Podcast: Batteries are undermining dominance of gas-fired power plants
What will happen to the electricity market when 20 gigawatts of additional battery storage comes to the grid? Leonhard Gandhi (Fraunhofer ISE, Energy Charts) ran the numbers using the electricity price simulator: In the simulation for 2025, the number of hours with prices above 200 €/MWh drops from 169 to 20. The electricity price simulator uses historical exchange data and adds bids from battery storage systems. In this way, it shows what the day-ahead price would have looked like with more storage capacity.
Among other things, we explain:
- Why the average electricity price barely drops, but price spikes and curtailment do
- Why batteries are good at smoothing out short spikes but reach their limits during longer periods
- What this means for gas-fired power plants and dependence on the price of gas
- How large-scale batteries are financed and whether they cannibalize each other
- What role they play in grid expansion
- How much battery capacity will be needed by 2030
Find the new “Geladen”-Episode here: https://youtu.be/0TDyre-iceM?si=MuOziHaAs9Mq0Rxj
