Genna Boyle on the Pexapark Podcast: Grid Scarcity, Co-location and How Markets Are Reacting

In energy markets, the scarcest resource is often the grid connection. On episode 48 of The Pexapark Podcast, Gridcog’s Genna Boyle explained how co-location and tri-location help developers and independent power producers (IPPs) use more of each connection, and how Great Britain (GB), Spain, Germany and Australia are responding through market design, flexible connection agreements and support for storage.

Key points

• Genna Boyle, Gridcog’s Chief Commercial Officer and Head of EMEA, joined Luca Pedretti on episode 48 of The Pexapark Podcast to discuss how grid connection scarcity is shaping project design across energy markets.
• A standalone solar or wind asset uses its grid connection between 10% and 25% of the time. Co-location and tri-location add assets behind the same connection to use more of that capacity.
• GB, Spain, Germany and Australia are each responding differently, through market design, flexible connection agreements and support for storage.
• In Spain, solar capture rates fell from around 90% in spring 2022 to 40% in spring 2026, strengthening the case for co-located storage.
• Genna’s ideal regulatory playbook would focus on using each grid connection more fully, backed by a value stack deep enough for projects to secure finance.

On this page

• Listen to the episode
• Why is the grid connection the scarce resource?
• How are GB, Spain, Germany and Australia responding?
• What can markets learn from each other?
• What would a better regulatory playbook look like?
• How are data centres changing the picture?
• Frequently asked questions
• Full transcript

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Gridcog’s Chief Commercial Officer and Head of EMEA, Genna Boyle, joined Luca Pedretti, COO and Co-Founder of Pexapark, on episode 48 of The Pexapark Podcast. They discussed how grid connection scarcity is changing the way energy projects are designed, and how different markets are responding to it.

In this blog, we’ve summarised the main points from the conversation, with the full transcript at the end. Thanks to the Pexapark team for having Genna on the show.

Listen to the episode

Genna’s interview runs from 01:51 to 31:51. The full episode and show notes are on Pexapark’s website.

Why is the grid connection the scarce resource?

In energy markets, the scarcest resource is often the grid connection rather than sun, wind or fuel. Connecting new generation takes significant infrastructure build, which is why connection queues are long in many markets.

Genna explained that this is pushing developers and IPPs to ask how they can get more out of the connections they already have. The answer is often co-location, tri-location or behind-the-meter development. The more an existing connection is used, the less needs to be spent on upgrading the grid.

‘One of the most scarce resources we have is the grid connection.’ – Genna Boyle

What do co-location and tri-location mean?

Co-location means two assets behind the same grid connection. Tri-location means three.

Ten years ago, a utility-scale project was typically one asset class behind one connection: standalone solar, wind or battery. Solar has a load factor of around 15% in a sunny market, and closer to 11–12% in GB. Adding a battery behind the same connection makes better use of it, and turns the site into a co-located project.

At utility scale, the most common tri-located combination Gridcog sees is solar, battery and wind. Behind-the-meter projects are often tri-located or more from the start, combining site load, solar, battery storage, backup combined heat and power (CHP) and electric vehicle (EV) chargers.

How else are markets signalling scarcity?

Price spreads are widening. The gap between minimum and maximum day-ahead or spot prices is growing in many markets, and negative prices are increasingly common in Europe. This is cutting solar capture rates and weakening the business case for standalone solar, while strengthening it for assets that can shift energy to higher-value periods.

How are GB, Spain, Germany and Australia responding?

Genna described market fundamentals as always present, with regulation and market design acting as either an accelerant or a blocker. She compared four markets Gridcog works in closely.

GB

GB has added a wide range of ancillary services over the last decade, which have stabilised the grid and built up the business case for battery storage. Combined with a capacity market and liquid wholesale trading, this gives batteries a deep revenue stack to trade across.

