Published: 22 Feb 2021, 09:25 By: Andy Colthorpe GELI's new owner since the end of 2020 is vertically-integrated solar PV company Q CELLS. Image: Q CELLS via Facebook. Battery storage systems can deliver multiple services and provide customers and sites with backup power, but their value in doing so remains largely dependent on “highly sophisticated” software. Dan Loflin, CEO of specialist software company Growing Energy Labs Inc (GELI) and Dr Ryan Wartena, the company’s VP of strategy, spoke to California-headquartered GELI was notable in the industry for being one of the few pure-play software companies in the energy storage space, focusing on the commercial and industrial (C&I) market. Their value proposition largely included allowing C&I entities to lower energy costs by reducing peak demand and therefore the high proportion of electricity costs they have to pay to their electricity suppliers in the form of monthly demand charges, while maximising solar integration. Loflin and Wartena said that C&I business models have changed in the past few years to encompass a variety of other applications.