Zenobē’s storage solutions help businesses utilise energy in a more efficient and environmentally friendly way. With the power of technology and innovation we have supported them on their journey of grounding a much greener future.
We love to work on products that improve the world in an almost invisible way behind the scenes - like Zenobē’s storage solutions which helps businesses and even countries to utilize energy in a more efficient and environmentally friendly way.
We often take electricity for granted as a basic utility, but it is very different from other energy types we use. Historically when electricity has been generated it needed to be used immediately, due to costly storage processes. This creates a need for complex forecasts leading to estimations that keep supply and demand in balance for the whole network, which is further complicated by the growing importance of renewable energy sources which are beyond the full control of humans.
Innovative energy storage services aim to break this pattern and separate the time of usage from the time of generation by creating reserve capacities. Zenobē’s team knows the ins and outs of storing electrons and needed our help to build software that enables a very precise management of these battery systems.
Working with Zenobē brings the exact type of high-stakes complexity that excites us - and we are thrilled to support them with innovative out-of-the-box thinking, IT expertise, and creativity as they explore novel use cases for battery technology.
In an ongoing effort to combat the effects of climate change, many cities are transitioning from fossil fuel powered transport to cleaner and more sustainable electric alternatives. This trend is apparent in the United Kingdom, which is setting ambitious targets to become carbon net-zero in the near future.
As a result, mass transit vehicles are increasingly turning green due to incentives and regulations enacted by the UK government. While this is a positive shift, the challenge lies within the lack of infrastructure (e.g. complex hardware systems such as bus charging stations, which often requires completely redesigning bus depots) and software solutions that can report the real-time condition of buses.
These challenges can make the transition to sustainable bus operations less desirable for traditional players in the transportation sector.
As the UK’s leading owner and operator of battery storage, Zenobē helps bus operators make the transition to renewable electricity sources by utilizing innovative finance and technology solutions. Zenobe provides battery services to commercial EV operators; including installing the entire charging infrastructure and providing a software solution that facilitates optimal bus charging.
While Zenobē’s team know how to build efficient energy storage solutions, Supercharge helped them build the digital platform which enables the precise management of a complex system of batteries, delivering real-time data used to optimize performance of both the batteries and buses.
And here’s the important part, optimization is key! Many electric vehicles found in the average fleet require massive amounts of power to charge them - but electric grid constraints make this unviable. As an example, you simply cannot plug in and charge 16 buses at the same time at a single location. The perfect solution is to deploy a stationary battery asset on-site and charge it while the buses are in the daily traffic.
This may sound simple but it requires very precise management of the assets with as little manual control as possible. Once the buses are plugged into the charger, the system carefully balances utilization of the two energy sources: the goal is to maximize grid usage without ever overstressing it while using as little energy from the stationary battery as possible to enable this.
This delicate mechanism ensures that a much larger amount of buses can be charged overnight, resulting in all buses being ready for service the following morning.
As a result of our work together, we contributed to a solution that aims to remove more than 135,000 tons of CO2 from the Earth’s atmosphere.
The users of this platform have quite distinctive user needs and requirements. One of our most important goals was not to disrupt the overnight processes of all employees working in the depots. Historically, these bus depots were operating diesel buses which would mean electrifying part of their fleet would involve a very different approach and practice.
Throughout a two month service design discovery project working with bus depot stakeholders and Zenobē’s EV market experts, we mapped out the most optimum workflow that could fit seamlessly into the depot’s existing operations, while Zenobē’s data science experts modelled the most efficient charging strategy.
The monitoring webapp was also designed with this in mind, enabling both a high level overview and detailed analytics simultaneously in order to satisfy all user requirements.
Zenobē’s unique offering and portfolio required us to integrate to multiple AC and DC smart chargers. As all smart chargers in the industry use the Open Charge Point Protocol (OCPP) – but interpret it in a very different way – we had to come up with a strategy for creating an OCPP service that runs locally on each bus depot (in order to react to varying grid load in real time).
This implementation had to be generic enough for us not to have to implement the same thing repeatedly, yet specific enough to allow for the variations of each charger type.
In addition to managing and optimizing fleet charging, the software provides constant data captures about vehicles, their routes, and their drivers. Bus operators are able to give personalized feedback to bus drivers and even educate them for a more energy-conscious way of driving. This often results in an elevated passenger experience as well.
We needed a flexible and robust stack to keep pace with Zenobē’s appetite for innovation. We have built a powerful, AWS based, cloud-hosted backend using Node.js and a scalable microservice architecture.
The entire platform has been architected and built from individual components that can run in multiple instances completely independently. We have designed and manufactured custom hardware for Zenobē that is the heart of control for all of the chargers and stationary batteries locally on site. This hardware solution both provides redundant and reliable offline operation 24/7.
In order to help expert Zenobē operators handle all possible scenarios, we have crafted a secure admin interface so they can monitor the health and conditions of their battery assets while having the ability to take full control over them as needed.
The platform delivers a holistic overview of an operator’s entire bus operation, giving them more information at their disposal to continuously drive their transition to a greener and more efficient future.
Besides the EV revolution, Zenobē is also the UK’s leading owner and operator of battery storage, with assets of over 170 MW (that is equal to powering up to 400 households for an hour), including the largest Tesla battery installation in the UK. As an established player in the UK’s electricity scene they bring unrivalled energy and innovative solutions to provide services to industrial and commercial businesses and utilities.
When we began our work with Zenobē in 2018, we built the first ever platform to be dispatched for National Grid’s brand new Fast Reserve system. On July 19th 2018, National Grid dispatched 50MW of power through our software and hardware solution and discharged 30MWh of energy from Zenobē’s battery assets across three different sites. Since then we have worked with Zenobē to extend their grid service capabilities with Firm Frequency Response (FFR) and National Grid’s latest balancing service: Dynamic Containment (DC).
We are proud to have supported Zenobē on their journey of powering the charge to a greener future with the power of technology and innovation.
Are you ready to join the green revolution and build a digital solution that drives real positive impact? Let’s get in touch!