Spain

Spain has a lot of inherent flexibility from pumped hydro and combined cycle gas turbines (CCGTs), but has been slower to add battery storage. Solar capture rates have fallen from around 90% in spring 2022 to 40% in spring 2026, as more solar has been added with little new storage. Genna noted that the April 2025 Iberian blackout, while caused by complex voltage stability issues, also acted as a wake-up call about the need for flexibility. Spain is now introducing a capacity market and lifting some of the barriers to batteries.

Germany

Flexible connection agreements (FCAs) are one of the most discussed topics in Germany. Under an FCA, network operators allow a connection with conditions attached, such as ramp rate limits, curtailment or wholesale freezes. This gets more projects connected, but developers need to model how much the conditions affect revenue. Genna gave the example of an FCA restricting battery exports between 3pm and 5pm all year round, even though there is no solar peak at 5pm in Germany in November.

Germany has also used a green battery model, where a battery co-located with EEG-supported solar can only charge from that solar. This connects faster and protects the solar subsidy, but limits how much the battery is used in winter, when the grid most needs flexibility. Since the episode was recorded, the Bundesnetzagentur (Germany’s Federal Network Agency) adopted MiSpeL on 1 October 2026, which allows co-located batteries to charge from the grid without losing the EEG premium. Read more in our blog on what MiSpeL is worth for large-scale co-located batteries.

Australia

Australia, where Gridcog was founded, is seeing much more activity on the demand side than Europe. The Cheaper Home Batteries Program has driven over 11 GWh of residential battery storage, close to the volume installed at utility scale. These residential batteries compete in the same market, compressing spreads and flattening the midday duck curve.

What can markets learn from each other?

Genna’s view is that markets share more than they often realise. They face the same physics and are trying to send the same signals to bring supply and demand on at the right time. They often use different names for similar ideas. Flexible connection agreements in Germany, active network management in GB and similar schemes that have run in Australia for over five years are broadly the same concept.

She highlighted two examples other markets can take from:

• Behind-the-meter flexibility in GB. The P415 code modification lets industrial and commercial sites add battery storage while staying on their existing supply contract, giving the grid access to flexibility it would not otherwise have.
• Residential flexibility in Australia. Europe has not yet seen residential storage at Australian levels, and Genna expects that to change.

Across GB, Germany and Spain, the shared lesson is that standalone renewables face a harder business case, and co-locating a flexible asset protects against falling capture rates.

What would a better regulatory playbook look like?

Asked what she would do as a ‘benevolent regulatory dictator’ in Europe, Genna focused on grid connection utilisation. A standalone solar or wind asset uses its connection between 10% and 25% of the time. She would challenge the industry to design projects that use the remaining capacity, with the flexible assets the grid needs.

The economics have to support this. Projects are financed with debt and equity and need contracted revenues, so the value stack must be deep enough to underwrite them. Offtake structures such as power purchase agreements (PPAs), tolls and floors all depend on price signals from wholesale, ancillary, capacity and inertia markets.

Genna also noted how battery offtake has changed over the last decade, from profit-sharing merchant contracts to tolls, floors and swaps, often combined with merchant participation. Many Gridcog clients use the platform to compare these options and see how each affects dispatch and payback.

‘I don’t think we give ourselves enough credit as an industry for how fast it’s shifting.’ – Genna Boyle

How are data centres changing the picture?

For years, new generation was built into markets with flat or falling demand, with electrification of heat and transport the main source of growth. Data centres have added a new asset class that wants to connect as quickly as possible.

Regulators are already responding. In Spain, a proposal at the time of recording would require 80% of the energy supplied to data centres to be time-matched on an hourly basis, though not necessarily from the same site. Data centres also face the same connection challenges as generators, including flexible connection agreements on the demand side. Genna sees this as an emerging challenge for market design and policy, and an area where Gridcog has seen a sharp rise in interest.

Model co-located projects across markets

Gridcog lets developers, IPPs and investors model co-located and tri-located projects across more than 40 markets, comparing asset configurations, connection constraints and offtake structures for a specific site.

If you’re keen to discuss this topic in more detail, reach out to our team.

