If infrastructure is increasingly moving economically in the direction of a flexibility economy.
The new physics of the electricity market
Negative electricity prices have long been considered a market anomaly. In the meantime, they occur with a regularity that can hardly be described as an exception.
According to data from SMARD/Federal Network Agency, 573 hours of negative wholesale prices were registered in Germany in 2025 — after 457 hours in the previous year. At the same time, the average daily day-ahead spread was around 130 euros per MWh.
The figures do not describe a short-term market phenomenon. They describe the new physics of the system.
Because the energy transition does not only produce renewable energy. It produces temporal asymmetry:
- high feed-in from sun and wind,
- Low feed-in during dark doldrums,
- increasing load peaks,
- growing demands on networks and flexibility.
The result is ever stronger price movements within the same day. At noon, prices sometimes collapse into the negative. A few hours later, massive evening peaks (EPEX SPOT) develop.
When fluctuation becomes economical
Historically, classical infrastructure was based on stability:
- regulated cash flows,
- long-term contracts,
- low market price dependency.
The new energy world, on the other hand, is beginning to reward precisely those assets that can react to fluctuations.
Battery storage systems are the most visible example of this. They don’t eliminate volatility. You monetize them.
The greater the difference between cheap and expensive hours becomes, the more valuable the ability to shift energy over time becomes.
The scaling makes the thesis credible.
BloombergNEF expects global storage installations to jump by around a third in 2026. At the same time, the average cost of battery storage has fallen by around 75 percent since 2018, according to BNEF. Storage systems are thus no longer just an instrument of the energy transition, but increasingly an infrastructure class in their own right.
It is not only the speed of expansion that is remarkable. With battery cost reduction, increasing global storage investments and increasing grid bottlenecks, the role of technology itself is also changing. (BloombergNEF). Battery storage systems are less and less to be understood primarily as “green technology” and more as an instrument for grid stabilization and flexibilization of an increasingly volatile system (Bloomberg).
The new bottleneck
At the same time, the logic of the networks is also shifting. Redispatch measures — i.e. the targeted control or curtailment of feed-in to stabilize overloaded grids — have recently increased massively; in the second quarter of 2025 alone, the redispatch volume for photovoltaic systems rose from 605 GWh to 1,168 GWh, almost twice the previous year’s figure (SMARD).
This is also more than a technical detail.
This is because grid capacity is increasingly becoming a scarce commodity itself:
- Data centers compete for connected load,
- Industrial projects fail due to grid connections,
- Storage systems are created where flexibility becomes tradable.
The electricity market is no longer just starting to evaluate energy, but also responsiveness.
📌 Conclusion: There is a shift in investment theses
- The investment infrastructure market of institutional investment funds continues to speak the language of classic infrastructure — stability, predictability, long-term visibility.
- Economically , however, a flexibility economy is increasingly emerging .
- In parts of the energy world, infrastructure is no longer primarily paid for to avoid volatility, but rather to monetize it for investors by generating returns from it.
