Agenda

California has seen a surge in battery energy storage system (BESS) deployments, but with it comes a growing concern over safety, particularly in light of recent high-profile battery fires.

This session dives into a groundbreaking case study led by Cleantech San Diego, which tackled these challenges head-on through a comprehensive public research initiative. With 850+ respondents participating in online surveys and detailed stakeholder interviews, the findings reveal that 65% of respondents support the shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy and 57% support battery storage projects in their own neighborhoods.

How asset owners are building their data and control infrastructure, and where the gaps are.

• What does a mature software stack look like for a fleet operator?
• EMS, SCADA, and analytics tools often come from different vendors, how should they communicate with each other?
• Vendor versus in-house- where is the right line, and how do you avoid being locked in either direction?
• What are the practical applications of AI and LLMs in asset management today - and what is still hype?
• How can BESS operators borrow from wind and solar asset managers who are further ahead on software maturity?

The regulatory patchwork facing BESS operators and the industry's campaign for a national baseline that doesn't punish emerging markets.

• How does a single thermal incident ripple into contract amendments, augmentation requirements, and performance obligations across a fleet?
• Should California's codes become the de facto national standard, or would applying them universally set the bar too high for markets that are just getting started?
• What is the industry's realistic path to federal standardisation, and what are the political and commercial blockers?
• What should asset owners be doing now to future-proof against codes that don't exist yet?
• How are insurance markets responding to evolving safety standards, and what does that mean for project economics?

• Where is new deployment happening and where has it stalled? A market-by-market financial snapshot across CAISO, ERCOT, PJM, and MISO. 
• The safe-harbor runway is finite. What does the supply of new compliant projects look like from 2027 onward, and how does scarcity affect asset pricing? 
• Load growth continues to accelerate. Where are power prices moving, and what does that mean for merchant revenue assumptions and project IRRs? 

• Construction lending has narrowed sharply. Which lenders are still active, at what leverage ratios, and for which revenue structures? 
• Private credit providers are facing pressure, including portfolio stress from borrowers. How is this affecting capital availability for renewable and storage projects, and at what cost? 
• Hyperscalers have been borrowing enormous sums from the same private credit funds that finance energy projects. Is tech borrowing crowding out renewable capital, and how is this showing up in deal terms? 
• What does a bankable project look like in 2026? Revenue structure, compliance status, and interconnection certainty all determine debt sizing. Where is the bar today? 

• Load growth is outpacing generation faster than anyone predicted. Data centers, electrification, and industrial demand are driving electricity consumption beyond the grid's current capacity. So who closes the gap, and how fast? 
• Data centers want firm power. Batteries are increasingly central to delivering it but reliability requirements go beyond what standard utility offtake is built to meet 
• Load growth plays out differently by market. Which of ERCOT, CAISO, PJM, and MISO are best positioned to absorb new generation quickly and where is the mismatch most acute? 
• For investors, timing is everything. Projects ready now and opportunities beyond 2028 are being treated as entirely different investment categories. What does the load growth story mean for asset valuations today? 

A proposal for the metrics the industry should agree on before the lack of standardisation becomes a systemic problem.

• You can't improve what you can't measure: what are the three to five KPIs the industry should standardize first?
• Availability, round-trip efficiency, and state-of-health all mean different things to different stakeholders- how do we fix that?
• What would a benchmarking industry look like, and who would need to be in the room to make it work?
• How do large portfolio owners and utilities approach KPI tracking differently from single-asset operators, and what can the market learn from them?

Bridging the gap between what OEMs promise and what asset owners experience on the ground.

• What do asset owners forget to consider when setting expectations with OEMs at procurement, and what should they be asking for instead?
• Single integrated OEM versus best-of-breed: in which scenarios does hardware-software-service integration benefit the operator?
• How are fleet operators making the vendor-versus-in-house decision on operations and software ownership?

• Battery self-cannibalization has been one of the more identifiable traits in some grid operator markets. Meanwhile, with over 19GW of BESS in ERCOT as well as 14GW in CAISO, ancillary revenues have compressed. How should forward curves and debt service models be adjusted? 
• What are the debt repayment implications when battery operational availability underperforms underwriting assumptions? 
• What floor and swap structures are giving lenders enough revenue certainty to size debt? 
• Storage accreditation directly determines capacity revenue potential. What Effective Load Carrying Capability (ELCC) outcomes are developers seeing, and how is this affecting investor return models? 

