Tracking the carbon intensity of battery electricity

California-based climate data and analytics company WattCarbon says its new Aristotle, AI-powered carbon measurement platform can record every watt-hour entering and exiting a battery, and its source. With the data translated into an emissions profile for the battery – based on the carbon intensity of grid electricity at time of dispatch – time-based accounting could enable users of the battery’s electricity to meet clean energy goals.

Aristotle is offering developers, electric vehicle (EV) fleet owners, and clean energy owner-operators a real-time glance at the emissions impact of their assets. 

Designed to help users measure the return-on-investment of clean energy projects in financial and environmental terms, the platform integrates smoothly with smart energy meters, sensors, and datasets to provide granular data about how assets are performing.  

“Decarbonization makes sense financially,” WattCarbon CEO McGee Young told pv magazine USA. “But as a business, you need proof that it’s delivering more revenue.” 

Without data around asset performance, companies can’t be certain that they’re getting their money’s worth.  

That’s where Aristotle comes in, Young said, as the real-time insights, coupled with artificial intelligence-generated reference models, enable users to see what is and isn’t working.  

“Imagine you’re helping a homeowner think through all the complexity of putting in solar and storage,” said Andrew Krause, the CEO of California-based solar contractor Northern Pacific Power, in a conversation with pv magazine USA. “Homeowners want to know: How can I trust your electricity usage models if you’re incentivized to sell me your systems? That’s where third-party measurement and verification comes in. It shows that your systems do what they say they’re going to do.” 

The product also has EV applications.

“When you go to the gas station, you can get the ’87,’ the ’89,’ or the ’91,’” said Krause, adding that you have the option to pay a little extra per gallon to get the higher-quality gasoline. EV charging stations could use the same idea to offer a clean energy charging option, where users could pay an extra $0.05 per kilowatt-hour. “If it’s part of a commercial fleet, the cleaner the energy that goes into your vehicles, the lower your emissions profile is.  

“There’s a lot of room for innovation in the space,” he added, “As we have better, more granular data to describe exactly the value of the energy that’s being delivered.” 

Still, what excites Young most is Aristotle’s “plug-and-play” integration with data providers such as Arcadia, UtilityAPI, and Bayou Energy.  

“You can drop in your API key and within 10 minutes have savings calculations for any of your assets at your fingertips,” he said.  

Krause echoed Young’s sentiment, noting that a data infrastructure like WattCarbon’s has been “extremely cost-prohibitive” in the past.  

“It has always taken weeks, if not months, for somebody to pull the data together; to make that basically seamless is a gamechanger for the industry,” said Young. “We’re really excited to see folks start to play with it and to understand the use cases that will come out of having that [data] immediately at their disposal.”

From pv magazine USA.