Reader · no content
No body text on file.
Open the original to read the full piece.
230. The growing complexity of battery fleet management - May26
Brief
The episode focused on the operational complexity of growing battery fleets and how analytics companies like Twice help operators manage reliability, performance and regulatory risk. Hosts opened by contrasting batteries with mature renewables and introduced Stefan, Twice’s CEO, who described Twice as an independent data layer that pulls AC and DC telemetry from EMS/BMS, inverters/PCS and—in some installations—down to cell-level signals. Twice unifies that heterogeneous data to generate actionable KPIs (for example, usable energy per system and portfolio), detect performance degradation and prioritize warranty or maintenance actions.
Stefan and the hosts agreed that batteries are a very different asset class from solar or wind: they generate an order-of-magnitude more data per MWh (he estimated ~10–100×), must be actively dispatched, and degrade with operation. Stefan reported a recent survey of ~100 IPPs/utilities showing ~80% experience incidents monthly and ~40% see revenue impacts, underscoring the need for proactive operations. He reviewed root-cause statistics from an EPRI-style failure database—about 40% of safety incidents traced to control systems, ~40% to balance-of-plant (HVAC, wiring, etc.) and ~20% to cells—and noted that early deployments (circa 2017) using NMC pouch cells produced notable fire events, while most new projects use LFP chemistries that are intrinsically safer.
The conversation also covered industry structure and geopolitical constraints: as portfolios diversify across integrators and vendors, operators need a single pane of glass for monitoring but face data-sovereignty and cyber requirements that push vendors to run local clouds (Twice has regional deployments in Europe, the US and Australia). Twice currently takes read-only access to assets to provide independent analytics; hosts pushed on the idea of moving into write/control functionality, and Stefan acknowledged both the commercial opportunity and the certification/complexity trade-offs. Both hosts and guest concluded that excellence in operations—driven by continuous, high-resolution telemetry and independent analytics—will be the competitive edge for battery fleets that are expected to remain on grids for 15–20 years.
Why it matters
Stefan (CEO of Twice) says Twice is an independent battery analytics platform that ingests AC- and DC-level telemetry from EMS/BMS/inverters/PCS (and sometimes cell-level data) to unify signals and compute KPIs such as usable energy at both single-asset and portfolio levels.
Key details
- Hosts reported Twice has grown to ~150 employees (battery scientists, chemists, software engineers, data scientists) and has raised roughly €60 million in equity plus about €25 million in finance from the EIB, positioning it for global expansion (Speaker 2).
- Stefan cited a survey of ~100 IPPs/utilities from earlier this year: ~80% of operators see storage incidents at least monthly and ~40% of operators report those incidents cause direct revenue impacts.
- Twice and Stefan highlighted data scale and complexity: battery assets produce ~10–100× more data per MWh than solar, making monitoring, aggregation and cross-vendor 'single pane of glass' analytics necessary to manage portfolios.
- Referencing an EPRI failure dataset, Stefan said root causes cluster roughly into control systems (~40%), balance-of-plant components like HVAC (~40%), and cell issues (~20%); he noted early systems (circa 2017) used NMC pouch cells and experienced high-profile fires, whereas modern deployments trend to LFP chemistry.
- On cyber and sovereignty, Stefan explained Twice operates regionally (local clouds in Europe, US, Australia) because regulators restrict foreign access to grid-critical data; Twice currently takes read-only data access (no write/control), though hosts and Stefan discussed market pressure for integrated control layers and certification challenges.