TALKING NEW ENERGY

In conversation with Mario Moura

Jon Slowe – Director – Delta-EE

Mario Moura - Managing Director – EMEA - Resideo

[00:00:00.000] - Jon Slowe

Welcome to Talking to Energy, a podcast from Delta-EE, the new energy experts. We will be talking about how the energy transition is developing across Europe, with guests who are working at the leading edge of this transition.

[00:00:21.800] - Jon Slowe

Hello and welcome to the podcast. Today we're looking at the world of connected homes.

[00:00:27.230] - Jon Slowe

And I'm in conversation with Mario Moura who is managing director for Europe Middle East and Africa with Resideo the Smart home or connected home spinoff of Honeywell. Hello Mario.

[00:00:39.920] - Mario Moura

Hi, Jon. Pleasure, to be here. Thanks for inviting me.

[00:00:43.200] - Jon Slowe

And thanks for joining us. Now, Honeywell, everyone will have heard of Resideo. My guess is some of our listeners may not have heard so much about. So, can you start by just giving us a very quick introduction to Resideo and your role at Resideo?

[00:01:01.820] - Mario Moura

Absolutely Jon. Resideo is a fairly new company. We are you know 13 months old but obviously we have a close the 150 years heritage as a spin-off from Honeywell. We are a public trade company, listed in the New York Stock Exchange since 1st of November last year. And basically, we are a combination of businesses in Honeywell that had residential markets as in markets. So, the company decided to refocus into commercial-industrial areas. They decided to spin off everything that has to do with residential markets and automotive markets.

[00:01:50.570] - Mario Moura

So we are, Resideo is one of the two companies that were spun off from Honeywell.

[00:01:55.970] - Jon Slowe

Okay. So Resideo has got this focus only on the home. Is that right? You're solely focused on products and services to do with the home?

[00:02:05.300] - Mario Moura

That's correct. We only focused on the home. We have some minor businesses in what we would call light commercial but in essence what we try to do is expand the products and solutions that we have in the home to the grey area that's not buildings, not homes.

[00:02:30.290] - Jon Slowe

Okay, and how do you divide up the different products and services within the home. How do you organise yourselves? Is it around energy and security or what are your verticals or organisation within the home?

[00:02:44.860] - Mario Moura

Yeah. So, we would try to deal with the home as a whole-home approach. And we do have a focus on four main products and solutions areas. One of them is air. So basically, Indoor Air Quality Systems, humidifier, dehumidifiers indoor air quality monitors, air purifiers. We do have another area of focus which we call water. So basically, we are talking about hydraulic controls, hydraulic valves and portable water systems. We have another area which we call and focus on energy efficiency. So that's basically you know the controls and electronics and services around boilers.

[00:03:47.920] - Mario Moura

And we do have a security business as well. So those are four areas, that's how we slice the home. And we try to link all that into a whole-home approach.

[00:04:01.390] - Jon Slowe

So, if Resideo, linking that together as you say into a whole-home approach and packaging them up do you have a strapline or how would you try and position Resideo ultimately in the market to either installers or homeowners.

[00:04:19.240] - Mario Moura

Yes. So, what we're trying to do Jon is in just a few words, you know gave the home a pulse. So imagine a human being right has a pulse, if the person is alive obviously has a pulse at any point in time and you have professionals right or so-called doctors that will measure the pulse at any given time and try to understand the situation of that human being if it's healthy or not and what potentially he could have. So we're trying to do the same thing with home it's a much more complex system or market.

[00:05:09.640] - Mario Moura

I think we have many people you know focusing in different areas, but we don't have a professional that can go to your home and measure you know if the home is performing according to your needs. So, we do want to create that. I'm sorry we do it to enable professionals to measure that pulse and bring solutions to improve situations where their home is not performing as well as we would want. So, we do want to enable installers, professional installers out there as doctors of the home.

[00:05:57.910] - Mario Moura

So that is included in our vision.

[00:06:01.780] - Jon Slowe

So, Mario, I'd like to delve in a minute into the concept of the supported or connected home and I really liked this analogy of the home having a pulse and looking after the home in that way. But before I do that I just like to come back to the spinoff of Resideo from Honeywell. Now when I look at the energy sector in general, I can see companies struggling to decide how broad their focus should be. Some like E.ON have taken active decisions to focus down particular parts of the energy market so E.ON sold off generation and focused very much now on customers and distribution networks.

[00:06:49.870] - Jon Slowe

What's your take on the spinoff of Resideo from Honeywell? Honeywell was broad it was as you say industrial, commercial, residential. So, do you see, what are the pros and cons of now having a smaller more focused company? Is it making your job easier or what have you lost from being part of a bigger organisation?

[00:07:12.750] - Mario Moura

Yeah, it is an interesting question. The intention here is to focus solidly on this sector is to move faster than we were moving at Honeywell that became the core of our business or the only core really of our business whereas as part of Honeywell we were on an adjacent to a very robust commercial industrial business. So, we although I would say we had a fairly good rotation you know at the Honeywell leadership team and we invested, and we are where we are right now because of Honeywell.

[00:08:02.980] - Mario Moura

But the perception was that we'll be able to move a lot faster than if we were part of a honeymoon.

[00:08:13.440] - Jon Slowe

Mario do you see that speed becoming more important. So, the smart home, the connected home is a very fast-moving dynamic environment. So, do you think it is just getting really hard for slow-moving really large corporations like the old Honeywell to play in this fast-moving dynamic sector?

[00:08:36.780] - Mario Moura

Absolutely. Speed is key customer needs change faster than in other areas. You know in which Honeywell is primarily focused. So we believe that entrepreneurial culture that we're trying to build and a sole focus on the residential areas with the advantage of having in Honeywell DNA in a very process-oriented company will help us big time in addressing this market in a much more comprehensive way than we did before.

[00:09:22.520] - Jon Slowe

Okay, and I guess time will tell. But a year into it. How do you feel if you rewind to a year or so ago when the spin-off happened and where you are now? How do you feel that year gone has it changed in the way you thought, or have you been surprised by some other changes that you've seen?

[00:09:44.650] - Mario Moura

Well, we've been surprised with the speed coming back to your point. We were able to launch now two new platforms. One for our comfort business or market segments and one for our security segment. We launched that in the US, in North America very recently. So, I don't think we'd be able to develop in launch that as fast as we did now as part of Resideo. Another area that I'd like to also point out is that we have made three acquisitions in 2018, three fairly you know smaller acquisitions, start-ups basically.

[00:10:37.420] - Mario Moura

And that was not really the approach of Honeywell. So, I do see a lot of really decision making especially in the areas that the Honeywell traditionally took a different approach.

[00:10:52.540] - Jon Slowe

Great. Okay. Let's come back to the connected home and listeners may use a smart home, supported home, lots of different acronyms. Now, this sector promises so much and maybe the trigger for the excitement within many ways Google's acquisition of Nest all those years ago but it's still very much a niche market. Some I'm really interested Mario from your perspective. Your being in the home, your products Honeywell/Resideo's products have been in the home for many years. How do you see this smart home, connected home market? Is it still niche in your eyes?

[00:11:39.490] - Jon Slowe

How quickly will it become? Will it grow and become more significant and how quickly can it scale?

[00:11:47.300] - Mario Moura

Yep, I do believe that we are still in a niche phase. Precisely. You know as you said we are, we've been there for a long time, but we have around five billion dollars in revenue only selling to residential you know a market. So, it's a fairly large presence and even in the connected or smart or supported the home is using the acronyms that you just mentioned. We do have 17 connected customers at the moment worldwide even with all that scale. I think this is a niche student ish market for us and for a number of other players out there and we do believe and I do believe honestly that to keep the humble pulse it's one area to focus to make this you know a mass market.

[00:12:57.160] - Mario Moura

We won't be able to create a mass-market without evolving, without training, without equipping, the professionals out there to trade you know the house if the house has as a problem in a meaningful way. So, we do need to get the whole home control live with the right piece of hardware, the right apps, analytics, subscription services you name it. But integration with the pro will be key to me.

[00:13:36.020] - Jon Slowe

Okay. And a view if you look back, Mario. Have you been surprised that the connected home sector hasn't grown quicker or actually when you look at the challenges now? Is it in line with your expectations if you rewind to four or five years ago when much of the excitement really kicked off with connected homes?

[00:13:59.880] - Mario Moura

Well, you can go back a lot longer than four or five years right. I think 15, 20 years ago we were already talking about smart homes. So, I'm still a little bit surprised that this market didn't take off as other markets if you compare with all the innovation that we have out there like mobile phones or like personal computers, right. I do remember someone that probably in the 80s that the personal computers were too complex to work with and now look at where we are right.

[00:14:43.670] - Mario Moura

We can't live without personal computers or mobile phones so I think the level of complexity there when you talk about a home is much higher therefore much more complicated to get that from a niche to a mass market you know you have a myriad of systems out there regulations, cultures, climate, socioeconomic you know conditions in different areas in the world so it is a complex market by nature.

[00:15:23.180] - Jon Slowe

How does that play Mario for Resideo when in your job you're looking at EMEA I don't know how many countries there are in that region or that you look after but many tens of countries and as you say every country is different in terms of the type of heating system or the nature of installers or the culture. If you look at computers in your analogy there that's a global market you can create one product for tens of countries. How difficult is it in a company like Resideo to cope with all those differences when you would ideally want one platform or one product set for your countries?

[00:16:03.270] - Mario Moura

Yeah, it is a different market to deal with. We do have many different systems for many different geographies, and I don't think that will change that rapidly. I think customer needs changed much faster than regulation in many cases. The softer layer, the integration with pro layer is something that needs to be standardised. In my view and you know the hardware it will need to have we need to conserve its big peculiarities or sorry also in other words that particularities so often there is where you need to integrate all that.

[00:16:56.000] - Mario Moura

In a much more meaningful way.

Jon Slowe - So you will need bespoke products and services for different countries. But then behind that if I'm understanding correctly if you can have a standard platform that stores the data, does the analytics, provides the services a platform that can provide their services then that can provide you with the scale benefits but you're always going to have this bespoke nature of different countries to deal with.

[00:17:27.210] - Mario Moura

Absolutely. The digitalisation will help us on this aspect connecting these bespoke products to customers or to other appliances in the house or others right even outside your home. As we mentioned professionals in the beginning of our conversation. So that's where this standardisation will occur faster and help us move from a niche market to a mass market.

[00:18:02.670] - Jon Slowe

Now you've mentioned, we've talked about customers a couple of times and you've talked about the pro channels the professionals, the installers. Who do you really see as your customer? Or is that a difficult question to answer. Is it the end customer? Is it the professional?

[00:18:20.730] - Jon Slowe

How do you balance the needs of your professional customers and the end customer?

Mario Moura - Our customers at the end of the day are our end customers. Our people like you and me that want to be comfortable and safe inside the home. And will we reach that by a complex chain, of a complex value chain. We are not selling directly to end customers, but we would like to enable professional community to serve that end-user the best way they can with our products and services.

[00:19:07.030] - Mario Moura

That's how we see the market but everything we do is really taking into consideration the end-user out there.

