QINOUS GmbH, a Berlin-based energy storage and energy management supplier, has entered a strategic partnership with Relayr GmbH – a Munich Re company – the specialist for Industrial IoT solutions. The long-term collaboration will build on relayr’s expertise to add data analysis and data transfer capacities to QINOUS’ energy management solutions. These capacities will enable failsafe maintenance and streamlined optimization of energy storage performance anywhere in the world, especially in remote areas.
Today, harnessing the power of relayr’s Industrial IoT expertise, QINOUS adds an end-to-end data tracking and analysis to its energy management systems.
Customers operating in areas of the world outside of power grid connections already rely on energy management solutions by QINOUS. These customers include communities and towns, as well as hotels that have previously secured their power supply by using diesel generators. QINOUS’ compact energy storage systems help increase their users’ independence from diesel as a primary source of energy generation. Among other uses, QINOUS’ solutions provide backup power sources to safeguard against blackouts caused by shortages in supply. Moreover, feeding and storing power from renewable sources into existing systems makes energy cheaper, more efficient, and greener than using diesel.
To do so, QINOUS supplies standardized lithium-ion battery systems in a compact container format. These batteries can be transported anywhere that people or organizations produce power using diesel generators. The battery systems feature micro-grid controllers that act as control centres for renewable energy feeds and optimize energy consumption.
Founded in 2013, the company has been part of Rolls-Royce since the beginning of 2020 and forms the core team for microgrid solutions there. In 2020, the company is now partnering with relayr to advance its solution further still. Building upon relayr’s expertise in the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), QINOUS plans to add end-to-end tracking and analysis of the data produced by its energy management systems and stores. Relayr’s solution will then enable the data collected from the store to be saved temporarily and forwarded and analysed on a centralised server once an Internet connection is available locally. The data analysis and storage capacities QINOUS gains from collaborating with relayr also make it possible for QINOUS to offer performance guarantees to its customers. This becomes all the more significant when considering that QINOUS’s energy stores are designed to run for at least twenty years.
“Our partnership with relayr and, by extension, Munich Re, is an important step on our way to even smarter energy store solutions,” says Steffen Heinrich, QINOUS’s co-founder and managing director. “Systems for storing energy, which are absolutely indispensable for ensuring round-the-clock electricity supply in remote areas like the mountains, small islands, or the rainforest, require the best maintenance available and need to be analysed constantly. Working with relayr allows our technicians here in Berlin to do so optimally, hand-in-hand with the operators on-site there. This way, we’re bringing the full potential of our solutions to bear, and our customers can rely on their power supplies one hundred percent.”
Josef Brunner, relayr’s CEO, is just as excited about the opportunities the partnership offers: “Combining QINOUS’ unique all-in-one solution for energy storage with our experience in the Industrial Internet of Things and data analysis offers QINOUS’ customers power storage solutions of the highest possible reliability. At the same time, we’re making a major contribution to pushing the use of renewable energies in areas previously unable to do so. We’re thrilled to be supporting QINOUS in their ambitious pursuit of cutting electricity generation loose from its reliance and dependence on diesel all over the world.”
The partnership between the two companies begins with immediate effect. Moreover, they are already working on a joint equipment-as-a-service solution based on power purchase agreements (PPAs) to address the issue of the battery systems’ high procurement costs.