Registration & Welcome Coffee
Cap, Floor, and the Future of Long Duration Storage
Great Britain's first Long Duration Electricity Storage (LDES) cap and floor scheme has reached its Minded to Decision stage, and Ofgem is at the heart of one of the most significant regulatory move for the storage sector. This keynote will walk through the regulator's rationale for the 16 projects provisionally selected, covering pumped storage hydro, compressed air, lithium ion and vanadium flow batteries, and explain what a roughly 7.65GW LDES portfolio actually means for a grid increasingly reliant on renewables and vulnerable to extended periods of low wind and solar generation.
- How will the cap and floor mechanism work to reduce investment risk without leaving consumers exposed?
- What could a second window look like for developers and asset owners who didn't make the cut this time round?
- How does Ofgem see LDES fitting alongside shorter duration battery storage in GB's flexibility landscape?
From Promises to Performance: What the First Decade of GB BESS Has Taught Us
The UK's first wave of battery assets has now been operating long enough to close the loop between pre-construction assumptions and live outcomes. This panel examines what has changed, what failed and what the industry genuinely knows now, covering grid delay cascades, revenue trajectory versus model, debt risks and the lifecycle decisions that are arriving.
- What investors and asset owners wish developers had prioritised at project inception
- Which pre-construction assumptions have caused the most consistent damage to real-world asset economics and have lenders updated their models accordingly?
- Are the promises made at financial close on degradation, cycling, and availability achievable?
Inside a Real Battery Upgrade Journey: Augment, Repower or Walk Away
The session covers the real decisions operators face once a Gen 1 GB battery site starts showing its age: whether to augment, repower or walk away, what retrofitting costs against a greenfield build, and how to finance an upgrade once the original OEM warranty can no longer be relied on. I will draw on a live upgrade case to show what that decision looks like in practice, and on SolaX's view of what future proofing a site actually means.
- What options are actually open to an operator once a Gen 1 battery starts degrading
- Why grid connections have become the scarcest asset in the country, and what that does to the economics of an old site
- What a real upgrade assessment looks like, and how sizing and duration get decided
- Where planning risk and timing come into an upgrade, and why winter is worth avoiding
- What future proofing looks like from SolaX's side
Fire Standards and Public Perception: Where Is the Industry Up To?
Concerns around battery storage fire safety remain a live issue for policy makers and the public. The National Fire Chiefs Council's fire safety guidance has been updated, DEFRA's environmental permitting framework is starting to take shape, and a new incident reporting framework is getting underway. Alongside this, the Electricity Storage Network, managed by Regen, has just published Battery Energy Storage Systems Explained, a guide designed to give MPs, communities and other stakeholders clear, evidence-based answers on fire safety and nine other frequently raised topics. Industry is responding, but is it enough?
This session asks what myth busting the industry still needs to do, what are they industry initiatives underway, whether local fire services are engaged and prepared, and what role insurers play in shaping safety practice.
- What are the common misconceptions around fire safety?
- What does an asset manager need to have in place today to demonstrate a credible safety risk profile to an insurer?
- How should the industry engage with MPs and local communities, and what part can resources like the new Battery Energy Storage Systems Explained guide play in that?
- Is DEFRA's environmental permitting framework the right approach?
Moderator
Morning Break
Technical Asset Management Stream
Optimisation at Portfolio Scale: Operating Integrated Energy Portfolios
As portfolios grow beyond standalone BESS into hybrid sites, the complexity of coordinating dispatch, tracking performance and managing teams can outpace headcount and system design.
- Best practices for coordinating dispatch across a mixed portfolio of BESS assets, each with different state-of-health, grid constraints and contract structures
- How does asset management change when a site isn't just storage?
- What does integration with EV charging infrastructure add to the operational picture?
- Where should the boundary between in-house and outsourced operations sit for larger, hybrid portfolios (500MW+)?
The LTSA Trap: What Operators Are Getting Wrong
During LTSA negotiations, what clauses create liability: availability thresholds, operating profile compliance windows, OEM warranty stand-still when contractors change, liability caps and the contractual consequences when optimisers push assets beyond their modelled cycling profile.
- Future-proofing LTSAs for augmentation, technology change and evolving regulatory requirements
- When an asset is pushed beyond its contracted cycling profile, who bears the warranty risk?
- How do you maintain warranty protection when transitioning to a new LTSA contractor?
