Quick answer
A commercial battery can make several thousand pounds a year or more from trading, but there is no safe standard figure for every site. The result depends on spare inverter power, usable battery energy, site demand, meter setup, connection limits, prices and fees. Get a site-specific forecast before promising a number.
A commercial battery can earn several thousand pounds a year or more from trading, but you should not put a generic £/kW or £/MW figure into your quote. So your client has verifiable and believable figures to work from, let us work out the potential revenue by checking the battery, the half-hourly site data, the meter setup, the connection limits and the customer’s expected share after fees.
Clients can earn money in two ways through trading:
- Export route: The battery discharges and the site exports electricity to the grid. The export MPAN, export agreement and DNO limit need to allow this.
- Metered-change route: The trading software sends the battery a different charge or discharge instruction, so the site’s half-hourly meter records a different import or export amount from what was expected. Your client receives payment for that eligible meter change.
Do not use a grid-scale £/MW figure as the client forecast
Published GB battery revenue figures are usually shown in pounds per MW of power per year. They often cover large batteries earning from several markets, including wholesale trading, the Balancing Mechanism, frequency response and Capacity Market payments.
A commercial battery behind a site meter may also need to:
- Discharge into the building during expensive tariff periods
- Store surplus solar
- Reduce demand peaks
- Keep a minimum reserve for backup
- Stay inside the import and export limits
- Keep within the battery warranty and cycling rules
The base of any trading estimate is what remains available for trading after those site uses, connection limits and battery rules have been allowed for. Check these three things:
- How much inverter/PCS power is still available
- How much usable battery capacity is still available
- Whether the site has enough import or export headroom for the trade
For example, a battery may have a 200 kW inverter, but the site might need 120 kW of that power for peak shaving. That leaves no more than 80 kW for a trade at that point.
The battery also needs enough usable kWh to keep charging, discharging or exporting at 80 kW for the full trading period. The inverter/PCS rating alone does not tell you that.
Do not take a grid-scale £/MW figure from a market report, scale it down to the client’s inverter size and use that as the income forecast. That shortcut misses the client’s site data, meter setup, connection limits and spare battery capacity.
Check what the battery can really make available
A headline battery size or inverter rating is not enough on its own to create a reliable and verifiable proposal. Before you put a trading figure into the proposal, please gather the following information and send it to GridVolt:
- Inverter/PCS power in kW
- Usable battery capacity in kWh
- State of charge when a trading window appears
- Minimum battery reserve
- Half-hourly site demand
- Spare import and export headroom
- Meter and settlement status
- Electricity tariff and export rate
- Battery availability and warranty limits
- Trading fees or revenue share
Your client is more likely to generate income when their site has spare inverter power, usable stored energy and headroom on import or export headroom during half-hours when the price of electricity is high or low enough to trade. If their site uses most of the stored battery power, there is an export limit that restricts discharge or there are fewer half-hours where the price is high or low enough to trade, making money is harder.
GridVolt checks the battery, inverter/PCS, meter, site load and what remains available for trading when creating estimates for clients and installers. On many sites, making several thousand pounds a year in trading income is possible but don’t promise any figure until we have confirmed it for you. That’s because clients lose trust faster in suppliers whose initial estimates come back lower after inspection.
Related questions
What battery trading income can we put in a GB commercial proposal?
Is quoted battery trading revenue gross or net of fees and revenue share?