Originally published here.
Battery storage is becoming profitable: How enspired uses AI-powered trading to monetize flexibility and accelerate the energy transition across Europe.
The New Economics of Battery Storage
As renewable energy from solar and wind continues to expand, our energy systems are becoming more volatile. While this rapid rollout of clean generation is essential, it also creates a fundamental challenge: the mismatch between energy production and energy consumption. In 2024, Germany alone spent around €2.8 billion on the so-called redispatch. And the number of hours with negative wholesale electricity prices has increased to 457 hours.
One way to match the intraday mismatch: battery storage. They’re emerging as critical solutions that allow us to integrate more renewable energy sources and stabilize our systems. We expect that regulatory changes will follow the technological advancements.
Technological advances are accelerating the global shift toward clean energy, and this is sharply increasing the demand for battery storage. In the renewables sector, rising solar and wind deployment is creating a greater need for flexible storage solutions that can balance intermittent generation. In the electric vehicle and truck market, rapid growth in manufacturing and adoption is driving large-scale demand for high-performance batteries across both consumer and commercial fleets. In the area of BESS and co-location, battery energy storage systems are being rolled out alongside renewable projects to enhance grid stability, optimize energy use, and improve project economics. BloombergNEF forecasts that the energy storage market will expand fifteenfold between 2021 and 2030, rising from 27 GW of installed capacity in 2021 to a projected 411 GW by 2030.
Over the past ten years, the cost-effectiveness of lithium-ion batteries has increased significantly. According to PwC, the volume-weighted average price of a complete battery pack fell from $780/kWh in 2013 to just $139/kWh in 2023. A reduction of more than 80%.
Volume-weighted average lithium-ion battery pack and cell price spilt
End of interactive chart.
And how come? Thanks to new business models and technological advances, batteries are becoming profit-generating tools that unlock value for owners while providing the grid with flexibility. All, while batteries technically keep enhancing. And this is exactly where enspired stands out.
enspired's Automated Approach
Automated trading of flexible power assets is a specialty of enspired. The platform simultaneously optimizes the commercial use of batteries and other energy systems across multiple markets.
This technological advantage offers two key benefits: renewable energy producers or battery operators can maximize their systems' economic potential, and the grid itself enjoys improved stability. In practice, this means:
• Accelerating investment in energy storage solutions, which are vital for integrating renewables at scale
• Enabling a higher penetration of renewable energy by balancing intermittency
• Reducing reliance on fossil-fuel “peaker plants” that traditionally provide grid flexibility
• Creating new revenue streams for sustainable projects
• Supporting grid stability as more distributed resources come online
The Future of Energy Markets: enspired in Action
enspired is now scaling internationally, with owners and operators of flexibility assets all over Europe. Their partnerships across Spain, Poland, Greece, the Netherlands, and Japan highlight this momentum.
• Spain is doubling down on energy storage, setting a target of 22.5 GW for the next five years, backed up by new regulations and subsidies. The Spanish government recently highlighted energy storage as a critical asset to avoid a repeat of the massive blackout witnessed in April.
• Polish energy storage investors now get seamless access to wholesale and ancillary markets and the tools to maximize returns.
• They are launching a 270 MW portfolio of energy storage systems to unlock the full value of battery storage in Greece.
• The Netherlands is one of the most densely populated countries in the world and ongoing grid congestion makes it difficult to scale up renewable production at the pace needed to reach climate targets.
• The first milestone of enspired’s global expansion is the partnership with Banpu NEXT, a leading net zero solutions provider in the Asia-Pacific region, emerging as BESS key player in Japan.
Transparency is the fastest way to drive the market maturity of grid-scale battery storage, and the best time to adapt to the market is before it changes. We will make batteries and flexibility so profitable that investments are directed away from fossil fuels into clean energy.
The results are already visible. Together with Entelios and Obton, enspired is marketing three major battery projects in Germany:
• Tangermünde (15.8 MW; 35 MWh)
• Karstädt (20.7 MW; 41.4 MWh)
• Alfeld (137.5 MW; 306 MWh)
Combined, these projects deliver close to 400 MWh of storage quantity. These projects contribute to the energy transition, bolstering the development of a sustainable energy infrastructure in a region heavily reliant on renewable energy.
Battery storage solutions are therefore used in transmissions and distribution networks to support the integration of renewable energies into the grid. When integrated into charging sites, onsite battery storage solutions act as a decentralized source of power or ‘buffer’, helping to manage increased loads on the grid by storing excess energy generated during periods of low demand and releasing it during peak times. This is a highly effective solution to the problem of grid instability.
enspired and EnBW
EnBW operates several pumped storage plants used for flexible power generation. To maximize the economic efficiency of these assets, EnBW leverages the digital trading platform provided by enspired.
enspired manages the marketing of the pumped storage plants in short-term electricity trading. Using AI-based forecasting models, enspired analyzes spot market prices in real time and identifies windows when electricity generation is most profitable or when electricity can be purchased at low cost to refill the storage.
Also, enspired is now optimizing a first 1 MW battery, extending its data-driven approach to additional storage assets.
In addition, Enspired supports VNG (an EnBW subsidiary), in purchasing low-cost electricity. The enspired AI leveraging accurate market forecasts, optimal buying times on the spot market can be determined.