[00:19:15.550] - Jon Slowe

Do you think that the pro channels will keep being the dominant channel or do you see with digitalisation with more direct routes to market companies now often going more direct to customers? Do you think Resideo will or part of Resideo will go more direct customers or do you think you will the pro channels will always be the dominant channel in this connected home in this home sector?

[00:19:44.920] - Mario Moura

The way you look at the market is the professional channel being stronger being more supported by us.

[00:19:53.320] - Mario Moura

So, we really will continue to focus, and this is part of the Honeywell DNA that we inherited on the on the professional channel. Nothing wrong with the wires out there but the areas but we are looking at like air, water, energy efficiency, security those things combined will give the home a pulse back to our conversation. That to us is primarily a focus of the professional. So, going back to our analogy with a human being you go and try to get a pulse when you're feeling that something is it's not OK with your body for minor things you can sometimes even medicate yourself.

[00:20:47.320] - Mario Moura

I'm not a doctor I want to go into this route, but a lot of people medicate themselves when they feel that something is going a little bit the other way you go look for a professional. So, that's, those are the needs that will try to you know fulfil and tackle with our product solutions via the professional channel.

[00:21:16.800] - Jon Slowe

OK. And that because you will always need as professionals. This involves hardware in the home and there's just no shortcut to having a professional dealing with the hardware in the home. Is that the dominant thought or is the thought more that customers will always turn to a professional, a local installer or an installation chain when they have a need around their home or is you know the analogy of going to a doctor they go to a local installer or local professional.

[00:21:49.020] - Mario Moura

Well, we want to go beyond this. We want to provide the best connection between the professional and our mutual customers out there in a way that they predict if something is wrong or something is about to get wrong and fix or inform the customer on how to fix before, those things become a problem. We will also want to give the control you know the information obviously to the customers so that they can potentially decide to fix themselves. But our main route is equipping, training, connecting the pros so that we can offer you know that the whole home care when it's needed.

[00:22:49.180] - Jon Slowe

Okay. That brings me to my next question Mario. Which is the nature of a company like Resideo and you're probably known for hardware? Many listeners will be able to see a Honeywell product in their home in some form. And what we've been talking about the service, the diagnostics this involves platforms, it involves software it will involve A.I. a machine learning to analyse the data that you're getting back from the home. So how would you describe Resideo? A hardware company? A software company? Or do these categorisations not really work anymore.

[00:23:30.300] - Jon Slowe

Are you a blend of all of the sorts of skills I've mentioned?

[00:23:32.910] - Mario Moura

Back to the Honeywell DNA. You're absolutely right. Your listeners and the markets regard us as a hardware company but be behind the scenes we're investing a lot in software capability. We know most of our hires at the moment is are on this area and know that all the software capability area and we will not be able to realise that vision of the home the house only with the hardware. We won't be able to connect pros with consumers only with the hardware.

[00:24:23.670] - Mario Moura

So the idea is that pros can connect via ideally one single app, one single portal our water service you know sorry, our water services, our energy-efficient services, our indoor air quality services, are critical appliance monitor services and our secured services through one platform and I mean by that is one app and one portal and to get there we are investing a lot in our software capabilities much faster than we were when we were part of Honeywell.

[00:25:12.270] - Jon Slowe

Okay, and you won’t be at all the only company making this transition or focusing more and more on those types of skills. So, from products being dominant to this mix of products and the softer skills you mentioned how challenging is that in terms of sort of culture and DNA, for Resideo. Is that something you're really trying to focus on to get the culture and the DNA as much around the software as the hardware. Is that a challenge or actually finding that's going quite smoothly at the moment?

[00:25:52.620] - Mario Moura

Yeah, it's an interesting challenge for us. We have a number of people in the company obviously that came from Honeywell right, spent a lot of time in Honeywell and had this strong hardware mindset. We have a number of engineers that work to make our hardware the most robust as possible. But we need to move from this culture of having those pieces of hardware that will be fit and forgotten right. That's probably what's the structure of a Honeywell fit and forget. You basically don't see that you have a thermostat there and the thermostat will work for 20, 30, 40 years without breaking, to a much more dynamic market or dynamic situation than having contact with the pros and customers.

[00:27:00.270] - Mario Moura

So there is a huge cultural gap and we're working towards blending our workforce, our new workforce with all the software engineers that bring you know A.I. and machine learning capability to our business app and cloud capabilities as well to our business and blending to those you know robust hardware builders. So, I think we have a very good position in the market but not easy to blend those two cultures but that is where we are spending a lot of our efforts right now.

[00:27:41.250] - Jon Slowe

Yeah, I can imagine it's not just bringing the right people are skills in but as you say it's the culture and getting people working together and understanding each other and all a soft but critical issues that are necessary.

[00:27:54.570] - Mario Moura

That's correct. And going beyond that is about selling services right. Selling analytics, data, fixes rather than just a hardware. So, the commercial teams also need to change and adapt to that new situation. Absolutely.

[00:28:20.010] - Jon Slowe

So, Mario, trying to bring these different topics that we've discussed together as we move to wrapping up. We've talked about this still being, the connected home market still being a niche market. You talked about I think seven million connected customers you have at the moment for this to really grow and become a mass market. Looking forward what are the key challenges you see for not necessarily Resideo specifically but to the sector in general. So, what are the things that the sector needs to get right or really focus on in the next years?

[00:29:07.280] - Mario Moura

Yeah when we talk specifically about the energy sector, I think I mentioned that that's a very regulated sector.

[00:29:11.980] - Mario Moura

Regulations involves much lower than the customer needs and channels to serve those customers. So, I think we as a sector need to understand those challenges.

[00:29:27.040] - Mario Moura

We need to engage at the right level with professionals. I mean equip them, connect them so that they can be more effective in addressing the customer needs. I also think that this market will evolve much faster once we tackle the whole home rather than offering point to point solutions. The point to point solutions will be always there. But once we can connect all that and offer a comprehensive whole-home solution, I think we have a much better capability to grow this market faster. Could be peer to peer communication, cloud to cloud there are ways to connect those products interoperability.

[00:30:21.820] - Mario Moura

It's the keyword in this respect as well.

[00:30:27.010] - Mario Moura

I also think that we should look into the energy trends going forward and making sure that we not only do the job right now in terms of connecting the screws but also think about where the industry is moving towards in terms of the heating mix becoming more, much more complex, electrification, with the heat pumps, with the renewable gas, we have decentralisation of you know heating generation across the board.

[00:31:04.870] - Mario Moura

I think that we also need to link somehow what we're trying to do now with the home with the general trends to have that as a mass market.

[00:31:18.190] - Jon Slowe

So, the two things that really stand out to me there Mario are the focus on the whole home, and will that create more customer pull? Is that a stronger customer proposition? If Resideo or any one of your competitors can offer me a whole home piece of my solution, so that looks after my home from a water security and energy aspect. So that's one thing that stands out to me and the other thing I think is the focus you have on those professional channels and moving both of those forward at the same time so equipping the professionals, making it in their interests, getting their enthusiasm to install these types of products and offer these types of services whilst at the same time creating some really compelling customer propositions.

[00:32:16.910] Jon Slowe

Would that be a fair summary of what you said?

[00:32:21.200] - Mario Moura

That's a fair summary. That's exactly what we're trying to convey.

[00:32:26.940] - Mario Moura

We also talked about the move from hardware to service. Right.

[00:32:33.840] - Mario Moura

And linking that to what you said maybe evolving from hardware to heat as a service, to comfort as a service, to ultimately offer peace of mind as a service that's a valuable position very easy to understand.

[00:32:50.490] - Mario Moura

And there will be various different levels of willingness to pay from consumers but that's a very easy value proposition to understand versus where we are at the moment. So, I think you summarised very well what we're going with the whole home solution.

[00:33:13.440] – Jon Slowe

So, looking forward Mario.

[00:33:14.890] – Jon Slowe

Then to finish off, excuse me, from your current seven or so million connected customers in ten years’ time. Ballpark. Do you think you'll be in low tens, high tens, hundreds of millions of connected customers?

[00:33:35.170] - Mario Moura

That's a very tough question Jon. Well in ten years’ time I'd definitely like to be in the hundreds of millions of customers. Absolutely. And then we would be at a point hopefully not only ours, but you know the whole market, the whole industry to say that we are finally at the mass market point that's what I would say is our ambition.

[00:34:05.320] – Jon Slowe

Well, I think it would be hugely exciting if the next decade is a decade when the concept of the connected home or smart home really takes off. So, Mario I really appreciate your time and your sharing your thoughts and experiences.

[00:34:23.140] – Jon Slowe

With us and with my listeners. I hope you've enjoyed the podcasts there. Thank you very much.

[00:34:30.580] - Mario Moura

Thank you so much, Jon. Thanks for inviting me once again and have a nice day.

[00:34:35.110] – Jon Slowe

Thanks. And thank you as always to all of our listeners. We hope you enjoyed the slightly different format, the in conversation format today with Mario and hope with inspired you to maybe go back home look at your hardware in your home and think what could be connected or where you might be in your home in ten years’ time. What sorts of services you might be buying?

[00:34:59.380] – Jon Slowe

So that's it for this week. We'll be back next week. Thanks for listening and I'll be speaking to you all soon, goodbye.

EV's - leasing, subscriptions, bundling and accessibility

Jon Slowe – Director - Delta-EE

Rob Jolly - Founder and CEO - EvEzy

Philipp Maul, Co-founder, Juicar

Abhishek Sampat -Principal Analyst- Delta-EE

[00:00:00.000] - Jon Slowe

Welcome to Talking to Energy, a podcast from Delta-EE, the new energy experts. We will be talking about how the energy transition is developing across Europe, with guests who are working at the leading edge of this transition.

[00:00:22.340] - Jon Slowe

Hello and welcome to the episode. In this episode, we bring the three themes together.

[00:00:27.800] - Jon Slowe

First electrification of transport. Second the move from product ownership towards services or as a service models. And thirdly the coming together of two established industries the energy industry and the transport industry. These three themes come together in electric car subscription businesses and I'm joined today by two companies from Switzerland and the UK that are at the forefront of this emerging area.

[00:00:57.800] - Jon Slowe

Now some of you listening may already own an electric vehicle but I'm sure that there are many of you who don't but are really interested in driving one.

[00:01:07.520] - Jon Slowe

And I'm also sure that many of you don't own outright your current internal combustion engine car but lease it. Well, the two businesses that we have joining us today can both provide you with an electric vehicle with charging included for a monthly subscription with the ability to cancel whenever you want. So now we've whetted your appetite without further ado let's introduce my guests. So first up we have Philipp Maul co-founder at Juicar.

Hello Philipp.

[00:01:40.980] - Philipp Maul

Hi, very nice to meet you, very good to be here. Looking forward to the podcast.

Jon Slowe - Great.

[00:01:46.700] - Jon Slowe

Philip your, could you tell us a little bit about your company and the name Juicar and what the history of your company is where you've come from and in a nutshell what you do.

[00:02:00.000] - Philipp Maul

Sure. So Juicar is basically a combination of two aspects like you said already and that's juice so the electricity for the car and the car itself. That's basically what the name comes from. As a company we were actually founded in the Oysterlab, Oysterlab is an incubator or company builder by Alpiq, a Swiss energy company and how it all came to be is actually that we were doing research for a different project and by doing that realised that there is a lot of misconceptions and a lot of uncertainties and fears around electric vehicles, plus that there is actually a need for good means of transportation that are easy and flexible and actually fit lifestyle needs and what people nowadays want.

