Is the Battery Storage Gold Rush Really Over? - Enfinity Global

I'm your host, Ed Porter. Welcome back to Transmission. At a glance, batteries can look simple. A contract, a revenue line, a box in the field.

But as storage matures, the easy story falls away. Sam Harden, director of storage at Enfinity Global, works in global markets where value depends not only on getting built, but staying available and performing. This episode is about what happens after the initial rush for battery projects. How do you get the most from your storage assets?

Before we get started, a lot of people listening will have follow-up questions after an episode like this. Those are exactly the questions that Ko, Modo Energy's AI analyst is built for. Try it out now. Link in the comments.

So, let's jump in. Hello, Sam. Hi, Ed. Good to see you again. Great to see you as well.

And let's jump into the contrarian view or what do people always get wrong about batteries? So I think what is a hot topic at the moment is tolls and tolling for BESS. What what what I see is that this is not a silver bullet for the industry and for projects to remove risk. What they are really is a reallocation of risk.

um they have become popular because it is a way in which to try and attract uh more financing and providing a long-term revenue stream. But what people often miss is that in in some circumstances you can be increasing your risk um when it comes to the operational availability. So whereas you are uh just working on a a a merchant basis and you can be losing revenue under these contracts you could be you could be liable for more strenuous penalties than just loss revenue. So what's really what's really important is it's understanding not just my market risk but my availability risk.

It's kind of like the the devil is in the detail, right? So on the face of it at all seems so straightforward. It's like okay for 10 10 years or 15 years I'm going to get X amount of money and then you can take that to a financier and say I've got this contract and they go great you're going to make this amount of money it's so easy for me to put debt in against that that that toll so that you can get access to cheap capital but you're saying actually if I sign that toll and then something goes wrong with the assets availability then you could get into a sort of a tricky situation on on that toll and you could be losing money in a way that you weren't expecting.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think it's the same case as well we've seen for long long-term auctions like the MACSE recently in Italy. It's the same issue again.

You are eliminating one risk but you are perhaps increasing another risk. Um and if you do not have control and the right sort of plan around to manage that um you are not necessarily removing risk. Toll has their use. Um but I think what we are evolving to is not just looking at a toll but how can I provide some level of security.

um without overexposing myself operationally. Um and I think that's something we're seeing even on the other side uh from from traders and from offtakers actually having an asset owner that has some skin in the game and is incentivized to optimize and be there to to maximize revenues can be beneficial to them. Again with a toll it's you you are there to provide the availability as you know the bare minimum from from the contract. Yeah.

And I think um just to stay on tolls for a second. So you mentioned availability as kind of one of the ways that you could let's say get caught out. And so let's say your availability isn't the 95 or the 98% that you want. So it drops down to 94% all of a sudden you have to pay an amount of money to kind of make the other party whole.

There are also other things right in tolls. You mentioned a it takes a long time. So 9 months 12 months that's a lot of time to be putting into projects to get people distracted from other things. I think you've also got this kind of uh changes in law.

So what happens when the ground underneath you changes that the the rules of the market change? You then have to reopen these things, renegotiate them. So there could be a lot of complexity in in these processes that that maybe could could kind of catch you out uh if you're not 100% aware of what you're getting into. As you say, with a with a non-toll structure like a profit share, then it's much more that sort of both parties are keen to get as much money as possible from the asset and so you're both aligned in the right way.

Whereas in a toll because it's allocating between both parties, there's much more sort of confrontation in the mark in the contract design. Absolutely. And when there is a change, it's who is feeling the effects of that. Is is it the taller?

Is it the asset operator? You know, it depends. Is it a market? Could there be a change in the way that grid fees are charged, which you know, who does that sit with?

Yeah. Um, and again, if you do not have that alignment where it's in both's interest to maximize as far as possible, that's when you're going to run into issues. And, you know, with these contracts, particularly in the battery space, it it's very difficult to plan ahead for every scenario. You know, we've seen how much it's evolved and change in in in recent years, we know that the market is going to continue to evolve um and get more complicated and sophisticated.

So, yeah, that is absolutely another challenge that that we can see with that sort of structure. Okay. And you dropped in the MACSE very quickly. Let's just remind people what the MACSE is.

So the MACSE auction was a long-term fixed revenue contract run by the TSO Turner in Italy. Uh and what it would do was providing 15 years, you would get a fixed revenue for that time and as the asset owner your responsibility was really to ensure availability and the dispatch instruction would be sent by Turner. And we had the first auction take place last year. I think it was about a gigawatt of uh volume.

