The transcription of the video is below.

Nathan’s background and Energy Toolbase’s product line

Kerim: Hi, everyone. This is Kerim, Kerim Baran with SolarAcademy. I’m here today with Nathan Gutzmann, from Energy Toolbase. Nathan is the Product Manager of Acumen EMS, which is one of the key modules of Energy Toolbase. And we’re going to talk a little bit about Nathan’s background now, as well as the general Energy Toolbase product lines and specifically, Acumen EMS. Nathan, welcome. Good to have you here.

Nathan: Great to be here, Kerim. I’m excited to have our conversation today. Yeah.

Kerim: Great. So before we dive into Energy Toolbase, can you tell us a little bit about your background?

Nathan: Yeah, you bet. So I have a background in electrical engineering. I’m based out of Calgary, Alberta, where a lot of the Energy Toolbase engineers are based out of. And that’s often surprising to people in the industry. It’s not just a California-centric company which is kind of interesting. And I’ve worked in controls and data acquisition for the last 12 years in the energy industry, both in oil and gas. And now also in the renewable space which I’m quite enjoying.

With that –

Kerim: A couple of questions on that. So were you with Pason, I assume, prior to being on the Energy Toolbase team, they are prior of Energy Toolbase? Yeah.

Nathan: That’s correct. So I worked with Pason, as part of their engineering team, and they created an internal startup, and that startup created the product that is the Acumen EMS today. And then during that merger or acquisition of Energy Toolbase, my team was merged with the former Energy Toolbase team. And we kind of formed a broader set of products through that merger.

Kerim: And for viewers’ benefit, that then that merger between Pason and Energy Toolbase happened, I think around 2018 timeframe.

Nathan: 2019. Yeah.

Kerim: 2019. Okay. Same year that we sold my prior company. Good. Okay.

Great. And maybe before we start diving into Acumen EMS, we can talk a little bit about Energy Toolbase, their traditional products, their history for those who would like to know more.

Nathan: For sure. Yeah. So we kind of started talking down this path with the merger. So prior to the merger, Energy Toolbase had one of the leading solar modeling platforms in the industry, and they were also adding storage modeling at that point in time. 

Pason saw this opportunity to commercialize their EMS product by integrating with this leading brand in the space. And so we formed this merger and added a controls product to the modeling tool. So Energy Toolbase continues to provide that modeling tool. We call it ETB developer now, and that’s the brand name. And that tool generates 5,000 proposals per week. 

It also holds over 100,000 rate schedules from 2,000 utilities that our rates team is maintaining. And so it has quite a broad reach in terms of the utility rate data that is stored by the tool.  

We also have significantly improved our storage modeling because that is now a core offering of Energy Toolbase with our Acumen EMS product. That Acumen EMS product is a hardware product that sits at the edge, and it’s optimizing your battery assets for the best economic payback that you can achieve.

And I’m quite excited about some of the software that we’ll be talking about later in this conversation, I’m sure. But some new features that we’ll be bringing to the market this year that, I believe, are industry firsts.

What is Acumen EMS™ and why is it valuable to its users?

Kerim: So I’ve been aware of Energy Toolbase for a decade plus. And my first wow, was about how, back in the early to 2010s, hundreds of utility rate schedules were integrated into the tool, and it was a key proposal tool for many installers and developers to calculate their payback. And that, so since then, you guys added a control module as well as a monitoring module. And then there’s, on top of that, I guess the control, the hardware control is coupled with Energy Toolbase Acumen EMS now. Is that how you guys sell that and market that module?

Nathan: Yeah. Right. So you’re definitely using those keywords that we talked about a lot, model control and monitor. And so the control keyword is really tied to our Acumen EMS product, that hardware product. And then because it’s very hard to get insights into what the control system is doing, we also developed a monitor product. And that monitor product is essentially the front end. It’s a web-based application where you can see, what are your assets doing in real time? Are they performing, based on the modeling that you did already? Are they providing economic benefits? Are there any hardware issues on the site that we can report up to you? So that that monitoring tool is really the user interface also for our controls product.

Kerim: Got it. Okay. So now let’s dive into the Energy Toolbase Acumen EMS, the energy management system which you sell, coupled with the hardware. 

What makes it unique, special, and valuable to its users? And I’m assuming the users are mostly developers and installers, and in some cases, site owners, as well?