[00:02:52.020] - Philipp Maul

So, therefore, we started first tests with ourselves putting ourselves in the industry in the segment with some users and within three months we had the first cars on the roads.

[00:03:05.100] - Philipp Maul

And now we're live in four countries.

[00:03:08.250] – Jon Slowe

Wow. So, it wasn't a master plan. There wasn't a big strategy to do this it came about through seeing an unmet need in the market.

Philipp Maul - Exactly.

Jon Slowe - And the countries you're in obviously Switzerland will be one of them.

[00:03:22.880] - Philipp Maul

Yes. It’s Switzerland, Germany. Liechtenstein and now we are launching in Italy.

[00:03:30.800] – Jon Slowe

Very exciting. Thanks, Philipp, we'll come back to you shortly. My second guest is Rob Jolly founder and CEO at Evezy.

Hello Rob.

[00:03:42.800] - Rob Jolly

Hi, yeah great to be here speaking to you. Do you want me to jump into a bit of an introduction of Evezy now?

[00:03:49.630] – Jon Slowe

Yeah absolutely and likewise a name means something as well doesn't it.

[00:03:54.780] - Rob Jolly

Yeah exactly. So, I will spare some of the details because Philipp has already covered a lot of what we also do.

[00:04:04.140] - Rob Jolly

Evezy stands for EV easy, the background the name and we’re an electric vehicle subscription service all- inclusive, car insurance, maintenance and public charging included. We launched about two and a half years ago in the U.K. and we’ve got just over 1000 customers in our vehicles today and it's funding quickly. A little bit about my background I was actually working at Jaguar Land Rover before this for about six years in the corporate strategy team doing a lot on mobility trends and how we're going to migrate across to electric vehicles. And yes started Evezy off the back of that, realizing that there's a massive need for having a brand agnostic platform, which it was take the benefit of leasing but without the long term commitment and baking in the all-inclusive nature to actually show that even though the vehicles are slightly more expensive the total cost of ownership is cheaper.

[00:05:00.540] - Rob Jolly

So that's the background for it and yeah why we can actually price competitively verse leasing without the long-term commitment.

[00:05:09.210] – Jon Slowe

And Rob did the idea come to you, did you wake up in the middle of the night with this idea or did it come to you through your work at Jaguar Land Rover in corporate strategy actually overtime just seeing the trends in the market or talking with customers?

[00:05:23.610] – Jon Slowe

How did the seed of this business develop?

Rob Jolly - A little bit through work and it was something we explored about doing with Jaguar Land Rover initially and then yeah, they couldn't or didn't have the appetite to do it, so we took it outside of that. I think the big turning point for me was actually back whenever it was four or five years ago when we were developing the I-PACE and actually going out and testing the vehicles. And at that point I'd never been in an electric vehicle and just the cars out there, obviously the Tesla Model S but even Nissan Leaf and the Renault ZOE.

[00:06:00.140] – Rob Jolly

It just blew my mind over these cars and actually realise that these are kind of a milk flow or a spaceship or every else that people kind of initially judge the cars as. But actually, they're just very good cars to drive and have so much benefit in terms of the driving characteristics over petrol a diesel car.

[00:06:20.190] – Jon Slowe

Great. So, opening up that opportunity to more and more people. Rob, we will come back to you shortly.

[00:06:28.040] – Jon Slowe

As always, we're joined here by our resident expert at Delta-EE. And this week I'd like to welcome Abhishek Sampat. Hello Abhishek.

Abhishek Sampat - Good morning Jon, how are you doing?

Jon Slowe - Very well, excited to be talking about this topic. Abhishek the automotive sector as a whole is coping with some huge changes at the moment electrification, autonomous vehicles, connected cars, the move from ownership to shared ownership of services. Now your background is with the automotive sector and I'm interested in your feel for how much the automotive companies are moving into these sorts of subscription models, shared services that Juicar and Evezy are pioneering.

[00:07:19.030] - Abhishek Sampat

Yeah. So, I mean all of the key the four topics you just described are challenges but they’re also opportunities and different automakers are looking at it in different ways. So, we've got people like now Daimler and BMW combining forces to provide their shared mobility solution to buy a car to go, drive now. We've got similar things with charging infrastructure to support that. So, there's always, most OEMs have an investment or a VC arm or an incubator arm that allows them to experiment with different services that don't fit the main corporate vision. And we're seeing more and more expand into that, but a lot of them are partnering very intelligently with you know targeted groups that enable them to try these sort of services specifically around ownership releasing.

Jon Slowe – So, it's on their agenda then Abhishek some are active, some are really pushing it, others are feeling their way through investments but in the next years we'll see more and more you think from the big automotive companies.

[00:08:23.850] - Abhishek Sampat

Oh absolutely, absolutely.

Jon Slowe – And when you look at energy companies across Europe. So, I've mentioned at the beginning this of confluence of the automotive sector and the energy sector. To what degree do you see energy companies also looking to develop these type of offerings?

[00:08:43.660] - Abhishek Sampat

Well, it's interesting you say that because we're seeing energy companies now embrace EVs, every energy company or every utility you talk to has someone on their team or a team or a large team actually sometimes which looks at EVs and the penetration of EVs and what it do for them. Now that could be because they have a service requirement to meet but also because they see it as an opportunity for growth. And you've got people like Octopus now doing vehicle leasing and EV charging and the home wall box all of that in one.

[00:09:14.800] - Abhishek Sampat

And that's one example of things coming together as one package.

[00:09:21.610] – Jon Slowe

So again, some energy companies at the forefront of this, my impression would be probably a few rather than many. Do you think from, do you think energy companies have the appetite for this as a whole would you say the sector as a whole? Or when you look at it would you say actually this is quite a stretch to move into a subscription type electric vehicle offering?

[00:09:47.800] - Abhishek Sampat

Yeah I mean for some they're looking at it from being part of that value chain but for some energy companies just providing the energy service to that value chain is probably enough for them to diversify their revenue from today's supply and we're also looking at some major oil and gas corporations moving into electricity and EC charging. Would they at some point also look at providing a vehicle? Maybe, but we haven't seen that yet.

[00:10:24.320] – Jon Slowe

Okay. Thanks, Abhishek. Now let's come back to Philipp and Rob who are pioneering this. So, I've got a few themes to discuss with you both.

[00:10:38.290] – Jon Slowe

The first question I'd like to ask you both is how much to bundle together. So, on one hand, what you could, what you offer could just be a car on a subscription model but you're both bundling a bit more than the car that aspects of charging so maybe starting Philipp with you.

[00:10:58.910] – Jon Slowe

What's options do you offer the customer in terms of how much you bundle together and why have you chosen those options?

Philipp Maul - So maybe we’ll have to go back a little bit in history. In the beginning, we had the conception of or the idea of actually bundling everything. But over time realised and also with a lot of customer feedback that that's not the ideal scenario. So currently what we offer is the electric vehicle, home charging, public charging and actually the electricity for home and public charging. You can bundle those altogether or you can just get the electric vehicle on the monthly subscription.

[00:11:40.720] - Philipp Maul

So, by doing that we actually also tackle things that normally are in the domains of two different areas of the car. Obviously with car manufacturers and the energy which is normally done by utilities we combine and offer this as a whole package.

[00:12:00.950] – Jon Slowe

So, two questions Philipp the first question, what proportion roughly of customers go just for the vehicle and what go for the wider bundle with home charging, public charging and electricity. And the second question what were you considering to bundle in addition to these things that you now don't bundle in?

[00:12:22.560] - Philipp Maul

So, for the first, I would say when people sign up to the offer it's around 40/60 so 40 per cent of people just going for the car. But what we see on top is that there is actually a lot of people that quite fast move into getting additional packages installed. So, having chargers or actually the electricity tariff as well. So public charging anyway is always included with the car, but home charging and electricity are actually add ons that most people actually add as soon as they have a car for a couple of months.

[00:13:02.520] – Jon Slowe

Yeah okay. That's quite nice from a business model perspective. I guess you can provide more services to grow the revenue per customer.

Philipp Maul - Yes.

Jon Slowe - And then what about other things you thought you might be bundling in that you're not bundling in or things you might bundle in the future?

[00:13:20.620] – Philipp Maul

There is actually, there's a lot of things so funnily because they are now everywhere on the streets. What we tried bundling in a year ago or one and a half years ago already was like electric scooters for the last mile basically going from your car to the office or wherever you have to go. That was an interesting concept that didn't work out at the time and probably nowadays it's too late to redo it.

Jon Slowe - Yeah.

Philipp Maul - You know you always have to find the rights the right niche to do that. Things that we are trying to add in the future.

[00:13:57.820] - Philipp Maul

There is, which one can I pick that I can share. That's a good question.

[00:14:03.480] – Jon Slowe

I'll come back to that when let's come back and give you a chance to think about what you can reveal. Rob how about your yourself, what do you bundle together?

[00:14:16.320] – Rob Jolly

Yeah sure, it's the car and all everything that goes along with the maintenance, insurance and don't see public charging. We’re, yeah, we partner up and have some preferred suppliers for home charging and installing that, I think in the future we would love to pull in the actual energy tariffs at home and the home charging installation into one subscription so that that's all through a monthly fee. I think what we're just very conscious of is that we're trying to do it in the most effective way for the customer that will actually be price, cost-effective too. So, we don't want to do something where we're limiting them to only having one option and that is by far the cheapest option we can get.

[00:15:03.030] – Rob Jolly

So we're really making sure we can get the best scalable options that the customer will actually see the benefit of having as a bundle because everyone obviously would prefer to have more things included and more simplicity in terms of not having to manage all the different aspects of it, you know, insuring your car at a different time of year, tax it at a different time of year, having to take it in for service then having your energy tariffs and organising that and getting them onto the cheapest tariff. So, from our perspective we know from the vehicle point of view we've got everything as cheap as possible and we're getting the scale benefits that we've passed to the customer to make it cost-effective.

[00:15:46.750] – Rob Jolly

So, they're moving more into what we want to do further on, doing more home charging, integration and the electricity bundles integration once we can get to the point where we think it's the most cost-effective solution.

[00:16:02.520] – Jon Slowe

Okay. So that has to be cost-effective as you say for your customers but what are you learning from your customers are you sensing or hearing that appetite from your customers. Are people saying well why can't you bundle any electricity at home or is that more of a hypothesis that you want to test?

[00:16:19.850] – Rob Jolly

Yeah, I think customers definitely want home charges. There's definitely interest in having it all bolted together. I think that the really interesting bit is that the EV customers want to make sure their home tariff is a renewable tariff, so then there's just a more aligned mindset. So just silly little things like that actually go a long way there’s no point offering a home charging tariff where actually all of the energy is pulled from non-renewable kind of areas. So that's the real learning we've got from it in terms of bundling it all together.

[00:16:56.250] – Rob Jolly

There are not huge amounts of requests. But again, it's about proven that this is a better solution by getting the best offering for the customer to drive that demand ourselves.