Talk to our team       Gridcog for asset developers

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Frequently asked questions

Full transcript

This transcript covers Genna’s interview with Luca Pedretti. Timestamps run from the start of the interview. It has been lightly edited for readability.

Luca (00:25): Today I’m very happy to have with me Genna Boyle, Chief Commercial Officer at Gridcog, and we’re going to discuss an evergreen of the energy transition: scarcity of grid sites, and how markets are reacting to it. Genna, welcome to the show.

Genna (00:40): Great to be here, Luca. Looking forward to the chat today.

Luca (00:43): Genna, tell us first a bit about you and what Gridcog is up to.

Genna (00:49): Sure. I’m Gridcog’s Chief Commercial Officer and Head of EMEA. I’ve been with Gridcog three and a half years now.

Gridcog is a software business. What we’ve developed is simulation software for energy projects. Our clients are the people really investing in and driving the energy transition: the developers, the IPPs, advisory businesses, and the large load clients who are investing in these assets.

They use Gridcog to simulate all of the different physical and commercial options for their site. Typically that drives us towards co-location and even tri-location: given my grid connection, what asset should I put behind that connection to maximise my revenues and protect against my risks? And what commercial model is most optimal for my site?

What we’re doing behind the scenes is the full dispatch optimisation – simulating exactly how all of those assets would trade and perform across the project lifetime, to enable our clients to make informed decisions about the investments they pursue.

What’s really fun about that, as an energy markets person by background, is that we get to speak with so many different clients working in over 40 different energy markets globally. So we really get to spot interesting trends, and sometimes things that different markets can learn from one another, or that are particularly powerful in one market or another. I personally find that fascinating.

Luca (02:19): We discussed this in our preparation – 40 markets. Let’s start with the first hypothesis. We initially said that everywhere we look, grid sites are scarce, and that this is due to more renewables being absorbed into the market. Is that true across the 40 markets you see?

Genna (02:40): In energy markets we often think about what the most scarce resource is. It’s usually not sun or wind, or even fuel – although fuel is increasingly scarce. Actually, one of the most scarce resources we have is the grid connection. As we progress on the energy transition and hopefully deploy trillions of dollars of capital into renewable and flexible assets, what we’re seeing is that the scarce resource is often the grid connection.

So what we’re seeing through our clients is: how can we maximise those grid connections? And often the answer is co-location, tri-location, behind-the-meter development. Because the more we can utilise the poles and wires that already connect these assets to the grid, the less we have to sink into upgrading the grid – and hopefully the faster we can progress on the transition.

Luca (03:36): Before we go into details – you mentioned co-location and tri-location. How would you define those buzzwords?

Genna (03:45): At its simplest: co-location is two assets behind the same grid connection; tri-location is three.

In the utility-scale world, if we wind back ten years, a utility-scale asset was one asset class behind one grid connection – standalone solar, standalone wind, or standalone battery. That’s how that whole part of the market worked: there were solar experts, battery experts, thermal generation experts.

What we’re seeing now is people saying: hold on, the load factor of solar is around 15% in a sunny market, and somewhere like GB it’s closer to eleven or twelve. How can I add something else behind that same grid connection – where battery storage is probably your most typical asset – to maximise the utilisation of that grid connection? Once you’ve got a battery behind it, you’re talking about a co-located project.

Confusingly, they can sometimes be owned by entirely different people, or different SPVs. But that’s part of the joy and the complexity of the energy transition.

Luca (04:53): So co-location is typically solar plus battery. And tri-location – what else do you typically add into the mix?

Genna (05:03): Solar, battery and wind is what we’re seeing a lot of at utility scale. And a huge volume of Gridcog’s clients are actually modelling at the behind-the-meter scale as well. By default, those projects are often almost immediately in that tri-location-plus space, because you’ve got load, solar, battery, maybe a backup CHP, maybe some EV chargers, and so on.

Luca (05:30): The hypothesis, then, is that co-location is the universal answer to improving the use of grid sites. Is that true as a general statement?

