Peak shaving with a battery flattens the demand peaks at your production site, so you stay within your existing grid connection and cut grid and energy costs. Whether it pays off depends on your load profile — and on smart control. That is exactly where Crux Digits' AI comes in.
Last updated: 11 June 2026
Peak shaving with a battery flattens your demand peaks so you stay within your existing grid connection and cut grid and energy costs. It pays off most when you have sharp, predictable peaks or are blocked by grid congestion (netcongestie) from getting a heavier connection. The return depends on smart control — forecasting peaks, prices and constraints and charging/discharging at the right moment. That is where Crux Digits' AI comes in.
Crux Digits is a boutique AI consultancy and development partner for Dutch SMEs (MKB), based in Nieuwegein in the Utrecht region. Bilingual (EN/NL), with transparent fixed pricing — a €2,500 AI audit, a €20,000 proof of concept and a production build from €50,000 — delivered by a named expert (founder Tom Joseph), with 13 real case studies, EU AI Act- and GDPR-ready. A focused alternative to the large enterprise consultancies.
Peak shaving means flattening the highest demand peaks at your site. Instead of your grid connection having to deliver that short, sharp spike, a battery steps in: it discharges during the peak and recharges when demand is low. Your metered peak — and with it a large share of your grid costs — drops, without your production having to give anything up.
Why now? Because of grid congestion (netcongestie), in more and more of the Netherlands you cannot simply enlarge your connection — grid operators have multi-year waiting lists or hand out no extra capacity at all. If you still want to grow, add a machine or install EV chargers, flattening the peak is often the only route that works in the short term. Stuck on the waiting list? See how to handle it under grid congestion in industry.
Honestly: a battery is not always worth it. The return depends entirely on your load profile and your tariffs. A flat, predictable load leaves little to shave; sharp, short peaks leave a lot. The situations where peak shaving and energy storage typically do pay off:
Machines, compressors, furnaces or EV chargers that draw heavy power in short bursts. The sharper the peak relative to your average, the more a battery can shave.
If you are billed on your contracted or metered maximum power (kW contract, transport tariff), every shaved kilowatt translates straight into lower fixed grid costs.
If congestion means you cannot enlarge your connection, a battery lets you grow within it — often cheaper and faster than waiting for more capacity.
With solar panels, the battery stores your midday surplus and deploys it during the peak — a double gain on your own generation and on grid costs.
A battery with nothing to do can trade on the imbalance and day-ahead markets or provide flexibility services — an extra revenue stream on top of the savings.
The only way to know whether it pays off for you is to run the numbers on your own consumption data. That is exactly what our audit does: a payback calculation on your quarter-hourly meter values, not on a rule of thumb.
A battery earns nothing if it charges or discharges at the wrong moment. The hardware — the cells, the inverter — is now a commodity: everyone buys from the same factories. The difference in return sits almost entirely in the control: when does the battery charge and discharge, how deeply, and on what signal?
Good control forecasts your coming peaks from historical and real-time data, looks ahead at prices (day-ahead and imbalance), respects the limits of your connection and your process, and then steers automatically — with no one having to intervene by hand. Controlled badly, the same battery sits full at the wrong moment and misses the very peak you wanted to shave.
This is Crux Digits' domain. We build the optimisation and forecasting software that turns a bare battery into a profitable installation: buy the hardware wherever you like — the intelligence around it decides your payback. See also our work on an energy management system for industry.
We work in three fixed steps with transparent pricing — and you own all the code we deliver:
A payback calculation on your own consumption data: does a battery pay off here, and if so, how big and controlled how?
Working control logic that shows on your data how much peak you shave and what it returns.
The optimisation software live-connected to your battery, meters and processes, in production and maintained.
Fixed price, no open-ended hourly rates, EU AI Act- and GDPR-ready, and the code and models are yours — no vendor lock-in on the intelligence of your own installation.
Explore how operational AI and energy constraints come together:
Peak shaving is flattening the highest demand peaks at your site using a battery (energy storage). The battery discharges during the peak and recharges when demand is low. Your metered peak power drops, so you stay within your existing grid connection and cut grid and energy costs — without your production giving anything up.
A battery typically pays off with sharp, predictable demand peaks, high peak or grid costs (a kW or transport tariff), a connection you cannot enlarge because of grid congestion, or in combination with solar panels. With a flat, predictable load there is little to shave and it often does not pay off. The only way to be sure is to run the numbers on your own consumption data.
That depends entirely on your load profile and your tariffs — we deliberately quote no fixed percentage, because doing so would mislead you. The saving comes from lower grid costs (a flattened peak), lower energy costs and possibly revenue from flexibility or imbalance trading. In our audit we calculate the payback on your own quarter-hourly data, so you get a figure that actually fits your situation.
Solar panels and a battery solve different problems. Panels generate; a battery shifts energy in time and flattens your peak. In fact, with solar a battery often becomes more attractive: it stores your midday surplus and deploys it during your most expensive peak, instead of exporting it at a low price. Whether it pays off for you again depends on your consumption and generation profile.
Crux Digits works in fixed steps: an audit with payback scan for €2,500, a proof of concept for €20,000 and a production build from €50,000 (excl. VAT). You buy the battery hardware separately from a supplier of your choice; we build the optimisation and forecasting software around it — and you own that code.
Crux Digits, based in the Utrecht region, is a small senior team that has built operational AI for energy-constrained industry since 2022 at fixed prices (€2,500 audit / €20,000 proof of concept / from €50,000 production). We build the forecasting and control software that makes peak shaving and battery storage profitable, work in Dutch and English, are EU AI Act- and GDPR-aware, and you own the code and IP.
Start with a free 30-minute consultation. Tell us about your peaks and connection, and we'll map whether a payback scan on your data is worth running.
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