[00:17:07.820] – Jon Slowe

Okay.

[00:17:09.630] – Jon Slowe

Now the next question I'd like to look at is risk and I think I'm right in saying in your subscription models I only have to sign up and commit for one month. Now, this would have some corporate risk managers or make some corporate risk managers very nervous as to how you manage that risk. And we've seen the same thing actually in the heating sector where we have looked at heat as a service contracts, do you need to have a five-year contract a ten-year contract or there's one company that just got a rolling contract that can be cancelled at any time.

[00:17:45.120] – Jon Slowe

So, is it a really big risk to have the ability to cancel after one month? How do you manage that risk? How does that risk actually play out?

[00:17:57.010] – Jon Slowe

Philip, what's your experiences been?

Philipp Maul - So I can just go with basically what Rob said before. It's all about the customer and actually risk of people being able to cancel before us. As we learned it's not a risk at all.

[00:18:14.340] – Philipp Maul

The biggest risk that there is for a subscription service or a digital-only product as we are and I assume Evezy is as well is building the trust of the customer.

[00:18:25.740] – Philipp Maul

That's where it really plays out and that's where you really have to step up your game to ensure people want your product or that are interested in your product, that you can actually provide them with a solution that's safe for them, that's cost-effective for them and where they have no strings attached.

Jon Slowe - And how.

[00:18:49.800] – Jon Slowe

Can you give us an example of how you go about building that trust?

[00:18:57.250] – Philipp Maul

That starts, I mean already, how you advertise your products, how you actually create awareness for your product and then cascades through the whole customer journey.

[00:19:10.180] – Philipp Maul

You always have to, like once you introduce your product you have to double down with facts, with features that your product has. And once you have that you actually have to come back with actual customers, actual statements. How it really plays out and you always have to be attentive as a company as well.

[00:19:35.290] – Philipp Maul

So, if there's somebody reaching out to you should be able to answer any question that comes within actually no time.

[00:19:46.330] – Jon Slowe

So, it's in a way it's part of the DNA of the company it needs to percolate, everything you do needs to have that building of trust in that customer-centric behaviour as you described at its heart.

[00:19:58.810] – Philipp Maul

Obviously, if you're not customer-centric I guess if you're not customer-centric nowadays as any company it doesn't matter which sector you're in, you won’t have a business.

[00:20:09.390] – Jon Slowe

Yeah and building a brand, you're building a brand from scratch. I know now it's a lot, well easier might be the wrong word. But the ability to build a digital brand from scratch is easier than it might have been 20 years ago. Are you putting a lot of effort into building your brand or how aggressive are you being with that or are you looking at taking things quite slowly at the moment?

[00:20:34.790] – Philipp Maul

That's really pennies on which market you're looking at. So, there is.

[00:20:44.850] – Philipp Maul

So, the Swiss market is, we are more established in the Swiss markets than in the German and Italian market. Plus the market also completely reacts differently to your products in different ways so you have to not only have to build your brand a little bit differently in each market you also have to focus on a couple of different points like Rob already said obviously the cost of ownership and everything inclusive, are the two main drivers plus if you have an end to end solution with the superior user experience where you can get out and in at your own choice all the time.

[00:21:27.500] – Philipp Maul

That's always the core but then outside of this you really have to focus on what's important to customer segments in different markets.

[00:21:37.430] – Jon Slowe

Yeah okay. So really understanding your market your customer's augmentation, you know your messages in each market will be tailored towards that particular segment. Rob come back to you and let sort wind back a little bit to risk, where do you see your biggest risks in your business?

[00:21:59.070] – Rob Jolly

I think really the biggest risks are the very macro ones. From our point of view, I think exactly what Philipp said we're not too concerned as long as customers are put at the heart of the customer experience.

[00:22:14.020] – Rob Jolly

Yeah, but, the big horrible ‘B’ word that dooming in on the UK obviously is a potential risk. Changes in tech and batteries which again is a few years out but having set changes in batches informants can obviously have an impact but really from our side.

[00:22:34.180] – Rob Jolly

The biggest thing is just managing supply and demand because at the moment what we're seeing is that we don't have the risk of customers leaving and we have the risk of customers being disappointed and not being able to get in the car quick enough, so it's trying to manage that side a bit more than what happens if worst case no one wants a car or everyone leaves in one go.

[00:22:55.730] – Jon Slowe

Yeah. Of the thousand customers or so that you have, do you have any?

[00:23:00.400] – Jon Slowe

Anything you can share with us on how long they stay with you or how quickly they cancel?

Rob Jolly – Yeah, I'd say without going into the details it’s longer than you'd expect and mirroring more a lease contract than a rental.

[00:23:20.080] – Jon Slowe

So yeah, OK, So, you're not finding people are dipping in for a month just because they need a car for a month and then come back to another solution. They're treating it as a three-year lease, five-year lease that they used to.

Rob Jolly - Yeah in general.

[00:23:33.130] – Jon Slowe

Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

[00:23:37.190] – Jon Slowe

I'd like to touch on one last topic, which is both of your views on smart charging. So smart charging does depend on there being a time of use electricity tariff. This is emerging in the UK and in some of the markets that you'll be in Philipp and also vehicle to grid, which is a bit further out, how, maybe starting with smart charging being the more immediate one, is that on both of your roadmaps? Does that come in Rob to what you're talking about with bundling, for example, a tariff with a subscription? Do you see that as something that can really help your customers in the next year or two?

[00:24:21.480] – Rob Jolly

Yeah, I think it’s more about working with the energy providers. As we get more and more into the integration with home tariffs because a lot of them are starting to offer. Well firstly charge points and scheduling cars so that you can't actually charge out of the hours. But yeah, it's definitely a very cool tech that is helpful for both the customer and the grid. So yeah, of course, we'd want to be involved in helping play that out why wouldn't we? It’s saving costs and it’s helping in balancing the grid.

[00:24:58.170] – Jon Slowe

Does that depend on the practicalities of doing that? You need to either go via the connected car to influence the time of charging or to go via connected charger. If you imagine that being part of your offer is that something that's months away do you think? Or years away or is a lot more work to do to get standardisation in place? Or do you think actually…

[00:25:20.780] – Rob Jolly

So yes, I think most of our customers probably already have these features because our cars access the mobile app, you don’t get a physical key. You can schedule on some of the cars already smart charging and most charges in the UK are in terms of getting the government grant, I think they have to be a connected charger. So, I think already it is not something we actively are making sure 100 per cent it has to be that, that is naturally kind of happening already.

[00:25:54.410] – Jon Slowe

Yeah, Philipp, how about yourself. In terms of dynamic tariffs or smart charging or in Germany, for example, there's a lot of thought of a volter…. so you can encourage more self-consumption of the electricity produced from volter….

[00:26:11.290] – Philipp Maul

So smart charging by itself is a great concept and I think it will help in the long run but it needs to be tackled on a global or at least on a European scale because what we don't want is actually having something put in front of the customer that actually doesn't benefit the customer. So smart charging on paper sounds really nice and we definitely encourage our customers to take part in it and also actually working ourselves towards it. But if it's not working on a global scale and there is not a critical mass for it.

[00:26:54.900] – Philipp Maul

We will not roll it out because it won't benefit our customers. And vehicle to grids is on paper a great idea but as long as every parking spot isn't basically connected to the grid.

[00:27:09.660] – Philipp Maul

It might not work out in the long run.

Jon Slowe - And as you roll out to more countries Philipp, how you develop the propositions, how you market, how you position your brand. You've already explained how that will be quite country-specific. Are you looking for as much standardisation behind all the other aspects as you can, so you can really scale this across several countries?

[00:27:37.180] – Philipp Maul

Obviously, so the backbone needs to be needs to be the same in all countries. It needs to be the same basic offering that we roll out with the same toolset behind it. Otherwise, it becomes less scalable. So, that needs to be needs to be the same everywhere. And apart from that, every feature that we add needs to be available in all countries ideally as well.

[00:28:03.640] – Jon Slowe

Yeah okay. Now before we bring out the talking new energy crystal ball, I'd like to ask each of you, Philipp Rob and Abhishek, for, well Philipp and Rob.

[00:28:17.960] – Jon Slowe

One, the biggest thing that you've learned from customers since you launched, or you started or set up. So maybe the biggest thing that surprised you most about your customers and Abhishek from looking across the sector as people move into the subscription models an observation form you about what one of the biggest learnings has been in the last years. Philipp let's start with you and then Rob and then Abhishek.

[00:28:48.790] – Philipp Maul

So I mean there's a couple of things that we've learned from our customers but basically the main thing that we've learned is that they actually want end to end solutions and that if they are done correctly and they actually serve the purpose they want them for, that they are happy to actually help you grow your business.

[00:29:18.720] – Philipp Maul

So, they actually fully want to take a part in developing the company with their feedback, with their input with what they see on the road. So, they don't only become advocates, but they actually also become a major stakeholder in your brand and your company by their by giving their feedback by giving their input.

[00:29:38.460] – Jon Slowe

Okay, that sounds very powerful. Rob how about yourself, your biggest or most surprising learnings from your customers?

[00:29:46.580] – Rob Jolly

Yeah, it's probably in a similar vein. Actually, what we found is that most customers come in under the assumption that they'll use it for a couple of months to figure out they want an electric car. And what we're finding is customers generally then stay after that point and we're pretty much finding no customers are leaving our service because they want to go back into a petrol and diesel car because they can't make electric work for them. So, I think we were pretty confident that EVs suited the mass market. Yeah, that's probably the thing that surprised us most, that there’s not more customers who actually go you know what the hundred- and fifty-miles range that I've got.

[00:30:27.200] – Rob Jolly

I can't make work, customers are seeming to be quite happy to adapt and coping fine with electric cars.

[00:30:37.090] – Jon Slowe

Okay, and Abhishek how about yourself looking across the sector.

[00:30:41.480] – Abhishek Sampat

Well, I think echoing what Rob just said that people tend to adapt to the EV lifestyle as soon as they start driving one and going back to something Rob said at the very beginning which is when he drove them for the first time when he was at JLR, they're actually really good fun to drive. The other thing, it's quite nice to see companies trying to move into the space with a disruptive approach to vehicle access different to the traditional leasing, different to the traditional renting. And I guess it gives you flexibility as well.

[00:31:15.350] – Abhishek Sampat

Looking I mean, looking specifically at Evezy, it gives you the option to swap cars on a monthly basis which is quite handy for different uses. It's almost like the mobile phone access subscription except you can swap your device which is new for a much larger physical item which has bigger capital. So, it's a change and I can see more people wanting to do it. To use this sort of service to get into it they're probably not want to leave it so accessible. And I guess that's what both companies are trying to do.

[00:31:51.530] – Abhishek Sampat

Be accessible.

[00:31:53.000] – Jon Slowe

Yeah. And certainly, thinking of my own situation. I live in Glasgow unfortunately not in one of your countries Philipp and Rob I don't think you’re yet to reach Glasgow but when you do, I think for me it will be a very attractive way of taking that step. Okay let's get out the talking you energy crystal ball now and this week will set the dial to 2030 and I'd like to ask each of you, what proportion of drivers will be driving on subscription packages like the ones you offer. So, driving an electric vehicle on subscription packages like the ones you offer and you can answer for the UK Rob, for Europe as a whole.

