German BESS Offtake Market Accelerates in H1 2026 While First Co-located Hedging Structures Emerge

The German BESS offtake market accelerated sharply in the first half of 2026, with deal volumes already surpassing last year’s total. This surge was underpinned by a rapid expansion of FPA volumes and the first wave of co-located BESS structures entering the market.

The German BESS offtake market, including both FPAs (agreements with a fixed-price component) and merchant optimization agreements, recorded strong growth in the first half of 2026, with H1 volumes already exceeding the total 2025 capacity by 7% (see Figure 1).

The growth was primarily driven by a sharp increase in FPA volumes. Volumes increased from 254 MW in all of 2025 to 642 MW in the first half of 2026, meaning the market has more than doubled within only six months (+153%). This reflects the growing role of debt financing in the BESS space, with lenders requesting a higher share of fixed revenues for BESS assets.

Tolls are the dominant structure, with only a small fraction of deals announced as day-ahead swaps. However, day-ahead swaps are a more recent development, with two of the three deals announced in June 2026.

Figure 1: BESS offtake deals in Germany for both standalone and co-located BESS assets, volumes and structures 2023 – H1 2026 (in GW).

While tolls provide full revenue certainty, they also eliminate any potential upside for asset owners from the currently high level of merchant BESS revenues in Germany. As a result, the market is moving towards partial tolls, where only a share of the asset is tolled. The remaining share is usually operated under a merchant revenue-share scheme.

This was also confirmed by a poll with market participants at the recent Pexapark Customer Briefing in Munich, where 64% of participants considered partial tolls to be the dominant structure in future BESS offtake.

For example, the largest tolling agreement ever announced in Germany is structured as a partial toll: Next Kraftwerke and Shell are offtaking the flexibility from ECO STOR’s 300 MW / 700 MWh asset, structured as an 80% toll and 20% merchant revenue share agreement.

Partial tolls can be structured either as a physical agreement, where there is one offtaker and the payment is partly fixed, or as a virtual toll, where there is only a financial settlement for a share of the asset while the entire asset is physically dispatched by a third party.

Poll participants ranked fully merchant structures, full tolls and day-ahead swaps (TBx contracts) behind partial tolls, while floor-price structures received very limited support.

Hedging structures for co-location enter the scene

Until recently, all FPAs in Germany were announced for standalone BESS assets. However, in June 2026, the first two FPAs for co-located assets appeared.

The first is a day-ahead swap by Deutsche Bahn for a grey co-located BESS asset, where the day-ahead portion of the revenue is fixed. The remaining parts of the revenue stack remain unhedged and the asset owner benefits from merchant upside in intraday and balancing markets.

The second is a toll between MaxSolar and MVV Trading for a unique co-located set-up. The solar asset was awarded an EEG subsidy, with MVV responsible for the direct marketing as well as the optimization of the co-located BESS asset under a fixed-price tolling agreement. This set-up was enabled by a regulatory update that introduced the so-called “Abgrenzungsoption” that allows the BESS asset to charge from the grid without the solar asset losing the EEG subsidy, which Pexapark reported on.

A second poll conducted during the Pexapark Customer Briefing asked participants which contractual structure they expect to become the market standard for green co-located BESS projects. The all-in hybrid PPA, where a single offtaker optimizes both the renewable generation and the battery under one fixed-price agreement, received the strongest support. Separate agreements combining a renewable PPA (or EEG subsidy) with a merchant BESS optimization contract ranked second but only closely behind, while shaped PPAs, where the battery is primarily used to reshape renewable output, received the fewest votes.

For grey co-located BESS, the situation is different, as the BESS asset can participate across more markets and achieve substantially higher revenues. As a result, other structures, such as the day-ahead swap mentioned above, become viable options.

The share of BESS offtake agreements announced for co-located BESS assets, including both merchant optimization agreements and agreements with a fixed-price component, has also grown significantly in H1 2026 compared to previous years (see Figure 2). While no offtake agreements for co-located BESS were announced in 2023 and 2024, with all agreements relating to standalone assets, the first co-located deals appeared in 2025, although they accounted for only 3% of total volumes. In the first six months of 2026, however, the volume has increased by almost 10 times, making up more than 30% of the German BESS offtake market. This is a very clear signal that co-location set-ups are maturing fast in the German BESS market.

Figure 2: BESS offtake deals for standalone and co-located BESS assets 2023 – H1 2026 (GW).

Overall, the German BESS offtake market is becoming more diversified across both standalone and co-located assets and FPA structures. Partial tolls are emerging as the preferred structure for combining revenue certainty with continued merchant upside.

Want to know how the market is pricing FPAs in Germany, France, Italy or Spain?

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