271 episodes
- GB Energy's £1 million solar investment freed up savings a Hull hospital had left on the table for years. It's an example of what can happen when a state-backed investor takes risks the market won't.
GB Energy calls itself an activist investor, built to put public money behind the frontiers where private capital moves too slowly: deepwater wind, long duration storage, public sector solar. The interesting question now is how far this model can scale, and how well it keeps sharing that risk with private capital as it grows.
Dan McGrail, CEO of Great British Energy, joins Ed Porter to explain how Britain's state-owned energy company decides where to invest, and why it's taking on the risks private money won't take first.
They cover:
- Why the "activist investor" model can justify riskier bets than pure-return investors would take - and where that logic stops making sense
- How to identify an investment "frontier": the areas of high ambition where private capital isn't moving fast enough to hit national targets
- What a queue of 50GW+ in unsolicited co-investment enquiries reveals about investor appetite for state-backed risk-sharing
- Why community-owned local energy can outperform national schemes on economic impact - one Orkney turbine now funds housing, buses and insulation
- Why chasing niche global market share, not local content quotas, may be the smarter industrial strategy for competing with China
Got a question about the build-out of batteries, solar or wind in GB or Europe? That's what Ko is for - sign up to try for free.
Transcript available here
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.
Chapters
00:00 £1m Solar Saving At A Hull Hospital
00:43 Guest Introduction: Dan McGrail, CEO Of GB Energy
01:11 GB Energy's Company Model And DESNZ Ownership
02:42 Investment Committee Discipline Vs Government Thinking
03:23 The "Frontiers" Strategy Explained
07:44 Floating Wind And The Deepwater Frontier
09:03 ScotWind, Rising Costs And Investor Confidence
12:33 Three Strategic Pillars: Offshore, Onshore, Local
19:56 Public Entrepreneurship Vs Maximising Profit
21:17 The Siemens Story: Why Private Capital Wants In
22:35 50GW Of Unsolicited Investment Enquiries
26:00 Electrically Qualified Workers And The Skills Gap
30:45 Shapinsay's Community-Owned Wind Turbine
34:34 Solar On Hospitals And Schools
37:16 Balancing Solar With Battery Storage
39:56 GB Energy's £8.3 Billion Budget: Progress So Far
41:14 Contrarian View: Industrial Legacy Over Cheap Energy - Germany looks like Europe's most attractive battery storage market on paper: deep power price volatility, a fast-growing renewables build-out, and nearly three gigawatts of batteries already live. In reality, developers are navigating uncertain grid connection queues, gruelling commissioning phases, and a tolling market still working out how much risk is fair to price in.
Christina Hepp, Director Strategy, and Leandra Boes, Director Asset Management, both at Green Flexibility, join Ed Porter to unpack what building and operating batteries in Germany actually looks like once the PowerPoint slide meets the grid.
They cover:
- What a Flexible Connection Agreement actually is and why this kind of trade-off is fast becoming the norm in Germany.
- Why grid operators and battery companies have historically struggled to "speak the same language", and how a shared framework like REGIOlink helps translate one side's needs into the other's terms.
- What actually happens in the final weeks before a large-scale battery switches on for real: the software integration, testing and last-minute troubleshooting that never makes it into a press release.
- Why choosing to sell power on the open market versus locking in a steadier, pre-agreed deal is a much bigger and riskier decision than it sounds - and why Green Flexibility is betting on the option most peers shy away from.
- Just how enormous Germany's battery storage pipeline has become: enough grid connection requests queued up that regulators have had to start filtering out the projects that aren't actually going to happen.
Want the data behind this conversation? Ask Ko, Modo Energy's AI analyst:https://modoenergy.com/sign-up?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast_apps&utm_campaign=green-flexibility&utm_content=ko_signup
Transcript available here:https://modoenergy.com/transmission-podcast/0b5744a4-36e3-471d-bb95-16adefb96a93?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast_apps&utm_campaign=green-flexibility&utm_content=article_page
Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
01:20 Common Misconceptions About Building Batteries in Germany
02:24 FID Prep and Commissioning: What Doesn't Make the Press Release
03:25 Flexible Connection Agreements (FCAs): The Ski Cannon Example
07:54 Germany's FCA Market Standardization
10:36 Battery Commissioning in Germany: Lessons From the Toughest Phase
14:29 Merchant vs Tolling: Germany's Battery Revenue Models
19:30 REGIOlink: Integrating Batteries Into Distribution Grids
23:11 Battery Data Sharing With Grid Operators
26:27 Germany's Project Development Shakeout
29:32 Co-Located Battery Projects: Pros and Cons
31:47 Germany's Zonal Pricing Debate for Batteries
34:32 Contrarian Views: Merchant Strategy and the German Power Market as "Barbie" - Many people picture a power purchase agreement as a 15-year mega-deal between a tech giant and a solar farm. In reality, 99% of UK PPAs look nothing like that. Power purchase agreements now sit behind a growing chunk of how the UK's electricity supply is sourced, and getting the price wrong could mean getting locked in well above the market rate for years.
