Post by Sympower

As Greece sits on over 4 GW of BESS pipeline, will its balancing markets experience the same rapid saturation we’ve seen in the Nordics? 🔋 The short answer is yes, but at a slower pace, simply because of the structural design of the Greek markets. Our Senior Portfolio Manager Konstantinos Souloutzidakis S. weighs in👇 "Nordic balancing is capacity-based. The fixed pool of capacity gets split between participants. Once it is split, the energy activation on top is close to zero. When volumes are tight and the market design is efficient, that pool fills fast; Finland saw products saturate in as little as three months. Greece operates differently: a second layer of highly activated energy sits on top of the capacity split. In Greece, we have one of the highest activation levels of balancing products, and we observe constant real-time balancing needs, with significant volumes activated in both directions. The market pays for energy actually delivered, which creates an important additional revenue stream, particularly for flexible assets. As for the already live subsidised BESS projects, they have little incentive to chase aggressive multi-market participation: with a contract for difference and government support behind them, many may sit safely on the wholesale side, which keeps the balancing market less crowded than it would otherwise be. The near-term read is genuinely strong. During the upcoming two-year window, a Battery Energy Storage System participating across markets could significantly benefit from balancing revenue opportunities."