Casey Keller, founding partner at Caerus Commodities, shares critical lessons from optimising battery storage, ahead of the 2026 US Battery Asset Management Summit taking place in California on 15-16 September.
As battery energy storage systems (BESS) play an increasingly important role in US power markets, the gap between developer expectations and operational realities has become more apparent.
One of the most significant challenges facing battery developers is site selection. While targeting the most volatile locations seems logical for maximum revenue, Keller warns this strategy often backfires.
“Even if you had the ability to come up with the most volatile location today, nobody knows if that’s going to be volatile tomorrow,” Keller explains. “The second a new asset is built, all of that price formation changes.”
Try Premium for just $1
- Full premium access for the first month at only $1
- Converts to an annual rate after 30 days unless cancelled
- Cancel anytime during the trial period
Premium Benefits
- Expert industry analysis and interviews
- Digital access to PV Tech Power journal
- Exclusive event discounts
Or get the full Premium subscription right away
Or continue reading this article for free
A location that appears ideal during a five-year development cycle can become far less attractive by the time the asset comes online. The addition of a single solar plant, wind facility, or competing battery can dramatically reduce volatility.
Keller recommends “instead of aiming for that top 5% that could become the bottom 5%, aim for something in the top 25%.” The goal changes to identifying locations with persistent volatility rather than chasing the highest current returns.
The forecast problem
Revenue forecasts represent another critical issue. Developers often commission projections from well-known providers to secure financing, but Keller says many are fundamentally flawed.
“We wish that developers spent more time actually diligencing forecasts and making sure that they’re only purchasing those from people who have a track record of being accurate,” Keller notes.
Forecasts can miss the mark by a factor of five, creating significant problems when financing structures are built around unrealistic expectations. The root cause often lies in faulty assumptions about market rules, fundamentals, and generation stack composition.
Keller says that “buying a forecast from the entity that’s going to be doing the optimisation” eliminates discrepancies between what a forecast provider claims is possible and what market rules actually allow.
Keller further explains that when Caerus Commodities was founded over six years ago, it recognised that battery storage represented a shift in the market. Power would finally have storage like every other commodity.
Yet, unlike other commodities, optimised by trading companies with deep market expertise, battery storage optimisation had been handed to independent power producers (IPPs), many lacking dedicated trading floors.
“We decided to start offering trading as a service,” Keller says. “We optimise batteries for asset owners who don’t have those capabilities in house.”
Caerus deliberately avoids owning batteries to prevent conflicts of interest. Their approach combines automated algorithms with human expertise—what Keller calls “hybrid methods.”
“If everybody at Caerus were to get hit by a bus, our bids would continue to be generated and submitted,” Keller explains. “But we also think there’s a lot of value to be added by having experienced traders in the loop.”
“Humans are able to pick up on changing patterns more quickly than machine learning, which needs a very large amount of relevant data points to actually shift how it thinks,” Keller notes.
Bad bidding
Static bidding strategies represent just one manifestation of widespread “bad bidding” in the market. The challenge for asset owners is that optimisation operates as something of a black box, making it difficult to evaluate performance quality.
Recently, Energy-Storage.news Premium spoke with David Miller, CCO of Gridmatic about its CAISO report, which found that many battery operators were using static bidding strategies that remained unchanged for extended periods, rather than adapting to market conditions.
Keller’s solution is rigorous benchmarking. Caerus offers tools that allow clients to compare their performance against other assets in the market.
“We don’t want our clients to be locked in just because they signed a contract. We want them to be repeat customers because we’re doing a good job,” Keller emphasises. “It really all just boils down to: ‘Are you making the most money you can while decreasing risk?'”
Market evolution
The past few years of operational experience have revealed persistent issues. One critical area is understanding state of charge (SOC) boundaries.
Keller explains that in the early days of the BESS market, revenues were high enough that even poor optimisation could yield profits. That’s no longer the case.
“Now that revenues have come down a little bit as the market gets more saturated, owners really do need to be squeezing every penny that they can out of their assets,” Keller says.
“Looking at things from this stochastic method becomes more and more important as the market becomes more volatile and less predictable,” Keller explains. “Just saying, ‘I think this is going to happen, this one scenario,’ is not useful anymore.”
Keller will be speaking on this and related topics in a discussion alongside Colin Tareila, executive vice president of asset operations at developer Key Capture Energy; Aaron Lampe, COO at service provider Workbench Energy; David Droz, director of energy storage implementation at IPP Exus Renewables; Jerry Liu, director of asset management at developer and EPC provider RES Group; and Kristina Peterson, independent director at private equity firm EQT Group.
Battery Asset Management Summit USA 2026 will be held 15-16 September in Garden Grove, California, hosted by Energy-Storage.news publisher Solar Media (part of the Informa Group). The agenda emphasises addressing the roles of AI, cybersecurity, and second-life applications, broken down into two tracks: Technical Asset Management and Commercial Asset Management. This year, the conference is also co-located with Solar & Storage Finance Summit USA. Visit the official site for more details.
