How FENECON cut its sizing effort to a quarter with Furo & gets customers to a purchase decision faster with the Virtual Battery

Customer

FENECON is the largest German manufacturer of battery storage systems, covering the full spectrum from small home storage to large commercial and industrial systems. Its focus is on the commercial and industrial segment. What sets FENECON apart from many competitors: every storage system is consistently shipped with its own energy management system (EMS). Speaking for this customer reference are Franz-Josef Feilmeier, Managing Director of FENECON, and Thomas Fuchs, a sales engineer who has been with the company for a good five years and is responsible for the economic viability calculations and sizing of battery storage systems.

Challenge

Commercial and industrial customers rarely arrive with clear requirements. Load curves have to be analyzed, scenarios calculated, and different capacities and power classes compared. For a long time, FENECON did this with self-developed Excel tools, with a separate model for each use case. Self-consumption optimization, peak shaving, high-load time windows: all handled separately, and the relevant parameters such as grid fees and electricity prices had to be researched manually each time.

As requirements grew, the system reached its limits. The realization was clear: developing and maintaining complex Excel solutions is not the core business of a storage manufacturer. And professional economic viability calculations also had to become accessible to installers and sales partners.

Solution with Furo

FENECON ran a structured selection process. At the outset, around 20 programs were on the list. After an initial pre-selection, five relevant providers remained, including Furo. In the end, the decision came down clearly in favor of Furo.

Today, FENECON maps all relevant use cases on a single platform: self-consumption optimization, peak shaving, evaluation of dynamic electricity tariffs, and flexibility marketing. Sales partners and installers gain direct access to the same calculations, without having to rely on FENECON as the manufacturer.

What makes Furo particularly valuable for FENECON is the connection between planning and operation. With the Virtual Battery, a digital twin of the planned system can be built during the sales process. Based on real-time data, the customer sees what a storage system would already have earned for them over the past few weeks. Anyone who sees that they could have made several thousand euros in two to three weeks inevitably asks themselves why the storage system isn't installed yet. The optimization algorithms developed in Furo can then be transferred directly to the EMS, so that in live operation the storage system delivers exactly what the planning calculated. One platform, from the very first customer conversation through to ongoing operation.

Result

Use cases such as the economic evaluation of dynamic electricity tariffs, previously impossible to model, are now part of the standard process. The partner network can plan independently and advise customers. And the time required for a complete battery storage sizing has, in Thomas's estimation, dropped to a third or even a quarter.

FENECON's vision is clear: a storage system and energy management at every grid connection. Furo is the platform that supports this journey.

“We worked with Excel for a long time. Of course, you then keep looking to model load curves, run different scenarios. Then new requirements come in, then the whole thing has to go international, then your sales partner has to be able to understand it, it should also look nice, and at some point we hit a wall. That's why I'm absolutely thrilled that after the big selection process we ended up with Furo, because there we can model everything we need."

“What Furo has done particularly well: striking the balance between the complexity of the economic viability calculation and usability. Calculations can be presented in a way that customers understand, while at the same time being easy for the user to handle."