[00:32:38.160] – Jon Slowe

Abhishek and Philipp or just one country. So, Philipp let's start with you. Where would you put the percentage or proportion of drivers driving on your subscription type offer?

[00:32:51.960] – Philipp Maul

So, a subscription by itself will probably be a little bit hard because I guess until 2030 subscription by itself will change completely. We will change what we offer and the environment around us will change.

[00:33:05.100] – Philipp Maul

So, I'll go out on a limb and say that 50 per cent of people in Europe will not own their own car which means basically buying or leasing it.

[00:33:19.190] – Philipp Maul

But it might be a subscription or something else.

Jon Slowe - Yes so, a subscription or shared.

Philipp Maul - But we don't know yet. And potentially globally it will be more than 50 per cent.

[00:33:30.120] – Jon Slowe

Yeah okay, so, very significant.

[00:33:32.400] – Jon Slowe

Rob, how about yourself?

Rob Jolly – Yeah, I think that the key thing to remember is that already in the U.K. 90 per cent of customers buy a car through a finance deal and only 70 per cent of their customers actually own the car at the end. So, I'm going to be controversial and say that the majority of customers already drive in subscription vehicle and they just don't realise that. So, I do think that the monthly subscription rather than the being locked in for a number of years will take because in our eyes it’s a bit of a no brainer.

[00:34:06.440] – Rob Jolly

So, I think probably similar numbers to what Philipp said. Yeah. And I think it obviously depends on the uptake of electric vehicles. And the biggest kind of factors in whether the car manufacturers move as quickly as they need to and can get the profit margins to mean they move quickly is that they need to actually, keep up with customer demand because we've seen in the UK last month 10 per cent of all new car sales are electric vehicles so the tide is turning very quickly and I think the tide will turn very quickly to subscription to.

[00:34:41.390] – Jon Slowe

Yeah okay. So, we're maybe at two tipping points towards electrification and subscription. And lastly Abhishek where would you set the percentage for 2030.

[00:34:51.430] – Abhishek Sampat

I would give a very specific answer of 46 per cent just because I think that's mostly because I can see more people wanting to use a subscription service like we've just discussed with the EVs in Juicar, there will still be a population that cannot access the cars because of where they live. So, they would probably go for a traditional lease or an outright buy because there'll always be that market. But I can see a large proportion of vehicle users which doesn't mean vehicle buyers, being in some of the larger cities where they just share cars instead of subscribing to them or lease them.

[00:35:28.750] – Jon Slowe

Okay so similar points to Philipp.

[00:35:31.920] – Jon Slowe

That we’ll see subscription, shared and all of you are very clear and I’d agree with you a big decline in the traditional lease or traditional ownership as you say Abhishek that might disappear completely.

Abhishek Sampat - Yeah and lots of new cars.

Jon Slowe - Yeah okay. So, we've run out of time so that's it for today.

[00:35:52.210] – Jon Slowe

Thanks for listening and we hope you enjoyed the episode. Thanks very much to my three guests. Thank you, Philipp.

[00:36:01.810] – Philipp Maul

Thank you, thanks nice to be there.

Jon Slowe – Thank you, Rob.

Rob Jolly - Thanks. Good to speak to you.

[00:36:07.990] – Jon Slowe

Thank you, Abhishek.

Abhishek Sampat - No problem, good to speak to you both Philipp and Rob. So, we'll be back with talking energy next week with our next episode.

[00:36:19.480] – Jon Slowe

Thanks again for listening and goodbye.

Jon Slowe, Director, Delta-EE

Victoria Trans, Enedis

Rémi Bastien, Enogrid

Rita Desmyter, Delta-EE

[00:00:04.550] - Jon Slowe

Welcome to Talking to Energy, a podcast from Delta-EE, the new energy experts. We will be talking about how the energy transition is developing across Europe, with guests who are working at the leading edge of this transition. Hello and welcome to the episode.

[00:00:58.240]

Some of you, like me, might have photovoltaic panels on your roof. And there's an emergence of companies across Europe that are developing businesses built around exactly this concept. And regulators and policy makers in many countries are now looking at how they can adapt rules and regulations to enable this. The topic in many cases is referred to as collective self-consumption.

[00:01:21.550]

Now, of course there's another very important angle to this, apart from feeling good about selling electricity to your neighbour or buying electricity from your neighbour. And that's their local distribution system operator, the network company. Now if lots of customers in a particular neighbourhood export electricity to the grid at the same time then this can cause headaches for the local distribution company.

[00:01:44.530]

From their perspective, and I'm generalising here, it would be much easier to manage the network if there was as much self-consumption as possible. And in the absence of self-consumption the more local balancing of generation and demand the better. So well done for bearing it with me so far; that's a longer introduction than normal. But today it's a slightly more complex topic than normal so a more complex scene to set. And it's a really important topic because this concept of collective self-consumption is being encouraged by the European Commission's Clean Energy Package and is gaining momentum in a number of countries.

[00:02:24.400]

And one of these countries in particular is France. So I'm delighted to be joined today by a company enabling collective self-consumption, and the main French distribution system operator. Plus of course one of our experts here at Delta-EE.

[00:02:38.910]

So let's do a quick introduction. First up is Enogrid, a start up that is enabling communities to develop self-consumption, collective self-consumption. Rémi Bastien is co-founder and CEO of Enogrid. Hello Rémi.

[00:02:55.840] - Rémi Bastien

Hello Jon.

[00:02:56.050] - Jon Slowe

Thanks very much for joining us. And I'll come back to you very shortly and you can tell us a bit more about Enogrid.

[00:03:02.500]

Second up, we have, well moving from a startup to a large distribution system operator in itis responsible for much of the network across France. Victoria Chan is a project manager at Enedis, focusing on this exact topic. Hello Victoria

[00:03:18.460] - Victoria Tan

Hello Jon.

[00:03:21.310] - Jon Slowe

And last but not least our resident expert on the topic here at Delta-EE, Rita Desmyter.

[00:03:33.240] - Rita Desmyter

Hello Jon.

[00:03:33.590] - Jon Slowe

So let's come back Rémi to you first and start with a grid. Now I'm imagining I'm in France, i', A homeowner. I've got Pv on my roof already. I self-consume some, I export the rest. Can you walk us through how Enogrid can help me or what Enogrid can do for me.

[00:03:54.810] - Rémi Bastien

Yes of course. So Enogrid it basically will help you to share your accrued electricity with your neighbour rather than selling it back to the grid. So this is a concept of collective self-consumption that local energy community where you have several consumer group together with one or more bodies who help to trade electricity. So to achieve this Enogrid we support you and guide you every step of the way.

[00:04:22.470]

First we will create the community as a community and its walls. Then we will deal with or set you of the DSO so Enedis. And then once the project is we have an online platform which is here to manage the projects very easily for the participants.

[00:04:42.120] - Jon Slowe

So Remy how big might these communities be. Are we talking 10 people, 100 people, a thousand people or could it be any number?

[00:04:54.840] - Rémi Bastien

Basically it could be any number.

[00:04:58.190]

So far the number we let's say we are between between four or five people and maximum possible amount. I think it's a hundred people.

[00:05:06.750] - Jon Slowe

Okay. Okay. So and quite the local? Would those people have to be in the same area, on the same street,in the same village for example?

[00:05:14.930] - Rémi Bastien

So rule have changed in France. And as a matter of fact it's changed quite recently. Now the perimeter is two kilometers between the two parties in a maximum of two kilometers between two participant of the collective self-consumption.

[00:05:36.400] - Jon Slowe

Okay. So that's quite a small defined geographic area then?

[00:05:40.490] - Rémi Bastien

It depends on when you are in a city know you meters second of two kilometer diameter is quite big. Yeah. When you are in the country side. Yes it's quite small. Depends on the situation. Okay. But well that you watch we have to note the view is that it's important to note that today it's not that individual people would develop a project of self-consumption, it's more the local government and the social landlord.

[00:06:13.450] - Jon Slowe

Okay. So the initiative then would typically come from the municipality, the local governmental, the social housing provider, and they would then advertise that and they would recruit customers or would that be your job or would that be both of you working together?

[00:06:34.800] - Rémi Bastien

We we can work together yes. Usually one project starts when as the source is the production source is defined and then according to the production capacity we defined how many participants we can get and then if a municipality for example need some help to explain to the resident how it would work, why they should join the project, we can help them with a possible public meeting, communication support. all that they need to get the people on board.

[00:07:14.460] - Jon Slowe

1. And then the platform or the place where the exported electricity or the matching of the export and the demand. That's Enogrid's job to help connect basically the producers and the users. Have I understood that right?

[00:07:33.910] - Rémi Bastien

Actually our platform is here as let's say managing tools for the collective self-consumption. That means that we will get, once the project is running, we are getting all the data from the DSO, from Enedis, and we make it available to the participants of the operation. So that's mean we know how much is produce, we know how much is consumed, and we allow people to assist with information and to use it as for example a technical point of view. Do I produce enough, when can you consume local energy, and also for administrative point of view, for example when you want to send some bills between producer and consumer or some as some as a means to achieve that's good.

[00:08:28.360] - Jon Slowe

So do you see yourself then as the enabler and the facilitator of of this?

[00:08:34.170] - Rémi Bastien

Yes more facilitator. Today in France we have we have a good playground let's say for collective self-consumption that says for example for the moment is a little bit complicated. First because it's new and also because you have to group a lot of people together and need it so you have some or some rural seats. Everything is a grid concept. It is a concept it is a bit complex.

[00:09:09.960]

So it's better to have somebody as somebody to which experts to explain and to say to make everybody comfortable with these concepts and to be there to be sure that everybody, everything would be working well. So that's what I'm trying to do try to make people more confident to develop the projects.

[00:09:30.800] - Jon Slowe

Okay. And can you give me a feel whether you're at the very beginning or do you have a few projects or many tens of projects at this stage?

[00:09:40.320] - Rémi Bastien

So far we we follow six projects in operation. We watched our first projects one year ago which was in west of France and we are we are helping so far let's say almost 20 projects to to start in the next six months.

[00:10:05.830] - Jon Slowe

Okay. An exciting and busy time and my last question for now or more before we move on to Rita and Victoria, your business model so how does Enogrid earn? How do you earn your money? Are you charging presumably some kind of fee for the facilitation that you provide?

[00:10:27.500] - Rémi Bastien

Yes we will have it. We would have first fees for the implementation of the project according what we need to do. How complex is a project. And then for the platform it's the SaaS, so software as a service, and so people we have annual annual fees platform according to the size of the budget.

[00:10:51.610] - Jon Slowe

Okay. Thanks Rita. I'd like to come to you next. You're looking at these markets across Europe and I'd like a sense of that. I'd like to talk to you about a sense of where these markets are at or how quickly this is happening. And let's start at the very top level with the European Commission and the Clean Energy Package I mentioned. What exactly is the European Commission encouraging here?

[00:11:25.490] - Rita Desmyter

The European Commission with the Clearn Energy package is promoting the principle of localt energy communities and this with two different terms: renewable energy committees and citizen energy communities. And in this sense collective self-consumption is one way of creative creating an energy community.

