That specific article is talking about the transition from ancillary services which drove the early battery adoption to actually buying and selling power which was only part of the business case for the initial battery rollouts.

The same story is repeating everywhere, batteries will very quickly supply all the ancillary needs for a grid at a fifth of the cost of spinning gas turbines if you let them.

The article seems written to intentionally confuse the saturation of that market with the wider abitrage market.

The high prices in a few days is likely more to do with Texas using those high prices to incentivize peaker plants rather than contract separately for capacity which some other markets do. They both still pay for it, just as different items on the total grid bill.

It would be strange if peaker style plants didn't make most of their money from peak times, whether they get paid via high market prices or capacity payments.

And when you enter a new market with batteries, it's shaving the peakiest peaks you've based your business model on. This also saves the most money (and carbon) for utility customers.

But all reporting on renewables needs to act like the whole thing is about to collapse into mad max for some reason.

There’s still a fortune to be made by whoever can crack seasonal storage. This is the ur-problem of humanity: to pay for the winter using the summer.

> the companies aren't getting rich ... revenues from energy arbitrage have plummeted

To be fair, there is an upside for such a company no longer being able to extract huge amounts of money from the general public on a regular basis. An upside to the public.

Enron was in this business and in this state.