1KOMMA5°: Enabling energy-efficient homes with data-driven solutions
About 1KOMMA5°
1KOMMA5° is a one-stop-shop for climate solutions and enables customers to reduce their carbon footprint and energy bills. The company's services are available at 72 locations in seven countries including Australia.
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Contact us1KOMMA5° worked with Google Cloud to build its own data platform 'Heartbeat' to help its business scale effectively, and unify its disparate data streams as it rapidly expanded across Europe and beyond.
Google Cloud results
- Analyzes data using BigQuery and apply ML models to help customers leverage clean and more affordable energy for their homes
- Successfully integrated new installation companies into a single self-developed operating system
- Can scale up and down quickly without wasting resources using Cloud Run
IoT system, Heartbeat, helps people live sustainably
With many countries at the COP27 conference pledging to become net zero by 2050, living sustainably is becoming increasingly vital. The annual investment worldwide in energy efficient buildings has been rising steadily since 2018, reaching its peak in 2022. But to reach the 2050 target, countries will have to invest trillions of dollars in building homes that have a low-carbon footprint. The recent worldwide energy crisis has also shone a spotlight on the cost of energy and how we manage our energy consumption.
The good news is that we can all have a genuinely positive impact on reaching that net zero target by simply changing how we consume energy in our homes. Climate tech startup 1KOMMA5° believes in a carbon-neutral future, and is helping people make their homes more energy efficient through a range of different solutions—engineering hardware and software to work together—from solar panels to heat pumps and energy management. And the company knows that energy transition is not possible simply by installing hardware—it's about connecting devices and optimizing them to make use of their full potential. This helps customers leverage clean and more affordable energy for their homes.
"The mission of 1KOMMA5° is to enable our customers to live on wind and sunlight forever for free," says Barbara Wittenberg, CTO, 1KOMMA5°.
Making the Heartbeat faster
The rise of 1KOMMA5° has been supercharged. It hit unicorn status only 23 months after it was founded. The company is building a one-stop shop for sales, installation, and services related to solar, power storage, heat pumps, and electric vehicle charging infrastructure. This rapid success is founded on smart tech that helps homeowners manage their energy consumption efficiently. And at the centre of it all is Heartbeat.
Heartbeat is an Internet of Things (IoT) system that connects different devices, such as solar panels, batteries, heat pumps and electric vehicle wallbox chargers, into a smart overall system that coordinates energy consumption and production. Customers use Heartbeat as an energy manager, to optimize their energy consumption and reduce their costs. The relaunch of the new app is based on Google Cloud and Flutter, the Google app development tool.
Data powers Heartbeat's decisions, and gives 1KOMMA5° the information it needs to optimize the customers electricity assets and purchase some of the cleanest and most affordable energy. Built from the ground up using Google Cloud, the Heartbeat solution uses BigQuery to bring together, analyze and predict data from its customers' devices. With each new Heartbeat that is activated, the data flow increases, which gives the company more insight into how customers are using the system. BigQuery can then apply machine learning (ML) to this data and scale effectively.
"Google Cloud enables us to analyze our customer data and helps our customers leverage clean and more affordable energy for their homes," says Wittenberg. "Our customers can see what their devices are doing, how much CO2 they're saving, and how much money they are saving. So they can, for example, decide on charge settings for their electric vehicle."
"Google Cloud enables us to analyze our customer data and helps our customers leverage clean and more affordable energy for their homes."
—Barbara Wittenberg, CTO, 1KOMMA5°Unifying data streams to gain crucial insights
Heartbeat is just one (very important) part of the 1KOMMA5° ecosystem. And data is driving every area of the business, from helping with the installation of photovoltaic (PV) panels to knowing what stock is currently available in each warehouse. Simple things such as the angle of a PV panel becomes data that can be analyzed and used to help with business decisions. Before scaling the new set-up on Google Cloud, the company was not able to gather the right amount of detailed information, because it wasn't using a centralized system. Google Cloud enabled 1KOMMA5° to bring these data streams together into one platform.
"Why did we choose Google Cloud? And why just one solution across the different areas of the business? The key point is data—our whole business is data driven," says Wittenberg.
The migration of existing applications to Google Cloud was quick, and done in collaboration with Google Cloud partner Mineiros. The move has enabled 1KOMMA5° to integrate each new company that it has acquired into its single operating system more quickly and effectively. As the company grows, Google Cloud can help them scale up.
"We bring the new businesses all together in one operating system. So basically, we build a virtual assembly line across all the different steps of the installation with the help of our software," says Wittenberg. "This has had a huge effect on our business, and we couldn't have done it without Google Cloud. Now, the tech team can react faster and develop quickly with the new businesses."
"Why did we choose Google Cloud? And why just one solution across the different areas of the business? The key point of why we migrated to Google Cloud is data. Our whole business is data driven."
—Barbara Wittenberg, CTO, 1KOMMA5°Working with a low-carbon cloud provider
Sustainability is the guiding principle of 1KOMMA5° and was a key factor in its decision to choose Google Cloud as its cloud provider. Google has matched electricity for all its operations with 100% renewable energy every year since 2017. And now it is aiming higher: its goal is to run on carbon-free energy, 24/7, at all of its data centers by 2030.
"The sustainability element was a feature in our decision. If you are a sustainability business, you need to think about sustainability in every area of your business. And we wanted to be on one of the greenest clouds," says Wittenberg.
1KOMMA5° chose its Google data centre based on the lowest carbon footprint. The company also aims to use the resources from its data center in the most efficient and sustainable way possible by using Cloud Run. Using Cloud Run allows 1KOMMA5° to deploy and scale applications quickly and securely in a managed environment. The scalability of Cloud Run means that the company can upscale and downscale when needed, without wasting resources.
Supporting the transition to a tech energy company
1KOMMA5° isn't resting on its laurels, as its mission to create a greener future continues at a rapid pace. The company recently announced significant investment in a new research and development site in Berlin, and said that Heartbeat should be compatible with already installed energy devices by 2024, bringing it into many more homes. The initial collaboration between 1KOMMA5° and Google Cloud laid the foundations for this growth.
"Google Cloud helped us change to a tech energy company. It helped us run our installation businesses more efficiently, supporting them with more data and helps our customers to live on wind and sunlight forever for free" says Wittenberg. "And the team just scaled with Google Cloud. So it's been a lot of fun to see a team on a clean page, scaling with a cloud provider, and setting everything up the way it should be."
"Google Cloud helped us change to a tech energy company. It helped us run our installation businesses more efficiently, supporting them with more data, and helps our customers to live on wind and sunlight forever for free."
—Barbara Wittenberg, CTO, 1KOMMA5°Tell us your challenge. We're here to help.
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About 1KOMMA5°
1KOMMA5° is a one-stop-shop for climate solutions and enables customers to reduce their carbon footprint and energy bills. The company's services are available at 72 locations in seven countries including Australia.