Transmission

Germany’s battery storage pipeline looks like a “tsunami” on paper, but grid connection requests say little about how many projects actually get built. The ones that do face a hard deadline: reach final investment decision this year to keep the grid fee exemption, while the rules that replace it are still being finalised.
Ed Porter is joined by Marie-Sophie Braun, Head of Markets and Regulatory Affairs at Kyon Energy, a German battery storage developer that now operates its own assets as an independent flexibility provider, to unpack how investment decisions get made when the rules are still moving.
They cover:
- Why the flood of grid connection requests says little about how much BESS Germany will build, and why the storage industry has no incentive to overbuild.
- How Kyon is approaching final investment decisions to keep the grid fee exemption for assets live before August 2029, why seven months is tight for an infrastructure investment, and why Marie still calls the new grid fee regime a fair compromise.
- What separates a flexible connection agreement a bank will finance from one that stalls projects, and why uncompensated curtailment needs a clear cap.
- Why Kyon splits comparable assets across different route-to-market providers, and what it wants to see from optimisers beyond the pitch deck.
- Why Germany pushes co-located storage and renewables while applying different grid rules to each, and what a split into price zones would mean for flexibility.
Want to see how German batteries are performing? Ko, Modo Energy's AI analyst, can answer questions on German BESS revenues, grid fees and the build-out.
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
00:00 Intro
01:11 What people get wrong about German battery storage
03:31 Why Kyon went from developer to operator
07:42 Should developers optimise in-house?
08:57 The FID deadline and AgNes grid fee reform
12:17 Dynamic and locational grid fees
14:20 Flexible connection agreements and financing
17:03 Benchmarking route-to-market providers
19:57 TSO vs DSO: who benefits from batteries?
23:52 Should Germany split into price zones?
27:28 Contrarian view: different rules for co-located assets

Germany’s battery storage pipeline looks like a “tsunami” on paper, but grid connection requests say little about how many projects actually get built. The ones that do face a hard deadline: reach final investment decision this year to keep the grid fee exemption, while the rules that replace it are still being finalised.
Ed Porter is joined by Marie-Sophie Braun, Head of Markets and Regulatory Affairs at Kyon Energy, a German battery storage developer that now operates its own assets as an independent flexibility provider, to unpack how investment decisions get made when the rules are still moving.
They cover:
- Why the flood of grid connection requests says little about how much BESS Germany will build, and why the storage industry has no incentive to overbuild.
- How Kyon is approaching final investment decisions to keep the grid fee exemption for assets live before August 2029, why seven months is tight for an infrastructure investment, and why Marie still calls the new grid fee regime a fair compromise.
- What separates a flexible connection agreement a bank will finance from one that stalls projects, and why uncompensated curtailment needs a clear cap.
- Why Kyon splits comparable assets across different route-to-market providers, and what it wants to see from optimisers beyond the pitch deck.
- Why Germany pushes co-located storage and renewables while applying different grid rules to each, and what a split into price zones would mean for flexibility.
Want to see how German batteries are performing? Ko, Modo Energy's AI analyst, can answer questions on German BESS revenues, grid fees and the build-out.
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
00:00 Intro
01:11 What people get wrong about German battery storage
03:31 Why Kyon went from developer to operator
07:42 Should developers optimise in-house?
08:57 The FID deadline and AgNes grid fee reform
12:17 Dynamic and locational grid fees
14:20 Flexible connection agreements and financing
17:03 Benchmarking route-to-market providers
19:57 TSO vs DSO: who benefits from batteries?
23:52 Should Germany split into price zones?
27:28 Contrarian view: different rules for co-located assets