- Are OEM warranties fit for purpose?
Commercial Asset Management Stream
Floor, Toll or Merchant? Structuring Revenue Risk for 2027
What are the trade-offs between tolling, floor agreements and merchant exposure? What does each structure protect against, where does the basis risk lie?
- Why prices were so low this winter and what it means for merchant revenue assumptions going forward
- Transmission Network Use of System (TNUoS) exposure and system constraints: how location-specific charges and curtailment are affecting trading Profit and Loss (P&L)
- Skip rates and volatility: how market interference is undermining the predictability that investors need
- What does the revenue outlook for a two-hour asset look like in 2030, and should the industry be building four-hour now to avoid stranding risk?
Moderator
Premiums Down, Standards Up: Is the Insurance Market Matching BESS Reality
The BESS insurance market is maturing, as fire incident data improves, and burn assessments demonstrate reductions in risk, the question now is how quickly this will change premium pricing. What can asset managers do to make sure their risk is understood and valued accurately?
- What information does the insurance market not have access to, and how can that gap be filled?
- How should asset owners be presenting their cyber risk profile?
- What does a robust warranty structure look like from an insurer's perspective?
- Looking forward, what does the BESS insurance market look like?
Technical Asset Management Stream
Degradation in Practice: What the Real Numbers Are Telling Us
Are assets degrading faster or slower than expected? Where is the gap coming from, and what does it mean for augmentation timing and residual value?
- What does real capacity data look like across GB assets, and how does it compare to what was modelled at financial close?
- Which operating methods (e.g. cycling depth, temperature, dispatch profile) are most closely linked to faster degradation, and were these properly accounted in initial forecasts?
- How are operators using state-of-health data to challenge warranty positions, and where are the biggest discrepancies?
- At what point does degradation change the augmentation business case?
Roundtables: Augmentation, Repowering and Decommissioning Decisions
Assets commissioned in 2015 and 2016 are approaching their first major lifecycle inflection point. No one in GB has fully decommissioned a utility-scale battery, as of April 2026. This roundtable works through the practical questions: how do you value residual equipment, what happens to warranties through augmentation, how is recycling liability allocated in an LTSA written before regulation existed, and what does a bankable repowering look like?
- When to reinstall capacity, when to expand it, and how to build the business case for each
- Warranty continuity, what the OEM requires, and what the LTSA allows
- What does a bankable repowering project look like?
- Is the industry ready for the volume of augmentation decisions that will arrive between now and 2030?
Closed format, maximum 30 delegates. Places are first come, first served - delegates should select this roundtable at registration as spaces cannot be guaranteed on the day.
Commercial Asset Management Stream
The CAPEX Shock: Lessons from the Last Price Cycle
Every few years mispricing hits the BESS supply chain and rewrites project economics. What has the most recent cycle taught us about single-source exposure, index contracts, cell module pricing risk, and multi-sourcing strategies?
- How lithium price spikes and other supply-side shocks affect project economics
- What is expected from a procurement strategy at financial close and how misalignment creates problems down the line
- What does a resilient BESS procurement strategy look like in 2026, and how different is it from what developers were doing three years ago?
Moderator
What Buyers Really Look for When a BESS Asset Changes Hands
BESS Project sales continue to grow, the sellers who get the best price are the ones who understand exactly what a buyer's really values. Anthony Agnew (Green Deck - broker & developer, Yoo Energy – early stage investor) sits down with Tom Blackwood (Octopus Energy Generation – owner of 4.9GW in 21 Countries) and Freddie Ward (Wise Energy - asset manager on 3.5GW in 9 countries) to talk candidly about what buyers scrutinise, what sellers wish they'd known going in, and where value quietly gets lost along the way.
Long-Term Bankability: System Integrators vs. Cell Manufacturers
As the energy storage market matures and global deployment accelerates, understanding what makes suppliers bankable for long-term investments has become increasingly complex.
- Which business model is more financially resilient: vertically integrated manufacturers or flexible system integrators?
- Should bankability metrics prioritize cell production capacity or shipment volume?
- With system integrators now entering the top supplier rankings, do traditional measures focused on manufacturing need to be updated?
- Does supply chain control matter more than flexibility in today's market?
- How can investors ensure suppliers remain committed to energy storage over the asset's 20+ year lifespan?
