Transmission

Poland has cut coal's share of power generation from 95% to roughly 55% in a decade, with renewables generating over 30% of the country's power last year. That mismatch is already producing negative prices and turning battery storage into one of the country's biggest investment opportunities.
Ed is joined by Tomasz Sęk, Founder and COO of R.Power Renewables, which holds a 1.7GW / 6.3GWh capacity-market-secured storage portfolio, one of the largest in Poland, to unpack how the country's power market is transforming.
They cover:
- Why coal's inflexibility, not its shrinking market share, is now Poland's biggest driver of negative prices and battery arbitrage.
- How Poland's capacity market is evolving as de-rating factors and CapEx fall together, and what that means for the next wave of battery investment.
- Why R.Power blends floor-plus-profit-share deals — including its new Axpo agreement — with full-toll contracts to balance risk and upside
- How solar PPAs are evolving into Hybrid PPAs, as corporates like Amazon and Cisco look for more flexible, peak-shifted power
- How R.Power plans to bring its 1.7GW / 6.3GWh capacity-market-secured portfolio online within 18–24 months, and what's setting the pace
Want to go deeper on the Polish power market? Ask Ko, Modo Energy's AI analyst, for the latest on Polish battery revenues, capacity market results, and grid dynamics.
Transcript available here
Chapters:
0:00 Introduction
1:08 Poland's Coal-to-Renewables Shift
1:57 Perception vs Reality of Poland's Energy Mix
4:52 Negative Prices and Coal's Inflexibility
5:58 Gas Peakers vs Battery Storage
7:45 Poland's Vertically Integrated Power Market
8:46 Day-Ahead vs Intraday Trading in Poland
9:54 Choosing a Route-to-Market Partner
12:06 Capacity Market Explained
13:21 R.Power's 1.7GW / 6.3GWh Portfolio
13:57 De-Rating Factors and Falling CapEx
17:00 Dunkelflaute and the Case for Gas
17:21 The Axpo Deal: Floor Plus Profit Share
19:51 Solar PPAs and the Rise of Hybrid PPAs
20:26 Multi-Technology PPAs and Peak Shifting
22:00 What's Slowing Poland's BESS Rollout
23:46 Poland's Grid Queue vs Texas and China
24:51 One Regulatory Fix: Faster Auctions
26:50 Poland's Cost Advantage

Most people assume Great Britain's grid connection queue works on a first come, first served basis. It doesn't - and that misconception is costing developers time and money. Connections reform was meant to bring clarity to the queue, but projects that were declared protected and pushed to the front are still missing their connection dates, and new contract disputes are now stalling projects that should already be moving. It all comes down to what actually gets built — and whether Britain can get anywhere close to Clean Power 2030.
Catherine Cleary, Specialist Connections Engineer at Roadnight Taylor and a returning Transmission guest, joins Ed Porter to unpack what's really determining who connects to the grid, and when.
They cover:
- Why the grid connection queue isn't ordered by application date and how a 20MW battery project can end up waiting behind a nuclear power station for the same network reinforcements.
- Why gate two offers under TMO4+ are going out with technical errors, and why fixing something as small as a typo can take months once you're one of hundreds of affected projects.
- Why NESO's oversubscription numbers might be the wrong problem to solve, and what bay sharing could do instead.
- Why data centres and other demand customers are pushing for independent transmission owner (ITO) status, and what Ofgem's latest signal means for future connections.
- Catherine's contrarian take after 15 years in the industry: why Britain might be about to build too much grid, not too little.
Want to go deeper on grid connections and battery build-out? Sign up for free to Ko, Modo Energy's AI analyst https://modoenergy.com/product/ko?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast_apps&utm_campaign=catherine_cleary&utm_content=ko_signup
Chapters:
0:00 Introduction
1:13 Two myths about the grid connection queue
2:05 Queue order vs. connection order: nuclear vs. battery example
3:34 The 4.9MW de minimis threshold loophole
4:12 TMO4+ and connections reform: from design exercise to rollout
6:41 Gate two offer errors and technical query delays
9:05 Clean Power 2030 deliverability under connections reform
13:37 Engineering capacity for 30GW of battery storage
16:01 Bay sharing and hybrid project connections
17:49 CMP470: the oversubscribed technology commitment fee
22:04 Co-location, AC/DC coupling and TMO4+ shortcomings for hybrids
25:15 Fixing TMO4+ for hybrids: the parent/child concept
28:05 Data centre and demand connections vs. generation
33:39 Politics, policy and the connections queue
36:35 Contract delays: the new longest pole in the tent
39:16 The case for independent transmission owners (ITOs)
41:50 Contrarian view: are we building too much grid?

