enSights CEO says BESS developers are repeating solar's modelling mistakes, and investors are noticing

Alon Maskovich, CEO and co-founder of enSights, says the pattern he is watching in PJM battery storage finance is a familiar one: the same modelling errors that cost solar developers credibility with investors years ago are now showing up in BESS project pitches^[1].

The observation extends reporting from earlier this week, which established that spreadsheet-based models are causing developers to double-count regulatory revenue streams and lose investor confidence - not because PJM market conditions are weak, but because the numbers do not hold up under scrutiny^[1].

The solar parallel

Maskovich draws on two decades of work with commercial and industrial customers on decarbonisation^[1]. His argument is structural: early solar developers routinely overstated revenue projections, and lenders learned to discount them. The BESS industry, he says, is at a comparable inflection point - one where the gap between what a model claims and what an asset can actually deliver is wide enough to stall financing.

PJM's April 2026 BESS fleet revenue stack reached $72/kW-month, composed of $56 from regulation, $11 from real-time energy arbitrage, and $5 from capacity. That stack is real, but it is also complex: battery storage assets in PJM can participate in five primary wholesale market revenue streams, including capacity market revenue through the Base Residual Auction, day-ahead and real-time energy arbitrage, frequency regulation through the RegD market, and spinning and operating reserves. Maximising total revenue requires co-optimising across all four streams simultaneously. A spreadsheet that treats those streams as additive and independent will overstate what any single asset can earn.

The regulation market is the sharpest illustration of the risk. Regulation makes up 47 to 66% of PJM wholesale battery revenue - but PJM's regulation market is only 750 MW. A developer modelling regulation revenue as though the market can absorb unlimited new supply is building on a foundation that will compress as the fleet grows.

What the fix requires

Maskovich's prescription goes beyond correcting spreadsheet errors^[1]. He argues the industry needs to:

• Use validated, site-specific data rather than market-average assumptions
• Connect operational decisions to financial outcomes in a single auditable framework
• Treat performance management as part of the investment case, not an afterthought

"Most organisations can model a storage project, but very few can connect those projections to ongoing operational execution," Maskovich said. "Our goal is to help customers understand whether a project should be built, how it should be configured, and ultimately how to maximise performance once it is operational."

enSights released a PJM-specific Battery Economics Calculator on 7 July 2026, combining sizing, degradation, revenue modelling, and ROI in a single auditable framework^[1].

What to watch

The solar industry eventually standardised its modelling practices, and lender confidence followed. Whether BESS reaches that point faster - or repeats the same multi-year credibility gap - will depend on how quickly developers move away from bespoke spreadsheets toward auditable, operationally grounded models. PJM's regulation market redesign in October 2025 lifted average fleet revenues from $20/kW-month to $62/kW-month, creating genuine upside - but also a revenue stack complex enough to punish imprecise modelling. A full interview with Maskovich is forthcoming in ESN Premium^[1].