What if a battery storage project could lock in its revenue before it's earned it? SSE and Statkraft have done just that with a battery revenue swap: SSE gave up the ups and downs of battery income for a fixed price, Statkraft took them on, and both energy companies came out with less risk.
On this episode of Transmission, Ed Porter is joined by Josh Brown, Origination Team Manager at SSE, and Cian O'Duffy, Energy Markets Quantitative Analyst at Statkraft, two people behind the deal, to explain how energy trading deals like this work and who could do one next.
They cover:
- How a battery revenue swap is set up, and why it needs far less paperwork than a wind farm PPA.
- Whether a swap changes how you run your battery, and what basis risk means for owners.
- How wind farms, solar farms and energy suppliers could use battery revenues to manage risk.
- Why big businesses might buy a virtual battery instead of building their own.
- What's next for battery storage deals, plus two contrarian views on CfDs and battery revenues.
Ask Ko, Modo Energy's AI analyst, about battery revenues, power prices, wind, solar and data centres: Try for free
Transcript available here
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:
00:00 What is a battery revenue swap?
01:11 How energy trading deals get set up
03:07 Why SSE sold its battery revenue risk
05:11 Why Statkraft wanted more battery risk
06:27 How big the SSE and Statkraft deal is
07:40 How swap contracts work (ISDA explained)
10:39 Does a swap change how you run your battery?
12:35 UK-wide vs regional battery indices
13:55 Can wind and solar farms hedge with batteries?
17:26 Battery revenues vs other ways to hedge
20:27 Virtual batteries for big energy users
24:30 What comes after swaps? Options and floors
28:46 How CfDs affect negative electricity prices
31:02 Why battery revenues could be a rocky ride
33:26 Wrap-up

What if a battery storage project could lock in its revenue before it's earned it? SSE and Statkraft have done just that with a battery revenue swap: SSE gave up the ups and downs of battery income for a fixed price, Statkraft took them on, and both energy companies came out with less risk.
On this episode of Transmission, Ed Porter is joined by Josh Brown, Origination Team Manager at SSE, and Cian O'Duffy, Energy Markets Quantitative Analyst at Statkraft, two people behind the deal, to explain how energy trading deals like this work and who could do one next.
They cover:
- How a battery revenue swap is set up, and why it needs far less paperwork than a wind farm PPA.
- Whether a swap changes how you run your battery, and what basis risk means for owners.
- How wind farms, solar farms and energy suppliers could use battery revenues to manage risk.
- Why big businesses might buy a virtual battery instead of building their own.
- What's next for battery storage deals, plus two contrarian views on CfDs and battery revenues.
Ask Ko, Modo Energy's AI analyst, about battery revenues, power prices, wind, solar and data centres: Try for free
Transcript available here
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:
00:00 What is a battery revenue swap?
01:11 How energy trading deals get set up
03:07 Why SSE sold its battery revenue risk
05:11 Why Statkraft wanted more battery risk
06:27 How big the SSE and Statkraft deal is
07:40 How swap contracts work (ISDA explained)
10:39 Does a swap change how you run your battery?
12:35 UK-wide vs regional battery indices
13:55 Can wind and solar farms hedge with batteries?
17:26 Battery revenues vs other ways to hedge
20:27 Virtual batteries for big energy users
24:30 What comes after swaps? Options and floors
28:46 How CfDs affect negative electricity prices
31:02 Why battery revenues could be a rocky ride
33:26 Wrap-up

Battery storage in Germany has a grid connection problem: far more projects want to connect than the grid can take, so Germany has scrapped first come, first served and moved to a maturity-based allocation scheme that rewards projects that are ready to build. But for 50Hertz and Germany's other transmission system operators, connecting BESS is only half the challenge. Merchant batteries could push grid congestion costs and grid fees up, or bring them down.
Wilhelm Kiewitt, Head of Energy Economics at 50Hertz, one of Germany's four transmission system operators, joins Ed Porter to explain how a grid operator sees the battery boom from the inside.
They cover:
Why Germany scrapped first come, first served for grid connections, and how the new maturity-based scheme scores projects on land, permits and finance instead of speed.
How 50Hertz went from a handful of transmission connection requests a year to more than 100, and why even the 14GW of batteries already holding grid reservations may not all get built.
Should batteries pay more towards wider grid upgrades? Why Wilhelm says no, and why data centres are a different case.
Dynamic grid fees or smaller bidding zones? Where Wilhelm and Ed disagree on the cleanest way to send batteries to where the grid needs them.
Could merchant batteries cut Germany's roughly 4 billion euros a year in congestion management costs, or push them up?
Building in Germany? Ask Ko, Modo Energy's AI analyst, what a battery earns there today, how it compares with wind and solar, and where power prices are heading. Try for free.
Transcript available here
Themen: Batteriespeicher, Netzanschluss, Reifegradverfahren, Netzentgelte, Engpassmanagement, 50Hertz