Accure: Intelligent batteries

“Look around you, batteries are everywhere: in phones, computers, cars, power plants, planes. The 21st century is built on batteries. I think they are amazing in the way they can pack all this energy, but they have one major shortcoming: their short operating lifespan. Optimize and upgrade them and you have the key to energy efficiency, decarbonisation and net zero,” says KP Kairies.

KP is the CEO of Accure – which refers to accuracy and cure – a company dedicated to making batteries intelligent and more sustainable through data analytics technology. “Lithium ion batteries make up 99% of the batteries we use. They all contain a small simple chip that gathers data. Some people call that the brain of the battery, but the scientific word is battery management system (BMS). The BMS monitors and manages performance and is important for safe operation, to prevent overcharging for example. This is valuable information but because it is cheap electronics, the data is difficult to lift. So up to now no-one has used it in a structured way.”

Enter Accure and its platform that is capable of extracting and analysing this data to optimise the system design and the operation of the batteries, increasing their lifetime by up to 25%.​ “It is always great if you can add value with software to existing assets, making them more sustainable,” KP says. The company now monitors 200,000 batteries literally all over the world: “The data can come from electric ships in Norway, solar storage units in Australia or windfarm systems in Germany.”

KP developed a passion for the topic as Head of the battery research group at Aachen University. ”Battery research used to be such a nerd topic, just a niche, not as hip as it is now. We were designing smart technologies to expand their lifespan, storage capability, performance.”

The company has just turned one and, as for most start-ups, the challenge from the beginning was financing. “It’s not easy to find investors that believe in your vision and are willing to give money to a bunch of researchers. We found in 42Cap, (a venture capital firm backed by the EIF), amazing investors bringing not just smart cash, but also incredibly valuable coaching.” The seed investment went into product development and kicked off the company’s commercial operation.

“If I had a wish for the future it would be that the cool technology we develop here can be leveraged by everyone so that batteries become the central element of our energy transition getting us to net zero quicker.”