The pow­er of hybrid data stor­age KiwiOS: the IoT Plat­form for a decen­tral­ized ener­gy world

Char­ac­ter­ized by the increas­ing demand for renew­ables and accom­pa­ny­ing decen­tral­iza­tion, the ener­gy sec­tor has changed dras­ti­cal­ly over the last 10 years. The ener­gy sup­ply is now dis­trib­uted among a large num­ber of dif­fer­ent play­ers, loca­tions and sources. How­ev­er, to date the process of plan­ning, pur­chas­ing, installing and oper­at­ing decen­tral­ized ener­gy sys­tems hasn’t been opti­mized into a seam­less cus­tomer jour­ney. We want to change that and are com­mit­ted to the inte­gra­tion of renew­able ener­gies into elec­tric­i­ty sys­tems and the con­tin­ued decen­tral­iza­tion of ener­gy sys­tems in the areas of elec­tric­i­ty, heat and mobil­i­ty. By devel­op­ing and open­ing up the next gen­er­a­tion of our IoT plat­form, KiwiOS X, we will set new stan­dards for sec­tor cou­pling, which is urgent­ly need­ed. The plat­form will ful­ly pre­pare our­selves, our cus­tomers and part­ners for the ener­gy future — one that is 100% dri­ven by sus­tain­able ener­gies.

Elec­tric vehi­cles, solar pan­el sys­tems and bat­ter­ies are all being pur­chased in dif­fer­ent loca­tions today. The instal­la­tion is also often done by a dif­fer­ent ven­dor. So there are numer­ous inter­rup­tions in the cus­tomer jour­ney and many steps still hap­pen offline. Our plat­form brings all these ele­ments togeth­er to cre­ate a seam­less expe­ri­ence.

Daniel Kühne, Kiwigrid’s Direc­tor Strat­e­gy & Port­fo­lio Man­age­ment

In our new blog series, we present some of the main fea­tures of the IoT plat­form for decen­tralised ener­gy and e-mobil­i­ty KiwiOS.

Advan­tages of the KiwiOS hybrid data stor­age mod­el 

A spe­cial fea­ture of KiwiOS is its hybrid data stor­age mod­el, which is designed for max­i­mum secu­ri­ty, min­i­mum down­time and accel­er­at­ed time to mar­ket. Data is stored by Kiwigrid as well as in the Google cloud. 

• High­ly secure data stor­age
• Min­i­mal down­time
• Accel­er­at­ed time to market

High secu­ri­ty

In order to opti­mize the ener­gy flow for approx­i­mate­ly 30,000 ener­gy man­age­ment sys­tems on the KiwiOS plat­form, Kiwigrid col­lects data such as the out­go­ing pow­er or volt­age in each grid phase and the charge state of bat­ter­ies. Since each sys­tem is con­nect­ed to an aver­age of 10 devices such as elec­tric­i­ty meters, pho­to­volta­ic sys­tems and heat pumps, a pow­er­ful data man­age­ment and analy­sis sys­tem is required. Tens of thou­sands of data points gen­er­ate valu­able insights for the opti­miza­tion of the ener­gy sys­tem, includ­ing for the local bal­anc­ing of self-con­sump­tion and the inte­gra­tion of the dis­tri­b­u­tion net­work. 

The hybrid data stor­age sys­tem enables cus­tomers, such as util­i­ty com­pa­nies, to store their data secure­ly. The com­po­nents of the Google cloud are used for anony­mous pro­cess­ing and analy­sis of data, while the Kiwigrid serv­er stores data secure­ly and makes it usable. Even high­ly secure and sen­si­tive infor­ma­tion, such as for the intel­li­gent mea­sure­ment of a smart meter, can be stored and processed in a legal­ly com­pli­ant way.

Min­i­mal down­time

By using the hybrid data stor­age mod­el of KiwiOS, unplanned and main­te­nance-relat­ed out­ages are reduced to vir­tu­al­ly zero, sig­nif­i­cant­ly increas­ing the avail­abil­i­ty of the plat­form. Addi­tion­al­ly, the Google Kuber­netes engine improves the sta­bil­i­ty of KiwiOS. 

Accel­er­at­ed time to mar­ket

Thanks to the hybrid data stor­age, devel­op­ers can quick­ly build pre-pro­duc­tion envi­ron­ments and scale test runs faster. This makes com­mis­sion­ing pos­si­ble with­in just a few hours and sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduces lead time. Orig­i­nal­ly, a max­i­mum of two pre-pro­duc­tion envi­ron­ments could be start­ed at the same time, which reg­u­lar­ly led to bot­tle­necks. Now, devel­op­ers can simul­ta­ne­ous­ly build as many as nec­es­sary, mean­ing that Kiwigrid is able to bring new ener­gy prod­ucts to mar­ket more flex­i­bly and quick­ly.

Book a con­sul­ta­tion with our experts to dis­cuss your busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ties in the decen­tral­ized ener­gy world and e-mobil­i­ty.

Click here for Google’s Kiwigrid case study

Kiwigrid is the soft­ware and IoT com­pa­ny for renew­able ener­gy and e-mobil­i­ty. The KiwiOS plat­form is used to oper­ate white label prod­ucts for ener­gy sup­pli­ers, the auto­mo­tive indus­try and man­u­fac­tur­ers of decen­tral­ized ener­gy sys­tems. Kiwigrid enables its cus­tomers to open up new mar­kets, diver­si­fy their offer­ings and dif­fer­en­ti­ate them­selves from the com­pe­ti­tion. The Dres­den-based com­pa­ny was found­ed in 2011 and cur­rent­ly employs over 150 peo­ple. Kiwigrid is a leader in the DACH mar­ket for intel­li­gent ener­gy man­age­ment and smart meter­ing and works with LG, Bay­Wa r.e., Inno­gy SE, E.ON, Siemens and BMW, among oth­ers. Strate­gic share­hold­ers are AQTON SE, Inno­gy SE and LG Elec­tron­ics.