Wärtsilä: Gems Pulse can secure battery revenue in unpredictable times

Finnish engineering firm Wärtsilä says the battery monitoring software it is making available to energy storage operators optimizes revenue and makes storage investment more secure just as the industry is facing policy headwinds.

In a press release issued by the marine and energy engineering firm yesterday, Wärtsilä Vice President of Energy Storage Software Engineering Luke Witmer said, “Our industry is experiencing changes in policy and global trade. Gems Pulse reduces risk and strengthens the long-term economics of clean energy. It gives customers real-time visibility and predictive intelligence so they can run their assets with confidence and speed. Batteries are fundamental to renewable energy integration and deliver real value, no matter how the market twists and turns or how policies evolve.”

The software, which Wärtsilä has used to optimize the operation of more than 9 GWh of its battery fleet to date, continuously monitors the thousands of data points generated by batteries throughout the day and draws upon insights gained by the company from operating millions of battery modules across billions of hours.

Gems Pulse can monitor energy storage project performance down to battery cell level, the company said.

Wärtsilä gave the example of a 5% error in reporting the percentage of energy left in a battery. That sort of “state-of-charge” error could cost up to $10,000 in lost annual revenue per megawatt of battery capacity, the engineer said, adding up to a $20 million hole across the life of a battery energy storage project.

The greater visibility of available energy, cell imbalances, and battery degradation offered by the predictive analysis tool, Wärtsilä said, also means project owners will not feel the need to hold back as much as 20% of their available energy storage capacity as a safeguard against under-performance.

Gems Pulse also enables modeling of new dispatch strategies so project owners can estimate the effects of a new approach based on real-time data.

Another feature reported by Wärtsilä is that the system can benchmark project performance against contractual requirements.

Competition

The software side of battery monitoring, analytics, and optimizing, is becoming a competitive market, with examples from 3E, Twaice, and Accure, showing increasing comprehensive and novel ideas to support both O&M activities, but driving batteries with a more complete understanding of state of charge, accuracy, and more.