[00:11:47.450] - Jon Slowe

Okay. So it's defining the sense of an energy community and collective self-consumption. Now many of our listeners will know that a lot of European legislation has to be then translated into national law by each country. So can you give us a feel for whether most countries are at the beginning of implementing this or have most countries implemented this already. So where are we at on this journey from this initial concept of legislation through to everything being ready on the ground?

[00:12:22.500] - Rita Desmyter

We are really in the beginning of the journey. So the transportation of the directive has to be translated by 2021.

[00:12:32.160]

At the moment in Europe they are eight countries that translated, that has collective self-consumption allowance. So we have France we have Belgium with one region, Germany, Slovenia, Spain, Austria and Greece and Switzerland which is not a Member State.

[00:12:52.580] - Jon Slowe

Okay so it's starting it's getting momentum. There's a few countries you've noted there but it's quite, the regulations can be quite complex. And is it a case that once a country has translated this the market is then ready to go? Everything's in place. Let's get started. Or from your experience, actually, even once it's implemented, can there still be a lot of detailed challenges to get right before this market can really start taking off.

[00:13:27.150] - Rita Desmyter

Absolutely. Because we have at the beginning off of translating those principles into reality. For example in France we we see that's become very very complex in terms of fragmentation. There's also pressure on around upfront costs of starting such a project, always question about around the local networks charge, the taxes. So it is not simple and we will need a few yes to learn from countries to countries.

[00:14:03.530] - Jon Slowe

Okay. So I think at all our listeners, I imagine, will think that the concept of generating your own electricity and then selling it to someone in your community or sharing that with the community, it's a great concept. We can see the direction the market's moving in but it's going to take a bit of time.

[00:14:20.490]

Now, Victoria, I'd like to come to you as the incumbent distribution system operator in France. First of all talking about photovoltaics in general, how do you see the growth the fault of attacks from a network perspective is it causing Enedis problems on the distribution network or is penetration still manageable or you're not seeing problems?

[00:14:48.910] - Victoria Tan

Yeah. Thank you for your question. I'd like to make a general statement regarding renewable energy as a whole.

[00:14:56.550]

And then detail more photovoltaic impact. So regarding renewable energy as a whole we can see that in France there is a trend this year that say that will enough to cover approximately 20 percent of the French consumption. So. And photovoltaic is a large part of this renewable energy. So this rate of renewable energy induce some investment both for DSO and TSO regarding hosting capacities. I can give you some figure for instance in 2019. Two hundred fifty a million has been invested in rebuilding distribution grid to facilitate the collection of renewable energy.

[00:15:55.660]

And we think that we would invest up to five hundred fifty million euros in two thousand thirty five. So it means huge investment but we anticipate this original number in France. So the region the local authorities will set some objectives in terms of renewable energy in the region and then we will anticipate with the TSO the hosting capacity and the investment that we need to implement so that we can prepare investment in renewable energy will be ready. And we need to connect them.

[00:16:43.530] - Jon Slowe

So Victoria sounds like well 20 percent is is a big number as you said for renewables in terms of overall demand. That number will grow. These are quite big numbers you're talking about investing so as in every country when renewables are connected to the network in some cases that needs reinforcement to increase the capacity. And how do you how do you then see the concept of collective self consumption from photovoltaics. Are you neutral about this. Do you see it as helping Enedis or maybe causing you other problems? How does Enedis see this topic?

[00:17:33.890]

According to how public our mission we are a regulated company so we have to facilitate and enable energy transition in general and collective self-consumption projects are part of this transition for sure. So we have the role of an enabler for this project related to the grid impact and the data management. First of all I can say the role of in this project. And then I can say how productive we have been to develop this project as well with the legislation.

[00:18:11.530] - Jon Slowe

That would be great.

[00:18:13.390] - Victoria Tan

1. So Enedis will connect to every consumer and produce out to the grid. So every consumer and we saw that all part of this collective self-consumption project can be supplied even in the absence of local production. So they are guaranteed of the power supply quality. Moreover we will get equipped participants with smart meters. And we have developed an industrial solution that takes advantage of the data management infrastructure that is associated with the deployment of smart meters. So we will collect the electricity generation injected into the grid by [...] and the electricity consumption of each participant.

[00:19:05.690] - Jon Slowe

So Victoria can I just ask about that? You're collecting that on a 30 minute basis. So if you've got the smart meter installed then that's 30 minute data you're collecting on generation and on consumption.

[00:19:22.580] - Victoria Tan

Yes. That's what I was about to say.

[00:19:24.310] - Jon Slowe

Okay.

[00:19:24.810] - Victoria Tan

Yeah. About 30 minutes. Yeah. Yeah. And so then with the data we will calculate the share of production to be allocated to each participant according to the rule established by the project manager of collective self-consumption and we'll send the data in order to help the stakeholder to build the electricity turnkey for the network, to build the residual electricity supply, and to implement a balancing mechanism.

[00:20:00.550] - Jon Slowe

Okay.

[00:20:01.390] - Victoria Tan

So that's our position.

[00:20:04.850] - Jon Slowe

And at this point I just bring Rémi in so Rémi, Victoria described that data that they're collecting and they make available, presumably that data then plugs in some way and/or connects to your platform. Is that correct?

[00:20:21.740] - Rémi Bastien

When Victoria says she would send the data to the project manager of the collective self-consumption, we are, this is our clients, this project manager will the Enogrid platform,and the data that Enerdis are sending is it's a real data in our platform with our platform the data is almost automatically analysed with beautiful graphics, with beautiful analyses, and it can be used directly by the stakeholder

[00:21:00.660] - Jon Slowe

So yeah if anyone wants to see the beautiful analysis and graphics and can they go to your website Enogrid and see some examples of that, I assume Rémi?

[00:21:12.660] - Rémi Bastien

I think we didn't put example directly on our website but if you contact me I can make you some demo.

[00:21:20.370] - Jon Slowe

Yeah. Okay. The overall point I guess is that you're visualising and you're making it very engaging for customers and for the collective self consumption organisation you're making it very engaging and easy for them to see where their electricity is going.

[00:21:36.310] - Rémi Bastien

Yes because from our point of view it was important to share information to with all the participants because we are talking about collective self-consumption

[00:21:47.100]

So when we use the term collective that's meaning we we have to create this is this community and to create the community and the community where we can know the trust between each other I think the sharing information is as well important as the sharing of electricity.

[00:22:04.430] - Jon Slowe

Yeah okay. Thanks Rémi. Victoria, let's come back to you, so I interrupted you there. So we'd got to the point where you're collecting that staff hourly data for generation and demand, you're making that available to people like Rémi at Enogrid, please carry on.

[00:22:22.090] - Victoria Tan

Yeah. OK. And so we have very proactive regarding this industry and solution in 2017 when the first legal framework in France was set because this new concept had a particularity to involve the final consumer but also several stakeholders of the energy market such as Project Manager, supplier, producer, balancing entities. So in this context we suggested let's say a transitory package following the quick addition of the first project. So we proposed three documents: a contract between the legal entity, so the project manager, Enedis, and then a document explaining the different steps for a project manager to be implemented for his project. And the third document explaining the different calculations made by it is based on the datathat are from this smart meters. And so this document has been used from the first operation until nnow before the legal consultation with the different stakeholder. And so now recently it's in the mid 2019 Enedis opened a consultation so that different stakeholders could propose improvements to the document. After one year and a half of the first project in France. So we got that feedback. And we will try to implement some of the feedback.

[00:24:08.730]

For instance once the project was ready to begin a period of two months was required for the supplier and balancing. And you could prepare anticipate this project [...]

[00:24:31.870] - Rémi Bastien

I'm very happy about this.

[00:24:34.730] - Jon Slowe

Sure you are Rémi.

[00:24:37.670]

I think what you described there, Victoria, I find fascinating because you hinted at something we won't have time to really delve into today which is the balancing responsible parties. One of the cornerstones of the electricity market structures in Europe. And when I look back at Community Energy, Community Energy I would say was very much about a village building a wind turbine together and sharing some of the proceeds of profit for that amongst the village amongst people locally. What we're talking about now is really about customers, consumers, energy communities becoming a part of the electricity system and that is complex and it is difficult.

[00:25:26.320]

And to hear a a DSO such as Enedis facilitating that I think that's a really critical role because there's a lot of complexity.

[00:25:35.340]

Rémi, that that complexity, I guess that's in a way an opportunity for you to help to educate municipalities, local governments, organisations.

[00:25:50.950]

Can you just give me a feel as to what that's lik. Do some people come to you with an idea and you think wow this is going to be really hard work to educate them because they really don't understand this or do you find people are coming with some good concepts to you?

[00:26:12.270] - Rémi Bastien

I'm surprised because I'm walking on this field for one and half years and still I'm discovering new concepts not with every client but almost always during it.

[00:26:28.990]

I think at the beginning it was it was complicated but now the concept to get people are understanding and I think more and more the concept because a some pilot project some examples that we can show people are getting more and more experience about this one. But yes and sometimes when you have a question, but if my set up and then doesn't produce me I we're not having enough. Do do we still need to if I want to share electricity with my neighbor or do I need to pull a cable from mine to his house, basic questions like this.

[00:27:09.820]

So yeah we have to explain that idea to spend a lot of time on this but I think it's are getting better but it's also why for the moments the projects are developed not by individuals on people on the House on down but rather from an entity which are able to understand this concept and to explain and to build first the community. I like you. Maybe yeah I can.

[00:27:44.530] - Jon Slowe

I think on one hand I can imagine the time it takes to explain this to people but from what you said in just a year and a half you've seen already quite a lot of learning people being more educated. That's really encouraging because the market then if you know when you look for it do you see actually that in another year and a half time you'll be a lot further forward that the market would have matured a lot. Or do you think it will actually take a lot longer than that to mature?

[00:28:15.730] - Rémi Bastien

No I think it will be much broader. I think because collective self-consumption is very let's say complementary to the areas of consumption. If say if you live in a in a collective building and if you want to to have access to [...] the local energy electricity you cannot do individual self-consumption so your only choice would be then collective self-consumption by talking with your landlord or your municipality. So I think that's interesting because and a possibility to for people to access clean energy local clean energy that they didn't have before. You know I think that's interesting from this point of view and especially because now with the regulation on building construction we will have more and more positive energy building. So when we have energy building I think collective self-consumption will become a standard on these buildings.

[00:29:34.220] - Jon Slowe

Okay. Time is racing by so I see it's already time for the, to get the crystal ball out, the Talking New Energy crystal ball, and take a gaze into the future. So let's set it to the crystal ball this time to 2025 and I'd like to ask each of you how widespread do you think these collective self-consumption models will be in France in five years' time.

[00:30:01.960]

So Rita, let's start with you. And from where we are today which is from what may be described you know around a few tens of projects that sort of level but quite a lot of interest. Where would you say we'll be in in five years' time?

[00:30:22.550]

Right. That's that's right. There is a lot of factors to consider but I would say between 250 to 450. Considering that there is the regulatory barriers but in the same time lots of new business model emerging so it will balance itself out. And what we learn from the lesson.