Okay. And that's different to say GB, right? Because GB you decide to build your asset and then you can sort of self-dispatch. So you, the owner of the asset, can choose to dispatch your asset however you see fit.

But with the MACSE, you've got that sort of involvement directly from the the TSO, so the transmission system operator, which is, as you say, Turner. Exactly. That's exactly it. Very good.

Okay. So, uh, always good to get these things covered. Um, let's let's move on because I think there's another misconception that I'm keen to talk about in the battery space and that is that it's kind of it's both true and false this thing that there's a there's a gold rush in batteries that essentially it's about how fast can you get into a market and can you get into a market in the early stages when they're just starting to open up markets in say frequency response and and the sort of story historic story is if you can get in quickly and you can do the thing that gas was doing in quite an expensive way.

That's frequency control. So, making sure the frequency stays at 50 Hz or 60 Hz, wherever the grid is. Um, that if you can do that, you get paid some bumper payout. And that's the whole battery like principle.

It's all about can you move quickly and get stuff in. Do you think that do you think people really think that? Uh, what's what's your take? I think so.

And I think there is an element of truth of there being a gold rush era. you know, battery storage, the first commercial projects were only deployed, you know, a decade ago and this was a shiny new asset um of which sudden considerable value was being attached to um and it was a race to really bring that volume online. And so in a sense um it was true if you could be first to market once this value opportunity was realized there was chance for these high returns. But obviously as we saw in the UK um the first rush was for providing ancillary services um once storage technology became commercially viable and the market sort of open to allow the storage participation um it it was a value gap and we knew that storage was was competitive there against the existing uh former assets that were providing that.

But what we've seen over time is you know it it's less of a uh a scarcity trade and now we are moving into a maturing market where an asset is having to look across multiple revenue streams. It's having to look at how it can contract and and finance those revenues and again moving into the operational excellence and and keeping um availability. So is is it over or was it a gold rush? I I think partially yes, but I think there is enough volume now there to be built.

And so the initial phase, the initial rush might be done where you can sort of make these premiums and value by developing and and and and bringing assets to market. That could be like a payback in like three or four years. Exactly. Those days those days are are are done or or sort of coming to an end.

um there's limited sort of new origination to be done you know at least in a lot of the um the major markets like UK and and Italy and and Germany still to execute and and bring those projects to to ready to build but really it is now an evolution and it is okay well who is now able to uh build these assets contract these assets finance and then operate um in the most competitive and effective way. Um and when we talk about you know there's always a question in in storage and I think even from the beginning what happens when all the batteries come online and uh begin to cannibalize each other or saturate right that's maybe a top question that we get as a top question you know and and and you would have had it um from all people in industry from outside of industry from executives you know in your career um that has always been the question it it's been amplified by what happened in the UK with the saturation of the ancillary services Um but what we're actually seeing is that storage is now recognized and embedded in our electricity infrastructure.

You know, it's becoming maturing rather than saturating. Um the value of storage is being realized, but now it's it's uh it's really becoming an asset. Okay, how do we how do we operate? It's not a question of can storage do this job.

It's going to be there. Um it's no longer about just sort of showing up, you know, you have to show up. You have to show up perfectly every day and you also need to try and do it better than everyone else in the industry. And it probably begins to look a bit more like what a traditional utility would be waking up and building a business around to sort of maintain their their sort of thermal assets but just on a bigger uh distributed basis let's say.

So I think it's it's a really good description of kind of how the industry is maturing very quickly. Is it good news? Is it bad news for you? I mean, you're developing a whole heap of assets all over the globe.

Is this kind of is is this something that you um would welcome this maturing or is it something that's like actually you know what it'd be lovely if we were like day back to day one and we could get some like really quick paybacks in through the door? Yeah, I I would say those times were exciting, but you know, we're now sort of moving into we talk about skip rates or settlement periods or, you know, more sort of details in how we're now into the niche. It's it's exactly how how are we getting the most value out of this asset? Not just, you know, the very beginning.

How what what even is a megawatt hour, megawatt, you know, that's that's what we're doing at at the start um start of careers for for me personally and for um Enfinity Global who who who who I'm I'm director for their their storage business. We are evolving as the industry is. um Enfinity Global when I joined uh just over 3 years ago uh we're an asset owner and primarily where that had come from was from the develop um development construction and building of solar um management realized the way the world was moving and that if we're going to be an asset owner we need to have flexibility and management of flexibility as well and so in the last few years you know as a company that does is not a big utility have a big big balance sheet we tried to value from development, but now that focus is switching to the construction and buildout.

