CAISO Battery Revenue Index Estimated revenue for every California battery. Free.
Grid-scale batteries are California's fastest-growing power resource, but how much money each project
actually makes is locked behind expensive subscriptions. This index estimates monthly
day-ahead energy arbitrage revenue for every utility-scale battery in CAISO from public data:
EIA-923 monthly charge/discharge energy, shaped by the CAISO fleet's 5-minute dispatch and priced at each
plant's own grid node.
The fleet is earning less per kW — by design
Every new battery flattens the very price spreads the fleet feeds on. The benchmark line shows what a
perfect-foresight 4-hour battery at the average node could have earned in the day-ahead market;
the bars show what the reporting fleet is estimated to have actually earned.
Fleet revenue vs. perfect foresight ($/kW-month)
Estimated DA energy arbitrage, MW-weighted fleet average · benchmark: perfect TB4 at battery nodes
Installed battery capacity in CAISO (MW)
Cumulative nameplate MW online, from EIA-860M commercial operation dates
Where the money is
Marker size = nameplate MW; color = estimated trailing revenue in $/kW-year. Gray rings are batteries
without monthly EIA reporting (typically small or recently commissioned). Click a marker for detail.
$/kW-year (latest reporting window)
< 15
15 – 25
25 – 35
> 35
no monthly data
Project leaderboard
Estimated day-ahead energy revenue per project. Capture compares each project's estimate to a
perfect-foresight battery moving the same energy at the same node. This is an estimated value ratio, not observed plant-specific trading skill.
Click any row for monthly detail. Hybrid projects (co-located solar) are flagged: their charging cost is
largely internal PV, so treat their numbers as indicative.
Annualized values use available reporting months; they are not forecasts. A full 12-month history is selected for comparable rankings.
No projects match. Clear the search or include partial histories.
#
Project
County
MW
Hrs
Online
$/kW-mo
Annualized $/kW-yr
Value / benchmark
Cycles/day
Methodology & honest caveats
Everything here is an estimate built entirely from public data — no settlement data, no
confidential information. The point is a credible, free benchmark where none exists.
How it works
Roster. Every operating battery in the CAISO balancing authority from
EIA-860M:
capacity, energy, location, commercial operation date, operator.
Monthly energy. Each plant's monthly gross discharge and charging MWh from the
EIA-923
energy storage schedule (~92% of fleet MW reports monthly).
Node matching. Each plant is matched to the nearest geocoded CAISO pricing node
(generation nodes preferred within 15 km), reusing the node map behind the
Battery Locator.
Hourly shaping. The plant's monthly discharge and charge energy is allocated to hours in
proportion to the CAISO fleet's actual 5-minute battery dispatch that month, then priced at the
plant's own node's hourly day-ahead LMP — i.e. a volume-weighted average price for its
discharge and its charge.
Price history. Nodal LMPs are used from 2023 onward
(CAISO OASIS only retains ~39 months). Earlier months are priced at each plant's TAC-area
hourly day-ahead price (PG&E / SCE / SDG&E), which mutes locational differences between
projects — treat pre-2023 project rankings as approximate.
Benchmarks.Capture divides the estimate by a perfect-foresight dispatch of the same
monthly energy at the same node (best-priced hours each day, at nameplate power). The market
benchmark line uses a perfect TB4: charge the 4 cheapest hours (grossed up by 1/0.86 round-trip
efficiency), discharge the 4 most expensive.
What this deliberately excludes
Ancillary services, RA capacity payments and hedges. This is day-ahead energy value
only. For many projects, AS and resource adequacy contracts are a large share of total revenue,
and real-time trading can add or subtract more.
Plant-specific dispatch. Individual dispatch profiles are not public; the fleet shape is
applied to every plant. Differences between projects therefore come from their node's prices and
their monthly energy volumes — not from their trader's hour-by-hour skill.
Hybrid accounting. Co-located (hybrid) batteries often charge from their own solar; their
effective charging cost differs from the nodal LMP used here. They are flagged throughout.
EIA data quality. Monthly EIA-923 figures are survey responses and occasionally revised;
nameplate energy (MWh) in EIA-860M is unreliable for some plants, so duration-derived stats are
suppressed where implausible.
Sources: EIA-860M, EIA-923, CAISO OASIS day-ahead LMPs, CAISO Today's Outlook.
The full dataset behind this page is open:
index_data.json. Corrections welcome —
email me.
Loading index data…
Unusual benchmark ratio: inspect the monthly values below. A ratio above 100% may reflect survey data or benchmark assumptions; it is not evidence of trading skill.
Monthly data and benchmark values
Month
Est. revenue
Benchmark revenue¹
Value ratio
¹ Implied from estimated revenue divided by the published monthly ratio; rounded source values may differ slightly. The summary ratio is the mean of monthly ratios, not a ratio of totals.
Bars: estimated DA energy revenue $/kW-month. Line: volume-matched perfect-foresight ceiling at this plant's node. The gap is timing + the fleet-average dispatch assumption.