Afternoon Break
Debt Structuring for BESS: What a 15-Year Lending View Really Looks Like
How do lenders model degradation, augmentation cost and terminal value over a 15-year horizon? This panel looks at how lenders are updating their models, what new covenants look like, and how the gap between developer and lender assumptions at financial close continues to widen.
- How augmentation and repowering decisions impact refinancing options and lender confidence
- How do lenders model degradation curves and augmentation costs over 15 years?
- How are terminal value assumptions evolving as the market matures?
Grid-Scale Risk: Cybersecurity in the BESS Asset Chain
Cyber failures can escalate into grid level stability risks. The Cyber Security and Resilience Bill, currently before Parliament, is shifting cyber resilience from guidance to legal duty. The Smart Secure Electricity Systems (SSES) programme is moving from programme to practice.
- What does the SSES programme mean for asset managers and optimizers managing BESS on behalf of owners?
- Where does liability sit in the BESS asset management chain?
- Cyber risk is no longer confined to IT boundaries: failures in third party platforms, cloud services or device ecosystems can directly impact grid operations. How are operators managing exposure across remote access and third-party vendors?
- The Cyber Assessment Framework (CAF) is the practical standard under both SSES and the Bill. How do you demonstrate compliance that works for regulators and lenders?
Closing Remarks Day One
Evening Drinks Reception Sponsored by SolaX Power
Join us for an exclusive evening drinks reception hosted by SolaX Power. This relaxed networking event brings together all delegates, speakers, and sponsors for an evening of meaningful connections over drinks and canapés. The perfect opportunity to unwind, exchange ideas, and build valuable relationships in an informal setting.
Sponsor
Morning Coffee & Networking
Ireland in Operation: Asset Performance, Market Access and the Road to 2030
With around 1.4GWh of operational BESS across 30 sites, Ireland has roughly double the capacity of 2024. The Scheduling and Dispatch Programme (SDP) launched on 11 November 2025, opened Ireland's wholesale electricity market to batteries for the first time. A 10MW BESS owner could make between 12–37% more revenue over the next decade by participating in the wholesale market. Asset managers now face a more demanding operational environment: active participation across multiple market windows requires operators to forecast, bid, and dispatch.
- How dispatch, regulation and the OEM market differ from GB, and what is the operational experience in a smaller, more utility-dominated market
- With wholesale access now live, what does active optimisation look like in practice?
- Ireland's 2030 targets demand a step-change in duration and capacity, but for assets already in the ground, what does the business case for upgrades look like?
- Where are the real operational chokepoints, and what's being done about them?
The Asset Manager as AI Orchestrator: The Future of BESS Operations
As BESS portfolios grow in scale and complexity, asset managers are being asked to make faster, better-informed decisions across performance, availability, maintenance, warranties, commercial impact, and stakeholder reporting. AI is opening new possibilities for how this work gets done, from faster analysis and reporting to more proactive decision support.
This session explores how AI could transform BESS asset management from reactive, manual coordination into AI-supported operational intelligence. It will look at where AI can add practical value today, what needs to be solved before it can become truly operational, and how the role of the asset manager may evolve as specialist AI assistants become part of the daily operating model.
- Understand how AI could reshape the role of the BESS asset manager as portfolios become larger and more complex.
- Explore where AI can create practical value across asset-management workflows, from analysis and reporting to prioritization and decision support.
- Learn what needs to be solved for AI to move from ad hoc assistance to secure, connected, operational use.
- See how specialist AI assistants could support workflows such as performance monitoring, maintenance, reporting, warranty management, and stakeholder communication.
- Consider why the future of asset management is not autonomous decision-making, but human-led operational intelligence supported by AI.
The Grids Balancing Layer is Now a Cyber Risk
Last winter, in a single day, coordinated attacks hit more than 30 wind and solar farms. Nothing exploded and the turbines kept turning. Yet by the end of that day, the grid operator could no longer see or steer the sites it relied on. The intrusion was later linked to a state-backed group, but its entry points were ordinary weaknesses found in renewable portfolios everywhere.
The part of the grid that keeps supply and demand in balance used to sit in a few staffed control rooms. Today it runs on batteries, renewables, aggregators and cloud platforms, dispatched remotely over the internet and cellular links, often from unmanned sites with vendor access built in. This session takes you inside a real attack on that layer: what happened, why it worked, and why the next target could just as easily be a battery fleet.
