IN Brief:
- R.Power and Axpo have agreed a long-term optimisation deal for a 300MW/1,200MWh BESS in Dzięgielewo, Poland.
- The agreement includes a profit-sharing mechanism and a minimum revenue guarantee to support project bankability.
- The deal reflects the growing role of optimisation, market access, and revenue certainty in European grid-scale storage investment.
R.Power and Axpo have signed a long-term agreement to optimise a 300MW/1,200MWh battery energy storage system in Dzięgielewo, in Poland’s Mazovia province.
The agreement covers the full scope of optimisation services for the four-hour storage facility and will begin at the start of commercial operation, running until the end of 2038. It is based on a profit-sharing mechanism between the companies and includes a minimum revenue guarantee, or floor, designed to support project bankability and reduce investment risk.
The project is one of Poland’s largest planned BESS installations and forms part of R.Power’s wider Polish energy storage pipeline. It is the second storage optimisation agreement between the two companies this year, following an earlier arrangement for the 150MW/300MWh Jedwabno project in northern Poland. After the Dzięgielewo agreement, the total contracted storage capacity between R.Power and Axpo reaches 450MW/1,500MWh.
Battery optimisation involves managing how and when a storage asset charges, discharges, and reserves capacity for market and system services. For a grid-scale asset, this can include wholesale trading, balancing market participation, ancillary services, and capacity-related obligations. The commercial role is to maximise value from the battery while preserving technical performance and meeting operational requirements.
The structure of the agreement links trading expertise directly with investment certainty. A revenue floor can help lenders and project owners assess downside risk, while the profit-sharing element preserves exposure to market upside. As European storage markets mature, optimisation agreements are becoming part of the bankability package, sitting alongside grid connection rights, capacity market contracts, EPC arrangements, battery warranties, and long-term operation and maintenance plans.
Poland is emerging as one of Europe’s most active battery storage markets, driven by renewable growth, coal phase-down pressure, system flexibility requirements, and capacity market support. The country’s power system needs more fast-response assets able to manage variable output and support balancing as the generation mix changes. Four-hour systems can shift energy over meaningful periods, rather than providing only short-duration frequency response.
The Dzięgielewo project also shows how storage revenue models are becoming more sophisticated. Early European BESS markets were often built around a narrow set of ancillary services. As more batteries enter operation, revenue stacking becomes more important. Assets must move between wholesale arbitrage, reserve services, balancing activity, congestion management, and capacity obligations as market signals change.
That creates a stronger role for optimisation platforms and trading desks with direct market access. The technical performance of a battery depends on its cells, inverters, thermal management, control systems, and grid connection, but its commercial performance depends on dispatch decisions made every day. Poor optimisation can leave capacity underused or overexposed to low-value cycles; effective optimisation can turn the same hardware into a more resilient asset.
The agreement also reflects a wider European pattern in which storage developers are pairing large project pipelines with energy trading companies. As storage assets increase in size, the financial and operational consequences of dispatch strategy grow. The Dzięgielewo project places that dynamic firmly in Central and Eastern Europe’s power market, where flexibility is moving from policy discussion to contracted infrastructure.
