Serbian industrial companies face a procurement choice as SEEPEX recorded a day-ahead price of about EUR 368.6/MWh at hour 20 on 15 October. A small number of expensive hours can dominate electricity procurement costs, making exposure to price peaks relevant to factory operating decisions. Companies must weigh owning a battery against buying flexibility as a service.
A battery charged earlier can reduce an industrial site’s electricity purchases during expensive periods. Storage can also support on-site solar, lower imbalance and provide short-duration resilience for sensitive processes. These uses link some of a battery’s value directly to the factory’s own operations, rather than to electricity market trading.
Companies that own and operate a battery must select its technology, manage warranties and maintain its state of charge. They also need to decide whether to use the asset only behind the meter or participate in electricity markets. Those choices shape how the battery is operated and which sources of value the company seeks to capture.
Serbia’s EMS framework offers certain active customers a simplified technical-study route for internal storage below 10 MW, provided the installation has no export capability. The study fee is EUR 15,000 plus VAT. This route can lower entry barriers for some industrial sites considering battery storage.
Under a flexibility-as-a-service model, a third party can finance and dispatch the battery under a shared-savings, tolling or availability contract. The arrangement can keep the asset off the industrial company’s core operating agenda and shift technology and dispatch risk away from businesses whose core activity is not energy trading. In return, the customer transfers part of the battery’s potential upside to the service provider.
The decision depends on how much of the battery’s value is captive to the factory. Ownership can make sense when most of the value comes from avoided peak purchases and process resilience. Where the economics rely heavily on balancing and merchant trading, a specialist operator may be better placed to carry the risk, leaving companies to compare site-specific benefits with the returns they give up under a service contract.
