Pricing grid-scale storage for DESNZ
A three-university, DESNZ-commissioned techno-economic assessment of grid-scale storage — synthesising regulatory and TRL dynamics into a decision-grade £49–66/MWh pricing band.
Imperial College London × UCL × Cambridge — for UK DESNZ
Research Energy Analyst · Techno-economic module architect
2024 — 2025
01
£49–66/MWh
grid-scale storage pricing band
02
3 univs
Imperial · UCL · Cambridge
03
5
regulatory jurisdictions synthesised
04
~10
sensitivity inputs stress-tested
Net-zero needs storage — but at what price?
The UK's path to net zero leans heavily on grid-scale storage to firm intermittent renewables and balance the system. But the policy debate at the UK Department for Energy Security & Net Zero (DESNZ) kept stalling on the same question: what does storage actually cost, across the technologies that matter, under the regulations we can realistically expect?
Existing public estimates spanned wildly different assumptions on TRL, capex, opex, lifetime and grid services. The leadership team needed one defensible, sensitivity-tested number — not a survey of guesses.
A decision-grade number across competing technologies
I was asked to architect the techno-economic module of the three-university DESNZ-commissioned climate report (Imperial, UCL, Cambridge), with two non-negotiables: it had to be defensible under UK government scrutiny, and it had to be transparent enough that any reasonable analyst could rebuild the same number.
The hard work wasn't picking the model — it was synthesising the regulatory and TRL dynamics across jurisdictions so the cost answer was actually about storage technology, not about which country we squinted at.
From regulatory synthesis to a single price band
I built the work in three layers: regulatory + TRL synthesis, a transparent techno-economic model, and a sensitivity stack that DESNZ stakeholders could prod without breaking.
Phase 1
Regulatory & TRL synthesis
Five jurisdictions
Mapped storage support schemes, capacity markets and TRL assumptions across 5 jurisdictions into a decision-grade briefing for leadership.
Phase 2
Techno-economic model
Imperial · UCL · Cambridge working group
Architected the techno-economic module: capex/opex stacks, lifetime, round-trip efficiency, capacity factor and grid-service revenue layered into an LCOS-style framework.
Phase 3
Sensitivity stress-test
~10 sensitivity inputs
Ran ~10 sensitivity inputs (cost of capital, lifetime, capex curve, market design, etc.) to bound the band and identify which assumptions actually move the answer.
A £49–66/MWh band that shaped the report
Delivered a £49–66/MWh pricing band that became the headline number for grid-scale storage in the final DESNZ-commissioned report. The band — not a point estimate — was deliberate: it forces the policy conversation to be about which sensitivities matter, not which spreadsheet wins.
- Findings shaped the leadership team's storage-technology positioning in the final report to DESNZ.
- Methodology designed to be transparently reproducible by UK government analysts.
- Regulatory & TRL briefing reused as decision input for downstream Imperial Energy Society workstreams.
“A point estimate hides where the politics live. A band makes it impossible to look away from them.”
— Working note · DESNZ techno-economic module
How the work held up.
- Levelised cost of storage (LCOS) framework — capex, opex, lifetime, round-trip efficiency, cost of capital, grid-service revenue.
- Regulatory + TRL synthesis across five jurisdictions, briefed into the leadership team.
- ~10 sensitivity inputs stress-tested; report scrutiny-ready for UK government stakeholders.
- Published as part of the three-university climate report (Imperial · UCL · Cambridge) — see download link.