Um there's a lot to be taken if you have the experience in building out other energy assets and that's now what we're trying to apply to storage. So for for bigger players who are bringing through lots of sites, it starts to become not about like opportunistically are we the right place, right time. It's more about the the principles that have governed being good managers of energy assets for x number of years. How do we best apply those and make sure that we run those on batteries correctly so that we're in the right place?

And I think going back to the sort of maturing good versus bad, I feel like there is some it would be lovely to have very high revenues and be able to provide consumers value like that's that's the sweet spot of every market. Um but in in the sort of maturing of the market and more competition coming in then it's okay as long as the the businesses that are deploying these assets are maturing with them and are working to find ways of getting good value out of the assets but also value for consumers. Absolutely. And and I think that the fun part of this is that although we're talking about maturing, this is still a whole new asset class.

And that's why there's still a lot of evolution to go. And that's why we say is is the gold rush is the gold rush over. There's not been a lot of mega megawatt or gigawatts built of of storage. When you look at the ramp ups that we're actually expecting in 2030, it's incredible what still has to be built.

And I think we're really only scratching the surface still in how do we get best value not even just at the asset level at the portfolio level or even sort of integrated with other assets which is what I think people are now starting to think about. But you know this is the first time that we've had uh these sort of assets which can import they can export um they can ramp up or or down in milliseconds they can provide active power they can support grid stability. It's a basket of tricks which hasn't really been seen on the grid and you know that is sort of the next phase that we're seeing in storage is how do you optimize that?

How do you get the best value from that? I think I think it's really interesting. So um a few things we've got just on the build out right. So we've probably got 10 to 20 GWish batteries in Europe.

Um so far I think by by 2030 that could look something like 50 to maybe 100 perhaps if things go extremely well. But that's still like 25 to 50 billion that's going to come into the space. So yeah, we're still like so early stage um in this and there's a lot to get excited about in terms of infrastructure investors who want to get into these types of projects. I think on your point about how do we get the the the sort of most out of the sort of did you say basket of tricks?

I quite like that. Yeah. Yeah. I I quite like that. It's like a people say Swiss Army knife.

There's a few different expressions for it, but like how do you get the most out of it? We've just had a inertia auction in GB and we had sort of early phase uh versions of that inertia auction and batteries provided inertia in those services and this latest version I think there was an amendment of the rules halfway through where essentially it meant that the batteries technically failed that process and I think it's a really good example of of sort of what you're saying which is batteries can do so much more than just keeping good frequency where it should be or buying low and selling high.

They can do all these other kind of things like voltage control, inertia on the system, and we have all these additional things that batteries can do, but we haven't really got into the detail of kind of how do we get how do we fine-tune these assets? How do we get the most out of them for systems? And I think that's probably one of the things I'm most excited about in the battery space. And and it's it's proving those right and then sort of getting those verified, you know, under the existing codes and regulations.

And you referenced there the inertia auction in GB in Spain we see a similar story um where batteries are receiving transmission connection offers where yes you can connect but it's conditional to you building and operating a synchronous condenser to manage inertia and grid stability issues. So again right now that is a condition to connect. Um but there is a a a sort of an education and a process to be done there where saying actually we don't need this great massive synchronous condenser. We we we've got uh this we've got this BESS system that could do a lot of what you are actually worried about and and what you are requiring.

So yeah absolutely that's a fascinating piece to watch. Yeah. And I think if I sort of get the crystal ball out and look five years forward, I think we're spending a lot of time talking about voltage control, uh, fault currents, uh, inertia, which may sound a little bit like dry to some people, but if you're, uh, into transmission and you've heard a lot of these episodes, you'll know that we talk about this a lot, and I'm also very excited about it. Looking forward to it.

Yeah. Uh, okay. So, let's let's go on to then actually developing these projects. So, we are maturing, but then commercially and technically on these sites, what decisions are you making around those sites to make sure that they are best set up for the future world?

Yeah, there's there's there's a few ways we're looking at that. Um, set setting up for the future world. What we have seen over the last few years is an easy way to demonstrate is this increase in value of the energy and the duration of the systems as we move further away from just providing fast response services to moving more into the space. Should be like the halfhour system from a few years ago.

Exactly. 2016 2017 is now becoming a three. Most commonly people ask oh should it be three or four hours these days? Exactly.

