1. BESS owners and operators struggle with commissioning
As many are acutely aware, BESS commissioning can be a painfully expensive process fraught with both technical and regulatory challenges. Systems often fail the tests defined in their off-take agreements, and operation teams struggle to identify issues promptly due to data limitations. Even after commissioning, unresolved quality concerns and potential warranty claims can lead to accelerated degradation and underperformance early in the battery lifecycle.
To address these challenges, more and more BESS owners and operators opt for commissioning analysis with cloud-based predictive battery analytics. This enables battery asset owners and operators to identify quality issues early during commissioning, submit appropriate warranty claims, and avoid future downtime.
2. Battery State Estimation continues to challenge BESS owners operators
Inaccurate battery state estimations, especially regarding state of charge (SOC), continue to be the Achilles heel of battery assets. Without precise state of charge estimations, asset owners and operators risk significant financial consequences. Underestimations lead to missed sale opportunities, while overestimations incur penalty costs for underperformance.
This issue arises because the intricacies of Lithium Iron Phosphate (LFP) based systems surpass the capabilities of traditional Battery Management Systems (BMS). BESS managers without an advanced data analytics platform are at the mercy of these ill-equipped BMS for battery state estimations.
To avoid taking this gamble, leading battery asset owners and operators are employing AI-driven predictive analytics to achieve pin-point accuracy in their battery state estimations, particularly SOC. Now, these operators can confidently plan around unavailability and downtime without compromising their revenue stream.
3. Safety remains highest priority while operating BESS sites
In just the last 5 years, the rate of Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) failure incidents has seen a monumental decrease, yet the severity of these incidents remains high. Predictive battery analytics is recognized by leading battery asset owners and operators as a tool to continue to decrease the rate of battery incident occurence, while minimizing their severity.
This concept was an important topic of discussion during Intersolar panel,“BESS Quality: Technological advances and safety concerns,” featuring our CEO Kai-Philipp Kairies and thought leaders from Huawei and Jinko Solar. The panelists emphasized the necessity of predictive battery analytics in ensuring a safe and efficient operation, with Neil Parkinson from Jinko Solar stating point-blank “We need battery analytics.”
Conclusion
Intersolar 2024 has once again provided valuable insights into the direction of the energy storage market and its biggest obstacles. All three takeaways that we discussed above can be boiled down to this: BESS owners and operators are leveraging advanced battery data to create safer, more reliable, and higher-performing battery assets.
Optimizing BESS operation is a key step toward reaching the climate goals set forth in the Paris Climate Accord. We can’t wait to see what Intersolar 2025 holds.
