Transmission

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.

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. 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.

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.

Spain has approximately 42GW of utility-scale solar and 50GW when rooftop is included, yet less than 100MW of grid-connected battery storage. In February, solar capture rates hit €1.30 per megawatt hour, a fraction of the €30–35/MWh needed for a solar project to break even. So why hasn't battery storage followed the solar boom and could it be the key to rescuing solar revenues?

Pablo Martinez Serrano, Iberia Industry Lead at Modo Energy, joins Ed Porter to break down why Spain's energy market defies easy assumptions, and what the Iberian blackout changed.

They cover:

- Why Spain's hydro fleet masked the need for batteries for years, and why that's no longer enough as solar saturation bites.

- Why solar developers are earning less and less for every unit of power they generate and what that means for the projects still in the pipeline.

- The co-location thesis: why existing solar asset owners are turning to BESS to fix their generation profile and unlock ancillary service revenue

- What actually caused the Iberian blackout: voltage instability, cascading disconnections, and why the TSO had already flagged the risk

- Spain's new voltage control market: how it works, why priority of dispatch may be more valuable than the reactive service payment itself

Want to model battery revenue stacks in Spain or track Iberian power market dynamics? Ko, Modo Energy's AI analyst, is built for exactly these questions. Free sign up: https://help.modo.energy/en/articles/13335470-ko-your-ai-analyst?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast_apps&utm_id=pablo_martinez

⏱ CHAPTERS

00:00:00 Introduction

00:00:50 What everyone gets wrong about Spain

00:01:54 Spain's generation mix: solar, wind, hydro, gas and nuclear

00:04:43 Seasonal demand dynamics and why spring is the problem

00:06:03 Solar capture price collapse: €42 to below €30/MWh

00:08:19 PPA contracts, negative prices and the solar momentum problem

00:11:52 The co-location pivot: why developers are turning to storage

00:13:58 Why Spain has less than 100MW of batteries vs GB's 6GW

00:15:33 Where the money is coming from: two types of investor

00:17:11 The Iberian blackout: what went wrong and why

00:20:04 How Spain is rebuilding grid stability after the blackout

00:21:04 Spain's new voltage control market and what it pays

00:24:43 Grid forming inverters and the future of ancillary services

00:26:38 Contrarian take: Spain hasn't actually decoupled from gas

00:29:15 The three phases of displacing thermal generators

00:30:39 Closing remarks

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.

Spain has approximately 42GW of utility-scale solar and 50GW when rooftop is included, yet less than 100MW of grid-connected battery storage. In February, solar capture rates hit €1.30 per megawatt hour, a fraction of the €30–35/MWh needed for a solar project to break even. So why hasn't battery storage followed the solar boom and could it be the key to rescuing solar revenues?

Pablo Martinez Serrano, Iberia Industry Lead at Modo Energy, joins Ed Porter to break down why Spain's energy market defies easy assumptions, and what the Iberian blackout changed.

They cover:

- Why Spain's hydro fleet masked the need for batteries for years, and why that's no longer enough as solar saturation bites.

- Why solar developers are earning less and less for every unit of power they generate and what that means for the projects still in the pipeline.

- The co-location thesis: why existing solar asset owners are turning to BESS to fix their generation profile and unlock ancillary service revenue

- What actually caused the Iberian blackout: voltage instability, cascading disconnections, and why the TSO had already flagged the risk

- Spain's new voltage control market: how it works, why priority of dispatch may be more valuable than the reactive service payment itself

Want to model battery revenue stacks in Spain or track Iberian power market dynamics? Ko, Modo Energy's AI analyst, is built for exactly these questions. Free sign up: https://help.modo.energy/en/articles/13335470-ko-your-ai-analyst?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast_apps&utm_id=pablo_martinez

⏱ CHAPTERS

00:00:00 Introduction

00:00:50 What everyone gets wrong about Spain

00:01:54 Spain's generation mix: solar, wind, hydro, gas and nuclear

00:04:43 Seasonal demand dynamics and why spring is the problem

00:06:03 Solar capture price collapse: €42 to below €30/MWh

00:08:19 PPA contracts, negative prices and the solar momentum problem

00:11:52 The co-location pivot: why developers are turning to storage

00:13:58 Why Spain has less than 100MW of batteries vs GB's 6GW

00:15:33 Where the money is coming from: two types of investor

00:17:11 The Iberian blackout: what went wrong and why

00:20:04 How Spain is rebuilding grid stability after the blackout

00:21:04 Spain's new voltage control market and what it pays

00:24:43 Grid forming inverters and the future of ancillary services

00:26:38 Contrarian take: Spain hasn't actually decoupled from gas

00:29:15 The three phases of displacing thermal generators

00:30:39 Closing remarks

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.

Smart EV charging isn't just about saving money on your electricity bill, it's quietly becoming one of the most scalable sources of grid flexibility in Great Britain.

Ohme has run the numbers: incentivising 22,000 customers to plug in more often drove a 32–37% increase in plug-in frequency, unlocking dispatchable flexibility across 60 National Grid events.

