We’re quickly accelerating towards a society based on clean energy. The cost of batteries and solar generation is dropping so rapidly, the only further limiting factor now seems to be the scaling of the hardware that needs to get this done. But it’s important to realize we can string all this hardware together - and mitigate the increasing growing pains of this scale-up - with software.
By the Stekker Team
Charging points have to talk to solar panels. Electric vehicles have to talk to batteries. Ovens and dryers will want to be powered on when it’s windy or sunny outside. And so forth: our electricity use is quickly changing and expanding.
There’s a lot of complex work left to be done to modernize our electricity infrastructure to meet the demands of the 21st century: clean energy is scaling, creating volatile energy demands, while flexibility on the grid is increasing in value.
The speed at which this transition will take place is currently severely hampered by a grid built for a fossil world. It has trouble adjusting to the new reality of clean energy, which can suddenly be available in abundance whenever the sun shines or the wind starts blowing. The grid currently can’t handle these peaks.
At the same time, the amount of people driving electric vehicles is skyrocketing. In the coming years, many millions more will switch from a car burning fossil fuels to an EV, and all these cars will carry batteries that will need to be charged.
These car batteries can be very useful in the coming energy transition. As peaks of clean energy could flexibly be stored in these batteries.
The smartest way to solve these problems, is to use the clean energy from those peaks to charge electric vehicles. This way, the grid can be stabilized, EVs can be charged cheaply and with clean energy, and more clean energy will fit onto the grid.
All we need to do, is figure out the best moments to use this clean energy.
On the electricity grid, the amount of power generated needs to be almost perfectly equal to the amount of power used. If not, voltages will rise, the grid will start heating up, and eventually, things will start to (catastrophically) fail.
In areas that have recently seen a burst in clean energy production, grid operators are already doing everything in their might to keep the grid in this perfect balance right now. Throwing lights on, shutting wind turbines down, throttling solar parks, and firing up flexible gas turbines to continuously level out society’s supply and demand of electrons.
These emergency measures are inefficient. They are heavily penalized through the market and morally wasteful because of their emissions inefficiency. Instead of burning away solar power on lights of greenhouses - something that literally already happens - we should rather store that clean electricity in vehicles that we can actually use to get somewhere.
Stekker can help here: By storing clean energy into the already existing batteries of electric vehicles, Stekker can quickly offload the grid of cheap and abundant renewable energy, while customers are charging their electric vehicles at the lowest costs possible.
We do by handing people an app that they can connect to their chargepoint, vehicle or appliance. They tap when they need their device to be done with whatever it needs to do, and Stekker will from then on pick the right moments to charge, heat or wash.
This service - of knowing when electricity is clean and cheap and being compatible with a range of smart appliances and vehicles - will be free to use for individual home use, and highly flexible to implement in third party apps and services.
Businesses will be able to get a business license to manage multiple charge points, solar arrays and vehicles. Stekker algorithms will find the smartest moments to take power from the grid, heavily reducing energy spending and carbon footprint.
For consumers and businesses, this means spending less money on charging and energy use. For grid operators, Stekker will mean a more stable grid. And for the rest of society, Stekker will mean less carbon emissions overall.
Expanding this service of smart energy use to the widest audience possible and expediting the use of clean energy on the grid will be the mission of Stekker.
If you’re interested in helping us or partnering up to scale smart charging or smart home energy, reach out to info@stekker.com, become a member of our community at community.stekker.com, start developing at developer.stekker.com or find some of our projects on Github at and our IFTTT applets for smart homes here. Also be sure to check our English and Dutch job pages.
