Photoseo und suena energy: Optimising Green Co-Located Storage
- Amelie Heinz
- Jul 1
- 4 min read
The combination of photovoltaics and battery storage is becoming increasingly important as the energy transition progresses. While the expansion of renewable energy continues, standalone PV projects are getting under growing economic pressure. Market value cannibalisation, negative prices and increasing price volatility are changing revenue profiles. At the same time, grid connections are becoming a key bottleneck for new generation and flexibility projects.
This is exactly where co-location concepts without grid charging – known as green co-located storage systems – come in. They make it possible to use existing grid connections more efficiently, shift solar power to different points in time and provide additional flexibility without necessarily requiring new grid capacity.
Project overview: Laage
For the operator Photoseo, suena energy is optimising a green co-located storage system at the Laage site, which complements an existing PV plant. The PV plant, with an installed capacity of 9.7 MWp, has been expanded with a battery energy storage system offering 5 MW of power and 10 MWh of capacity.
The battery is connected behind the same feed-in market location as the PV plant and may only be charged with electricity generated by the connected renewable energy asset. Drawing electricity from the grid is not part of this setup.
The project was selected as part of a competitive innovation tender by the German Federal Network Agency and has been in commercial operation since April 2026.
Project: Laage
Customer: Photoseo
Asset: Existing PV plant retrofitted with green co-located storage
PV nominal power: 9,7 MWp
BESS: 5 MW / 10 MWh
Support scheme: Innovation tender by the German Federal Network Agency
Technology: suena Energy Trading Autopilot
Operational challenge: Optimisation within strict parameters
The regulatory requirements for a green co-located storage system shape the entire operating model. Since the battery may only be charged when sufficient PV generation is available, the number of economically usable cycles is limited. Participation in certain markets may also be restricted.
Commercial success therefore depends on how precisely PV generation, market prices, the battery’s state of charge and technical constraints are coordinated. Forecast errors, suboptimal schedules or missed short-term market opportunities have a direct impact on revenues.
Solution: How suena energy automates the commercialisation of green co-located storage systems
suena energy is responsible for the full commercialisation and operational market integration of the green co-located storage system in Laage.
At the heart of the solution is the suena Energy Trading Autopilot. The system continuously processes relevant data points and uses them to derive the economically optimal schedule for the battery. These inputs include market prices, weather data, PV generation forecasts, the battery’s state of charge and technical battery constraints.
Why is automation particularly important for green co-located storage?
Green co-located storage systems operate within tight operational boundaries. They can only capture market opportunities when sufficient PV generation is available at the same time and the technical conditions of the battery are met.
suena energy's automated trading approach helps to:
capture short-term price movements,
balance forecast deviations,
continuously optimise battery schedules,
comply with technical restrictions,
reliably reflect regulatory requirements.
As a result, the battery is not operated in isolation, but optimised as a flexible component of a hybrid PV-plus-storage system.
What is the specific added value for Photoseo?
With suena energy, Photoseo gains a solution that combines market access, battery optimisation and operational execution. The green co-located storage system can be used in a targeted way to shift solar power from the PV plant into more economically attractive time windows.
This turns the existing PV plant with retrofitted battery storage into an actively marketed, flexible energy system that is commercially optimised within the applicable regulatory framework.
A reference project for scaleable co-location concepts
The project in Laage demonstrates how existing PV plants can be developed into hybrid, market-integrated energy systems by adding battery storage. What matters is not only the physical combination of generation and storage, but also the operational optimisation within clearly defined technical and regulatory boundaries.
For asset operators, this creates an additional lever to respond to changing market conditions. Solar power does not necessarily have to be sold during periods of high feed-in and low prices. Instead, it can be shifted into higher-price time windows. In this way, the battery becomes a commercial tool to counter declining market values during solar hours.
Based on this project, five additional assets with Photoseo are already planned or partly in implementation using a comparable setup. This makes Laage an important reference project, showing how asset operators can systematically add flexibility to existing PV portfolios.
About Photoseo
Photoseo is a specialised group of companies in the renewable energy sector, focused on delivering modern infrastructure projects. Its core business and strategic focus includes the following areas:
Asset portfolio: Development, operation and management of ground-mounted pv plants and battery storage systems. Storage systems are implemented both in combination with pv plants and as standalone assets.
End-to-end implementation: The Photoseo Group covers the entire process through to long-term operation of the assets.
Business model: The energy assets developed and built by Photoseo are used flexibly. They are either transferred into the company’s own long-term asset portfolio or sold as stable-value investment assets to institutional and individual investors.
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