In this episode, Ed is joined by Joshua Willetts and Dan Norton from Ohme. Josh is part of Ohme's customer operations team and starts the conversation with a live demo of the Ohme Home Pro, and then Dan Ohme's Commercial Director takes us through a deep dive of the economics, regulation, and long-term potential of smart home charging.

They cover:

- How the Ohme Home Pro works, tethered setup, app pairing, tariff integration, and smart scheduling on Octopus Go and equivalent time-of-use tariffs.

- Why plugging in little and often (rather than running to empty and topping up) is the behavioural shift that unlocks real-world EV flexibility.

- The CrowdFlex trial results: how a 1–3 GBP/week incentive delivered a 32–37% rise in plug-in frequency and fed directly into National Grid dispatch events

- What smart charging regulation, including the Energy Smart Appliance (ESA) framework and load control licensing means for charger manufacturers and aggregators

- How V2G and vehicle-to-home could evolve once older EV fleets start cycling into second-hand markets, and what cultural shifts are needed first

Want to model EV flexibility potential in your market? Ko, Modo Energy's AI analyst, is built for exactly these questions. Free sign up: https://help.modo.energy/en/articles/13335470-ko-your-ai-analyst?utm_source=podcast_apps&utm_medium=video&utm_id=ohme

Transcript available here: https://modoenergy.com/transmission-podcast/d2135750-c32a-49dd-a218-e3f69cfc48d7

────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

⏱ CHAPTERS

0:00 Intro — Ed Porter, Welcome to Transmission

1:04 Meet Joshua & the Ohme Home Pro

1:52 App Setup, QR Code Pairing & Smart Scheduling

4:44 Why a Box? What's Inside an EV Smart Charger

5:22 Live Demo: Charging a Light Bulb via the Ohme App

7:53 Charge Speed, Battery Times & Little-and-Often Strategy

11:37 Introducing Dan: EV Adoption Stats & the UK Home Charge Market

13:33 Barriers to Home EV Charging Installation

18:44 Home Charging vs. Public Charging: The Economics

20:06 CrowdFlex Explained: Smart Charging as Grid Flexibility

23:11 CrowdFlex Results.

26:32 Smart Charging Regulation: ESA, Load Control & Revenue Certainty

28:43 How Big Could EV Flexibility Get? GB Grid Scale

30:34 Vehicle to Grid (V2G) & Vehicle to Home: What's Coming

34:40 What Would You Change? Flexibility Contracts as Steel in the Ground

────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

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.

Smart EV charging isn't just about saving money on your electricity bill, it's quietly becoming one of the most scalable sources of grid flexibility in Great Britain.

Ohme has run the numbers: incentivising 22,000 customers to plug in more often drove a 32–37% increase in plug-in frequency, unlocking dispatchable flexibility across 60 National Grid events.

In this episode, Ed is joined by Joshua Willetts and Dan Norton from Ohme. Josh is part of Ohme's customer operations team and starts the conversation with a live demo of the Ohme Home Pro, and then Dan Ohme's Commercial Director takes us through a deep dive of the economics, regulation, and long-term potential of smart home charging.

They cover:

- How the Ohme Home Pro works, tethered setup, app pairing, tariff integration, and smart scheduling on Octopus Go and equivalent time-of-use tariffs.

- Why plugging in little and often (rather than running to empty and topping up) is the behavioural shift that unlocks real-world EV flexibility.

- The CrowdFlex trial results: how a 1–3 GBP/week incentive delivered a 32–37% rise in plug-in frequency and fed directly into National Grid dispatch events

- What smart charging regulation, including the Energy Smart Appliance (ESA) framework and load control licensing means for charger manufacturers and aggregators

- How V2G and vehicle-to-home could evolve once older EV fleets start cycling into second-hand markets, and what cultural shifts are needed first

Want to model EV flexibility potential in your market? Ko, Modo Energy's AI analyst, is built for exactly these questions. Free sign up: https://help.modo.energy/en/articles/13335470-ko-your-ai-analyst?utm_source=podcast_apps&utm_medium=video&utm_id=ohme

Transcript available here: https://modoenergy.com/transmission-podcast/d2135750-c32a-49dd-a218-e3f69cfc48d7

────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

⏱ CHAPTERS

0:00 Intro — Ed Porter, Welcome to Transmission

1:04 Meet Joshua & the Ohme Home Pro

1:52 App Setup, QR Code Pairing & Smart Scheduling

4:44 Why a Box? What's Inside an EV Smart Charger

5:22 Live Demo: Charging a Light Bulb via the Ohme App

7:53 Charge Speed, Battery Times & Little-and-Often Strategy

11:37 Introducing Dan: EV Adoption Stats & the UK Home Charge Market

13:33 Barriers to Home EV Charging Installation

18:44 Home Charging vs. Public Charging: The Economics

20:06 CrowdFlex Explained: Smart Charging as Grid Flexibility

23:11 CrowdFlex Results.