Genna (05:46): ‘Universal answer’ is a bold term. But it certainly is an answer, without a doubt. And it’s one of the answers that we at Gridcog see as the most logical – one that honestly stacks up and makes sense both from a grid perspective and from an investment perspective.

To solve the energy transition and solve grid scarcity there are lots of answers, but co-location – utilising those connections and bringing flexibility into the energy system – has to be one of the leading ones.

Luca (06:30): How do you actually see markets reacting to grid scarcity? Co-location is one answer, as you said. What other types of answers do you see?

Genna (06:41): Ultimately, grid scarcity and energy markets are supply and demand in their purest sense. When there’s scarcity of supply you’ll see energy prices go high, and obviously when there’s too much demand you’ll see the same. Conversely, when there’s oversupply you’ll see prices fall.

What we’re seeing is that the difference between your minimum and maximum price in day-ahead or spot markets – depending on where in the world you’re speaking about – is sometimes getting much wider. We’re seeing increasing negative prices, particularly in Europe; that’s been a big topic after the summer. And those negative prices are significantly impacting the business case for solar assets, with falling capture rates.

So on the market side, supply and demand is creating a very clear signal: at some times that energy is worth a lot, and at other times, please turn up demand or turn supply off, because it isn’t worth anything. Energy markets point to grid scarcity and supply and demand very clearly.

We also see it on the connection side. A common thing we all hear about in the energy industry is connection queues – it takes a very significant amount of time to connect new generation to the grid. That’s because it requires huge infrastructure build. It’s not a simple thing at all to connect to the grid, especially at the scale the industry is pushing towards. That also creates a signal, and what we’re seeing is a lot of clients asking: how can I maximise what I’ve already got?

Luca (08:31): That’s very much a market fundamentals approach, and I fully agree – there’s more demand for grid sites. How do you see markets reacting in terms of changing market design, or from the regulatory and policy angle?

Genna (08:47): There’s a lot happening in the market design space, and it’s amazing how quickly energy markets have evolved.

If I speak about GB, a market I know well and have been active in for a while, it’s changed so much over the last ten years. We’ve brought in a whole suite of ancillary services which have helped stabilise the grid, and which have also really built up the business case for battery storage. There’s a lot of liquidity across different venues to trade power and wholesale energy. There are capacity markets, which we’ve had in GB for quite a while and which are now coming into the Spanish market, for instance.

Ultimately, for flexible assets – and when we talk about co-location we’re invariably talking about a flexible asset, let’s say a battery – those new markets and venues are creating price signals. A battery makes money by trading in a whole host of different markets, and it’s the revenue stack it can access that makes the business case appealing. Markets like GB, where there’s a very deep stack with lots of venues to trade power, is one of the reasons GB has done well in getting a high number of batteries and flexible assets connected to the grid versus some of our counterparts in Europe.

We’re seeing that come through in other markets too – Spain, for instance, with their new capacity market, which really increases the case. So market design plays a huge role in the business case for flex. And it has played a huge role in the business case for renewables as well. All of these markets got renewables not only because the price was good for exporting solar, but also because of things like the EEG in Germany, and the ROCs, feed-in tariffs and CfDs in GB. So regulation and markets play a big part in the broader story of renewables, and subsequently of flex.

Luca (10:54): How important is market design and the regulatory approach when you compare market by market? Could you generally say it’s just an accelerator, because market fundamentals will solve for it anyway? Or how do you see the picture?

Genna (11:12): Market fundamentals always exist. But regulation and market design can throw in a big blocker if they’re not done right, and can be a big accelerant if they are.

Let’s take four markets that Gridcog and I know fairly well. In GB, as I said, we’ve done really well with a very deep value stack: real incentives like FiTs, ROCs and CfDs for renewables, capacity markets for batteries, deep ancillary and balancing markets, wholesale. Is it perfect? No. But there have been strong tailwinds for flex and renewables in GB.

