IRR, Meet “What If”: Testing Scenarios at the Speed of Thought
- Elina Bazinas
- Jun 3
- 2 min read
Don’t build one model. Explore 20.
Imagine you’re about to pitch your BESS project to an investor. You’ve got your model ready, IRR, payback period, revenue forecasts. Everything neatly tied up in a spreadsheet.
Then the investor asks:
“What if wholesale prices drop 15% over the next 3 years?”
“Can you show me the upside case if you double capacity and delay COD by a quarter?”
“What’s the IRR if you qualify for IRA incentives under a new ITC structure?”
You freeze. Not because you don’t know the answer—but because you don’t have it. Yet.
Welcome to the “one-scenario” trap
Traditional modeling workflows are built around a case. A base case. Maybe a downside. If you’re lucky (and well-staffed), you throw in an upside too.
But energy markets move fast. So do policies, capex costs, and grid dynamics. And a single model can’t answer today’s biggest questions:
What’s the range of possible outcomes?
What are the levers that actually move IRR?
Where’s the risk hiding, and how do I hedge it?
If you’re stuck with static spreadsheets, you’re stuck seeing only part of the picture.
The smartest teams don’t guess. They explore.
Terra AI was built to make BESS scenario testing not just easier, but instinctive.
You don’t need to copy-paste across ten tabs or build new files for every change. You simply tweak an assumption, battery cost, capacity size, merchant price curve, opex, and instantly see what shifts.
IRR doesn’t live in a single cell anymore. It lives on a canvas of possibilities.
And now you can explore them all—without breaking the model, calling finance, or reopening “Final_v8_actual_final.xls”.
Why this matters more than ever
Investors don’t fund static projects. They fund teams who understand risk, model range, and know how to respond.
Being able to answer, “what if?” in seconds it isn’t a party trick, it’s a trust builder.
It shows you’ve done the work. It shows that you understand the market. It shows you’re in control, not just optimistic.
And that confidence can be the difference between “let’s circle back” and “we’re in.”
Real-time scenario testing: what it actually looks like
With Terra AI, you can:
See how an increase in interconnection costs affects NPV
Compare the impact of 2-hour vs. 4-hour storage durations on revenue stacks
Quickly test sensitivities around COD delays or degradation rates
Model incentive cliffs, policy shifts, or merchant volatility, live
All without rebuilding the model.
All without asking someone else to do it.
Imagine you’re about to pitch your BESS project to an investor. You’ve got your model ready, IRR, payback period, revenue forecasts. Everything neatly tied up in a spreadsheet.
Then the investor asks:
“What if wholesale prices drop 15% over the next 3 years?”
“Can you show me the upside case if you double capacity and delay COD by a quarter?”
“What’s the IRR if you qualify for IRA incentives under a new ITC structure?”
You freeze. Not because you don’t know the answer—but because you don’t have it. Yet.
In BESS finance, your edge isn’t having a perfect model. It’s being able to test 20 versions before anyone else has finished their second.
That’s what Terra AI gives you.
The freedom to explore. The speed to act. The insight to choose the best path forward.
So go ahead, ask “what if”?
Because now you’ll actually have the answer.
Want to test your next five scenarios without opening Excel? Start with Terra.
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