26:32 Smart Charging Regulation: ESA, Load Control & Revenue Certainty

28:43 How Big Could EV Flexibility Get? GB Grid Scale

30:34 Vehicle to Grid (V2G) & Vehicle to Home: What's Coming

34:40 What Would You Change? Flexibility Contracts as Steel in the Ground

────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

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.

Battery storage looks simple - a steel box that charges when prices are low and discharges when they're high. But financing a BESS project in Europe means underwriting a trading position: convex revenues, volatile returns, and a growing menu of contractual choices that each shift the risk profile in a different direction.

Lisa McDermott, Managing Director and Head of Energy Transition Project Financing at ABN AMRO, has been structuring BESS deals across Europe since 2023*. In this episode, she opens up the credit committee. What gets a project over the line, and what quietly stops it.

Covered:

- Why battery storage finance is fundamentally different from solar or wind and why contracting it away doesn't change the underlying risk when the contract ends.

- From physical tolls to day-ahead swaps, Lisa breaks down which offtake structures are gaining traction in Europe and why the day-ahead swap is the hardest to bank.

- Too much merchant exposure, insufficient sponsor equity, weak technical track record and why pushing too many levers at once is the fastest way to stop a deal.

- How battery warranties have evolved from 8 to 20 years and why coverage beyond the debt tenor is a bankability requirement, not a nice-to-have.

- Germany's grid fee reform has created financing uncertainty at COD, while the Netherlands' congestion model is, counter-intuitively, better for bankability.

Want to model battery revenue stacks or stress-test tolling structures for a specific market? Ko, Modo Energy's AI analyst, is built for exactly these questions. Free sign up: https://help.modo.energy/en/articles/13335470-ko-your-ai-analyst?utm_source=podcast_apps&utm_medium=podcast&utm_id=lisa_mcdermott

Transcript available here: https://modoenergy.com/transmission-podcast/e2b12f17-f7b4-49d3-9d85-e4cc822695f6

────────────────────────────

⏱ CHAPTERS

0:00 Introduction - Is financing battery storage the same as financing solar?

2:32 Why a battery is financing a trader, not an infrastructure asset

5:14 Financing across technology types - TRL 8 vs TRL 9

10:43 What stops a BESS deal in credit committee

15:53 Comfort zone: from fully merchant to fully contracted

18:43 The growing offtake menu, physical tolls, virtual tolls, and floors

24:43 Day-ahead swaps explained and why they introduce basis risk

31:59 Gearing: the sliding scale from 30% merchant to 85% fully tolled

34:37 European market comparison: Netherlands, France, Italy, Germany

40:23 Final question

────────────────────────────

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.

*Correction: The intro incorrectly states that Lisa McDermott has been financing batteries since 2020. She has been doing so since 2023. We apologise for the error.

Battery storage looks simple - a steel box that charges when prices are low and discharges when they're high. But financing a BESS project in Europe means underwriting a trading position: convex revenues, volatile returns, and a growing menu of contractual choices that each shift the risk profile in a different direction.

Lisa McDermott, Managing Director and Head of Energy Transition Project Financing at ABN AMRO, has been structuring BESS deals across Europe since 2023*. In this episode, she opens up the credit committee. What gets a project over the line, and what quietly stops it.

Covered:

- Why battery storage finance is fundamentally different from solar or wind and why contracting it away doesn't change the underlying risk when the contract ends.

- From physical tolls to day-ahead swaps, Lisa breaks down which offtake structures are gaining traction in Europe and why the day-ahead swap is the hardest to bank.

- Too much merchant exposure, insufficient sponsor equity, weak technical track record and why pushing too many levers at once is the fastest way to stop a deal.

- How battery warranties have evolved from 8 to 20 years and why coverage beyond the debt tenor is a bankability requirement, not a nice-to-have.

- Germany's grid fee reform has created financing uncertainty at COD, while the Netherlands' congestion model is, counter-intuitively, better for bankability.

Want to model battery revenue stacks or stress-test tolling structures for a specific market? Ko, Modo Energy's AI analyst, is built for exactly these questions. Free sign up: https://help.modo.energy/en/articles/13335470-ko-your-ai-analyst?utm_source=podcast_apps&utm_medium=podcast&utm_id=lisa_mcdermott

Transcript available here: https://modoenergy.com/transmission-podcast/e2b12f17-f7b4-49d3-9d85-e4cc822695f6

────────────────────────────

⏱ CHAPTERS

0:00 Introduction - Is financing battery storage the same as financing solar?

2:32 Why a battery is financing a trader, not an infrastructure asset

5:14 Financing across technology types - TRL 8 vs TRL 9

10:43 What stops a BESS deal in credit committee

15:53 Comfort zone: from fully merchant to fully contracted

18:43 The growing offtake menu, physical tolls, virtual tolls, and floors

24:43 Day-ahead swaps explained and why they introduce basis risk

31:59 Gearing: the sliding scale from 30% merchant to 85% fully tolled

34:37 European market comparison: Netherlands, France, Italy, Germany

40:23 Final question

────────────────────────────

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.

*Correction: The intro incorrectly states that Lisa McDermott has been financing batteries since 2020. She has been doing so since 2023. We apologise for the error.