Spain has a lot of solar – something like 50 gigawatts. There’s a lot of inherent flexibility in the Spanish energy system with pumped hydro and CCGTs, but they’re comparatively behind on battery storage compared to their European neighbours. What we’re starting to see is that the market has realised that, as have a lot of developers and IPPs who are very interested in Spain. We’re starting to see some of those regulatory barriers lift towards being more favourable to batteries, and new markets coming in, like the capacity market.

Germany has historically had some very lucrative subsidy regimes for solar, particularly the EEG. They have the same grid connection challenges as other parts of Europe. They have a background of a very liquid power market and they have ancillary services, which are increasingly saturated. The question that market is designing around is: how do we add assets and flexibility to the system?

What we’re seeing in Germany is flexible connection agreements becoming one of the biggest and hottest topics. That’s the DSOs and TSOs saying: sure, you can connect to the grid – but you’re under an FCA, and that means you can only ramp up at, let’s say, six percent a minute. There might be some renewables curtailment, there might be some wholesale freezes as well, so that the network operator has a clearer view of how your asset will operate, can impose some restrictions, and can get comfortable with the risk of new assets coming onto the system.

On the one hand that’s accelerating things, because more connections are going out. On the other hand, there’s a lot of challenge for the market in understanding how material these connection agreements are – something a lot of Gridcog clients are using us to try and figure out. And sometimes they don’t really make sense. If I’ve got a flexible connection agreement saying, ‘Genna, you can’t export your battery because of the solar peak between three and five’, all year round – there is no solar peak at 5 p.m. in Germany in November. So there’s also the question of how dynamic this needs to be.

What we’re also seeing in Germany, which is quite interesting and a bit different to other countries, is the concept of a green battery. That’s saying: I’ve got solar on my site, my solar has the EEG, and if I add a battery that can only charge off my solar and therefore only export to the grid, then one, it can connect much more quickly, and two, it protects the subsidy on the solar side.

On the one hand that’s positive – great, we’re connecting more flexibility, and the energy system needs more flexibility to keep the lights on and run a more renewable grid. But it also feels like a missed opportunity, because in winter, when the grid really needs this flex, there isn’t much solar, so there isn’t much generation, and the utilisation of the battery isn’t as strong as it could be.

The only other market I’ll mention is Australia, where Gridcog was founded. What’s interesting on the Australian side is that, obviously, there’s a lot of solar – it’s a very sunny place – but we’re seeing much more happening on the demand side than in Europe, particularly on the residential side. Last year they introduced the Cheaper Home Batteries Program, and what that has incentivised is a lot of residential storage: I think over eleven gigawatt hours of residential batteries now, which is very close to the same volume as utility scale.

What that’s starting to do is really fascinating from a markets perspective: it’s changing the fundamental case for storage. It’s starting to compress spreads, and almost to arrest the duck curve you see from solar generation in the middle of the day, because those residential batteries are competing for the same market and the same fundamentals.

So, lots of different examples across those four markets. But in all cases there are some policies and market designs that are accelerating things, and others that are inhibiting them.

Luca (16:41): My head is spinning already. Just looking at the European cases, they seem so different – the way those markets develop. The question this poses is: is this by design, because the markets were always so different and there’s simply no harmonisation even at European Union level? Where does this come from? From an investment point of view, if you have a multi-market portfolio you have to deal with so many different designs.

Genna (17:17): It is a challenge. I think it’s easy to assume your specific market is special – and I’ve been guilty of that, knowing the New Zealand and GB markets historically in a lot of detail.

Something I enjoy, and something we get quite an overview of at Gridcog – and I imagine you get a similar view at Pexapark, operating across quite a few different markets – is being able to say: actually, we’re dealing with the same physics challenge, and market design is often similar too. We’re all trying to incentivise supply and demand to come on at the right time. Different markets are just pursuing different ways of creating the same signals to drive the investment they want.

And sometimes we call it different things. Take FCAs in Germany – flexible connection agreements – such a topic there. We’re actually starting to see a little bit of that happen in Spain. It’s been happening in Australia for over five years. And in GB we call it active network management. It’s broadly a similar concept.

