MISO's 2026 load forecast projects 63% energy growth by 2046, driven by data centers and flat-load manufacturing. Peak demand grows only 2.0% annually. The system gets tighter on capacity, not peakier on timing. That changes what storage gets paid for.

NYISO demand rises 55% through 2049, but gas generation nearly doubles to 114 TWh and its share climbs from 42% to 53%. Renewables reach only 22% of supply. The model favors gas as cheapest firm capacity, with front-of-meter solar not appearing until 2040.

Why are we turning down Scottish wind farms? Check out the Modo Energy documentary here: youtu.be/vX7ZOn3KKfU?...

MISO's 314 GW interconnection queue shrinks to 68 GW of realistic buildout by 2031 once you apply withdrawal probability and locational constraints. Gas and solar split evenly at 27 GW and 28 GW each. Historical withdrawal rate runs 73%.

What's one mistake people always make when thinking about financing battery storage? youtube.com/shorts/qDy5d...

🎧 Transmission: Battery storage looks like infrastructure but banks treat it as a trading position. Lisa McDermott at ABN AMRO walks through what actually gets BESS deals approved in Europe: enough sponsor equity, technical track records that hold up, and warranties covering the full debt tenor.

SPP batteries claimed 8% of Regulation Up procurements by December 2025, the RTO's highest-paid ancillary service at $13.50/MW. These assets only began commercial operations that year. Fast response capability is scarce in the ancillary market, and batteries are capturing that premium.

ERCOT BESS fleet crossed 15 GW in Q1 2026, but the 1.1 GW quarterly addition trails the 1.7-2.1 GW pace from late 2025. Queue withdrawals are accelerating as financing tightens. The gap between interconnection queue capacity and viable projects keeps widening.

GB battery storage fleet hit 7.2 GW in Q1 2026. The difference between 20.4 GW and 22.8 GW by 2029 comes down to one thing: how fast the connection queue clears. Everything else is secondary.

NEM battery additions fell to 70 MW in Q1 2026, the lowest in two years. But both projects signal structural shifts: Limondale is the first 8-hour battery, and Quorn Park is the first hybrid under AEMO's new framework. 3 GW sits in commissioning.

A battery gold rush? youtube.com/shorts/la-zB...

Gas prices are up since the Iran war started — and that's widening daily power spreads across Europe. Good news for batteries: cheaper midday solar, pricier evening peaks set by gas. More work to do to knock out gas in those peaks.

NEM battery capture rates fell to 52.8% in Q1 2026, the lowest in 12 months. Mild peak demand and weak evening prices cut revenue opportunity across the fleet. Queensland outperformed, but optimiser quality became the main differentiator when volatility dropped.

GB battery revenues jumped 69% in March as gas prices spiked on Iran supply concerns. The mechanism is straightforward: wider spreads between peak and off-peak prices, plus higher ancillary service rates. Effect size varies sharply across Europe though.

SPP batteries are capturing $8-10/kW-month in bilateral capacity contracts, nearly double the $4.7/kW market average. NextEra's four new projects secure payments from Google, municipal utilities, and co-ops. All bundle storage with wind or solar. Hybrid stacking is driving the premium.

NYISO upstate capacity prices rose 150% year-over-year in March 2026, while NYC's fell 11%. RCP convergence ran through UCAP spot prices and higher CAFs. Real-time spreads averaged $182/MW-day versus $120 day-ahead: batteries capturing volatility outperformed reference benchmarks.

PJM Real-Time TB4 spreads averaged $341/MW-day in March, down from $510 in February. But median spreads still ran 28% above March 2025, and transmission constraints kept Mid-Atlantic batteries capturing roughly double the spreads of Midwest zones.

🎧 Transmission: Let me analyze the episode and craft a post that follows all the rules. Key insight: Tolls don't actually remove risk in battery storage - they redistribute it, and availability penalties can exceed merchant revenue losses. This is a contrarian point that challenges conventional wis

CAISO battery revenues hit $3.70/kW-month in March, nearly double February. A heat dome lifted demand 7% year-over-year and restored daily price shape. But year-over-year, revenues fell 29% from March 2025. Seasonal weather still matters, yet structural spreads have not recovered.

ERCOT batteries averaged $3.94/kW-month in January 2026, highest since May 2025, driven by Storm Fern volatility. Top 10% captured $5.91/kW-month. March shifted: renewables flattened midday prices, stronger evening discharge capped peaks. Energy arbitrage compressed 31% year-on-year.

Spain's intraday continuous market traded 1.6 TWh in Q4 2025. Germany's ran 30 TWh. For battery developers, Spain's low liquidity means cross-market optimisation across day-ahead, secondary, and tertiary markets will drive returns, not continuous spreads alone.

ISO-NE March RT spreads hit $278/MW-day, up 31 percent year over year. A five-day cold front tightened Algonquin pipeline supply in early March. Maine's high wind penetration and north-south transmission constraints mean DA prices get depressed there, while RT dispatch captures the spread.

MISO Indiana Hub real-time spreads hit $288/MW-day in March, up 38% year over year. A single scarcity event on the 17th drove it. Prices spiked to $1,288/MWh when wind collapsed post-storm, then fell back to $30/MWh by noon.

Poland's utility-scale battery pipeline sits at 12.5 GW across 89 projects. But PSE's transmission grid has zero available connection capacity at every substation through 2031. Only 66 of 397 projects with conditions have signed agreements. Pipeline compression is coming.

🎧 Transmission: Most BESS revenue forecasts aren't actually wrong. The problem is using a valuation forecast as if it's a fixed cash flow when the project goes live. Developers who design for that uncertainty from the start rather than after the fact are the ones that survive.