And I think by fluke a few have provided that optionality because of where the industry has come. So I can even give an example. Um so a few years ago projects um where projects that were getting submitted into planning three or four years ago possibly still waiting for their connection or final connection dates in in the UK um would have been submitted with shipping containers or 20ft shipping containers that maybe had 2 and a half megawatt hours um as as an engine density. Now the standard is beyond five.

You know we're at five and most are now offering far uh far greater than that. So even in those plans that were submitted a few years ago um uh there is the possibility to potentially double capacity in in those same footprints. Um but I think now people are looking and and certainly we are proactively how how do we how do we future proof? How do we allow the space um physically and and electronically within the equipment um to to augment and change the capacity or add if that's where the business case is is directed in the future or even have equipment which is uh capable of providing a lot of the services you mentioned there on on good stability.

In a lot of markets that's not yet a remunerated scheme. A lot of them are under consultation or there's some trials. Um, but we know it's something that's coming in the future and that's a decision we have to take. Um, do you look at putting in possibly slightly more expensive grid forming inverters that can do that even though you don't get paid for it immediately?

Um, it's it's a challenge um, as an investor, but it's something that we we look at very carefully. I was at dinner with some inverter providers recently and they were very very keen to tell me that it wasn't expressly the uh, inverter that's like more expensive. It's more like the configuration and the testing of it for systems that kind of takes longer and and so all of that additional work costs more but the thing itself is is kind of largely unchanged. Um and I I I have to take their word for it.

The same. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we're definitely seeing that. I think the other thing um that's quite interesting, right?

So you said that one of the one of the ways that's happening is you go for planning and you have say 10 sort of sort of concrete plots you're going to put batteries on. The other thing that's happening is that for batteries that have been operating for a while, one of the options that is coming up is because the energy density in the battery is getting better. You originally had a 3 MWh 20ft container. Now you can have an 8 MWh 20ft container.

And so Gresham House who one of the storage funds in GB, they uh essentially did this augmentation because obviously they're a fund and it's public where they were sort of swapping out these old these old containers and bringing in sort of three or four hour systems. And so yes, you can kind of augment in the planning stage, but also when you go live, it's not like you're going to be a 1 megawatt, 4 MWh system forever. If if the system needs something, as you say, the basket of tricks point, you could easily be a 6-hour system if in 7 years time that's what we need and let's say 7 years like who knows when you're actually going to be replacing that system.

It could be sooner, it could be later. But there are so many options with these systems um that I think people probably haven't really understood how we can get the most out of these batteries in the long run. Absolutely. And that that comes back to our first contrarian uh viewpoint that as well as technically considering it, it's also commercial.

How do I allow that flexibility? Do I want to allow that flexibility knowing that I might be able to improve um that value in the future as we know the market is just changing so quickly? Yeah, that's a good point. So, you have a toll.

The toll says 70k per megawatt per year. Actually, a new system comes along or a new product comes along, voltage control, whatever it is. There's an extra five or 10k per megawatt per year on the table. How does the contract make sure that's um enabled and people can go after that?

And I'm sure there'll be some very good lawyers who'll be like, "Ah, I tell you what, Ed, I've got a really good answer to that." And I'm sure they will send me a message and say there's a good answer to it. Okay, let's move off this and let's go on to the next phase of things maturing. So in general when things go from early stage tech to later stage tech and they more mature and investors get more comfortable.

The thing we see in lots of markets is consolidation you know the very early days you have 100 players because you've got 100 enthusiasts that come into the space. If I look at say the number of gas units that are owned by um players in GB it's not that many. You know it used to be the big eight uh when I first started in industry which was maybe quite a long time ago but like it used to be the big eight. Um and so do you think we'll see that same consolidation in the battery space and we'll see sort of 10 or 20 players globally or do you think it'll still be the same sort of disparate like 100 or 200 asset owners or funds?

I I think there will be in part a consolidation. Um I I think when markets be begin to mature those that can become competitive it does become about scale. it does become about those that um do have the means to uh have the balance sheet or able to raise the capital. Um I I think where there is still room for disruption is that as I say there's still a lot to be built.

there's still room and players are beginning to establish themselves um and perhaps not burdened by um uh you know storage is a disruptor and displacer of of thermal if I if I've already got an existing thermal fleet how do I manage that do I cannibalize myself that that is sort of a question that's why that question has got asked you know when I've worked at utilities before although the response is always if it's not us someone else someone else will um someone else will do it for sure. For sure. Like we've already seen I mean we see a lot of big utilities going into batteries. Most recently we've seen Drax doing a lot of business in terms of picking up other sort of flexible assets in in in the market.

