Energy arbitrage
Energy arbitrage in the SpeicherCampus context: economical only with a sufficient price spread and good control. Technically, the term is usually described as charging at low prices and using energy at high prices.
What does energy arbitrage mean?
Energy arbitrage is the deliberate exploitation of price differences: the storage system charges when power is cheap and discharges (or displaces purchases) when it is expensive. Grid-scale systems do this directly on the spot market; commercial systems via dynamic tariffs.
The calculation is more demanding than it sounds: efficiency losses, cycle costs (degradation) and possibly grid fees come off the price spread. What remains is the real arbitrage profit.
What matters in practice
- net calculation: spread × RTE − cycle costs − fees
- arbitrage competes with self-consumption for the same capacity — the EMS prioritizes
- commercial systems are rarely built for pure arbitrage; as extra yield it often makes sense
- grid-scale systems (PotisBank, HyperBlock) play in their own league here
Practical example
A 215 kWh system earns about 15 % additional yield from tariff arbitrage on top of PV shifting. As the sole revenue source, arbitrage would not have carried the system — as a third pillar beside self-consumption and peak shaving it strengthens the total noticeably.
The SpeicherCampus perspective
SpeicherCampus treats arbitrage as additional yield with an honest net calculation — and as a primary application only for grid-scale storage with a marketing concept.