Seven C&I sites and how their battery case differs: supermarket, cold store, factory, EV depot, hotel, farm, office

Each section has a real case (with its source) and an illustrative Zorowatt example. The examples are not real customers: their inputs are assumptions from Zorowatt's scenario notes, their paybacks are simple screens (cost ÷ yearly net saving), and they are not investment advice.

1. Supermarket: short refrigeration and bakery peaks

• Real case: Coles Orana Village near Melbourne has a 110 kW / 225 kWh battery with 270 kW of rooftop solar and four DC fast-charging bays; savings are not published (pv magazine Australia, 30 Sep 2026).
• In Dutch supermarkets, refrigeration is almost half of total energy use (Vakcentrum, Dec 2023).
• Illustrative, Germany: a 60 kW / 120 kWh battery cuts a 200 kW annual peak by 40 kW. At a Leistungspreis of €163.32 per kW a year (a vendor example value) that is 40 × 163.32 = €6,533, plus €1,090 of arbitrage: €7,623 a year. Cost 120 kWh × €450 = €54,000, maintenance €1,080. Payback 54,000 ÷ (7,623 − 1,080) ≈ 8.3 years.
• The same store on Liander's Dutch tariff: 40 × €70.32 + €1,063 of arbitrage = €3,876 a year, payback 54,000 ÷ (3,876 − 1,080) ≈ 19.3 years. In the Netherlands a supermarket battery needs a connection-limit or EV-charging reason.

2. Cold store: the weakest evidence

• No named cold store with a battery and published kWh, kW and savings was found, in any country. Say so openly when you study one.
• A 2018 model of a refrigerated warehouse found a battery cut operating cost by 18.7%, while storing cold in the product mass cut it by 20.5% (Zhu et al., Applied Energy 2018). Test pre-cooling before a battery.
• Illustrative, Netherlands: a cold store wants 120 kW more compressor capacity under a 400 kW contract the grid operator cannot raise. A 150 kW / 500 kWh battery costs 500 × €400 = €200,000. Its tariff and arbitrage value is €11,462 a year against €4,000 maintenance: 200,000 ÷ 7,462 ≈ 26.8 years. The honest metric is the cost of growth: €200,000 ÷ 100 kW = €2,000 per kW enabled.

3. Factory with high peak charges: the strongest tariff case

• Real case: Bäckerei Miedl cut its maximum grid demand by just over 70 kW with 131 kWh, saving about €9,000 a year (Solarserver, 17 Feb 2021).
• Academic case: a KIT study on a real factory found a 38.4 kW / 38.4 kWh battery cut the peak by 33.8 kW, worth €980 a year (KIT, 2023) — a reminder that small cuts on a low kW price earn little.
• Illustrative, Germany: a 200 kW / 300 kWh battery cuts an 800 kW peak by 150 kW at €148.56 per kW a year (a vendor example value): €22,284, plus €1,817 of arbitrage. Cost €135,000, maintenance €2,700: payback 135,000 ÷ 21,401 ≈ 6.3 years.
• The same plant in Romania, where network tariffs have no kW charge: arbitrage only, 300 × €23.01 = €6,903 a year, payback 135,000 ÷ (6,903 − 2,700) ≈ 32 years.

4. EV-charging depot on a full connection

• Real case (vendor source): Albert Heijn's distribution centre in Zaandam runs more than 1.8 MWh / 800 kW of batteries for 70 electric trucks and 17 DC chargers after its contracted capacity was reached (Intercel).
• Real case (vendor source): at Stagecoach's Guildford bus depot a battery avoided a grid upgrade estimated at £2–3 million and more than 12 months (Zenobē).
• Illustrative, Netherlands: 20 trucks on a 500 kW contract; with Albert Heijn's ratios of about 27 kWh and 11.4 kW per truck, a 250 kW / 600 kWh battery. On tariff value alone: €240,000 ÷ €15,970 a year ≈ 15.0 years. The decision metric is €240,000 ÷ 20 = €12,000 of battery per truck the site can electrify.

