Grow BESS Revenue by Shrinking Margins: How SoC Margins Reduce Capacity & Profit

Asset operators know cell imbalances reduce battery energy storage system (BESS) availability. At the same time, inaccurate energy and power signals further add to the problem, causing undesired behaviors like surprise shutdowns and power derating at top- and bottom-of-charge.

But did you know that the most common “solutions” just make matters worse? 

How do most asset operators try to problem-solve?

They avoid the problem. 

More precisely, they attempt to make up for BESS controls’ unreliability at high and low SoC (State of Charge) by implementing off-limits safety margins of 5-10% SoC at both ends, effectively avoiding operations at high and low SoC today.

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Unfortunately, while this tactic may superficially improve availability, it ends up creating another problem: unnecessary reductions in usable capacity.

With large safety margins, the more you “play it safe,” the more you cut your capacity. Worse, the size of the margins necessary to maintain availability only grows as your battery ages.

Why SoC safety margins are a Band-Aid solution

SoC margins may seem like a sufficient way to accommodate BESS controls’ unreliability, but at the end of the day, they fail to solve the real problem: the cell imbalances and inaccurate energy and power signals limiting your BESS assets’ availability. 

If you continue to rely on large SoC safety margins, you’ll never solve the root cause. Instead, you’ll just reduce your BESS assets’ usable capacity—and your revenue potential along with it. 

For most asset operators, SoC margins reduce capacity by 10–20%. 

How to manage BESS controls’ unreliability at high and low SoC—without relying on safety margins 

Implementing overly conservative SoC margins doesn’t just needlessly reduce capacity; it also reduces your profit potential by cutting capacity that could otherwise be used for revenue generation. 

But there’s another approach to handle cell imbalances and inaccurate state estimates—one that actually solves the crux of the issue. 

Zitara for BESS is a purpose-built software solution that uses advanced battery modeling to enable smarter balancing and more accurate state estimates. Deployed on premises via Zitara-managed hardware, its two software modules seamlessly integrate with existing control systems to increase asset availability and empower asset operators to realize full profit potential. Here’s how: 

• Zitara Balance empowers you to make informed, strategic balancing decisions to keep imbalances low and enable deeper discharges.
• Zitara Power gives you accurate, real-time estimates of available energy at any power level so you know exactly how far to discharge your assets—no more relying on arbitrary fixed margins.

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Together, balanced assets and reliable energy and power signals enable you to shrink SoC margins, increase BESS capacity, and maximize revenue opportunities.  

Don’t forget to consider dispatch power 

Safety margins are typically implemented as a strict limit on the usable SoC range—but available energy is never just a strict function of SoC. It also depends on dispatch power.

Specifically, as power increases, available energy decreases due to what is known as a “rate-limiting effect”, which is more pronounced in systems with larger cell-to-cell, rack-to-rack, or block-to-block imbalances.

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This isn’t anything new. Most asset operators are familiar with the phenomenon, but because native control systems can’t predict available energy as a function of power, SoC margins are oversized to cover the worst-case rate-limiting effects at the maximum power level, even when more energy could be utilized at lower dispatch rates.

With Zitara, you can take a different approach.

By revealing the power-energy-SoC relationship, Zitara Power enables asset operators to use a dynamic margin matched to your intended dispatch power. This way, you can access every last drop of available capacity—and realize every last dollar of profit potential. 

Meanwhile, by enabling smarter balancing strategies, Zitara Balance pushes the margin threshold lower and lower, increasing available capacity and market opportunities.

Stop relying on a Band-Aid solution. Shrink SoC margins and increase revenue with Zitara for BESS 

Cell imbalances and inaccurate state estimates are a persistent problem in BESS asset management—but conservative SoC safety margins don’t solve the root cause. In fact, they actually end up reducing your BESS assets’ usable capacity and limiting your revenue potential. 

With smarter balancing strategies and more accurate state estimates, you can unlock margins at top- and bottom-of-charge to win back 10–20% capacity—and unlock more revenue potential. 

Contact us for a FREE Zitara Insights Report—we’ll measure your BESS assets’ utilization at the margins to see how much capacity you can recover.