While software has been described by many as the single most important aspect of how an energy network integrates, manages and then uses energy storage, two industry heavyweights have said that selling software licensing alone was not a viable business model for them.
Rolling out the controls and management software by itself is a perilous business proposition, according to Karim Wazni, MD of Aggreko Microgrids and Storage (formerly Younicos until it was bought out and became part of rental energy solutions group Aggreko).
Having deployed 220MW of battery storage projects worldwide to date across nearly 50 projects, many of which it worked on as a full system integrator including hardware and software provision, Aggreko M&SS-Younicos had found that the value of the software alone could not be divorced from the overall aims of the project.
“It’s [software is] only valuable if you can package it in a system that delivers benefits that the customer can measure. I think it’s been challenging to prove a profitable business model based on software licensing,” Wazni said.
“So, it’s through the realisation of these benefits in a service model that we actually leverage the value of this software, so we’ve ported, we’ve included the software coming from Younicos and we’ve integrated [it] into our overall power management system, so we can then realise the benefits of the combination of thermal, storage and solar.”
Value is in the integrated offering
Andy Tang of the executive team at Greensmith Energy, also the target of a recent successful takeover bid by Wärtsilä, told Energy-Storage.news that he and his team also did not believe “that in this industry, there’s a strong case for a software-only business model”.
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