Nathan: Certainly. Yeah. Yeah. So our primary customers are developers and installers. But we strive to make our user interface experience in the monitoring tool as simplified as possible, so that those developers and installers can pass along access to the monitoring tool to the end customer as well. 

So our Acumen EMS, there are really two facets to that product that I think about, and that I deal with on a daily basis. There’s the hardware side and the software side. And so the hardware side is really about integrating with different vendors in the energy storage system space. So currently, if you’re modeling in Energy Toolbase developer, you’ll see three brands that we’re actually re-sellers of. That’s Tesla, BYD, and Socomec. And we have hardware integrations with those vendors. 

We’ve also done about a couple of dozen more integrations for different projects based on customer specifications and requirements. And so we’re always updating our roster of energy storage systems that we can work with and bring our software solutions to those hardware solutions from our partners. 

I’ll talk a little bit about the software solutions. I think this is also something where Energy Toolbase sets itself apart. The software that drives our controls is actually the same software that you get access to in ETB developer. 

And so because of that, we have a really high amount of confidence that what we model, we can also deliver on, in real life. And so what does that really mean? Well, our modeling, it does forecasting, just like a real system does. So when our system is operating in real time, it doesn’t know the future, but it needs to make decisions right now about what to do with that battery. Do we charge it? Do we discharge it, based on forecast about the future? So we also brought that into our modeling tool.

Our Acumen EMS also can co-optimize different value streams. And so whether you’re talking about demand response, you are talking about demand charge management, talking about time-of-use arbitrage, or any combination of those things, our EMS can make economically the best decisions, so that your asset is getting paid off as fast as possible. 

Kerim: Got it. And you guys also offer a performance guarantee wrapped around all this hardware/software solution, as well, if I remember correctly.

Nathan: Yeah, that’s definitely correct. So in my opinion, I think the whole idea of performance guarantees has been significantly discounted in the industry lately. I think people were excited about them originally, and then they sort of read the fine print and saw like, “Oh, if XY or Z changes like this is not relevant anymore.” And so this guarantee doesn’t have a lot of teeth.

Kerim: Yeah.  

Nathan: One of the core values at Energy Toolbase is our transparency and our integrity in the industry. And so we want to take responsibility when our products don’t deliver. 

And so what that means is, we’ve sort of developed a way where we can let you rerun your performance guarantee based on your site’s performance. So if you’re dissatisfied with the asset’s performance, come talk to our team and let’s rerun that guarantee, and we’ll guarantee a portion of the savings that we come up with out of that exercise.

So I think that really helps assure customers that what we’re modeling and how we’re executing will be quite close to each other. 

Kerim: And to clarify, in that guarantee, you’re obviously not guaranteeing the performance of a BYD or a Tesla battery itself, but the whole system, how your software optimizes the whole system and its charging times, discharging times, and basically making the right, smart decisions at the right times.

Nathan: Yeah, absolutely. And those brands that we resell, they’re top tier hardware vendors. Like I mentioned, we’ve worked with quite a few different ones, and we’ve had really good success with the reliability of those products. And so that’s why we’re happy to also provide our guarantee on the next layer, that software layer of optimization, making the best decisions for you.

Kerim: How do you handle the situations where the customer or the end user’s load profile changes from one year to the other, dramatically or somewhat?

Nathan: Yeah. So in that case, we would just take kind of let’s say in 2023 the load profile was one shape, and in 2024 it’s changed significantly. So we would obviously be modeling based on historical data, 2023. We’d get an idea of the savings and decide that the project was a good fit. 

So then we’d commission the projects and let’s say the load has changed, well, we can actually take that new load that we’ve worked our way through, and put it into our technology and understand. If everything was perfect, what should Acumen have done? And based on Acumen’s ability to forecast the future, how well do we think it should have done? And that’s how we’ll establish that guarantee.

The flexibility of Acumen EMS™ around optimizing ROI

Kerim: Got it. We talked a little bit about the demand response programs, and how and when to utilize and monetize storage solutions. There’s a ton of different ways to deploy storage for different use cases, different goals. 

Can you tell us a little bit about that landscape of the market? And what are you seeing these days? And are you guys approaching various different use cases and solutions? 

Nathan: Yeah. So the really cool thing about batteries is that they’re very flexible in their application. And one of the awesome things about software is that you can make it do whatever you want it to. 

And so as part of our Acumen EMS that someone would purchase, they also purchase a lifetime optimization of that energy storage system. And so regardless of the value that you’re hoping to target with that battery, our team is ensuring that you’re targeting the right things at any point in time. So you can switch rate schedules, you can participate in different demand response programs. 

