Corab: Managing solar energy usage with unified consumer data

About Corab

Corab is a manufacturer and distributor of high-quality photovoltaic (PV) systems. The company exports to more than 20 countries worldwide, and has 300 employees and 8,000 trained installers. With all the PV structures produced to date, Corab has saved almost 1,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions.

Industries: Utilities

Location: Poland

Products: Google Cloud, BigQuery

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About Deloitte

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With its Corab One app, built on Google Cloud, Corab can now use end consumers’ data to help them optimize their solar energy consumption, reducing costs, and lowering carbon emissions. The application was designed by Deloitte.

Google Cloud results

Gains insights to optimize consumers’ energy consumption and reduce emissions with BigQuery
Able to monitor performance and diagnose and fix faults with PV-system data feeds
Receives detailed consumer data for the first time, enabling targeted upselling and cross-selling campaigns

BigQuery data optimizes energy use, reducing emissions

European demand for solar energy is surging. A combination of record-high energy prices and the urgent need to reduce carbon emissions made 2022 a record-breaking year for the EU solar market , with a 47% year-on-year increase in new solar capacity. As the third largest solar market in the EU, Poland’s solar energy production grew 80% in 2022, with solar electricity now supplying almost 10% of Poland’s total demand for electricity, up from less than 1% just three years earlier.

Helping to meet this demand is Corab, one of the country’s leading manufacturers of photovoltaic (PV) systems, whose PV solar panels and components are installed in homes, offices, and farms around the country. For Corab, installing PV systems is only half the battle. The company also wants to help people understand how to optimize their energy usage to achieve the biggest reduction in energy bills and carbon emissions. This was the thinking behind the Corab One app, launched in early 2023 and based on Google Cloud, which helps Corab’s end consumers to use their PV systems efficiently, while providing Corab with the data it needs to improve its business.

"Last year we saw a huge increase in people installing PV systems in homes and offices," explains Monika Wachowska, Project Manager, Corab One. "But they weren’t informed about how to use them, meaning their costs remained high. With our app, based on Google Cloud, we want to educate end consumers about how to use PV energy efficiently."

"Last year we saw a huge increase in people installing PV systems in homes and offices, but they weren’t informed about how to use them, meaning their costs remained high. With our app, based on Google Cloud, we want to educate end consumers about how to use PV energy efficiently."

—Monika Wachowska, Project Manager, Corab One

From the sun to the cloud

As Corab built its app, it was important to find a cloud provider with the data capabilities to ingest and store a constant, and rapidly expanding, stream of data from PV systems throughout Poland and beyond. Impressed by its ability to scale as the volume of Corab’s data grew, Corab chose BigQuery.

Now, every time an installer installs a PV system in a customer’s home, the customer uses a QR code to download the Corab One app. The app is connected to a device called an inverter, which sits at the heart of the PV system and changes solar energy from the PV panels into electricity for consumption. As the inverter transforms solar energy to electricity, it feeds energy data into the Corab One app, where it is stored in BigQuery. That data is added to all the data relating to the customer’s energy usage, along with data from other sources, giving the end consumer insights into how much energy they are using, how much they are generating, and how much it is costing them.

"Our goal was to create an innovative mobile application, available on both iOS and Android ecosystems, with multidimensional functionalities, aiming to provide optimal support for both individual users and installers."

—Jakub Górnik, Associate Partner, Deloitte Digital

Shining a light on solar energy consumption with the Corab One app

With data feeds every five minutes, Corab’s end consumers can see the balance of energy produced and consumed at any time, day or night, and immediately make adjustments to optimize their energy usage, lowering carbon emissions along with their energy bills. As part of the educational element of the app, Corab plans to combine end consumers’ PV data with weather feeds to notify them about the times when their PV panels are at their most productive, suggesting that they make use of those productive hours to perform high-energy tasks such as running a dishwasher. This will prove particularly important with the introduction of Poland’s new energy tariffs next year, which will see customers being charged at variable hourly rates.

"With our Corab One app, built on Google Cloud, users learn how to use PV energy correctly to adapt their energy usage in the best way," explains Wachowska. "We show them how to maximize their own solar energy usage, while minimizing consumption when solar production is low and grid charges are high."

In addition, people with Corab batteries built into their PV systems will be able to connect the battery to Corab One to gain insights around the best times to store energy (such as during peak solar production) and when to sell it back to the grid for further energy savings.

Fixing faults fast with detailed performance insights

The Corab One also enables Corab to monitor its PV installations to ensure that they are all working as they should be. In the event of a fault, the service department can quickly diagnose system failures.

"With BigQuery we track 20 parameters from each of our PV installations every five minutes," Wachowska explains. "This gives our service team granular insights into what happened, where in the system, and when, enabling them to quickly find and fix the problem."

For their part, installers have their own version of Corab One, which provides information about the customers’ usage of their PV system along with insights on how well the system is performing. As Corab adds more functionality to the app, it plans to enable installers to use the insights into faulty installations to diagnose and repair any issues remotely.

"With BigQuery, we track 20 parameters from each of our PV installations every five minutes. This gives our service team granular insights into what happened, where in the system, and when, enabling them to quickly find and fix the problem."

—Monika Wachowska, Project Manager, Corab One

Getting to know consumers with valuable new data sources

For Corab, meanwhile, the Corab One app provides a unique opportunity to gather information about its end consumers. Previously, once Corab handed its products over to the installers, it had no contact with the end consumers who were actually using its products, leaving the company in the dark about when or where its PV systems were being installed and how they were used.

"Corab One is our first contact with end consumers," says Wachowska. "With BigQuery, we now have a database of information about who is buying what, and how they are using our products. This is very valuable data for us, which we plan to use for client segmentation and personalization, as well as targeted marketing and sales campaigns, such as upselling and cross-selling."

A bright future for solar energy management

As Corab releases more devices, such as heat pumps, it will integrate them into Corab One, collating the data in BigQuery to create a unified energy management system for end consumers’ homes and offices. In this way, Corab aims to provide end consumers with a type of virtual assistant to help them optimize every aspect of their energy usage. In doing so, Corab hopes to create an ever-clearer picture of the needs of its end consumers and how they are using its PV systems.

"With Google Cloud, for the first time, we are gaining a huge amount of data about our customers’ precise needs," says Wachowska. "The more we get, the more we are able to help end consumers save money and reduce carbon emissions, and make better business decisions to take Corab to new heights."

"With Google Cloud, for the first time, we are gaining a huge amount of data about our customers’ precise needs. The more we get, the more we are able to help end consumers save money and reduce carbon emissions, and make better business decisions to take Corab to new heights."

—Monika Wachowska, Project Manager, Corab One

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About Corab

Industries: Utilities

Location: Poland

About Deloitte

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