So there's definitely that sort of splitting out. Um but but but going back to sort of the first point you made, you think there'd be like a cost of capital shootout that the people with like the access to the lowest capital will be able to pick up these projects. Again, in in part and I think it a lot of what can drive this infinite markets as well will be regulation and how much markets remain open. Um going back to MACSE and the results of MACSE um and the winner the majority winner of that was the incumbent um Italian utility.

Exactly. Um so again the more open the market is I think the more room for that innovation and disruption and more players to come in. um if we go down a full regulated route it it it becomes more more challenging and that's what we've seen um in other markets. I think just and one thing to add you know this is talking about the asset owners where clearly there is still room for for new entrance and where we're seeing that is it's it's really in the sophistication.

So the optimization of BESS that has all tended to come from new players and now we're not just sort of talking about what that's still got a road to run but it's also not just commercial but technical as well. AI gets banded around a lot in how how can I squeeze out uh an extra 10% on my lifetime and that those extra percentages are going to make a lot of difference um as we move to a sort of more maturing marginal type market. Yeah, I I totally agree. Like we are not done with how do we get the most from the battery fleet.

It's something we we say a lot. Um but like it's really clear like when you're on the inside of seeing these these projects. It's absolutely true that uh we really are the sort of still in the starting blocks for how to get the best of these assets. So let's go on to what happens next.

So we know that we're kind of the gold rush. We're through the gold rush. We're starting to look at multiple markets. There is a maturing.

How does a company get the most out of the next few years? It's really important these years to establish a position. So I think to there is still a chance to secure let's say above infrastructure rate returns. Um what does what what does that mean?

So what does it mean? So so I guess in a pure m mature mature market infrastructure stable revenues which you could sort of align with with uh mature markets um but relatively low rates of return. So a lowrisk 6 to 10 that type of ballpark. Exactly.

Exactly. I think and perhaps speaking from the perspective of a a a sort of a growth utility you could call it. um we we look to try and secure more than that by by coming into this market early and that can allow us to compete and try to establish and then in the long term compete against those uh say bigger incumbents that maybe have to buy and pay that premium to enter um into the market. Mhm.

Um so so you're then thinking about right the right time and place to execute in terms of entering the market but do you also think about sort of operational excellence? You mentioned uh just before we started recording about uh this kind of incident you you had in North Japan where you had 5 m of snow all falling very quickly. How do you actually deal with stuff like that? Because nobody making a financial spreadsheet is thinking about 5 m of snow all getting dumped all at the same time.

It's everything you know and even forgetting the asset online. I think there is a danger of sitting behind spreadsheets sitting behind contracts. There is only so far you can go to protect. you cannot completely sit behind contracts and fully derisk um your operation at at some point you know as an asset owner you need to look at those um uh mitigation and and plans and it it becomes it becomes so key like with in Japan how how how do you plan for one in a century events of snow but you know should that happen you be unprepared you know it can have incredible damage to a company it's not just a case of being offline.

Um, but that sort of snow would crush panels. And we think the same way with a battery. Um, and it is it's more complicated. You know, that's it.

It I think from a development perspective, it's easy to slip into this is quite straightforward. You know, it's a bunch of boxes in a field, not a particularly big space, even when we're talking about large megawatts. But first of all, we're talking about some of these very high voltage connections, very sophisticated kit, um, very complex. And what does that what does that actually mean, right?

Does does that mean that for like your your battery supplier or your inverter supplier, you're making sure that you pick someone who has the or like a factory or like a service hub within the country so that when stuff goes wrong, they have someone who's trained who can come to site and let's hope it's just flicking a switch, but let's say it's more than that. They have spares. they have things they can kind of put into these projects. Is is that really what you mean?

Yeah. And and to try and put this in basic terms, you know, I might have a warranty uh for my vacuum cleaner and if it breaks, I can through maybe a slightly arduous process try to get a filter replaced and they send it from wherever and it takes a couple of weeks and it's a bit annoying, but at least I don't need to pay for a new one. Whereas, if this happens with my battery and I have a critical part which fails um and I've got a product warranty, so someone has to come in and fix that. But, you know, there will be a time delay if I haven't managed that.

If I'm then having to call up and say, "Hey, I've got my warranty. This is broken. Can you come and do it?" "Yeah, sure.

