廉价电池和智能软件将掀起下一波科技革命

    电网软件创业公司

    像特斯拉一样，许多主打低成本锂离子电池业务的创业公司也从硅谷中脱颖而出，并获得风投资本的支持。它们从事的领域包括软件、数据分析、用户界面、可视化仿真和即插即用的电子产品设计。这些企业包括加州米伯莱市的Stem公司，马里兰州罗克维尔市的Greensmith Energy公司，加州圣克拉拉市的Green Charge Networks公司，旧金山的GELI公司与Advanced Microgrid Solutions公司，原本从事电动汽车行业的洛杉矶Coda Energy公司，以及来自德国的洛杉矶Sonnenbatterie公司等。

    Stem公司CEO约翰•卡灵顿指出，从2013年年末他刚加入Stem公司到现在，在这样一段短短的时间内，“电池价格就已经大幅下降。”全球各大电池供应商纷纷在电池生产方面投入重金，其中多数投资都瞄准了电动汽车方向。但随着近期石油价格的下跌，电动汽车进入市场的速度可能要比预期更慢一些。

    除了电动汽车，以及各种各样的计算设备对锂离子电池的需求以外，电网市场对锂离子电池的需求也正在增长，尤其是在一些对清洁能源和降低碳排放有较强需求的地区，以及一些电价很高的地区（如夏威夷等岛屿）。加利福尼亚州率先出台一项政策，要求电力公司在未来几年内必须拥有10亿瓦特以上的电力储备。德国也出台了强有力的激励政策，鼓励人们购买电池，与家用和商用太阳能电池板搭配使用。

    Stem公司正在安装几百个电池项目，主要是为企业和工业客户的建筑物安装电池组。当电网电价处于高位时，Stem公司的软件可以自动切换到电池组的电力。Stem还为它的电池组提供了金融方案，即所谓的“零首付”模式，用户可以在需要的时候租用电池，然后靠与电网电价的差价省钱。该公司还为电力公司安装大型电池组，帮助他们管理电网，南加州爱迪生电力公司就是它的大客户之一。

    The grid software startups

    Like Tesla before them, many of the startups building software, data analytics, user interfaces, visualization and simulation tools, and plug-and-play electronic product designs, on top of low-cost, lithium-ion batteries are coming out of Silicon Valley and backed by venture capitalists. These include Stem (based in Milbrae, Calif.),Greensmith Energy (Rockville, Maryland), Green Charge Networks (Santa Clara, Calif), GELI (San Francisco),Advanced Microgrid Solutions (San Francisco), Coda Energy (the reborn former electric car company in Los Angeles) and Sonnenbatterie (originally from Germany, with an office in Los Angeles).

    Stem CEO John Carrington says even in the time between when he joined Stem in late 2013 and today, there has been a “massive decline in battery prices.” The world’s largest battery suppliers have been investing heavily in the battery manufacturing side of their business, much of it for electric cars, said Carrington, but with the recent drop in oil prices, electric cars might be a little slower coming to market than expected.

    Beyond the pull of electric cars, and the already-established market for lithium-ion batteries for computing devices, the market for grid storage is emerging first in regions with strong incentives for clean energy and for lowering carbon emissions, as well as in places with very high electricity rates (such as islands like Hawaii). California in particular has a first-of-its-kind mandate that says utilities need to buy over a gigawatt of energy storage in the coming years. Germany has strong incentives that encourage batteries paired with solar panels for homes and businesses.

    Stem, which is in various stages of installing a couple hundred battery projects, deploys its batteries at its business and industrial customers’ buildings, and the company’s software switches the building over to using battery power when electricity rates from the grid are high. Stem offers financing for the batteries — so it’s “no money down”—then leases the batteries while the customer saves money on the electricity rates. The company also installs big battery banks for utilities, such as Southern California Edison, for helping them manage the grid.

    创立刚刚7年的Greensmith Energy公司据说管理着美国去年三分之一以上新安装的电力存储设备。该公司为企业和电力公司提供的电池组也是借助软件进行管理。CEO约翰•荣格表示，虽然电网是依赖软件运行的，但在很长一段时间里，软件并没有得到足够的重视。

    虽然Greensmith公司安装的大多数电池组都是锂离子电池（该公司总共为17个客户实施了30个项目，其中包括9家电力公司），但它也为客户提供流体电池等其它类型的电池。该公司的软件可以模拟客户的任何需求和用途，从而帮助客户选择正确的电池和配置来解决他们的问题。

    Sonnenbatterie公司已经为客户安装了8000多套电池系统，不过它的客户主要是家庭和小企业，并且以日常使用为主。该公司使用的是索尼Fortelion系列锂离子电池。CEO鲍里斯•范•伯尔曼表示，该系列电池是目前市面上唯一能够满足家用日常充放电需求的电池。

    其他大公司为了保持在技术上的同步性，也正在纷纷进军电网蓄电池市场。比如通用电气公司最近就对它的钠电池生产部门进行了“瘦身”，同时开始利用第三方电池提供锂离子电网蓄电池产品。日本京瓷公司也开始销售家用能源系统，它使用的锂离子电池来自三星公司。

    EnerNOC公司是做需求响应系统（即在高峰时段调低用户用电量）起家的，现在它已经迅速成为一家能源软件服务公司，目前该公司正在测试特斯拉的电池。此外，加利福尼亚州政府的公开数据显示，加州还为索尼、电气业龙头老大施耐德公司等企业的能源存储项目提供了政策激励。

    Seven-year-old Greensmith Energy, which says it manages over a third of all the energy storage capacity installed in the U.S. last year, also uses software to manage low-cost batteries for both businesses and utilities. Greensmith CEO John Jung says that even though the power grid runs on software, it has largely been an afterthought for a long time.

    While the majority of the batteries Greensmith has installed — it has 30 projects for 17 customers including nine utilities—have been lithium-ion, it has also used other kinds of batteries for its customers such as flow batteries. The startup offers its customers software that can simulate how batteries would work for whatever purpose the customer needs, and then helps them choose the right battery and configuration to solve their problem.

    Sonnenbatterie, which has 8,000 battery systems installed, is different in that it sells its battery systems mostly for homes and small businesses for daily use. The company uses lithium ion batteries from Sony (Fortelion), and Sonnenbatterie CEO Boris Von Bormann says those are the only batteries on the market today that can fulfill the daily charging and discharging needs of its residential customers.

    Other big companies are jumping into the grid battery market, too, looking to stay on the right side of the tech curve. GE has appeared to have scaled down its sodium-grid battery manufacturing division, and has more recently started to offer a lithium-ion battery grid product using third-party batteries. Kyocera is selling home energy systems using lithium-ion batteries from Samsung.

    EnerNOC, which built a business off of turning down its customers’ energy during peak hours (called demand response), is quickly becoming an energy software services company, and is testing out Tesla’s batteries for that purpose. A scan of the publicly available data of the incentives that the state of California offers for the deployment of energy storage projects includes other electronics giants like Sony, as well as power behemoth Schneider.