To go alongside the publication of our April 2022 Leaderboard, Robyn and Imrith discuss battery energy storage system (BESS) trends and strategies from last month. In the video below, you can see which markets helped boost the BESS revenue stack in April. You’ll also be able to dive deeper into these revenues on an asset-by-asset basis.
Imrith and Robyn discuss the April 2022 Leaderboard.
Leaderboard analysis
Fleet revenues
Figure 1 (below) shows the average fleet revenues for BESS assets in Great Britain (GB), from January 2020 to April 2022 (inclusive).
Average revenues
In April 2022, average earnings (£/MW) for BESS assets grew 6.5% from the previous month. This was largely driven by the introduction of Dynamic Regulation (DR) into the BESS revenue stack and the transition of sites which historically provided EFR moving to participate in Dynamic Containment (DC).
Asset revenues
Figure 2 (below) shows the revenues of assets from Modo’s Leaderboard in April 2022.
Asset revenue strategies
Asset strategies can be split into four categories:
Strictly FFR.
Dynamic Containment (DC) and merchant markets.
Hybrid (a mixture of DC, FFR, and merchant markets).
Hybrid + DR.
Figure 3 (below) shows asset revenues for the different operational strategies taken in April 2022.
Figure 3 - Modo Leaderboard asset revenues categorised by operational strategy (Apr 2022).
The average revenue for the six BESS assets solely providing FFR was £9,773/MW - the lowest of all four operational strategies.
The average revenue for assets that adopted a hybrid strategy (participating in DC, FFR and merchant markets) was £11,468/MW, the highest operational strategy (aside from those that provided DR).
Further analysis - April markets in review
Dynamic services clearing prices
Figure 4 (below) shows the average clearing prices (volume-weighted) in DC and DR for April 2022.
Response Reform clearing prices
On average across the month, low-frequency Dynamic Containment (DCL) cleared at £18.67/MW/h.
The average clearing price for providing the service symmetrically (at 90% rated power) was £20.76/MW/h in April, 8.7% higher than in March 2022.
The DR service(s) launched on 8th April, with average clearing prices of £30.8/MW/h and £32.17/MW/h in both the high- and low-frequency services respectively.
Firm Frequency Response
Figure 5 (below) shows the accepted bids in FFR for the eighteen assets that participated in the service during April 2022.
In April 2022, Balancing Mechanism (BM) revenues only made up 1.3% of GB BESS fleet average revenues. Figure 6 (below) shows the daily BM revenues for all BMU-registered BESS assets.
Balancing Mechanism activity (April 2022)
Wholesale prices
There were few instances of high price spikes in wholesale markets during April 2022. This is highlighted in Figure 7 (below), which shows Nordpool’s day-ahead hourly auction.
