We’re thrilled to have Carlton Cummins, an Amdaris client and visionary voice in the tech world and co-founder of Aceleron, take part in our latest Q&A. As the CTO of Aceleron, Carlton has propelled the company to remarkable heights, showcasing a deep understanding of industry trends and an unwavering commitment to sustainable innovation.
With an impressive track record, Carlton has consistently steered the Aceleron towards new – and greener – horizons, ensuring its continuous growth in a rapidly evolving sustainable battery industry.
Amdaris has been supporting Aceleron with its software capabilities since 2021, including building unique interfaces for end users, installers, repairers, and the Aceleron team. These interfaces present CO2 emissions, cost savings, solar energy generated, and usage history.
Over to Carlton to tell us more!
Tell us a little bit about Aceleron. What mission is the company looking to achieve?
The world currently makes batteries like chocolate bars. It’s made, it’s eaten, and the wrapper is disposed of. However, that simply isn’t sustainable, especially when batteries are now powering houses, cars, hotels and ships. We can’t have so much waste accumulating at such a large scale.
We also tend to keep a car a lot longer than we keep a phone, and they have much more critical value for our lives. When we take the example of electric taxis, building the battery for the taxi is the biggest and most expensive component of that car.
Aceleron is taking a different approach to make and manage batteries, enabling them to be repaired and upgraded over time. Rather than sticking to a consumer mindset, we need to see batteries as an asset that can be serviced. That’s where the combination of hardware and software comes in.
At Aceleron we have reimagined how batteries are assembled from the very beginning. Instead of welding them together and using glues and adhesives, we reengineered and patented a method that can fasten them together and then unfasten them, allowing us to repair and upgrade them with ease.
We want to be able to use hardware and software to completely change the way batteries are manufactured and managed.
Can you give us an example of Aceleron in action?
One use case for Aceleron is using batteries for stationary energy storage with renewable energy. From a residential perspective, we implemented them in harsher environments, like the Caribbean coastlines. We’ve also been able to accomplish this in the UK and colder climates.
More recently, we’ve deployed our batteries at a light commercial scale, including powering a few boutique hotels in the Caribbean. As hotels are likely to experience frequent outages due to power quality issues on the coastline, the use of these batteries are incredibly important to enable these spaces to operate 24/7. When charged with solar panels this also allows them to deliver their services using clean energy.
Another example is in Africa with light mobility for electric motorcycles. These motorcycles are often used as taxis or are rented in a subscription. The model has been really exciting because you can see every time a battery is used in an application where it delivers a service.
What role does Amdaris play in this mission? And what’s next for the partnership?
Amdaris is building the framework and the architecture that allows us to use batteries in an asset management model. This includes the back end and the end user portal, as well as monitoring the battery systems remotely.
Next steps include building prediction models that empower us to start thinking about what will happen in the future based on the data we have from the past. We will also be building different interfaces for end users, installers, repairers, and the Aceleron team alike.
We have a lot of big milestones coming up. The partnership with Amdaris is empowering us to build the framework we need to move towards a brighter, greener future.
What role does the wider industry play in the adoption of sustainable batteries?
Professionals in the battery industry need to come together to actively seek collaboration. Sustainable battery producers should not pit themselves against non-sustainable battery users, for example.
Instead, there should be a community of industry experts, producers and users that share ideas, knowledge, and listen to each other. Without it, we simply won’t see the progress that’s needed for the world to become more sustainable.
This is another mission that we’re setting out to achieve with Amdaris. To give the industry a space to collaborate in a communicative environment that shares a common goal.
Read more about the Amdaris and Aceleron partnership here
To get support with your software needs – you can book a meeting with the Amdaris experts here.