How BayWa r.e. uses Furo to activate 4,000 installers in the commercial battery storage market & evaluate the economic viability of multi-use projects

Customer

BayWa r.e. is a systems house and wholesaler for photovoltaic components, headquartered in Tübingen. The company covers the entire value chain: from mounting structures and inverters through battery storage to C&I and utility solutions. Sabine Ruoff-Sixt heads the C&I and Utility Solutions division and has been with the company for over twenty years. In Germany, BayWa r.e. works with around 4,000 purchasing customers, including installers who are increasingly entering the commercial battery storage market.

Challenge

BayWa r.e. actively supports its customers in developing storage projects, but needed a powerful planning tool to do so. The tool used previously was no longer being developed further, which became a particular problem in the area of multi-use applications. At the same time, a fast-moving regulatory framework demands constant adjustments in sizing. On top of that: for smaller commercial battery storage in particular, there are hardly any suitable marketing partners in the market. This complicates economic viability advice and means that the revenue figures circulating in the market raise unrealistic expectations among end customers.

Solution with Furo

After screening four providers, BayWa r.e. chose Furo. The decisive factors were the complete coverage of all multi-use application cases, the team's quick response to regulatory changes, and a manufacturer-independent, user-friendly interface. The integration with the [Connectika*] energy management system was also a key factor.

In day-to-day project work, the team first captures all relevant customer data using its own checklist: load profiles, consumption structure, grid fees, and marketing objectives. This data feeds directly into Furo, which derives an economically sound storage sizing from it, optionally in several manufacturer variants for direct comparison. The visual presentation of the results makes it considerably easier for installers to win their end customers over to storage projects.

What is particularly important to Sabine Ruoff-Sixt is Furo's strategic direction for the future: the step from planning into active operational management, based on live data from real systems rather than on historical projections. This would make it possible to build economic viability calculations on robust, practice-oriented values and to avoid overstated revenue promises to end customers.

Result

BayWa r.e. now uses Furo every day within the department and actively encourages its entire customer network of around 4,000 purchasing customers to acquire their own Furo licenses and size systems independently. The goal: to bring as many customers as possible onto the platform and enable them to develop storage projects on their own. The recommendation is unequivocal. BayWa r.e. sees Furo as the partner with which the commercial battery storage market in Germany can be opened up together.

„For us, the absolute dream scenario – and where we perhaps already have a sense of where Furo is heading – would be to truly have it as a holistic tool that is continuously developed, from system planning and sizing through economic viability calculation, the marketing interface, and the integration of the energy management system, all the way to live data from storage systems. A tool with which we can really cover everything."