Ed sits down with Rob Ogden, Founder and CEO of Renewable Exchange - one of the UK's largest PPA marketplaces - to unpack how PPAs are actually priced, why REGO certificate prices have swung from over £20 to just a few pence, and what happens to Europe's ageing wind fleet as 20-year subsidies run out and thousands of turbines are pushed onto the merchant market.
They cover:
Why the "blue-chip" corporate PPA is the exception in a UK market dominated by short-term utility contracts, and how subsidy schemes from NFFO to CfD shaped that split.
How negative and volatile power prices are forcing generators and off-takers to rethink how PPAs are priced and structured.
The lessons from Covid and the Ukraine energy crisis on why locking into a 15-year PPA carries real pricing risk.
Why matching thousands of small renewable generators with energy suppliers is such a hard problem to solve, and what it takes to build pricing infrastructure that can handle PPA demand spiking overnight.
Why REGO prices have swung from over £20 to just a few pence, and the case for moving to 24/7 REGO matching.
Want to see what future power prices look like right now? Head to Modo Energy and ask Ko, Modo Energy's AI analyst — sign-up's free and takes seconds.
Transcript available here.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction: Is Your "100% Green" Tariff Really Green?
01:15 What People Get Wrong About Power Purchase Agreements
03:45 UK Power Purchase Agreement Market Structure
04:57 UK Renewable Subsidy History: NFFO, RO, FiT and CfD
07:16 PPA Regret: Negative Pricing and Value Erosion
09:49 Long-Term PPA Risk Through Covid and the Ukraine Crisis
14:32 Hybrid PPA and Flexibility Contract Structures
17:46 Renewable Exchange Origin Story: The Aberdeenshire Wind Farmers
19:53 Platform Scaling Pains: Rebuilding Three Times
22:41 Renewable Exchange's Impact on Consumer Energy Costs
24:30 Co-Located Solar and Battery Revenue Streams
26:58 REGO Explained: Renewable Energy Guarantee of Origin
32:16 The Case for 24/7 REGO Matching
36:27 Expanding to Germany: Legacy Wind Assets and Repowering
41:13 Contrarian Take: Ending Renewable Energy Subsidies - How dangerous are battery storage fires, really? Despite the headlines, grid-scale battery fire failure rates have fallen 99% since 2018 - from around 4 incidents per gigawatt hour to under 0.1. Even as global deployment scaled into the tens of gigawatt hours.
Most people still picture a whole site going up in flames. The engineering tells a very different story. Dan Sherlock-Burke, Director of Asset Management at Gore Street Capital, joins Ed Porter for a technical look at how battery fire safety actually works - from the Moss Landing fire that shaped public perception, to the data that can flag a failing module weeks before it fails. He explains what really happens minute-by-minute when a cell enters thermal runaway, why most BESS fires trace back to operations rather than faulty cells, and why fire suppression isn't always the safeguard it appears to be.
They cover:
- Battery fire propagation: why "let it burn" is increasingly viable, and how modern container design has made fires spreading across a site vanishingly rare
- BESS fire statistics: how EPRI's failure incident database shows a fall from around 4 incidents per gigawatt hour in 2018 to under 0.1 today, a 99% reduction
- What causes battery fires: why only ~11% start with a faulty cell, while ~65% trace back to operations and integration
- LFP vs NMC battery chemistry: lower combustion temperatures, no self-supplied oxygen, and why lithium iron phosphate still isn't "inherently safe"
- Battery fire suppression: the contrarian case for why the wrong system can turn a fire into an explosion
Ask Ko, Modo Energy's AI analyst, about battery storage safety and fire risk: Get started now.
Read the companion article here.
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.
0:00 - What everyone gets wrong about battery fires
2:42 - Battery fire propagation and site design
4:04 - Moss Landing fire: what actually happened
7:04 - LFP vs NMC battery chemistry explained
9:04 - Why lithium iron phosphate isn't "inherently safe"
13:08 - Using data to catch thermal runaway early
15:53 - EPRI's battery failure incident database
16:27 - How battery fire rates fell 99% since 2018
18:58 - What causes battery fires: the 11% vs 65% split
23:26 - Why most battery fires go unreported
28:01 - Inside thermal runaway, minute by minute
34:44 - Fire suppression and the explosion risk
39:09 - The Liverpool battery fire
41:11 - Rethinking battery fire suppression - The atmosphere is unpredictable, and weather forecasts are far more reliable on some days than others. For anyone trading power or gas across Europe, knowing the difference is everything. It's what separates a confident call from an expensive guess.