- Discover how the shift to thousands of remotely dispatched assets has quietly turned the balancing layer into a cyber target.
- Follow a real attack from first foothold to a blinded grid operator, and see how ordinary each step was.
- Learn why attackers do not need to damage a single battery to cause a grid event, and how quickly the physics takes over once control is lost.
- Find out who else can reach into your sites, from OEMs to aggregators, and what EU and UK regulators will soon expect you to prove.
- Leave with six practical controls that would have stopped this attack, and three questions to ask your team.
Sponsor
Data That Earns Its Keep: From Monitoring to Operational Intelligence
How should asset owners and operators examine what data is collected and what decisions it changes: state-of-health and state-of-charge estimation across mixed battery portfolios, and the difference between a dashboard and a decision-support tool?
- What can be done remotely and what requires on-premises support for real-time trading decisions
- How do you assess whether a third-party analytics platform is delivering operational improvement or just a more attractive dashboard?
- At what point does it make financial sense to invest in independent analytics?
Managing BESS at Scale: Lessons from BW ESS
A candid fireside chat with Emily Taylor from BW ESS on the realities of managing a fast-growing BESS portfolio.
- How does asset management need to evolve as BESS portfolios grow?
- What should owners expect from OEMs, optimisers and other partners?
- How do you maintain visibility and accountability across a growing portfolio?
- Where can technology and AI genuinely support better decision-making?
Sponsor
Morning Break
Technical Asset Management Stream
Benchmarking Your Optimiser: Are You Getting the Best Dispatch Decisions?
How are asset owners benchmarking strategies for route-to-market performance, what skip rates reveal about optimiser capability, the data an asset owner needs to hold their trading counterpart to account, and the emerging practice of multi-optimiser strategies.
- How can the physical condition of the asset affect trading revenues
- How much of underperformance is driven by asset condition, grid constraints or operational limitations?
- What does a contractual framework for a multi-optimiser arrangement look like?
Smarter Sites: AI, Maintenance and Knowing When to Step In
Operators are getting better at catching problems before they turn into downtime, and AI is a big part of that- but technology only goes so far. People still decide what gets fixed, when, and whether it's worth the cost.
- How is AI changing the way operators spot and fix problems?
- How much does good data make a difference?
- What's the right balance between planned maintenance and keeping assets earning?
- What changes when a battery is supporting a data centre?
- Which decisions should always stay with people?
Moderator
Investor Expectations in 2026: What Has Changed Since Financial Close?
Return expectations, risk appetite and what makes a project attractive have all shifted since the first wave of BESS. What signals are investors watching and which assets are attracting follow-on capital?
- Investors have revenue and performance data to work with rather than modelled assumptions. How has that changed the way deals are structured?
- Which assets are attracting follow-on capital, and what do they have in common
- How are investors pricing connection delays into new deals, and has it changed appetite for early-stage exposure?
- What does a credible asset management strategy look like to an investor in 2026
ESG and the Liability Nobody Has Priced
How is recycling cost allocation being handled in LTSAs today, what green metals traceability requirements mean for procurement in 2026, and are the industry's ESG commitments bankable?
- What ESG due diligence on lithium, cobalt and nickel sourcing looks like in practice and how it is being embedded in procurement
- How tariff policy and global trade uncertainty is affecting supply chain ESG assumptions
- How evolving climate risk terrain change, flooding, extreme weather affects the insurance coverage of an asset over a 20-year life and what LTSA adaptability clauses can protect against
- Is ESG a bankability requirement or still primarily a reporting exercise?
- At what point do investors start declining projects that cannot demonstrate supply chain integrity?
LDES, Co-location and the International Question
Ofgem has named the first projects it intends to back under the LDES cap-and-floor scheme. Sixteen projects made the cut, adding up to 7.6GW with durations of 8 to 22 hours, and final awards are expected this autumn. The biggest surprise is the technology: most of the winners are lithium-ion. GB is about to add a new generation of very large, long-duration batteries, and they will earn under a regulated revenue model rather than in the merchant market.
- What do the shortlisted projects look like operationally, and how does a cap-and-floor revenue model change asset management compared with a merchant battery?
- Most of the winners are lithium-ion at eight hours or more. Which practices from two-hour assets carry over, and what will be new for degradation, augmentation, cycling and availability?
- Much of the shortlisted capacity sits in the north of Scotland. How will grid constraints and network charges shape the way these assets are run?
