Small <10MW BESS sites
The Modo forecast is built for the scale of typical utility-scale battery storage sites in GB - typically 10-100 MW.
For sites larger than this, check out this page.
For sites that are smaller than this, there are a few things to consider when using the GB revenue curves to forecast returns:
- Small sites are usually co-located with other assets - they often sit with demand. Our forecast does not cover the often complex charging arrangements for offsetting that demand - so the wholesale trading revenue projections will be wrong.
- Depending on the site (and its set-up), small sites may not face an hourly wholesale price against which to optimise. This could be due to an element of hedging or fixed price within a PPA. This should be considered particularly if the battery is co-located with demand.
- It is less likely to be exposed or actively traded in intraday markets because of the operational overheads required.
- It's more unlikely that a small site ~5MW would participate in the BM given the administrative hurdle of registration and operation.
- Within the Modo GB index, we track sites that are >= 7MW. This data is used to calibrate our battery revenue forecast. This calibration factor could be different for sites smaller than this. Issues like the 1MW minimum unit size and integer market granularity in frequency response markets have more of an impact on revenues.
Our revenue forecast is made up of line items for frequency response, wholesale trading, intraday trading, participation in the Balancing Mechanism, TNUoS revenues and has the option for DUoS revenues.
- Within the run library, we assume a site is connected at Extremely High Voltage (EHV) - typically 132kV and ignore any costs or revenues due to DUoS charges (more here).
- If the small BESS site is standalone, and part of a portfolio that will have exposure to wholesale day ahead and intraday revenues, a custom run should be used then they'd need to input the duos information on a custom run form to ensure we capture what can be a significant DUoS opportunity within our optimization algorithm.
Updated about 1 month ago