ACCURE Battery Intelligence

BESS financing models rest on the availability guarantees, capacity tests and warranty degradation curves laid out in contracts. What none of those documents tell you is how the asset performs once it is running. Banking BESS, produced with support from U.S. Bank, tests them against operational data. We found consistent, quantifiable gaps between what the contracts promise and what the assets deliver, and they are big enough to move the coverage ratio a loan was sized on and the return a sponsor underwrote. Every maturing asset class reaches the point where measured field performance, not the contract, sets the baseline for financing. Find out where the gaps exist in the full report. Link in the comments.

Sites report a median 96.7% availability. Measured on whether components actually respond when the energy management system calls on them, it is 94.1%. Three out of four sites over-report availability. The gap averages 2.6 percentage points, and at the tenth percentile it reaches 6. So what does a gap like that do to a financing model? To the coverage ratio a loan was sized on, or to the return a sponsor underwrote? Produced with support from U.S. Bank, Banking BESS tests the availability guarantees, capacity tests and warranty degradation curves BESS financial models are built on against operational data from 50+ operating projects covering 4 GW of installed power capacity. Discover more in the report. Link in the comments.

This is our most comprehensive BESS report to-date. With support from U.S. Bank, and drawing on operational data from 50+ operating battery projects, we test the guarantees, capacity tests and warranty curves that BESS financial models are built on against how assets actually perform. We found consistent, measurable gaps between what the contracts promise and what the assets deliver in operation. The report works through availability, usable energy and downtime, and translates each into what it does to coverage ratios and returns. Because the analysis works from measured performance, availability, efficiency and degradation that can be verified rather than assumed, and warranty entitlements evidenced rather than argued. That gives lenders and investors a baseline they can check rather than take on trust, and owners and operators a clearer read on where problems are caught and fixed fastest. Download the full report using the link in the comments.

BESS financial models assume a level of availability. The obvious threat to that assumption is a major failure that takes a site offline, and those get escalated and fixed quickly. However most unavailability, 57.6%, comes from smaller, recurring outages that rarely get treated as urgent. Produced with support from U.S. Bank, Banking BESS traced this pattern across 50+ operating battery projects. These outages show up in the data well before they take a unit offline, which means they can be caught early. When they aren't, however, the downtime builds into revenue the model assumed the project would earn. That shortfall leaves less cash to service debt, pulling down the coverage ratio a loan was sized on and the return a sponsor underwrote. See where unavailability comes from, and how it can be detected and avoided, in the full report. Link in the comments.

Next week we publish a new report, Banking BESS: financing lessons for lenders and investors, from 50+ operating battery projects. Produced with support from U.S. Bank. It tests the availability guarantees, capacity tests and warranty curves that BESS financial models are built on against operational data from the field. It finds consistent, quantifiable gaps between what the contracts promise and what the assets actually deliver. Here's a glimpse at what we found: ① Sites report a median 96.7% availability. Measured on whether components respond when called, it is 94.1%, with 3 out of 4 sites over-reporting. ② Netted against a DC overbuild of 20.2%, the median site enters its first year with just 0.5% operating headroom above nameplate energy. None of that is caused by aging. ③ 57.6% of downtime comes from small, recurring outages that early detection and predictive maintenance can catch. The report puts numbers to what these gaps do to coverage ratios and returns, and shows how measured performance, not contractual assumption, gives lenders and investors a baseline they can verify. For owners and operators, the gap between the best assets and the worst comes down less to age, suppliers or chemistry than to how early problems are found and fixed. The report launches on the 21st September. Reserve your copy using the link in the comments to get first access the moment it's live.

Your insurer is pricing your BESS assets on estimates. Aviva has agreed a way for you to change that. Aviva Global Risk Management Solutions now recognises ACCURE's continuous safety monitoring within its insurance risk evaluation framework. Owners and operators get an independent view of how risk is managed at asset or portfolio level, without adding to operational workload. Insurers get the same evidence base, supplemented with 24+ GWh of supported BESS capacity, and independent of OEMs. Whichever side of the policy you're on, we want to hear from you.