Why energy storage is moving beyond the capex debate |
Why energy storage is moving beyond the capex debate
Amanda Simonian is Chief Marketing Officer at TerraFlow Energy, a long-duration energy storage company focused on deploying flow battery systems as grid-scale infrastructure.
For most of the past decade, the energy storage conversation revolved around a single question: how much does it cost?
That focus made sense. Storage was still proving itself. Capital costs were high, deployment was limited, and early projects lived or died on whether the numbers penciled out at all. Capex became a proxy for viability, and for a long time, it was the right one.
But as storage moves from pilots into infrastructure, that proxy is breaking down.
Projects struggling today often aren’t underperforming because upfront costs were miscalculated. They struggle because long-term operating realities can look very different from what was modeled.
As someone working inside the long-duration storage sector, currently serving as the Chief Marketing Officer of a flow battery systems company, I have seen these debates through one technological lens. But the broader market shift underway extends well beyond any single chemistry or storage architecture.
When capex was enough
Early storage deployments were evaluated almost like technology experiments. Could the system perform? Would it respond when dispatched? Could it survive a few years of operation without major issues?
Within that frame, capex mattered most because everything else was still uncertain.
That logic is evolving.
Storage assets are increasingly expected to provide firm capacity, support critical loads, and remain available during periods of prolonged grid stress. Those roles shift the cost conversation away from what it takes to build a system, and toward what it takes to operate one over decades.
Availability, degradation........