[00:30:41.520] - Jon Slowe

Okay so from from 10 to 200 is in the next years. Victoria, how about from your perspective. ff you're in a way right at the middle of this you're seeing all the projects develop you're getting all the applications. How fast do you think this can move in the next year?

[00:31:03.430] - Victoria Tan

Well we don't have a crystal ball that is that at the moment. We have 19 operational projects running at the moment and more than 100 projects. So from what we know are there development at a different stage at the moment and other say that a lot of social landlord are very involved in this project and some social landlord will will involve more than 10000 consumers in that project. But I think maybe they will take the lead for the next year especially because the load with price to facilitate. The fact that the social landlord by itself could be a legal entity, a project manager for the project, because before they had it another entity. And I think this should you know we'll have them in that project. Yes.

[00:32:09.460] - Jon Slowe

So we'll see we'll see then. Yeah we'll see many more projects as some of them could actually well some may be small or some I think it's a really interesting point. Some of them may be very large. And yet last but not least...

[00:32:25.900]

Yeah. Okay. So they're small today but you see then while the the average size could go up considerably. Rémi, last but not least having started a business in this area. I imagine you're very optimistic about the future but do you want to just describe your your vision for 2025 or where you think the market will be in 2025.

[00:32:49.980] - Rémi Bastien

In 2025 we're seeing that in the general point of view self-consumption would have increased a lot for two for two reasons.

[00:33:01.260]

First the decrease of the TV costs so it would be actually built to produce your own electricity as increase of the electricity electricity price or in general self-consumption we will do it will be developed more and more and from a collective self-consumption. We can see two drivers for the representation of the energy issue from small and medium municipality or with the operation. And then as Victoria says as a social landlord which will be a very big driver because as you have all the keys to make a lot of projects we said with a building, with the new rules of construction and with the social interest to do so.

[00:33:58.710]

And the last point will be for the markets to let's say to generate or not will be to have a tax system which is dedicated to collective self-consumption as it is required on the European energy package.

[00:34:20.730]

And in France we don't have this. This is it is a tax system doesn't encourage creative consumption but still the concept interest as when we will have a dedicated taxes and that is economic interests will be there. We will have a lot really a lot of pressure.

[00:34:47.550] - Jon Slowe

Okay. So plenty to keep you busy over the next year and a nice opportunity for Enogrid. I think my my takeaway is that there's no doubt that there is a strong demand for this sort of concept, that there's a lot of interest, but a lot of the devil will be in the detail of the regulation, the taxes as you explained Rémi, and I think it's fantastic Victoria to hear how Enedis in facilitating this and the role you want to play in supporting these models. So my expectation is in France and other countries Rita mentioned Belgium and Spain etc. that we see a lot of growth in the next years. Bit hard to predict because it will be regulation dependent and details around taxes and so on, but there is a big appetite there for these types of models.

[00:35:41.090]

So. With that I want to say a big thank you Victoria for joining from Enedis, thank you very much. From Rémi, from sharing your experiences at Enogrid.

[00:35:59.140]

And not least to Rita for sharing your research and views on this market. And of course thank you to everyone listening. We hope you've enjoyed this podcast. If you've got PV on your roof or you know other people that have and you've heard some chat about a local energy community or collective self-consumption in your area maybe it will spur you to get involved. I'm going to go back to my home in Glasgow and see what I can find locally. So thank you for listening and see you next week. Goodbye.

Utility plays in public EV charging infrastructure

Jon Slowe – Director – Delta-EE

Amadeus Regerbis - Head of Charging Infrastructure at EnBW

Alexander Lewis-Jones – EVs & Electricity Research Service Manager – Delta-EE

[00:00:04.560] - Jon Slowe

Welcome to Talking to Energy, a podcast from Delta-EE, the new energy experts. We will be talking about how the energy transition is developing across Europe with guests who are working at the leading edge of this transition.

[00:00:22.900] - Jon Slowe

Hello and welcome to the episode. Today we're looking at another aspect of electric vehicles. Now as electric vehicles gather pace, more and more come to the market, we've seen more electricity demand and, as the saying goes, a rising tide floats all boats. From a utility perspective, there are lots of different ways a utility could play in the emobility space. And today I'm delighted to be talking with one of the major German utilities about how they see the opportunities in emobility, what they've been doing over the last years, what they're learning and where they're going. And I'll be joined as always by our resident expert on the topic here at Delta-EE.

[00:01:10.480] - Jon Slowe

So, let me introduce my guests. First up Amadeus Regerbis, who is head of charging infrastructure at German utility EnBW. Hello Amadeus.

[00:01:22.600] - Amadeus Regerbis

Hello Jon, nice to be talking to you today.

[00:01:27.110] - Jon Slowe

And thanks for joining us. And my second guest, Alexander Lewis-Jones. Hello, Alex.

[00:01:33.310] - Alexander Lewis-Jones

Hi Jon, likewise. Thanks for having me.

[00:01:37.780] - Jon Slowe

So I'm looking forward to a really interesting discussion because there are so many different ways that utilities in their broadest sense of the word can play in the emobility space, they're starting to do so. Some are being quick, some are being a bit slower. Alex, you look across Europe at a whole variety of utility activities and Amadeus really interested to hear more about EnBW.

[00:02:06.210] - Jon Slowe

Amadeus, can we start with you? And for listeners that don't know EnBW, Can you give us a few facts and figures about EnBW?

[00:02:19.460] - Amadeus Regerbis

Yeah, happy to do so. EnBW is over 21,000 employees. One of the largest energy companies in Germany and Europe. We supply around 5.5 million customers with electricity, gas and water as well as energy solutions and energy-related services. And we've been quite active in the field of charging infrastructure in the last couple years.

[00:02:48.730] - Jon Slowe

Okay. So I'd like to delve into the charging infrastructure topic but before we do that, charging infrastructure could be at home, it could be public, you could have emobility tariffs, you could be looking at vehicle to grid and smart charging so can you give our listeners a feel for the journey EnBW been on. I guess in the last few years when electric vehicles become more prominent. So, where did you start and tell us a bit about the journey that you're on?

[00:03:25.360] - Amadeus Regerbis

Yeah, we actually started in the year 2011 with a public-funded project in the area of Stuttgart und Umgebung in Southern Germany with public AC charging. And since then we have developed our strategy into the public charging at first which is actually shifted from AC standard charging to DC fast charging. But since our approach is always charged approach where we went to offer our customers charging solutions at home, at the workplace or en route, like you so we actually target all these areas I mentioned.

[00:04:11.650] - Jon Slowe

And that fits with the overall strategy of EnBW which is to move more and more to the services and solutions business. How long would you say, how long has EnBW, do you feel made this shift from an old traditional utility to one that, still has traditional activities but has a really strong focus on services and solutions.

[00:04:41.930] - Amadeus Regerbis

Well, a couple of years ago you I believe the term energy vendor made it quite throughout Europe which is the transformation of the energy sector. And in Germany, we have a real hard cut into that direction. To transform utilities. So, our transformation of the company into a way more renewable energy company with intelligent infrastructure solutions has been a central element of our strategy for quite some years now. And we're still pushing that forward and our activities in the charging infrastructure business just underlines that individual transportation is just a part of the energy transition in general for us.

[00:05:35.030] - Jon Slowe

Okay, thanks, Amadeus. Alex can you help us and help our listeners just break down the public or the charging space. So, there are lots of different ways we can charge our electric vehicle, lots different types of speeds charging. We talked about this in one of the previous podcasts with Gridserve and Triodos bank, but to refresh our listeners memory. How would we break down electric vehicle charging?

[00:06:09.350] - Alexander Lewis-Jones

Certainly, yeah. So, with charging I think an important way to look at it is every charging is as diverse as places that you can park your car. It is a new form of parking. So if we take that lens of we were in the car parking industry we might see there's opportunities for parking on the street or indeed in people's homes. You might drive to work and then you have spaces to park your car there and a range of other opportunities in various different destinations. So flipping that back into the energy world we can see some clear segments appearing so home charging certainly its own very popular segment today.

[00:06:58.010] - Alexander Lewis-Jones

Workplaces will serve their business fleets, as well as their employees who are bringing their company cars to work and to charge during the day. And in the public space there are a number of ways that we can cut that up depending on the business model behind it. So we look at destinations places where you would want to visit any way you might be going to the supermarket or the cinema and you can actually do some charging last year there. Compare that to transit or en-route charging and as Amadeus has mentioned that is way where we can, where we can, and when we need to.

[00:07:38.450] - Alexander Lewis-Jones

When we're on the go to a destination much further away so we have to fill up there. A final category that we have done a bit of analysis here at Delta-EE recently is on the on-street market which blurs the boundary a bit because it can be in residential areas where people don't have driveways or garages to park at or it might be more urban areas too.

[00:08:05.460] - Jon Slowe

Okay, so summarizing that Alex at home, the workplace, public and at public could be at destination, it could be transit or it could be this slightly blurry on-street segment.

[00:08:21.040] - Alexander Lewis-Jones

Yes, and then from that point we could then look at the different speeds that you'd expect whether it's that slow or standard charging and through to faster-charging options such as, such as rapid or the, or the emerging and ultra-fast or high powered charging that we, like we've said we've heard about in previous podcasts.

Jon Slowe - And slow, rapid, ultrafast maybe one person faster and another person slow.

[00:08:48.200] - Jon Slowe

So how would you characterize that either in terms of I guess the time to fill up your tank or so to speak or charge your battery or the kilowatts of power drawn for each one.

[00:09:00.370] - Alexander Lewis-Jones

Yeah. So, for us we look at anything with a specification of about 22 kilowatts or below. Now we consider that standard or slow. So, if it's say a typical seven or eleven-kilowatt charger you could be looking at between five and eight hours to fully recharge your vehicle.

Jon Slowe -Yeah

Alexander Lewis-Jones - For most standard models out there. And then when we look at the rapid charging or other fast charging speeds this is when more of the DC solutions come in. So, we go beyond the AC capacities which are the lower numbers 30 to 50 kilowatts perhaps 60 kilowatts and then certainly the Tesla Supercharger network at 120 and beyond up to 350 that we're talking about currently.

[00:09:55.480] - Alexander Lewis-Jones

So for a 50 kilowatt DC rapid charger you might be looking for a 45-minute session to top up your vehicle through to the very fast, the ultra-fast where we're targeting more than the 5 to 15 minutes top-up experience more similar to the forecast, forecourt refuelling experience today.

[00:10:20.810] - Jon Slowe

Yeah okay. So, on public I guess we're seeing all of those speeds at the moment and at home we’ll see that the slow charging and this emergence of ultrafast or high-power charging starting to be rolled out.

[00:10:37.510] - Alexander Lewis-Jones

Indeed, and I think on that basis you've got to really think about how long am I going to be sat in this particular car parking space, that will determine what solution you go for it. It can be very tempting to think that the AC market is very much focused at homes or workplaces but it does have a big space in public too because a lot of public locations and destinations people will stay parked for 8-10 hours or more, so it gives you that window for the slower charge.

[00:11:11.250] - Jon Slowe

Yeah okay. Amadeus coming back to you now, how relating this to what Alex described how is EnBWs charging infrastructure activities developed across that, anything from the home, workplace, public spectrum on the slow, rapid, ultrafast spectrum.

