Terra Daily — May 11, 2026

Research Worth Reading

• Control and Scheduling of Behind-the-Meter Battery Energy Storage Systems for Stacked Grid and Building Services — Proposes and experimentally validates a two-stage scheduling and control strategy for behind-the-meter battery energy storage systems (BESS) that simultaneously delivers PV self-consumption maximization, peak-load reduction, and secondary frequency control (aFRR). The day-ahead stage allocates battery capacity across stacked services, while the real-time stage handles dispatch — a directly applicable reference for anyone building BESS control logic.

• SCOUT: Closed-Loop in-vivo System for Continuous Methane Concentration Monitoring in Cattle — Presents a smart cannula-mounted optical system for continuous in-vivo methane concentration monitoring in cattle, overcoming trade-offs between accuracy and operational feasibility in enteric methane measurement. Relevant to engineers working on agricultural emissions sensing, IoT instrumentation for livestock, or MRV (measurement, reporting, verification) pipelines.

• HealDA: Highlighting the importance of initial errors in end-to-end AI weather forecasts — Examines how initial condition errors propagate in end-to-end AI weather forecast models, addressing a gap where most AI weather models still depend on traditional NWP data assimilation. Useful for engineers building or evaluating standalone ML-based weather prediction systems and thinking about error budget design.

• Electric Axle and Wheel Module Driveline Concepts for Self-propelled Agricultural Machinery and Equipment Carriers — Explores direct electric driveline architectures for self-propelled agricultural machinery (combines, forage harvesters, root crop harvesters), equipment carriers, propelled trailers, and field robots. Highlights the design freedom for frame and suspension layout along with reduced energy losses compared to conventional drivelines — relevant to engineers working on electrification of off-road and agricultural vehicles.

News & Investigations

• Shell’s carbon capture plant is emitting more than it’s capturing — Investigation revealing that Shell’s Quest CCS facility in Alberta has a net-positive emissions footprint when accounting for upstream methane leakage and the energy penalty of the capture process. A critical real-world case study on the gap between CCS design targets and operational performance.

Open Source Projects

• Greenlane Expands Electric Truck Charging, Plans Chargers In Texas — Greenlane is expanding its electric truck charging network into Texas with sites planned for Houston and Dallas along Interstate 45, building on prior deployments in southern California and Arizona. Represents tangible infrastructure progress for medium/heavy-duty EV trucking corridors.

• ffunes/Marstek-Venus-Energy-Manager — Custom Home Assistant integration to monitor and control Marstek Venus energy systems for solar battery management. A practical example of how home energy management tooling gets built — useful reference for anyone interested in the residential DER/storage control space.

Today’s Synthesis

The BESS scheduling paper and the Marstek Venus Home Assistant integration point to the same opportunity: the software layer that decides when to charge, discharge, and curtail at the grid edge is still largely bespoke and underengineered. The paper’s two-stage architecture — day-ahead capacity allocation across stacked services, real-time dispatch — is a clean reference design that could be adapted to any residential or small-commercial battery system. Pair that with the Marstek integration as a concrete data-ingestion layer, and you have the skeleton of a working system. The missing piece is what Greenlane’s Texas corridor hints at: as medium/heavy-duty EV charging scales along freight corridors, the demand-response problem gets harder and more time-sensitive. An engineer entering climate tech could take the stacked-services scheduling logic, wire it into an open-source home energy manager, and extend it to co-optimize battery dispatch against EV charging schedules — turning three separate stories into one deployable control problem.