The 5 Maturity Stages of Battery Storage Asset Management

With batteries becoming a key component of our mobility and energy world, increasingly companies find themselves navigating operational risks like safety and performance for massive amounts of new assets. As an experienced industry consultant and battery expert, I can say: Welcome to battery storage asset management! It’s a wild, wild world with lots of intelligent and dedicated people – and more smoke and mirrors than even the beauty industry.

Battery buyers beware

The battery market is a world where every new headline could be a groundbreaking innovation or an empty claim that will fade like a summer fling. A world where a group of battery veterans actually coined the rhyme: “Liar, liar battery supplier.” And everyone pretty much agrees. Try it on anyone who has procured batteries at scale or for about three years or more and you’ll get a knowing chuckle—I guarantee it.  

By the way: This dynamic is not particularly new or outrageous. Just go back to any PV Expo in the early 2000’s and watch three-year-old companies give thirty-year warranties on modules they had yet to mass produce. Unsurprisingly, many of those companies are not around today and the warranties have quietly vanished with them. Although, the battery market has a substantial difference to the solar world of twenty years ago: batteries are everywhere and affect everyone. From electric cars and bus fleets to utility companies to financiers, battery safety and performance are already a major part of your life.

How do companies manage battery asset risk?  

With over a decade of commercial experience, I’ve recognized a few patterns emerge since the late 2000s. I recently had an interesting discussion with a colleague about the “maturity” of companies when it comes to managing batteries. Over a beer, we identified the following five maturity stages:

Stage 1: ”It’s the supplier’s responsibility.“  

Not every company starts in this stage, but many have been there. When first introducing batteries into their portfolios, stakeholders must focus on a million things at the same time, from supply chain restrictions to regulatory requirements. Topics like battery safety and performance are things the supplier should worry about. After all it’s their job and there are warranties and insurance for that stuff, right!?

Stage 2: “It might be an issue for others but my technology is safe/robust/long-lasting.”

‍Companies at this stage recognize that managing battery lifetime and safety is important - just not for them. The reasoning often goes like this:

- ”It’s OK, because my cells are automotive grade NMC (Lithium Nickel Manganese Cobalt Oxide batteries) and not some cheap backyard LFP technology (Lithium iron phosphate batteries).“

- ”It’s OK because mine are robust LFP and not the dangerous, low-cycle NMC.“

Logically, only one of these can be true. In practice, both aren’t. High-profile incidents of battery failures have occurred across all cell chemistries. Yes, that includes solid state and anode free technologies.

Stage 3: “I reactively manage battery assets.”

Now that the first projects are successfully deployed, companies at this maturity stage typically realize battery systems are not set it and forget it. They dedicate one person to manage the assets and to handle topics like battery lifetime and safety. This person is usually involved in everything from procurement to operations and maintenance—and confronted with a shocking amount of contradicting information. Pretty soon, it becomes clear that battery risks have a massive impact on the bottom line and that substantial opportunities are not leveraged.  

At the same time, it becomes clear that spreadsheets and the customer support from the supplier can’t help to manage this ever-growing complexity. And then, it gets even harder: the company wants 10 times more batteries in the next 5 years, but with different suppliers to diversify the supply chain and hedge risks.

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