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Battery Storage

BESS revenue stacking explained: FCR, aFRR, spot and imbalance

How battery storage earns from multiple markets simultaneously — and why stacking is what makes merchant batteries bankable.

A battery that only trades day-ahead spreads leaves most of its value on the table. The economics of storage come from stacking several markets at once and letting an optimiser choose the highest-value use for every cycle.

The four revenue streams

FCR (Frequency Containment Reserve) is contracted weekly and provides stable, predictable revenue. aFRR (automatic Frequency Restoration Reserve) is higher-value, fast-response balancing. Spot trading captures day-ahead spreads and intraday price spikes. And imbalance participation buys and sells at settlement prices in real time.

Batteries under Samawatt management in Switzerland average around €18k per MW per year across these stacked streams.

From merchant to bankable

Lenders won't finance volatile merchant revenue. SamaGreenBatt, Samawatt's proxy hedge, converts the stacked merchant revenue into a transparent, bankable stream that supports debt service coverage — without giving up the upside. Request the free Battery Optimisation Report for a cycle-level model of your project.

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