Deep Dive Into Battery Software - part 2
An overview of battery software startups.
Welcome back to Gaël’s deep dive into battery software featuring Breathe Battery Technologies CEO Ian Campbell.
Below you can see a (non-exhaustive) snapshot of companies active in the field of battery software from our Innovators Database:
Let me give you a summary of the different companies and the pain points they address:
Supply chain
Infyos adresses the customer pain point of compliance to sustainability regulations in the battery value chain. It specializes in supply chain software and provides audit services to improve the sustainability of battery manufacturing. Circularise and Everledger support the Global Battery Alliance’s intiative Battery Passport with blockchain-assisted transparency platform for product identification.
Quality control
Liminal, Titan AES, SirenOpt and Entroview provide hardware and software for the improvement of battery manufacturing by detecting defects along production lines. Liminal and Titan AES are both based on ultrasound sensing and impedance analysis (a relatively common non-destructive technique for defect detection in industry), while SirenOpt uses metrology sensors enabled by low-temperature plasmas. Entroview uses heat measurement via DC current input on batches of cells and entropy calculation to estimate resistance values and potential defects.
Materials discovery
We recently had the pleasure to host an article from Intellegens on AI and experimental design. Intellegens develops the Alchemite™ software, a machine learning based software that was successfully applied to predict electrode performance and reduce the development time for new battery chemistries. Aionics also leverages machine learning in materials science and seems to have a similar case study on the specific impact of electrolyte formulation on battery parameters. Citrine Informatics provides the Citrine platform (DataManager™ and VirtualLab™) to gather insights from data and run virtual experiments based on provided KPIs, allowing the user to zoom in on a selection of promising candidate materials. Chemix provides similar services, in addition to lifetime forecasting and in-house testing of commercially relevant form factors.
Modelling tools
A significant pain point for customers who want to make packs for a given application, is that it is not always obvious to know how different cells will behave in different conditions, and testing them can be expensive and time-consuming.
Companies in the “Modelling tools” category generally offer cell data and various models pre-loaded with characteristics, to allow customers to simulate cell behaviour, and issue guidelines on cell choice or pack design.
About:Energy develops the Voltt, a platform providing users with measured data and pre-calibrated models for a wide variety of cells (including cylindrical, pouch or prismatic), with possible integration with other software like COMSOL. Batemo provides their cell explorer, cell models and pack designer with built-in integration in Matlab for benchmarking or fast-charging applications. Ionworks was built by engineers who contributed to the open-source Python package PyBamm, and offer some closed-source services to enhance PyBamm capabilities and integrate different simulations with Matlab. Ionetic is more oriented towards pack design, and offers the ARC platform to customise cell organisation in the pack, as well as services to produce the pack. Monolith develops the Next Test Recommender platform, where engineers can apply machine learning algorithms to chart testing paths and streamline development.
Battery Analytics
Customers who already have packs in operation may be curious on how to optimise the operation and return on investment of their batteries. This is where the battery analytics services startups provide value: they offer data platform services to visualize the batteries in operation, with built-in analysis models that can calculate possible optimisation pathways.
Voltaiq offers a platform that allows customers to develop their own Python or Matlab models, streamline test analysis, pack design or lab management, while also providing some optimization services. Accure Battery Intelligence platform collects the data from your battery management system (BMS) and extracts insights such as warranty compliance, performance optimization and state estimations. TWAICE battery analytics software performs similar tasks, while also providing some benchmarking tools. Volytica Diagnostics offers a dashboard-based monitoring for warranty compliance and performance optimization, with apparently some interest in second-life applications. Bib batteries offers data-based analytics for battery fleets, with an emphasis on maximising the values of batteries when they reach their end-of-life. Byterat offers a platform to streamline battery data analysis from experiments or operation, with apparently a particular emphasis on impedance spectroscopy analysis. PowerUp offer the Battery Insight platform for improved state estimation and remaining useful life predictions, as well as some services in embedded software. Elysia offers cloud services aimed at health predictions over large fleets of vehicles, including fast charge applications, as well as embedded software. Energsoft offers business-to-business software subscription for medium-size companies working on battery data, with an emphasis on cell selection and testing analysis. Amplabs develops the Battery Observability platform, to generate insights into batteries and optimise performance.
Battery Management Software
Companies in this category offer a software layer that is meant to interact directly with the Battery Management Software (of the phone or the car) in order not to only extract insights but also act on the battery to optimise it during operation.
BattGenie offers a software layer that can be installed on the device or on the charger, to optimise its charging profile and the lifetime of the battery. Iontra offers charging profile optimisation, with an additional hardware layer that can be installed on the devices for improved performance. Gbatteries is active in the field of pulse-based fast-charging, and seems to provide hardware services as well. Eatron developed its 12V BMSTAR, a BMS with an improved software layer for better state estimation and an edge-to-cloud connection for remaining useful life (RUL) estimations. Electra Vehicles offers onboard battery software, a cloud-based fleet management platform and also a benchmarking software. Qnovo proposes an embarked software layer for adaptive charging, fault detection and prediction. Zitara offers its Live embarked algorithms to dynamically update operating parameters, coupled with its Studio cloud platform for management and benchmarking. Finally, Breathe Batteries offers Breathe Charge and Breathe Life, two software layers for charging profile optimisation and improved state estimation, fault detection and prediction.
Hardware innovations
The last category in my classification is made of startups that innovate significantly on the hardware side.
Sention specializes in advanced diagnostic techniques including X-ray computed tomography and thermal analysis, coupled with cloud-based software packages for battery diagnosis that can be connected to a BMS. Brill Power delivers a full BMS package, from hardware to OS (firmware and software), as well as cloud-based analytics. Relectrify proposes an original CellSwitch system, that seems to use slave boards at the cell level to act as both the BMS and the inverter by directly utilising AC current. Rejoule utilises Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy (EIS), an AC current-based method to characterize cell health for cars and second-life applications. Nerve Smart systems develops Nerve Switch, a smart technology stack allowing for individual cell management, with applications in fast-charging.
It should be noted that I left out a category of startups that could be considered part of battery software: battery optimizers. Basically traders who calculate the optimal dispatch profiles of batteries operating on various electricity markets. It does seems like Habitat Energy has activities related to battery degradation modelling, but overall battery optimizers have a pretty high-level view of what’s going on inside a battery, so I left them out.
Collaborations and partnerships
Companies in the space often present a high degree of complementarity, as underlined by Ian:
In many respects building a company is hard, but because batteries are electrically and chemically complex, even more so in the battery space. We have a huge amount of respect for any startup that operates in this value chain, and we are quite complementary to a few of them. Every company that builds a battery management system today, if they're building the hardware and the software architecture and platform, there's a lot to build, and I think there's a lot of complementarity with our products that focus on specific areas of the software. We are since 2021 in the deep tech portfolio of many US and Austria-based investors, sitting alongside one of their other investments, TWAICE. And I think that speaks to the kind of complementarity that we have, when we build the value in the embedded space while they build value largely in the cloud space.
About:Energy seems to have collaborations ongoing with Eatron and with Monolith, providing their Voltt platform and test data to accelerate the development of smart BMS algorithms or machine learning degradation models. Voltaiq collaborates with Batemo on the Battery index, a comprehensive battery benchmarking index to select optimal batteries for different applications.
The space of battery software is overall vibrant with innovation, and in part 3 of this series (coming very soon) I will give my two cents about where I think this market is going, including a few hot takes!
🌞 Thanks for reading!
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