Bozkurt Aydinoglu ist Head of Energy Storage at Aukera BV. Bozkurt verfügt über mehr als 20 Jahre Erfahrung in den Bereichen Unternehmensführung, Investitionen und Entwicklung im Bereich erneuerbare Energien und Batteriespeichern. Er war Mitbegründer von Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Er war auch einer der ersten Partner von Hazel Capital LLP, einem Pionier im Bereich BESS im Vereinigten Königreich, das 2017 an Gresham House verkauft wurde, wo Bozkurt Investment Director wurde. Bozkurt Aydinoglu is Head of Energy Storage at Aukera BV. Bozkurt has over 20 years of entrepreneurial, investment and development experience in renewable energy and battery storage. He co-founded and launched Bloomberg New Energy Finance. He was also one of the first partners of Hazel Capital LLP, a pioneer in UK BESS, which was sold to Gresham House in 2017 where he became Investment Director.

Is Germany an interesting market for battery storage project developers? More generally, which are the most attractive markets at the moment? 

Bozkurt Aydinoglu: Aukera Energy sees Germany as an attractive market for BESS projects. The rapid growth is renewable generation, with more to come, requires a large amount of BESS capacity to be deployed. Existing, operational BESS projects are earning high revenues from the ancillary services market at the present time, but even as that market saturates, BESS projects will be able to earn strong returns from trading energy in the wholesale power markets. Another factor that makes Germany attractive is the availability of several route-to-market options that also include structures that allow easier senior debt financing. The one negative in Germany is the difficulty of obtaining import capacity on the electricity grid. DNOs and TSOs seem to view BESS as being an importer and exporter and require the developers to demonstrate that adding the BESS project to the system will not contribute to instability. In our view, a more valid approach would be to take into account that a BESS project is likely to contribute to system stability buy doing the opposite of actors on the system that only export or only import. At Aukera Energy we stand ready to demonstrate the positive contributions that BESS could bring to system stability.

We also see Italy, Romania, Belgium and Greece as attractive markets for BESS with Spain expected to follow suit.

In your experience, which legal and/or regulatory framework condition is most likely to hinder the ramp-up of battery storage systems?

Bozkurt Aydinoglu: We see the following as obstacles in the deployment of BESS. 

1. A transmission and distribution cost allocation framework that does not recognize that BESS projects are a contributor to system stability and can help TSOs and DNOs achieve savings on upgrading grid infrastructure
2. A framework that treats a BESS project in the same way as any importer and imposes costs such as green energy tariffs on imported electricity even though that electricity will be re-exported to the grid.
3. A framework that discriminates against BESS projects when it comes to trading in wholesale markets, particularly balancing markets.
4. Legal and regulatory frameworks that do not put sufficiently strong obligations on TSOs and DNOs to grant connection capacity and help connect projects within reasonable timescales.
5. More generally, a framework which is not stable and subject to frequent change.

In what order would you rank the following four conditions in terms of their importance for the success of a battery storage project? Financing - Revenue Streams - Project Location - Technology Risk?

Bozkurt Aydinoglu: In decreasing order of importance: Revenue streams, Financing, Project location and Technology risk.