Thomas Hitch, Business Development Manager at iON+
Maximising the “lifetime value” of a battery asset is the overriding imperative for any asset manager in BESS. During the procurement and construction phases, naturally focus falls largely on the hardware – getting the highest performing system in place, understanding degradation curves, and cycle performance.
However, these solutions should be just one component of the asset manager’s toolkit. There is no use in paying the significant capital costs of high-tech solutions without also being acutely aware of what’s going on behind the scenes of an asset when it is operating. Then, the focus should turn to prioritising how the chosen hardware can actually be run most effectively. This is the dominant factor which asset managers can control, and one which offers significant potential to make gains through intelligent use of data.
Battery assets are now so sophisticated that they generate a significant amount of leverageable data. By integrating SaaS (software as a service) solutions, asset managers can have eyes on input, output, efficiency and wasted energy. Operating on a sub-second basis, the software allows operators to access a selection of critical metrics in real time, which they can put to use to reap rewards across technical and commercial imperatives.
Meeting technical KPIs
Technical Asset Management is at the heart of getting a battery to perform at its highest level as often as possible. Asset managers will be tracking performance against several metrics, including: availability (what percentage of the battery is online and available at any time); round trip efficiency (how much energy is lost between a charge and discharge cycle); or degradation/State of Health (how is the battery performing relative to the manufacturer’s warranty).
Over a battery’s lifespan, finding marginal gains across multiple KPIs such as these makes a meaningful difference to revenue and competitiveness.
To keep meeting these goals, naturally maintenance will be required. Smart data makes diagnosing problems much quicker, meaning assets stay underperforming as little as possible. But asset managers need to strike a careful balance between not neglecting maintenance days and not pausing operations too frequently.
Drawing on data visibility, an asset manager becomes able to identify the windows for repair which align most closely with priorities. One operator might choose to bring forwards a maintenance schedule to ensure a battery has top performance for a High Revenue period. Another might pay extra for a higher tier of service level agreement (SLA) from their maintenance contractor, so they can bring a battery back ‘online’ faster in the event of an issue arising to prevent lost revenue. Data is key to being able to chart the best path.
Maximising markets
When it comes to Commercial Asset Management, asset managers need to ensure their top performing sites from a technical perspective are transacting in the right markets to make the most money.
BESS assets can earn revenue across three key markets: energy arbitrage; grid stability services; and capacity/reserve markets. Whilst third-party Optimisers are often responsible for which market to monetise the battery in, an asset manager’s attention to system performance lays essential groundwork for them to make the best decisions.
Leveraging granular data will help asset managers assess these fundamentals – from availability to reliability – and put their asset in the best position for commercial market success.
Standardising decisions
Having the right data at your fingertips to make these daily decisions is one half of the puzzle. The other half – and to push an advantage further – is using data to back up and track the efficacy of these decisions over time.
Different stakeholders – such as asset managers, Optimisers, and investment funds – view asset performance from different angles.
Accurate, integrated, and accessible data can give a full picture to all stakeholders of all aspects of an asset’s performance, spanning different teams’ concerns. This can help different perspectives be reconciled more easily, allow decisions to be reached more quickly, and performance to be tracked consistently across time and portfolios.
Data as the differentiator
Maximising the capacity of infrastructure is important not just for individual energy managers, but for the energy transition more widely. This will, of course, continue to benefit from advances in hardware, but there is no denying the role which data already plays in optimising this same hardware – especially as budget constraints may mean asset managers cannot always install the most cutting-edge technology.
After all, the most sustainable battery replacement is the replacement that doesn’t need to happen at all. Asset managers should feel confident capitalising on infrastructure which is already in place, before taking a more critical and informed approach to considering future replacements or repowering.
This article appeared in the October 2026 issue of Energy Manager magazine. Subscribe here.