Battery storage costs have fallen by two-thirds since 2022 and the cell chemistry currently dominates the grid barely existed at scale five years ago, and the same disruption could be about to happen again. Meanwhile, the supplier market is fragmenting rather than consolidating and the biggest names today aren't guaranteed to stay on top.
Marek Kubik has watched these shifts happen from inside the industry since the early days. He joins Ed to explain why the balance of power in battery storage keeps changing, and what's coming next.
They cover
Why battery storage costs have fallen two-thirds since 2022 - and why that could be about to reverse.
The real reason CATL's battery market share has dropped from 32% to 20%.
Why sodium-ion batteries could repeat LFP's rapid takeover of grid-scale storage.
How battery container design is changing again, from bigger cells to taller stacks.
The battery duration limit everyone assumed was fixed - until 16-18 hour systems broke it.
Want to dig deeper into battery cell chemistry and pricing trends? Ask Ko, Modo Energy's AI analyst
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
01:50 Saudi Arabia battery storage market update
02:16 UAE 24/7 renewable energy project
03:18 Solar plus battery storage economics explained
05:10 Battery storage prices: are we near the floor?
06:38 Lithium carbonate prices and battery raw material costs
08:22 Battery storage cost per kilowatt-hour explained
11:07 China battery prices and the race to $50/kWh
13:36 Sodium-ion batteries vs LFP: the next chemistry shift
21:18 CATL market share and battery supply chain competition
26:14 Battery procurement trends and container design innovation
29:39 Battery storage service, warranties and spare parts
30:54 Lessons from a decade in battery storage
32:09 Long duration energy storage and the Ofgem LDES scheme
34:48 How much renewable energy storage is enough?
38:18 Flow batteries, iron-air and CO2 energy storage
39:32 Sodium-ion's future in grid-scale battery storage

GB Energy's £1 million solar investment freed up savings a Hull hospital had left on the table for years. It's an example of what can happen when a state-backed investor takes risks the market won't.
GB Energy calls itself an activist investor, built to put public money behind the frontiers where private capital moves too slowly: deepwater wind, long duration storage, public sector solar. The interesting question now is how far this model can scale, and how well it keeps sharing that risk with private capital as it grows.
Dan McGrail, CEO of Great British Energy, joins Ed Porter to explain how Britain's state-owned energy company decides where to invest, and why it's taking on the risks private money won't take first.
They cover:
- Why the "activist investor" model can justify riskier bets than pure-return investors would take - and where that logic stops making sense
- How to identify an investment "frontier": the areas of high ambition where private capital isn't moving fast enough to hit national targets
- What a queue of 50GW+ in unsolicited co-investment enquiries reveals about investor appetite for state-backed risk-sharing
- Why community-owned local energy can outperform national schemes on economic impact - one Orkney turbine now funds housing, buses and insulation
- Why chasing niche global market share, not local content quotas, may be the smarter industrial strategy for competing with China
Got a question about the build-out of batteries, solar or wind in GB or Europe? That's what Ko is for - sign up to try for free.
Transcript available here
You can watch or listen to new episodes every Tuesday. Transmission is a Modo Energy production. Your host is Ed Porter - Director EMEA & APAC at Modo Energy.
Chapters
00:00 £1m Solar Saving At A Hull Hospital
00:43 Guest Introduction: Dan McGrail, CEO Of GB Energy
01:11 GB Energy's Company Model And DESNZ Ownership
02:42 Investment Committee Discipline Vs Government Thinking
03:23 The "Frontiers" Strategy Explained
07:44 Floating Wind And The Deepwater Frontier
09:03 ScotWind, Rising Costs And Investor Confidence
12:33 Three Strategic Pillars: Offshore, Onshore, Local
19:56 Public Entrepreneurship Vs Maximising Profit
21:17 The Siemens Story: Why Private Capital Wants In
22:35 50GW Of Unsolicited Investment Enquiries
26:00 Electrically Qualified Workers And The Skills Gap
30:45 Shapinsay's Community-Owned Wind Turbine
34:34 Solar On Hospitals And Schools
37:16 Balancing Solar With Battery Storage
39:56 GB Energy's £8.3 Billion Budget: Progress So Far
41:14 Contrarian View: Industrial Legacy Over Cheap Energy