ed Porter @edporter.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
CAISO: BESS earned $2.59/kW-month in August, up 38% from July. But real-time energy revenue turned negative. On the 26th, SP15 real-time prices held above $1,000/MWh for hours after net load peak, and some batteries were charging into it. The day-ahead market carried the month.
Chart: caiso bess index react
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Ed Porter @edporter.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Poland: a four-hour battery earned 1.89m PLN/MW-year in August, up 13% on July. But the entire gain came in just twelve days, 3 to 14 August, which ran 32% above the rest of the month. Shorter evenings tightened the stack and pushed day-ahead spreads to record levels.
Chart: pl benchmark august daily
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Ed Porter @edporter.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Italy: solar capture prices reached €150/MWh in August, the highest in two years. The driver isn't solar economics but gas, which set the midday price on enough days to lift capture even as generation fell from July. Italy's gas-heavy system feels TTF moves the hardest.
Chart: ttf gas price europe
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Ed Porter @edporter.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
ISONE: real-time TB4 spreads averaged $201/MW-day in August, up 35% year on year, while day-ahead fell 27% to $124. Real-time beat day-ahead on 22 of 30 days. The clearest read is that day-ahead consistently underpriced August's volatility, and batteries chasing DA left value on the table.
Chart: isone aug2026 c1 daily lmp
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Ed Porter @edporter.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Italy: from 2028, Terna replaces its single national de-rating curve with four zonal ones. A 4-hour battery earns 24% less in Nord and 40% less in the South at last year's clearing price. The logic is saturation. 7 of 10 GWh awarded for 2028 delivery sit in South and Calabria.
Chart: cm2028 bess rating by zone
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Ed Porter @edporter.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Great Britain: Connections Reform cut the battery queue from over 170 GW to 83.2 GW of Gate 2 places, and NESO is issuing offers now. But the registers haven't caught up. NESO published a total per zone and named no projects, so nobody outside the operator can see the queue they're competing in.
Chart: gb queue pipeline review 2026 2 offer timeline
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Ed Porter @edporter.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Great Britain: NESO took just 5% of in-merit battery offers in August, less than half last year's rate and the lowest in twelve months, even though those offers undercut gas by £35/MWh. Balancing Mechanism revenues hit a record low of -£17k/MW/year as batteries charged on bids and sold wholesale.
Chart: gb benchmark 2 waterfall
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Ed Porter @edporter.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
SPP South: August 2026 was the first month energy arbitrage overtook ancillary services in the battery revenue stack. Not because regulation weakened, but because day-ahead spreads at the South Hub more than doubled year-over-year, up 105%. Total potential reached $14.2/kW-month.
Chart: spp revenue story
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Ed Porter @edporter.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
WEM: grid-scale battery revenues rose 24% to $48k/MW/year in August, back above zero on a merchant basis for the first time since May. Lower average prices cut charging costs. But fleet capacity is up more than half year on year, and Capacity Credits now cover most of the return.
Chart: wem monthly revenues august 2026 01 bess index
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Ed Porter @edporter.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
MISO's proposed LARS pathway would study data center loads of 250 MW or more alongside their contracted generation in parallel, cutting approval to 120 days from 180. The trade-off is cost: $15.7M upfront for a 500 MW project, 3.6 times the standard DPP queue.
Chart: lars cost comparison
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Ed Porter @edporter.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
ERCOT: Real-Time TB1 spreads averaged $86/MWh in August, more than double July and the highest since April. Five spike days in the back half of the month carried most of it. But June revenues settled at $1.11/kW-month, the lowest ever recorded in ERCOT.
Chart: 18 benchmark revenue carousel
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Ed Porter @edporter.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
NEM: grid-scale battery revenues held at $44k/MW/year in August, flat on July, but the source shifted. No NEM price exceeded $500/MWh all month. Revenue came entirely from consistent daily spreads rather than the price spikes that carried June and July.
Chart: 01 nem revenues by month
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Ed Porter @edporter.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
New York's VDER tariff isn't an add-on to wholesale, it's a replacement. An enrolled distributed battery earns credits from its utility instead of trading in NYISO, and pays retail delivery charges on top. That trade-off now runs across all seven utility territories.
Chart: nyiso vder 10 utility map
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