Guide
For a commercial or industrial site, storage is rarely about backup alone. It is about what the meter records and what the site can keep doing when the grid stops.
Backup. Keeping defined loads running through an interruption. This is the one everyone thinks of, and the one that generators already do.
Demand management. Reducing the peak the meter records, which on most commercial tariffs is a large share of the bill. See peak shaving.
Load shifting. Buying energy when it is cheap and using it when it is expensive, without changing when the work happens.
Resilience. Continuing to operate through an interruption rather than recovering after it. See microgrids and resilience.
Most business cases combine two or three of these, which is why a system sized only for backup often disappoints — it was never asked to address the bill.
Behind-the-meter storage sits on your side of the utility meter, so it changes what the meter records. That is what makes demand charge reduction and load shifting possible at all — a system on the utility side cannot do either for you.
It also means the system is yours to control. Discharge timing can follow your tariff, your shift pattern and your own priorities rather than a network operator's.
Fixed installations make sense where the load is permanent and the business case is measured in years. Mobile and containerised systems make sense where the requirement moves — multi-site operations, construction programmes, seasonal peaks, or a phased campus build-out where the same asset serves each phase in turn.
A useful middle path for uncertain cases: deploy a mobile system, measure what it actually saves across a few billing periods, and use real data rather than a projection to justify the permanent installation.
With twelve months of interval data if you have it, a single-line diagram if you do not, and a measured load survey if neither exists. Sizing that begins with a product and works backwards to a load profile is how storage projects disappoint people.
See EPC and system integration for how that process runs.
Questions answered
Battery storage sized and specified for a commercial or industrial facility, used for backup, demand charge reduction, load shifting and resilience — usually installed behind the meter so it changes what the site draws from the grid.
Storage on the customer's side of the utility meter, so it reduces what the site draws. That is what makes peak shaving and demand charge reduction possible rather than simply providing backup.
Principally by reducing the demand peak the tariff charges on, and by shifting consumption from expensive to cheap periods. Sites with rooftop solar also use storage to consume their own generation instead of exporting it.
Get in touch
Tell us the site, the load and the runtime you need. Our Austin engineering team comes back with a configuration, a runtime estimate and a price.
+1 512-316-7347
info@pulsar.industries
WhatsApp +1 512-585-8293