So what are those different value streams? I think a really popular one in California is demand charge management. Those utilities, the IOUs, they have significantly higher demand charges than anywhere else in the United States. 

You know, if you go to the East Coast, the demand charges are not as significant, but our flexible software can be reconfigured, and you can take part in, for instance, energy shifting or to your arbitrage, or demand response programs, which are very lucrative on the East Coast. That’s actually kind of a really interesting approach that different ISOs have taken, to managing grid level demand. 

In California, they’ve sort of imposed this stick mentality, where you get penalized for high demand charges. And in the Northeast, they’ve used the carrot, where you get rewarded for reducing your grid consumption.

And so our EMS is flexible. It’s something that we can configure to optimize differently at different sites. And it can take advantage of both of those kinds of paradigms. 

Demo of Energy Toolbase’s monitoring module

Kerim: We also talked a little bit about the monitoring module of ETB, Energy Toolbase to be able to, I guess, graphically show these value streams in a demo fashion in the software. Perhaps, we can give a glimpse of the ETB monitor tool.

Nathan: I’d be happy to walk through that. 

Kerim: Like a mini demo of that module, even though we’ll probably do a separate solar conversation about that module later. And if you can tie that a little bit into the Acumen EMS, I don’t know how in depth of a software interface Acumen EMS has. Or is that more of a hardware coupled solution that’s kind of running behind the scenes? If we can clarify that too, that’d be valuable. 

Nathan: Yeah. Acumen EMS, it has essentially only a software interface, that is not very user friendly. So our team is essentially responsible to connect each Acumen EMS to a monitor site. And I’ll share my screen here. And we’ll walk through it a little bit.

Kerim: Yeah. 

Nathan: What we have here is one of our demo sites. You can see, we’ve got a facility here that says Costco Wholesale of San Diego. It’s got solar on the roof and a battery deployed. Right now, it’s got four BYD chest units configured at that site. And we can see in real time what’s happening. We can see that the solar is generating, quite a bit of energy. And that is going to the battery to charge. And actually, we’re also charging a little bit from the grid. And the grid is primarily servicing the site load right now. 

If we go down, we can also see what the rate schedule –

Kerim: Can you go back up for one second? So the solar is basically 100% going into the battery too. Because it’s still, it is 1:24 PM here in San Diego where I am on a sunny day, on March 5th, 2024, when we’re recording this. And wow, so solar is not really offsetting any of the load right now, but it’s fully going into the battery to be used probably around 5:00, 6:00, 7:00 pm, today, when the rates are going to be much more expensive, I’m assuming. Right? 

Nathan: Yeah. Yeah, probably. And we can actually confirm that. We can see that at this site, the rate has a significant increase in energy price and a small bump in demand price at 4 PM. 

And so we can see that our solar is charging the battery right here. And we’ll likely see something similar to yesterday, where we offset as much as we can, in terms of the site load, which is the light blue line, during this high price window.

Kerim: Wow. That’s really cool. So the bottom graph with the jagged black line is what you’re paying for the energy, what the site is paying for the energy. So it’s going up from like around 20 cents to more like 60 cents around 4 PM. 

Nathan: That’s right. 

Kerim: Obviously, at that point, it is much more economical to pay via battery. And is that – where do we see the battery starting to deplete?

Nathan: Yeah, so this red dashed line, that’s the state of charge.

Kerim: Yeah.

Nathan: So that goes between 0 and 100. And then this orange line here is the battery power. And negative means it’s charging, where you can see the state of charge increasing. And a positive value indicates it’s discharging.

Kerim: Yeah. Got it. And what’s that red dotted line on the bottom? Of the top graph? Yeah. 

Nathan: This one? Yeah. So yesterday, we can see that the battery discharged during that high price period, and it went down to 4% state of charge and then it waited until today to start charging up, based on the excess solar.

Kerim: And the axis – okay, got it. Very cool. Thank you for that.

Nathan: Yeah, I think the other, I was talking about those utility rate schedules that we have accessible to us. And actually, we use those in our Acumen tool as well as our monitor tool. So Acumen uses them in optimization, and monitor uses them to calculate historical bill offsets.

And so we could see here, we’ve been operating the site since, I guess, June 1st, 2023, and we’ve been keeping track of what we think the utility bill should be. 