• California has one of the largest VPP programs in the country. How are VPP aggregators monetising distributed batteries, and what does the revenue per unit look like for project sponsors? 
• Distribution grid constraints are creating a sub-20MW storage opportunity in California urban markets. How is this financed differently from utility-scale, and what returns are investors seeing? 
• When does VPP participation add bankable revenue for lenders, and what contractual structures make it work? 

• How big is the gap between lab-tested and field-tested performance, and why are OEM degradation curves consistently optimistic?
• Augmentation strategy: when is it more cost-effective to augment, and when have you simply over-cycled the asset?
• How do cycling decisions made in year one affect capacity, warranty, and revenue in years ten through twenty?
• What does a realistic 20-year performance model look like, and which assumptions are most frequently wrong at financial close?
• Second-life use cases, field service after warranty expiry, and the emerging end-of-life economy: what should asset owners be planning for now?

Howthe market evolves as supply grows, demand shifts, and new storage technologies emerge.

• Are utilities willing to offer the resource adequacy terms that make long-duration projects bankable, and what would shift their position?
• Where does long-duration energy storage fit in the stack as lithium-ion dominates the near term?
• Data centers as integrated utilities and captive BESS customers: how should developers be thinking about this segment, and what does rapid deployment at scale do to the broader market?
• Will standalone BESS companies continue to exist, or will the future be dominated by solar-plus-storage developers and vertically integrated utilities?

How to hire, train, and retain the operational talent the industry needs.

• Where is BESS operational talent coming from (gas plants, real estate, solar), and what does conversion require?
• What should a 'battery curriculum’ cover, and is there appetite for an industry-wide training standard?
• How do you build a team that can both deliver bad news to stakeholders and solve complex technical problems under pressure?

What should asset owners be planning for, and who is building the infrastructure to handle it?

• What does a realistic decommissioning plan look like for a utility-scale BESS asset?
• Which battery chemistries and degradation profiles make second-life viable, and which make it a liability?
• What recycling infrastructure exists today, what is coming, and how should asset owners be factoring end-of-life obligations into project economics now?
• How are regulators and insurers beginning to treat battery end-of-life risk, and what disclosure standards are emerging?

• Rising premiums and coverage exclusions are affecting project bankability. What is the cost impact on project debt sizing and returns in catastrophe-exposed markets like California? 
• Tax equity basis step-up insurance, FEOC-related products, and parametric weather instruments are emerging. Which are gaining traction with lenders, and what do they actually cover? 
• How are independent engineers and lenders incorporating insurance gap analysis into project underwriting? 

• Is it a buyer's or seller's market? Where are bid-ask spreads widest, and what is driving valuation divergence between operational assets and development-stage projects? 
• How are interest rates, interconnection costs, FEOC compliance status, and supply chain constraints affecting deal pricing and timing? 
• Where is transaction activity concentrated, and what IRR are investors underwriting for acquisition today versus 24 months ago? 

Small-group discussions on topics voted during online registration.

Candidates include: end-of-life planning (decommissioning, reuse, recycling); asset acquisition and change-of-hands due diligence; third-party versus in-house operations; workforce development and attracting talent from adjacent industries; and practical AI applications in day-to-day operations. Votes cast at registration shape which topics run.

• Quick-fire presentations from project developers in front of a panel of capital provider judges, detailing the financing, investment, and acquisition opportunities they are currently seeking in the US market. 
• Developers will make their case directly to a panel of capital provider judges, who will respond with their current investment appetite across asset classes, transaction sizes, and power markets. 

• With solar ITCs and storage credits expiring in the shorter to medium term, for hybrid projects, can storage ITC be structured to finance the solar component, and how are lenders treating this? 
• Without ITC, what PPA rates do offtakers need to offer to make a solar project viable? Are any utilities or hyperscalers already signalling willingness to move on pricing? 
• Post-ITC projects have more freedom from FEOC sourcing requirements but still face anti-dumping, counterveiling duties (AD/CVD) and cybersecurity obligations. How does the cost structure change, and are project economics better or worse? 
• The industry has long depended on tax credits. Is post-2027 solar the moment it must stand on its own economics, and what does that project look like?