Great Britain. Battery revenues hit £70k/MW/year in March, driven almost entirely by Balancing Mechanism trading at £46k/MW/year. Gas price volatility from Middle East tensions created the spreads batteries exploit. Arbitrage between wholesale and BM is now the dominant strategy.

NEM battery revenues hit $44k/MW/year in March 2026, down 19% month-on-month. Mild demand and fleet competition compressed energy spreads across all mainland states. Shoulder months are predictable, but the convergence of regional performance is worth noting ahead of winter volatility.

ERCOT battery revenues fell 84% to $30/kW in 2025 due to mild weather and 14 GW of saturation. But this low-revenue environment is conditional on today's supply/demand mix. Load growth and potential thermal retirements could restore scarcity within 2-4 years.

How often did gas set the GB power price for March? This is a tracker for when the day-ahead price exceeds the SRMC of the most efficient CCGT in the system. It's a proxy for gas setting the wholesale price. It shows that the influence of gas on wholesale prices is declining in GB.

🎧 Transmission: Africa needs 100 GW of new capacity this decade. Battery storage is the fastest way to get there, but most of what outsiders think about these markets is wrong. Michael Cupit spent eight years getting a single project operational in Malawi.

France's solar capture rate fell from 97% of baseload price in 2022 to 60% in 2025. The CRE's new tender framework allows co-located batteries to charge from PV during negative-price hours. It shifts the problem from subsidy cost to developer incentive.

SPP's battery fleet hit 550 MW in December. The region queued 54 GW but only 1% built. Skeleton Creek's 252 MW shows the Surplus pathway works fast. Question is whether the new Consolidated Planning Process finally unclogs the remaining 53.5 GW.

Fun price spread for mid-afternoon in GB where the buy price is below the sale price for domestic supply. All I need is to find 90GWh or so and I’ll have made a million. Those evening peaks are also quite spicy, ideal for batteries 🔋🌶️

Spain's day-ahead market stayed calm during a 62% gas price spike, but the story doesn't end there. CCGTs rarely clear day-ahead but re-enter through technical restrictions needed for grid reliability, adding 78% of CCGT generation. Gas costs still reach consumers, just through a different channel.

NYISO capacity prices for four-hour battery storage jump from $248/kW-year in 2026 to $723/kW-year by 2049. But here's the trap: battery-specific revenue moves the opposite way. Accreditation factors degrade faster than headline prices rise.

Poland recorded over 300 hours of negative prices in 2025, more than double Great Britain's 149. Coal still sets marginal price, but solar's rapid growth is forcing thermal units to bid negative or shut down. Battery storage economics are shifting fast.

Great Britain. 21 GW of solar online. Battery revenues fell 84% on 8 July versus 3 July as solar hit record 14 GW. Solar capture rates projected to fall from 89% to 68% this decade. That cannibalisation is why CfDs were needed to sustain the 45 GW by 2030 target.

🎧 Transmission: Biomethane supplies just 1% of UK gas demand today. But could it reach 30% by 2050? In this episode, Future Biogas CEO Philipp Lukas explains how anaerobic digestion could turn organic waste into clean gas for industry, heating, and hard-to-decarbonise sectors.

NEM. Four-hour BESS is now the default investment choice. Two-hour projects return 6-8% IRR; four-hour systems hit 10-11.5%. Fleet average duration passed 2 hours in late 2025 and will exceed 3 hours by 2029. Falling capex premiums and compressing spreads explain the shift.

🎧 Transmission: Great Britain's largest battery just connected to the grid. But building it required far more than megawatts and megawatt-hours. Lisa MacKay, COO at Fidra Energy, shares what it takes to deliver storage at scale.

If you’re new to the Transmission podcast… Check out our new landing page modoenergy.com/transmission... With episode notes and transcripts if you’re looking for summaries.

SPP's 151 GW interconnection queue just got redesigned. FERC approved the Consolidated Planning Process in March 2026, merging transmission planning and generator interconnection. SPP now identifies where capacity is needed, then invites bids. Faster path for stuck projects.

CAISO's battery fleet hit 15.7 GW in Q4 2025, with 1.24 GW added that quarter alone. SP15 (Southern California) now holds 77% of all capacity. Arizona projects are expanding outside state lines. Full breakdown of regional buildout patterns and pipeline activity.

🎧 Transmission: 80% of clean energy projects fail in development. Not because ideas are bad, but because the process is broken: sequential, fragmented, slow.

When we’re looking to reduce gas consumption. Here’s March for my PV, heat pump, battery system with no gas heating. Roughly, 40% reduction of grid load and no gas on site. Total gas reduction is higher as grid around 25% gas atm.

Poland. Capacity market payments for BESS collapsed 85% by 2025, yet the largest BESS auction on record cleared 5.1 GW. Developers are pivoting from capacity contracts to merchant revenues. Day-ahead arbitrage and ancillary services now drive the investment case.

NEM. Battery storage jumped from 2 GW to 5.6 GW in 2025. As BESS scales from 5% to nearly 40% of peak demand by 2028, the investment calculus is shifting fast. What does this mean for your project economics?

🎧 Transmission: Tax insurance is quietly enabling billion-dollar clean energy deals by transferring IRS risk from developers to insurers.

🎧 Transmission: The power grid is getting harder to forecast. More renewables, weather shocks, and zero margin for error. Sean Kelly from Amperon joins us to explore how better forecasting of net demand is reshaping energy markets from Texas to Europe.

🎧 Transmission: How do major renewable operators decide what clean energy projects get built? Lolita Carry from Engie explains how they manage a 20GW pipeline across ERCOT, PJM, MISO, and CAISO.