So it’s easy for markets to design something inwardly and give it a unique name, but if you step back, there’s often a lot more harmony than you’d realise. We just call it slightly different things, and add a few different regulations.

Luca (18:43): Do you see similarities in the way markets develop? The problem arises from too much demand for grid connections, and then typically we see... do you see a similarity in how those flex markets evolve?

Genna (19:02): At a high level, yes.

You see an increasing need for grid connections, but that increasing need has already started from market fundamentals. I’m not going to go and ask for a grid connection as a developer or IPP if it doesn’t make sense for me. So it starts from: what is the generation stack, what are the fundamentals, are the price spreads there?

Then, with more intermittent generation coming on, that creates a fundamental case for grid stability. If we wind back a decade, there was much more spinning thermal plant on the grid. Less spinning thermal plant and more intermittent renewables creates a different challenge for the TSO or ISO to manage. That creates a case for ancillary markets. And now you start to develop a revenue stack that gets interesting for battery storage.

Meanwhile, market fundamentals keep happening. Take Spain as a good example: solar capture rates there have plummeted from around 90% in spring 2022 to 40% in spring 2026. They haven’t added much storage in that time, but more and more solar has been added to the system, and that creates another fundamental case for co-location and flexibility.

So I do think there is harmony in that space. As an industry we often hear about it in terms of huge connection queues, but there’s a path that gets us there.

Luca (20:54): Do markets learn from each other?

Genna (20:58): A lot. They can learn a lot from one another. Let me pick out a couple of examples from the markets we know well.

Something I haven’t mentioned so far is the behind-the-meter case. In GB we’ve done an excellent job in recent years of making behind-the-meter flexibility make much more sense, courtesy of a code modification, P415 – if you fancy a long read. That has meant that a lot of industrial and commercial sites can add battery storage while staying on their same supplier contract. That’s really interesting: it gives the grid a lot of flexibility, and access to flexibility it otherwise wouldn’t have. That’s ultimately what we need at grid level. We’re starting to see more and more of that appear in other markets, but GB is a real leader there, very much on the co-location side.

I also think the power of the residential side is interesting. What we’ve seen in Australia with residential flexibility coming online, we’re not seeing to the same extent in Europe. I think we will – and I think that’s an interesting view into the future from the Australian market.

And ultimately, if you look at GB, Germany and Spain, what all of those markets are learning from each other is the need for flexibility, the revenue stack needed to support it, and the fact that a standalone renewable asset has a much more challenging business case – one that’s much more threatened by market fundamentals than one that’s protected by having a co-located flexible asset.

Luca (23:08): Let’s assume you were given the job of benevolent regulatory dictator in Europe. What would your perfect playbook look like for developing a flex market? What would you mandate?

Genna (23:23): Big role. I’d look at utilisation of the grid connection. Conceptually, that’s something that should be used much more.

At the moment, a standalone solar or standalone wind asset is using the grid connection – a scarce resource, in my mind – between ten and twenty-five percent of the time. I’d ask: how can we use the remaining seventy-five percent? To me it makes sense fundamentally to add assets and say: if you want to connect, use that resource to its full potential. That would be really cool to see – throwing that challenge back at the industry and asking: how do you design projects to utilise that scarce resource more efficiently?

But to do that, the economics have to stack up. People aren’t going to build things just because you asked them to. So it’s very much about making sure the value stack is really deep, and that the options are there for the people building these assets. You’ll know that well at Pexapark: people are financing these assets with debt and equity. They need contracted revenues, so you need markets, offtakers and structures that work for them.

Ultimately, though, using the scarce resource of the grid connection more efficiently is what I’d love to see.

Luca (25:07): So that’s the main thing to optimise for – maximising the utilisation of the grid sites.

Genna (25:17): Yes – utilising those connections more efficiently, and with the flexibility and the assets that the grid actually needs.

Luca (25:26): And what I hear from you is that the market stack is very important: price signals, and the establishment of traded venues and traded markets.

