Why Two Identical Polish Battery Contracts Are Not the Same Deal

Statkraft has signed two ten-year tolling agreements with Greenvolt for two Polish batteries. Both are 200 MW and 800 MWh. Both hand Statkraft every megawatt hour the battery stores and the right to decide when it moves. The two agreements are described in the same words. The projects underneath them are not the same.

Key takeaways

• Greenvolt has signed two separate 10-year tolling agreements with Statkraft covering the 200 MW/800 MWh Elk BESS at Nowa Wies Elcka and the 200 MW/800 MWh Turosn Koscielna BESS, a combined 400 MW and 1,600 MWh. Together they mark Statkraft's first large-scale battery storage deal in Poland.
• Under both agreements Statkraft contracts 100 percent of the energy stored in the project and holds the right to determine when the batteries charge and discharge, across both energy and flexibility services markets.
• The Turosn Koscielna project holds a 17-year capacity market contract under Poland's capacity market mechanism. Enerdatics' record of the Elk project states no capacity market contract.
• Both projects carry a four-hour charge and discharge duration. The Elk BESS is currently under construction.
• Enerdatics records 101 Polish power offtake agreements since the start of 2024, of which only six cover battery storage. These two are the largest by contracted capacity, at 200 MW each against a previous high of 60 MW.

What does a tolling agreement actually transfer?

The decision, not the asset. A tolling agreement gives one party the right to charge and discharge a battery it does not own, in exchange for payments to the owner. Greenvolt keeps the batteries on its balance sheet, keeps the construction risk and keeps the residual value. For ten years it does not keep the commercial question of when to run them. Statkraft does, across energy markets and flexibility services, on all of the stored energy.

That split is why tolling exists. A battery's revenue depends almost entirely on trading it well, which needs a desk, forecasting and market access most owners cannot justify building for two sites. Handing that over converts a volatile merchant line into something closer to a fixed receivable, which is what makes the asset financeable at reasonable leverage. The toller takes the upside and the volatility. Alpiq has been running the same play in Germany, where its first operating battery purchase came from a developer it had already been tolling, which is a reminder that these contracts also function as extended diligence.

If both tolling agreements are identical, why does one project's capacity contract matter?

Because a capacity contract does not compete with the tolling fee, it sits underneath it. Poland's capacity market pays an asset for being available to deliver in a given delivery year, whether or not it is actually dispatched. Tolling pays the owner for handing over dispatch rights. The two revenue streams answer different questions, so an asset can hold both, and Turosn Koscielna does. Elk, on the records as they stand, holds one.

The term lengths are where this gets consequential. The tolling runs ten years. Turosn Koscielna's capacity market contract runs seventeen. At the end of year ten, Greenvolt will be deciding what to do with two batteries in very different positions: one coming back to market with seven years of contracted availability payments still attached, and one coming back with nothing but its own merchant prospects. If Greenvolt refinances, rotates or sells either asset before then, those two positions will not price the same, and the tolling agreements will not be the reason. Polish capacity contracts also start when they start rather than when the asset does, a gap Enerdatics has traced before in a project that will operate for two years before its contract begins.

Why is Poland's battery offtake market this thin?

Because almost nothing has been contracted yet. Of the 101 Polish power offtake agreements Enerdatics records since the start of 2024, only six cover battery storage, and these two Greenvolt agreements are two of the six. The four before them are small by comparison: R.Power with Axpo and Grenergy with Polskie Sieci Elektroenergetyczne, both in January 2026, EDP Renewables taking 60 MW from Axpo in July 2025, and a 48 MW Econergy contract in March 2025. At 200 MW each, the Greenvolt agreements are more than three times the largest contracted capacity recorded before them.

Pricing is almost entirely unobserved. Exactly one of the six Polish battery offtake records carries a disclosed tariff, the Econergy contract at $63.41 per MWh on 48 MW over 17 years. One print, on a quarter of the capacity and nearly double the term, is not a benchmark for a ten-year toll on 400 MW. Neither Greenvolt nor Statkraft disclosed a fee, so these two agreements, which between them are the largest battery offtake commitment in the Polish market, leave no visible mark on what Polish storage flexibility is worth. The price opacity is itself the finding.

Enerdatics records 101 Polish power offtake agreements since the start of 2024, 45 of them solar, 32 wind and only six battery. These two tolling agreements take battery storage from roughly 4 percent of the Polish offtake record to 6 percent in a single announcement, and they do it at a scale that no previous Polish battery contract approached.

What does the deal signal for Polish storage?

It signals that Poland's battery build is now large enough to attract Nordic trading capital, and that the capital is arriving as a counterparty rather than as a buyer. Statkraft did not purchase these projects. It bought ten years of their dispatch, which is the cheapest way to take a position in a new market: no construction risk, no permitting risk, no capital tied up in containers, and full exposure to the thing it is actually good at. If Polish spreads disappoint, Statkraft walks away in 2037 with a book it has learned and no assets to sell.

For Greenvolt the logic runs the other way. The company has a well-established habit of recycling Polish storage, having sold the 112 MW/448 MWh Kozienice battery to DRI in September 2025, a project that also carried a 17-year capacity market contract. Tolling is what makes a retained asset behave like a sold one on the revenue line while staying on the balance sheet. Expect more Polish batteries to reach financial close with a toll rather than a sale attached, and expect the capacity market contract, not the toll, to be the thing that separates one asset's valuation from another's.

Frequently asked questions

What is a tolling agreement for a battery?A tolling agreement gives one party the right to charge and discharge a battery it does not own, in return for payments to the owner. The owner receives contracted revenue and sheds market risk, while the toller takes the trading upside and the volatility. Under these agreements Statkraft contracts 100 percent of the energy stored in both projects and decides when they charge and discharge.

What is Poland's capacity market mechanism?It pays an asset for being available to deliver power in a given delivery year, separately from any revenue earned for energy actually dispatched. The Turosn Koscielna BESS holds a 17-year capacity market contract under the mechanism, seven years longer than its tolling agreement.

How much are Greenvolt and Statkraft paying under the tolling agreements?Neither party disclosed a fee. Only one of the six Polish battery offtake agreements Enerdatics records since the start of 2024 carries a disclosed tariff, a 48 MW Econergy contract at $63.41 per MWh over 17 years from March 2025.

Enerdatics tracks every European battery offtake agreement with the contract type, term and capacity market position behind each project, which is how two identically worded tolls stop looking like one deal. Browse more transaction analysis in the Enerdatics insights archive.