5. Hotel: spa, kitchen and chargers

• Real case (vendor source): Familux Resort Oberjoch in Germany has a 307.2 kWh / 300 kW battery and 540 kWp of solar; the vendor reports peak savings in the mid-five-figure range a year and a payback of 4–5 years, under an atypical-grid-use agreement (Tesvolt).
• Illustrative, Germany: a 150 kW / 300 kWh battery cuts 80 kW at €163.32 per kW a year, plus arbitrage: €15,792 a year, payback 135,000 ÷ 13,092 ≈ 10.3 years. The gap to the vendor's 4–5 years is plausibly the atypical-grid-use rebate, which this example does not model.

6. Farm with solar

• Vendor model: a German dairy farm with 180 MWh a year, demand charges cut from €13,400 to €5,300 a year, €8,100 saved on €55,900, payback under 7 years (EWS, 10/2025).
• Utility pilot: a Swedish organic dairy with 30 kWh / 10 kW of batteries lowered its main fuse from 50 A to 35 A (Vattenfall, 31 Aug 2018).
• Illustrative, Romania: a battery alone, storing solar surplus at an import–export gap of €0.12 per kWh (assumptions), pays back in about 32 years. With solar and the AFIR grant, which requires at least 70% self-consumption, the whole project pays back in about 3.3 years on the farm's own funds, or 7.6 years without the grant.

7. Office on a dynamic tariff: no published savings

• Real case: the De Walvis office in Amsterdam installed 320 kWh because its 137 kW connection could not carry peaks of about 200 kW. No dynamic-tariff use is mentioned (Solar Magazine, 27 Apr 2024).
• No office was found that publishes battery savings on a dynamic or spot tariff.
• Illustrative, Netherlands: a 100 kW / 250 kWh battery holding a 150 kW contract and trading the rest earns €7,763 a year: payback 112,500 ÷ 5,513 ≈ 20.4 years at €450 per kWh. For 10 years the battery would have to cost about €259 per kWh installed. The real driver is the connection, as at De Walvis.

What the seven have in common

• Where the tariff charges per kW heavily (Germany), peak shaving can carry the case alone.
• Where the grid is full (the Netherlands), the value is the growth the battery allows; measure it per kW, per truck or per year of waiting avoided.
• Where network charges are per kWh only (Romania), the case rests on solar, spreads and grants.
• Most published real cases are vendor material; independent savings figures are rare. Show the arithmetic, and say where the evidence is thin.

Every illustrative number above comes from Zorowatt's scenario notes, with all arithmetic shown there; the shared tariff values are in Dutch large-connection tariffs: kW contract, kWmax and kWh and German grid charges for RLM customers and the 2,500-hour rule. To run one of these on real data, start with the free meter data checker.

Related guides

• The four ways a business battery earns
• Sizing for a connection limit
• Romanian business tariffs 2026: no kW charge

Sources

• pv magazine Australia, Coles Orana Village, 30 Sep 2026
• Vakcentrum, Expertisedossier supermarkten, Dec 2023
• Zhu et al., Applied Energy 216 (2018) 348–357
• Solarserver, Bäckerei Miedl, 17 Feb 2021
• KIT, optimal design of storage for peak shaving, 2023
• Intercel, Albert Heijn Zaandam (vendor)
• Zenobē, Stagecoach Guildford (vendor)
• Tesvolt, Familux Resort (vendor)
• EWS, Spitzenlastkappung brochure, 10/2025 (vendor)
• Vattenfall, Vällsänge dairy, 31 Aug 2018
• Capital.ro, AFIR scheme, 15 Jun 2026
• Solar Magazine, De Walvis office, 27 Apr 2024
• Liander, tariffs 2026, Synertics spreads, updated 29 Jul 2026 and solar.red prices, Oct 2026 (vendor) for the shared assumptions

Last checked: 2026-10-30. Every figure in this guide comes from the source linked next to it, with the retrieval date Zorowatt's research recorded (28–30 October 2026), or from arithmetic shown step by step. Illustrative examples: Zorowatt's scenario notes (docs/scenarios.md), assumptions A1–A5 — €450 per kWh for 100–300 kWh and €400 above 500 kWh installed, 2% maintenance a year, arbitrage at 300 cycles and half the 2-hour spread.