Why is Your BESS Project Not Making Money? – Understanding BESS Underperformance

Synopsis

Despite rigorous financial modeling and conservative aging assumptions, many grid-scale BESS developments fail capacity tests and don’t meet the performance required to hit targets. In this session we’ll unpack the common gap between plan and reality: it’s not aging alone that kills returns.

Operators often assume linear degradation and maximal availability, only to confront real-world stranded capacity, offline strings, control failures, or design limitations. These gaps, between what’s assumed in the model and what’s experienced in the field, erode yield and stress investor confidence.

In this talk, we will:

• Share real-world examples and what “reality” is showing
• Dive into the leading root causes: availability challenges, control & software gaps, scheduling imbalance, and design limitations
• Highlight evolving best practices that shift O&M from reactive fixes to proactive performance protection