Navigating the Complexity of Battery Security (BatSec Series 3/6)
[ Missed the previous posts? Read part 1 and part 2. ]
A telephone from the Alexander Graham Bell era consisted of a handful of simple, easy-to-understand parts. The nerdy, 9-year-old me could take it apart and put it back together in an afternoon without my mother noticing it. I couldn’t have done it with an iPhone 14 — even though both are a “telephone.”
There’s no such thing as an end-to-end smartphone expert — the device, discipline, and ecosystem are so vast and complex that it’s practically impossible for any one person to comprehend every single element in detail (e.g., semiconductors, material science, mechanical design, UX, low-level software, databases, developer tools, privacy management, cellular, etc.)
The same is true for battery technology.
The batteries that will power large-scale electrification aren’t the AA batteries you plop into a TV remote. The batteries of the future — especially those powering medical, industrial, scientific, and aerospace applications — are much closer to the iPhone than the hunk of bakelite Bell brought into the world.
Yet, many still consider batteries a single, monocultural, and siloed discipline. Battery technology isn’t just about a guy in a white lab coat tinkering with battery chemistry and trying to eke out 3% more energy density in 5 years. What goes into the cells is only the acorn from which the mighty oak tree will sprout.
An advanced, software-defined battery (SDB) ecosystem requires numerous players with complementary competence, including chemistry, data analytics, operations, etc. Nobody can understand everything the entire system touches — not even those in leadership positions. As such, battery security also requires transitioning from a top-down to a horizontal structure.
Energy storage is a multi-disciplinary exercise.
As batteries become more numerous, powerful, multi-disciplinary, complex, and potentially hazardous, we have two options:
Allow only a limited group of scientists and engineers to build and handle batteries. They must absorb an ever-growing body of specialized knowledge just to stay out of trouble and prevent everything from blowing up. Or,
Create a framework within which specialists can contribute their expertise while putting in the guardrails so each person working in the ecosystem can’t overstep their limits and make adjustments to things they don’t know enough about… and blow things up.
The choice is clear if we are to scale electrification at the global level.
Maintaining checks and balances with advanced access control
Battery engineering, battery pack manufacturing, energy storage, and all the supporting functions are fast maturing. We need a competent, multi-disciplinary team to meet all the requirements. Yet, we can’t have too many cooks in the kitchen, each with access to every part of the system.
Battery security creates checks and balances with various types of granular access control to ensure only the right people can manipulate the right parts of the battery system at the right time. Here’s an analogy to illustrate the concept:
Let’s consider a school operated by different people, including the principal, superintendent, electrician, fire marshal, treasurer, and teachers. Who should have access to the electric panel? The electrician probably gets access most of the time but not the treasurer or the teachers. That’s role-based access.
What if the electrician is sick or goes on vacation? The superintendent may have temporary access to the fuse box but nothing more complex. What if there’s a fire? The fire marshal should then have full access to the control panel. These instances combine role-based and event-triggered access to allow the right people to go in and do their job.
Multiply the number of players and elements by a substantial factor, and you get a glimpse of the complexity of a battery ecosystem and the security measures required to implement checks and balances.
Access control: Beyond safety and security
Access control is integral to battery security, but it goes beyond ensuring safety, safeguarding data, and fending off hackers. The technology also makes it possible to control and optimize resource usage. Here’s an example:
The school principal told the groundskeeper that he can’t mow the lawn on Tuesdays from 2 to 4 pm because… oboe practice. But what if the groundskeeper has a problem following schedules?
Let’s say the school replaces its fume-spewing John Deere with a TBOS-powered mower. The principal can simply disable the mower battery on Tuesdays from 2 to 4 pm on the west side of the building (using geofencing) by clicking a few buttons on a software interface.
You can also set the battery system to automatically pull time information from the school’s centralized scheduler so the lawn mower will not work whenever there’s an oboe practice. The rule-based control means administrators only need to update the policy once to enforce it through every battery in the network to ensure compliance.
But how can you ensure the lawn mower battery only takes directions from authorized personnel? TBOS’s battery security architecture provides authentication and verification capabilities to ensure our software-defined batteries (SDBs) only follow commands from legitimate sources.
Let’s go further and look beyond the narrower definition of security. Say, the leasing company has determined that the SDB’s maximum discharge level is 30% since lower discharge limits can adversely impact battery longevity. The battery can retain 98% of its original capacity when the lease is up in 24 months, and the company can sell it for good money.
As it turns out, the groundskeeper can mow 7 out of the school’s 8 acres on one charge. But he has to return to the shed and charge the machine to finish the job, costing the school an estimated $20 in productivity per week, or $80 per month — presenting a business opportunity to the leasing company.
If it changes the depth of discharge (DoD) limit from 30% to 15% so the battery can hold more charge, the groundskeeper can mow all 8 acres in one go. However, lowering the DoD limit causes more wear and would reduce the residual value of the battery at the end of the leasing period by $240, or $10 a month.
The leasing company proposes an increase of $25 per month on the lease for the school to gain $80 in productivity. It’s a no-brainer: the school saves $65 per month, and the leasing company makes $15 more monthly. They agree on the arrangement, and the leasing company changes the parameters via the software interface.
The underlying principle and mechanisms of our battery security system facilitate this business model to make asset and revenue optimization possible. They provide a method for involved parties to enter permission, schedule, location, authorizations, dependencies, and other business data to automate the execution of strategies and policies.
Sounds like magic. So how does battery security really work?
We built our battery security architecture based on the concept of sandboxing and key management to ensure the right people have access to the right component of the battery system to do their job.
The next two installments of this series will discuss the various use cases, then we’ll get into the juicy part – the nuts and bolts of battery security key management.
