How Battery Traders Actually Make Money - Statkraft

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.