Genna (25:38): Really important. Ultimately that’s how any generating asset pays its way and earns its keep – through contracted offtake structures, whether they’re PPAs, tolls or floors. But all of those are ultimately underwritten by the market: wholesale, ancillary, capacity, inertia, and so on, or demand.

So that price signal needs to be there from as many of those venues as possible to make the business case really strong, and for somebody to go and invest. You’re not going to invest if there’s no price signal for you to do so. That’s what we see a lot of clients looking at.

As someone from more of a markets background, I find it quite interesting to see how those structures are developing. If we look back ten years, battery offtake contracts have moved from profit-sharing merchant contracts to tolls, floors and swaps – and often a combination of those, where people can also participate in the merchant markets.

We’re certainly seeing a lot of clients on the Gridcog side testing different options on the commercial offtake side: what does it mean if I’m fully merchant? How much am I giving away if I sign a toll or a floor? What might this hybrid PPA look like versus that one? And understanding what that means for the project, both in terms of how the assets are dispatched and ultimately how they pay back.

Luca (27:33): Since we’re not going to get this dictator – do you feel regulation, policy and market design are moving in the right direction? Or do you see it more negatively, with some markets really not moving?

Genna (27:51): Markets are moving, and they’re also being forced to move.

I see more movement on the market design and market fundamentals side, and in my view that’s going to drive how assets develop much more than, say, a longer-term roadmap of where markets will be in ten years’ time. It’s more the near-term things and market design that are driving it.

It’s easy sometimes to get caught in the weeds – ‘this would have been great if we’d had it two years ago’, or ‘why haven’t we sorted out this price signal?’ But a lot is moving. I don’t think we give ourselves enough credit as an industry for how fast it’s shifting. And for the people designing the markets, that’s a big job to sort out, particularly if they’re launching new services or new market designs.

Look at a place like Spain, which hadn’t moved much until last year, and where the market is now really shifting. That market had a strong wake-up call about the need for flex. Obviously it wasn’t a lack of batteries alone that caused the blackout in Iberia – those are very complicated voltage stability challenges – but it was a signal to say: hold on, flex in this market would make sense. Let’s try to remove some of the barriers, and add price signals like capacity markets to get people to do things.

Something we probably haven’t touched on yet is the topic of data centres. That suddenly changed the game again. We’d been building generation in a market with static, if not falling, demand. The only upward pressure on demand was electrification of heating and transport. Suddenly we have a whole new asset class wanting to connect to the grid as soon as possible, adding really new challenges – and again, regulation and market design will have to play a role.

I was chatting with my Spanish colleague earlier this morning, and he was talking about how the currently proposed regulation in Spain is that eighty percent of the energy going to data centres needs to be time-matched on an hourly basis. It doesn’t have to come from the same site – and it’s a proposal – but it’s really interesting to see how quickly markets are starting to think about how to bring this demand on and use it as an accelerant to the energy transition, and to make sure there’s parity and fairness with other demand coming in.

It’s an interesting space, and an area where we’ve seen a huge uptick of interest. Data centres have the same challenges as generators – flexible connection agreements, for example – happening on the demand side as well. So a lot of new demand is coming in through data centres, and I think it’s going to be an emerging challenge for us as an industry to say: how do we make this make sense, and put the right design and policy around it?

Luca (31:30): A huge topic, complex, and developing fast. Genna, thanks a lot for coming on the show and giving us an overview of what’s happening across markets.

Genna (31:42): Thank you for having me, Luca. Good chat.

Sources

1. Pexapark, ‘Episode 48 | Co-Location, Flex and the Grid Connection Squeeze with Genna Boyle of Gridcog’, The Pexapark Podcast, 24 September 2026
2. Australian Government, Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, ‘Cheaper Home Batteries Program’, accessed 14 October 2026
3. Energy & Water Ombudsman NSW, ‘Changes to the Cheaper Home Batteries Program’, accessed 14 October 2026
4. Gridcog, ‘MiSpeL in Germany: What It’s Worth for Large Scale Co-located Batteries’, on the Bundesnetzagentur MiSpeL determination of 1 October 2026