The Rise of Digitalisation in Energy Storage

This week I sat down with our CEO to discuss some of the trends we've seen in the Energy Storage sector so far in 2024 - check out the discussion here.

One topic we discussed was the growing emergence of software innovation in the energy storage and grid landscape. Like with any sector, data is king, and the ability for ESS and Grid companies, to analyse, interpret, and use this data to make informed business decisions is vitally important!

It's therefore no surprise to see this announcement from Fluence - the ESS powerhouse, as they look set to launch their own software product alongside their ESS hardware. 

This area excites me and I've had chance to partner with some wonderful software start-ups who are now disrupting Energy Storage in many ways!

Battery Chain

Whether it be software to improve battery design and testing in the pre-production phase, or the BMS to optimally control your EV battery performance, we're seeing a huge rise in new players. The better a battery can perform and the longer it can sustain this performance the more chance we have of accelerating EV driving and alleviate some of the supply chain challenges (finding new materials, new battery building etc). 

Battery makers are always striving for continuous improvement, particularly in EV where margins are super critical! Even a 1% improvement in performance can make a huge difference!

We've also been working with AI-driven battery monitoring SaaS players, helping customers to have real-time insights into the battery state of health, but also predicting opportunities to optimise and any potential failures that may be coming well in advance.

ESS Asset Optimisation & Flexibility

With such significant CAPEX involved on grid-scale ESS, owner-operators are looking for maximum optimisation of their expensive assets to ensure ROI.  We've seen in the UK recently that revenue returns have dropped, emphasising the need to focus on well-optimised operational BESS. The number of optimiser software companies across Europe is on the rise!

It's the same on smaller scale ESS, with C&I and even residential customers, looking for that “edge” on how to best manage their battery, particularly when co-located with PV, EV charging and smart building tech etc. Many of the major hardware providers are now broadening their offering to cover smart EMS solutions to better control and optimise their benefits!

Forecasting & Trading

Developers, Operators/IPPs, and large energy consumers are now recognising the potential for their distributed energy assets to be revenue generators, none more so that ESS. With many countries now modernising their energy markets (switching to wholesale markets), the opportunities to forecast and trade energy have never been more lucrative. We've worked with some of the smart forecasting and trading software companies rising in Europe, with many more seemingly coming through. This is a fast-paced, dynamic period for energy trading! 

Alongside this, is flexibility. Countries are now modernising their energy markets, enabling  of the global energy markets, as mentioned, are giving companies and Distribution Operations opportunities for flexibility revenues - ensuring demand is met by supply but also to allow numerous energy assets to be interconnected from an energy trading perspective - again helping to maximise the asset revenue returns!

The beauty of the software market is start-ups can scale quickly, without the need for capital intensive production facilities etc. and there are new disruptive solutions entering the mix every single year! 

We work with companies in all of these digitalisation areas, helping to hire great senior commercial, operations, and product / technical leadership talent. We're currently partnering with an exciting SaaS scaleup in Germany whose asset monitoring and management solutions offer valuable insights into battery condition and performance metrics, for transportation and BESS clients.

They're hiring some Senior Sales Managers so if you're interested, please get in touch today!