Energy Transition

Battery storage

An interactive model of how a grid battery charges, discharges and earns — across wholesale arbitrage and contracted capacity and frequency services — and how the spread, cycling and services stack into annual revenue, EBITDA and asset value for an investor.

Energy Transition · Battery storage

What flows through a grid battery — and how it pays

A grid battery makes money three ways: arbitrage — buying power when it's cheap and selling when it's dear — plus contracted capacity-market and frequency-response payments. Watch it charge at the price troughs and discharge at the peaks, with energy and cash flowing both ways, and see how the spread and services stack into EBITDA — net of the degradation that hard cycling causes.

1.5
£60
£40k
LIVE
Charging buy power when cheap Discharging sell when dear (arbitrage) Contracted services £ capacity + frequency Operating cost incl. degradation
Flows — annualised from current assumptionsper year
Revenue p.a.
£0
£0 / hr
EBITDA p.a.
£0
0% margin
Revenue / MWh
£0
per MWh cycled
Energy cycled p.a.
0
1.5 cycles / day
Stocks — what the flows accumulate intolive
State of charge now
0
live, of 100 MWh
EBITDA banked · session
£0
accumulating in real time
Implied enterprise value
£0
at EBITDA
The revenue stack — contracted vs merchant Total £0 p.a.
Contracted
Merchant
Why investors watch the stack: contracted revenue (capacity market + frequency response) is relatively stable; merchant arbitrage rides volatile day-to-day price spreads — higher upside but far less predictable. The mix, the achievable spread and how hard you cycle (which drives revenue but also degradation) are the core dials, and unlike a generator the battery earns nothing of its own — it lives on price differences.
Revenue streams£0 p.a.
Operating costs£0 p.a.
Investment case — should you buy it?DCF returns

Year-1 financials flow live from the simulation above: revenue £0 and EBITDA £0 p.a. Set your deal terms below — the unlevered IRR (asset return) and levered IRR (return to equity, after debt) recompute instantly.

Operating

%
%
%
%
%
%

Valuation & hold

×
×
y

Financing

×
%
%
Unlevered IRR
asset / project return
Levered IRR
return to equity
Equity multiple
MOIC over hold
Equity gain
exit equity − invested
Equity cash-flow profile£m · invested   returned
Projection — £m per year

Illustrative model. Represents a ~50 MW / 100 MWh (2-hour) grid battery, ~85% round-trip efficiency. Revenue = energy cycled × the captured price spread (arbitrage, net of charging cost) + contracted capacity-market and frequency-response payments. Operating costs include an augmentation/degradation provision that rises with cycling, plus O&M, network charges, insurance and rates. EBITDA = revenue − operating costs. The investment case is a simplified DCF: unlevered IRR discounts free cash flow to the firm (EBITDA − cash tax − capex) plus an exit on the EV/EBITDA multiple; levered IRR is the equity cash flow after debt. Battery revenues are volatile and have historically fluctuated sharply. For illustration only — not investment advice, and not any specific asset.