It'll be there in a few weeks." If you haven't planned for what happens when that's there, either through, you know, being very clear in in the delivery or through having those parts available, um, you you are exposed. Uh, you know, no one is going to, you know, your product warranty isn't going to say, "Oh, you've lost uh x millions in that time because you weren't able to deliver your revenue." They're not going to cover that.

that's not their responsibility. So that's where it becomes important and and to try and sort of foresee um and manage that and still in the most you know cost-effective way and it could be really like wrong time um wrong time wrong place. So so let's say it's really hot uh and something breaks or indeed there's 5 minutes of snow, it's really cold and the system's under lots of stress. if stuff goes wrong at times of system stress, if you are being covered to some degree by damages by your equipment provider, like they're not going to cover the very very peak returns that you'd be missing.

And so um yeah, this could this could get quite tricky quite quickly. Yeah, it's it's you know, a few days of the year can make or break um uh the value from that year, you know, particularly in certain markets. We're also um uh looking to build projects this year in UrkOT, you know, where takes us. Again, it can come down to 10 days where you can make or or break um your year.

So, yeah, it's so critical. Yeah, it is. Uh's a fascinating market. Um let's I want to talk about one more thing before we wrap up, which is that we've talked that we've kind of entered the market with batteries and now we've got this every single market kind of looks the same.

It all kind of looks like this kind of enter enter and then everything ramps like all of these buildout curves always look that way. So people have big plans about the capacity they're going to add and in reality that means that people want to build a lot of batteries all at the same time and you're you're sort of thinking okay well I want to build these batteries as well but you're not physically going to be building the batteries you're going to be working with companies to get this done. Are you worried that the supply chain of both equipment but also like professionally qualified people is going to be there when you want to hit go and get these projects into place?

In short, yes. I I I think one of the biggest bottlenecks to realizing now is not not the technology, it's not the business case, the scale of what has to be delivered is is now exponential. Do we have the human resource to be able to do that? Um the most tangible way is thinking yes who who are the guys actually going in and fitting and and putting but but it's even those that have the skill to be able to package a system a supply contract uh an offtake contract a banking contract.

Yeah. Um you know to such a volume across many markets. I don't know you know when when you look at um when you look at the market today has have the people that have been involved has it grown to the scale and has is it going to be able to accelerate again I think one way we are tackling at least one way I can give an example within infinitity is there is no silo between technologies so when I joined to really help transform and enable us to deliver storage it was within the existing regional teams for solar and rather than just only hiring those that were experienced in best it was bringing in those that had um those skills but then to use that to upskill those that already were there and that's that's the only way we're going to do that and know it's that's just within okay it's renewables so already you know with power there's a lot of a lot of synergies there um but we're going to have to pull people from those other industries right if the other industries in oil and um or other manufacturing or or anywhere in the client, you know, those those are the people we need to bring in, you know, as well as the focus on um ensuring that we can bring more young people through, right?

And they're not dissuaded um and they're sort of not forgotten as we uh take more simple tasks from from AI or you know the sort of direction that's going. I mean, we have let's say 50 gigs to deploy in Europe. that there is no uh way that you could imagine that we have deployed 50 gigs up until this point. That's pretty obvious and so we have to get people into this space.

Um it's a hugely pressing issue. And maybe with that segue, I got to ask my sort of final question which is that let's say I put you in charge of European battery rollout tomorrow. Congratulations. Um what would you do?

What's your what's because there's one thing you'd change to make things work better? I would change whatever whatever rules to allow you to add a battery to every existing generation system if you wanted to. In the UK, it it baffles me how difficult it is to do that. When a battery is added, at least I'd sort of say to intermittent renewable generation um and particularly so where I spend a lot of my time, it is it is effectively doing the opposite.

That is not a constraint operation. it is helping whatever issue is being caused by either asset, which is how markets work. When there's lots of solar, you want to charge like why would you discharge when there's lots of solar? That's Exactly.

Exactly. And I I think we're getting like that there are the discussions um I can say in in in Italy again where a lot of my focus is right now um uh permitting rules have have have been changed and introduced in the last year which is allowing an accelerated addition of storage to permitted solar sites. So the will is there. If I could change that in a day, um, you know, it would unlock so much growth so quickly.

My guess is people would be very panicked about it, but then when they see the things that storage is actually doing, they would be kind of like, oh, actually, I don't know why we were so worried about this in the first place. Absolutely. Maybe maybe a grid operator is going to come on next week and tell me uh horrendous see that. I hope so.

Yeah, I hope so. Sam, well, thank you very much for coming on and sharing your expertise with us. You've been a fantastic guest and hope to have you on again soon. Thanks so much.

Pleasure.