Key terms
Battery energy storage system (BESS)
A battery energy storage system, usually shortened to BESS, is a battery together with the power electronics and the control software that determine when it charges and discharges.
On a commercial site those control decisions set the return, since the hardware is broadly comparable between suppliers.
Lupa was built to make the deployment of commercial battery energy storage systems straightforward and free to assess. The modelling covers how the battery would be operated on the site: the cycling, the capacity held back for backup, and which value streams are included.
01
Create your baseline
Upload interval data and an electricity invoice for the building, and Lupa reads both into the platform without anything being keyed in by hand.
Where interval data is not available, the load profile can be built in the platform from the location, the type of operation, the operating hours and the heating system. Tariffs can be taken from the catalogue in the same way.
Upload or build from scratch
02
Enter site constraints
Enter the maximum rooftop solar system the site can accommodate, alongside the maximum battery size and the site's import and export capacity where these are known.
Left blank, default values are used based on the building type and size.
Site constraints
03
Evaluate multiple scenarios
A site might be planning to electrify its fleet of vehicles, replacing gas heating with heat pumps, or moving to a different supply contract. Each scenario can be modelled separately within the same analysis.
Scenarios
Average daily profile
04
Every option compared on the same terms
Every workable size of solar and battery is priced across a full year at half-hourly resolution on the site's own tariff.
Capital cost, net present value, rate of return, payback and emissions are produced for each one, and the options within a scenario can be compared on whichever measure matters most to the project.
Every option ranked
05
Out to the people who would build, operate and maintain itin build
The chosen option can be sent to the procurement platform, where local EPCs and aggregators evaluate the project and submit proposals.
Out to procurement