Uploaded July 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Battery storage is getting cheaper. Its operating data may still be wrong.
When capacity is misread, penalties stack and returns unravel.
I’m joined by Ashutosh Vats of 3E, who works on battery intelligence for utility-scale storage. His focus is the difficult space between what a battery management system reports, what the physical asset can genuinely deliver, and what owners and traders promise to the market.
This matters because battery deployment is accelerating as grids absorb more solar and wind, negative prices spread, and flexibility becomes essential. Yet a battery is both infrastructure and a financial asset. If its usable capacity is misread, the consequences move quickly: imbalance charges, lost capacity payments, extra cycling, warranty disputes and unnecessary oversizing.
Several points changed how I think about this. Ash says some customer batteries showed about 30% faulty cells before operation. In LFP systems, estimated state of charge can be 15–30% off. And when a delivery forecast misses by 10%, the downside can be much worse because the penalties stack. The deeper lesson is organisational: the asset owner sees a year, the trader sees a minute, and the asset manager sees a week. Without one shared operational truth, all three can make rational decisions that damage the same asset.
We also examine revenue stacking, battery degradation, warranty enforcement, digital twins, flow batteries, longer-duration storage, grid inertia markets and the four capabilities operators need before scaling a mixed battery portfolio.
This is not a conversation about adding another dashboard. It is about knowing what the hardware can deliver before selling capacity the battery does not have.
This is for energy executives, asset owners, investors, policymakers, storage developers and operators responsible for turning battery deployment into reliable grid capacity and durable returns.
If you are working on utility-scale energy storage, I’d be interested in how your team validates capacity independently of the OEM.
Podcast website: climateconfidentpodcast.com
Subscribe on YouTube and follow Climate Confident on your preferred podcast platform.
Chapters:
00:00 Faulty Cells Wakeup Call
00:49 Show Intro And Guest
01:24 Meet Ash And 3E
04:03 Why Storage Took Off
06:42 Revenue Stacking Explained
10:48 BMS Is Not Commercial Brain
14:16 State Of Charge Errors
16:49 Imbalance Penalties Spiral
19:46 Warranties And Digital Twins
24:00 Flow Batteries And Shared Truth
28:51 Two Hour Vs Four Hour Markets
35:57 Storage As Grid Coordinator
37:11 Four Steps To Smarter Ops
40:21 Lightning Round
42:28 Wrap Up And Where To Find Ash
Battery storage is getting cheaper. Its operating data may still be wrong.
When capacity is misread, penalties stack and returns unravel.
I’m joined by Ashutosh Vats of 3E, who works on battery intelligence for utility-scale storage. His focus is the difficult space between what a battery management system reports, what the physical asset can genuinely deliver, and what owners and traders promise to the market.
This matters because battery deployment is accelerating as grids absorb more solar and wind, negative prices spread, and flexibility becomes essential. Yet a battery is both infrastructure and a financial asset. If its usable capacity is misread, the consequences move quickly: imbalance charges, lost capacity payments, extra cycling, warranty disputes and unnecessary oversizing.
Several points changed how I think about this. Ash says some customer batteries showed about 30% faulty cells before operation. In LFP systems, estimated state of charge can be 15–30% off. And when a delivery forecast misses by 10%, the downside can be much worse because the penalties stack. The deeper lesson is organisational: the asset owner sees a year, the trader sees a minute, and the asset manager sees a week. Without one shared operational truth, all three can make rational decisions that damage the same asset.
We also examine revenue stacking, battery degradation, warranty enforcement, digital twins, flow batteries, longer-duration storage, grid inertia markets and the four capabilities operators need before scaling a mixed battery portfolio.
This is not a conversation about adding another dashboard. It is about knowing what the hardware can deliver before selling capacity the battery does not have.
This is for energy executives, asset owners, investors, policymakers, storage developers and operators responsible for turning battery deployment into reliable grid capacity and durable returns.
If you are working on utility-scale energy storage, I’d be interested in how your team validates capacity independently of the OEM.
Podcast website: climateconfidentpodcast.com
Subscribe on YouTube and follow Climate Confident on your preferred podcast platform.
Chapters:
00:00 Faulty Cells Wakeup Call
00:49 Show Intro And Guest
01:24 Meet Ash And 3E
04:03 Why Storage Took Off
06:42 Revenue Stacking Explained
10:48 BMS Is Not Commercial Brain
14:16 State Of Charge Errors
16:49 Imbalance Penalties Spiral
19:46 Warranties And Digital Twins
24:00 Flow Batteries And Shared Truth
28:51 Two Hour Vs Four Hour Markets
35:57 Storage As Grid Coordinator
37:11 Four Steps To Smarter Ops
40:21 Lightning Round
42:28 Wrap Up And Where To Find Ash