In this conversation, Ed is joined by Matt Dobson - Head of European Energy Forecasting and Emma Patmore, Energy Meteorologist from MetDesk. They walk us through when they can trust what they're seeing and when they can't, and how they turn an uncertain forecast into something traders can actually act on. Along the way they cover wind droughts (or Dunkelflaute), a possible record El Niño, river levels that shut down power stations, and the rise of AI weather models
They cover
- How weather forecast accuracy isn't fixed: Why a day-ahead wind forecast lands within 10–15% around 80% of the time, but a shifted low-pressure track can swing output 30–40%.
- Dunkelflaute explained: How a blocking high-pressure system causes a wind drought, and why the longest recent German event ran nine days in early November 2024.
- El Niño and energy markets: Why a milder autumn means lower heating demand and gives traders reason to sell Q4 gas.
- AI weather models vs traditional models: why AI is pulling ahead at the 10–20 day horizon while traditional models stay sharper on fine-scale detail.
- Heatwaves and nuclear power: How 40°C heat in France and low river levels force nuclear curtailment and Rhine freight limits, echoing 2022.
Want to see how weather is moving European power and gas prices right now? Ask Ko, Modo Energy's AI analyst: Free sign up: https://modoenergy.com/sign-up?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast_apps&utm_campaign=metdesk&utm_content=ko_signup
Read the companion article here
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.
Chapters
0:00 - How weather forecasting drives energy markets
1:01 - What everyone gets wrong about weather forecasting
1:26 - Why forecast accuracy changes with the time horizon
4:03 - Saharan dust and solar power generation
6:02 - How weather varies over short distances
7:11 - Dunkelflaute explained: wind drought conditions
8:20 - German wind power and the nine-day wind drought
11:08 - Teleconnections: El Nino, ENSO and the MJO
12:54 - Record El Nino forecast and what it means
17:30 - Trading El Nino: gas, hydro and Alpine snow
17:56 - Why traders go short Q4 gas
18:58 - ECMWF data and ensemble forecasting
19:35 - How weather ensembles work: 151 members
21:39 - AI weather models vs traditional forecasting
23:25 - Are weather forecasts getting more accurate?
26:17 - Climate change and weather forecasting
27:50 - French heatwaves and nuclear power curtailment
31:10 - Low Rhine levels and freight restrictions
33:11 - The polar vortex and sudden stratospheric warming
36:15 - The Beast from the East explained
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About Transmission
Transmission is the podcast for energy professionals navigating the global shift to a low-carbon power system. Hosted by Ed Porter, Transmission goes deep on battery storage markets, power market dynamics, and the commercial forces shaping the energy transition - with the people at the centre of it.
Every week, we sit down with the CEOs, heads of trading desks, government advisors, policy architects, and leading practitioners driving change across the industry.
These are practitioner conversations - focused on how markets actually work, where the real opportunities and risks lie, and what the data is telling us.
We cover clean energy investing, capacity markets, balancing mechanism participation, and the evolving regulatory environment that shapes returns across geographies. Our coverage spans Great Britain, Germany, Spain, and the broader European energy transition, with regular episodes dedicated to the specific dynamics of each market.
Transmission tracks the inflection points that matter: when markets shift, where capital is flowing, and what experienced operators are doing next.
We also cover power markets more broadly - interconnectors, flexibility markets, grid infrastructure, and the trading strategies that sophisticated players use to extract value in increasingly complex systems.
Who listens: Transmission is built for people who work in energy - analysts, investors, developers, traders, asset managers, and policy professionals at every stage of their careers.
If you're entering the industry or building your understanding of how battery storage and power markets actually work, Transmission is one of the fastest ways to get up to speed - directly from the people shaping them.
About Modo Energy: Transmission is produced by Modo Energy, a B2B SaaS platform that helps renewable energy companies, funds, utilities, and banks manage and value their energy assets. Specializing in batteries and provides data, analytics, and forecasting to help customers understand the financial performance of their energy assets.
The Modo Energy Terminal is the one-stop shop for teams trying to understand the commercial case for grid-scale battery energy storage - bringing together trusted indices, customizable benchmarks, independent revenue forecasts, in-depth written analysis, and much more.
Guided by the principles of transparency and usability, Modo Energy’s Terminal provides owners, operators, developers and financiers with a complete view of the landscape for storage - past, present, and future - so that users can make informed, bankable decisions about their assets.
Hundreds of organizations rely on Modo’s tools and insights to navigate market trends, optimize investment strategies, and stay ahead of industry shifts. As the storage space continues to evolve, Modo is leading the way - helping businesses unlock the full value of their assets and make smarter decisions in a net-zero future.
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