And so customers can come in here and understand how their asset has been performing in a historical way. And they can compare that to their actual utility bills and make sure that they’re getting the value that they need to, out of the asset. 

Kerim: Very cool. Thank you for this view into the monitor tool. 

Optimizing solar and storage solutions with Energy Toolbase’s Acumen EMS™ 

What other common questions do you get around this, the whole demand response, energy arbitrage, and time-of-use rates, complications of optimizing a solar plus storage or a storage? Do you guys do a storage-only solutions as well? Or is it usually coupled with solar or something else like, other types of generation?

Nathan: Yeah, I mean, Energy Toolbase participates in all kinds of projects. So whether that’s solar only, solar plus storage, storage only, we really want to help our customers make their businesses run. 

And so if someone has an opportunity for PV only, that makes financial sense, we’re going to, of course, look into, does adding a battery here make more sense or less sense? 

And we’re going to try and recommend what makes the most sense for our customers. So I think we participate in all kinds of projects, and we have released a new product, new aspect to our monitor product, which I’m excited for you to explore in a future conversation, related specifically to our PV only customers. So I think that that’ll be a really good conversation for sure.

Ways to monetize storage solutions across markets: Demand charges, demand response, grid services 

Kerim: Right. Going back to the common ways of participating in, not only demand response, but like, the demand response, energy arbitrage, like, what are some, I guess, key ways to think about it from a site-host, perspective in terms of optimizing these solutions? Which we talked about the carrot way, which is a demand – well, there’s a stick way, which is the California way, the demand charge. There’s the carrot way, which is more common in the East Coast for demand response. And then time-of-use arbitrage. 

Really, where do you see most a lot of that? And I assume that you see that it markets everywhere. 

Nathan: Yup.

Kerim: And then are there any other ways to create value with storage assets that you guys are helping right now?

Nathan: Right. Yeah. So the energy arbitrage, I would primarily see that on a like, it’s a demand side mechanism for controlling grid level demand. And so I see that as more of a stick than a carrot, really. 

That being said, there are some interesting, I guess, more complicated ways that you could perceive this as a carrot. So, for instance, in California, there’s NEM 3. 0. In the summer, there are these windows with really high export values.

Kerim: Yeah. 

Nathan: And so our EMS, it can differentiate between import and export price and pricing windows. And so it will actually, you’ll see it if you use our developer tool to target those, high price export windows to generate maximum value for the customer. 

Kerim: Got it.

Nathan: So, you know, the pricing structure that we have in our rates database is quite sophisticated, and our controls have been built with that in mind, so that we can take advantage of all those really sophisticated opportunities for value extraction, whether that’s from a rates schedule or from grid services that we’ll be providing, as well. 

Energy Toolbase’s upcoming product release to address Demand Response opportunities 

Kerim: Any other concluding thoughts as we come to the end of this solar conversation, Nathan?

Nathan: Yeah, I guess one thing that, you know, I already mentioned, is really exciting for me this year is that our team has been working really hard on co-optimizing grid services, demand response, and behind-the-meter utility rate spill savings. 

And so to that end, we’ve been participating in demand response programs across the country. And we’ve also been hard at work creating software that will help our users understand what is the value of participating in demand response? 

We’re actually going to be releasing that software, within a week or two here, which is really exciting for me. Maybe by the time this conversation is out there, our users will actually be able to use it, as well. 

And so I’ve been doing a deep dive on those demand response programs. You know, how do we sign up? How do we participate? How do we get compensated? And I think one of the things that we’ve seen across all of these programs is that our EMS will sacrifice potentially some bill savings to participate in demand response, but the overall outcome is net positive. And so it’s net positive both in terms of just dollars, which is really exciting. 

But the other, less quantifiable impact is that by participating in multiple value streams, we’re actually sort of hedging the project economics with one another. 

And so the more ways that you can create value for your customer in this sophisticated way, the more solid that economic analysis is, and the more bulletproof that project can be against any kind of future changes or unpredictable actions in the load profile. 

And so I think that’s what’s really exciting to me is we’re just creating an even more solid way to deliver these projects with our customers.

Kerim: Got it. That was a great clarification. Thank you very much. Thank you, Nathan, for sharing this depth of information on Acumen EMS. And yeah, thanks a lot for all the info you shared.

Nathan: Yeah. Thank you very much, Kerim. I had a great time chatting, and hopefully, we can keep in touch. 

Kerim: Yeah, do more of these conversations. 

Nathan: Absolutely. Yeah.