[00:11:34.890] - Amadeus Regerbis

Well since we're not able to address each charging situation, at the same time we started with the public DC charging, like Alex said you don't want to spend too much time or put something on a resting area on the German autobahn.

[00:11:56.920] - Amadeus Regerbis

If you want to recharge your car very fast.

[00:11:58.980] - Amadeus Regerbis

So, we actually started work with our use case, that we call use case, travelling, resting areas, locations, or at highways, or on highways like these western areas. And we moved to locations that are very useful for commuting, for people that commute to work as a gas station. So, we partnered up with different gas companies where we use their locations to provide DC chargers as well. But yeah, we have that very big target group that is like Alex mentioned when you go shopping at the supermarket or the even bigger shopping centre you go to eat something, fast food or to the drugstore.

[00:12:53.940] - Amadeus Regerbis

There are several companies that we're working together with and we're equipping their parking lots with them for charging solutions that really fits their needs. And like I mentioned the shopping centres they just need both, they need a standard charger for people that really enjoy shopping and spending a lot of time at these locations. But it's very helpful for EV drivers if they can find a DC fast charging or even an ultra-fast charging stop at these locations as well.

[00:13:32.570] - Jon Slowe

And how many charging, charge points have you rolled out so far and can you give us a feel of your level of ambition?

[00:13:43.930] - Amadeus Regerbis

Yeah. We have oh well we started because one thing I have to mention at first. We started three and a half years ago with our activities in the DC fast charging business and we have as of today around 250 plus charging locations all over Germany.

[00:14:05.360] - Amadeus Regerbis

And so we've been growing at a very ambitious speed there. And our ambition is to have well around 1000 fast-charging locations by the end of next week.

[00:14:18.960] - Amadeus Regerbis

Well I am sorry, what did I say a week, I meant year! If my colleagues from the fulfilment department would hear that they would probably be very angry.

[00:14:36.020] - Amadeus Regerbis

No.

[00:14:36.450] - Amadeus Regerbis

Next year!

Jon Slowe – Yeah, I think you might have just given us a bit of a heart attack over this!

Amadeus Regerbis – Yeah, yeah. Sorry about that. {laughing}

[00:14:47.300] - Jon Slowe

And in reaching these sort of numbers, if you had to step back and think about the biggest challenge here and this is where your fulfilment people might have something to say, I'm sure but is a challenge, is it around location of property is it around the partnerships? Is it around the capital? Is it around the physical people power to install this and roll it out? What's the hardest thing to achieve this rate?

[00:15:20.780] - Amadeus Regerbis

Unfortunately, it's a combination of different aspects you mentioned. One thing is actually to have a suitable grid connection at these locations. Yeah, but you mentioned the partnering that is actually something that really takes a lot of time because the investment in fast-charging infrastructure is quite high. So, when we go into partnerships, they're all very long-term contracts and then every one of us understand if you sign a real long term contract and I'm not talking about two, three years that's when talking higher. You have to be sure that the partner is the right one for you.

[00:16:07.940] - Amadeus Regerbis

And with all this information going through press and media. Some potential partners tend to just hesitate to go into a partnership because they don't know how the regulation is going to do well or how the market going to be.

[00:16:25.530] - Amadeus Regerbis

So.

[00:16:26.190] - Amadeus Regerbis

So, this is one part but getting the grid connection to be in all the district distribution network operator to establish the quick connection or even when it comes to public ground to get on the required goes from the authorities.

[00:16:45.110] - Amadeus Regerbis

That is something that really has taken some time and blocked a lot of people think well there's a bit there is an electric power line beneath the ground. You just open up, put the charger there and that should work.

[00:16:58.340] - Amadeus Regerbis

It's not the way.

Jon Slowe - No. If only it was that simple. With the partnership Amadeus, do you have a, is your pipeline of partners, have you got enough and more than enough partners in there? Is it a case as you said of the time to negotiate to get to agreement and get the partnership deal over the line. Or is it a challenge to get enough potential partners into your pipeline?

[00:17:24.960] - Amadeus Regerbis

Well actually we do, we are still looking for more partners. We are still looking for locations where we can build up these fast-charging locations and like I said before shopping centres, a supermarket. This is something that we're really aiming for. But yeah, it takes a lot of time to negotiate a contract to get the framework for partnership. So unfortunately, we are still short of partnerships in order to build up so many sites that are ambitious goals and will be easily reached by the end of next year.

[00:18:05.840] - Amadeus Regerbis

Now I'm saying that correctly.

[00:18:07.780] - Jon Slowe

Yeah. And on the grid connection I mean it's a lot of power. You know you line up a few 50-kilowatt charges that's a big connection. Can you just tell us a bit about when you start considering that the grid connection and of all the potential sites you look at how many you have to strike off because there isn't a suitable grid connection, so is it one of the first things you look at?

[00:18:34.670] - Jon Slowe

Or does it come later in the process and if it's later what's the sort of dropout rate of sites?

Amadeus Regerbis - Well we do have around 20 per cent of the locations that we're looking at. That won't be able to be built into a grid connection there.

[00:18:53.940] - Amadeus Regerbis

There is a solution to nearly every situation when it comes to the grid, but it often takes time or a lot of grid empowering activities which are often tied to our huge financial investment.

[00:19:12.890] - Amadeus Regerbis

So that makes some locations not suitable here, not very likely to be built there.

[00:19:21.470] – Jon Slowe

Have you done anything yet with batteries or distributed generation rather than building a bigger connection where necessary or is that something you think you do more in the future?

[00:19:33.450] - Amadeus Regerbis

Well actually we tried that already. We tried it in our office in Stuttgart.

[00:19:39.940] - Amadeus Regerbis

With a big battery pack.

[00:19:44.430] - Amadeus Regerbis

But when it comes to public charging it is actually our goal to have the strong grid connection because when you see the number of cars rising and the EVs have more and more cars coming this would be a bad customer experience if the battery would be discharged. And because so many customers were at these location before the one guy that has come in and wants to charge his car and he only gets like a standard 11 kilowatt or 20-kilowatt charge, that would be disappointing.

[00:20:27.760] – Jon Slowe

1. So, you try and focus on where the grid connection is strong enough for you to build what you want.

Amadeus Regerbis - Yeah

Jon Slowe - Alex I'm going to bring you back in now to explain a couple of acronyms and our listeners will be pleased not to have heard too many acronyms so far, but can you explain two acronyms and we'll try and go beyond these two a CPO and EMSP.

[00:20:58.530] - Alexander Lewis-Jones

Certainly, so these are perhaps the two most important acronyms you need to know when we're talking about the public access charging. So, whether that's the transit or on street or destination. So, the CPO stands at charge point operator and you could probably make a good comparison with any form of network provider they are responsible for the charge points and making sure the electricity gets from the grid and into the car, so that’s the CPO. The EMSP is the electromobility service provider.

Jon Slowe- I must say, that's one of my favourite acronyms in the energy sector, Alex.

[00:21:46.640] - Alexander Lewis-Jones

Fantastic, you see it in various different forms. It's less as ubiquitous as the CPO you might. In Germany for example you might see EMP as more common or even EVSP, but broadly it's all the same thing. It's about the service provider model. So, the organization that has the customer relationship and providing the information about where to find your charge point, access to that charge point, the information whilst that charging session is happening. And then of course some form of payment at the end of that. That might be through to a card or through an app on your phone and linked to websites you can find information on it.

Jon Slowe - And then some of that payment would then get passed over to the CPO in return for use of their infrastructure.

[00:22:43.830] - Alexander Lewis-Jones

Indeed, so it's the CPO is really providing the electricity and the EMSP is making sure that's a service delivered to the end customer.

[00:22:54.890] – Jon Slowe

Okay. Now Amadeus you know what's coming next, from EnBW could you share a bit on your strategy and aspirations about the CPO role, which I guess you're definitely playing because you're building out the infrastructure and the EMSP role. So, what interests you most, is it just the CPO role or is it the combination of CPO and EMSP.

[00:23:24.360] - Amadeus Regerbis

Well, we are active in both roles and although I am you could say the CPO guy of EnBW because you know my colleague who runs the EMSP he is very important because when we sat down and took a look at charging infrastructure and what do we want to provide for our customers we said well in our transformation of an energy company going from an energy supplier to an energy management we want to offer our customers the best experience. So that includes from our point of view to be the CPO, to build up more network applications where the customer really wants to charge as well as providing the access and payment methods at these locations to just implement a high standard for our customers.

Jon Slowe - So that the customer can get their whole experience from EnBW you're providing that infrastructure and the interface.

[00:24:29.130] - Amadeus Regerbis

Yeah,

Jon Slowe - And presumably you allow others to, with your assets you allow others to play that EMSP role, to play that service provider role as well. Or are you looking at an exclusive approach?

[00:24:49.820] - Amadeus Regerbis

No, we're actually open because we believe that at this stage of the market development, the only thing that really helps the market to develop is when you're open and you're looking for solutions that really suit the customer's needs.

[00:25:09.270] - Amadeus Regerbis

And I can give you an example when you take a look at all different CPOs as addition obvious dissolutions of key EMSP role, it might get you to topic of roaming that which means if you have a solution like the access card of a CPO and or EMSP and you want to target a different network there's always a different pricing and very tariffs that differ from the one that you're used to.

[00:25:46.350] - Amadeus Regerbis

So our EnBW mobility plus, which is our solution in the EMSP business has that great opportunity on the grid, our approach is that that our customers always have the same pricing no matter if they charge it at our CPO or network or if they charge it at a CPO network where we have roaming agreements.

[00:26:12.430] – Jon Slowe

Okay. So it doesn't matter whose infrastructure they're using, they have one experience which is using EnBW and that's simple and clear for them.

Amadeus Regerbis - Yes

Jon Slowe - I guess the business model Amadeus of developing charging infrastructure it's CAPEX heavy and the revenues will come with utilization, which will come with more rolling out of electric vehicles. Can you tell us a bit about that challenge of a very high CAPEX or CAPEX intensive model? Are you doing all this on your balance sheet? Or off the balance sheet? And how do you make them, how do you make assumptions about the utilization rates or does that keep you awake at night.

[00:26:57.640] - Jon Slowe

In terms of what the utilization rate might be?

[00:27:01.750] - Amadeus Regerbis

Well luckily EnBW is very experienced infrastructure company. So, we have energy company. We know how the infrastructure works. We know it from electricity grids from gas grids. We know that you really have these huge investments these very high CAPEX-based business cases. And we have the ability to do that and the whole company knows that's not a short-term business and that we will have the usage of the charging infrastructure within the next two or three years. So yeah you have to have a you have to be in a situation where you can really rely on that that your own company knows how to do that.

[00:27:59.420] - Amadeus Regerbis

And it's ok in operating in that way to invest and to have the earnings way later.

[00:28:05.290] - Jon Slowe

So, it is just an extension of part of your core business of infrastructure.

[00:28:12.490] - Amadeus Regerbis

Yeah, it is one part but we really taking it seriously. As you can see by this very ambitious goal to be one of the leading CPOs in Germany.

[00:28:26.080] - Jon Slowe

Alex when you step back and look at utilities across Europe in all of their different forms, how do you see the sector in general in gaging with a sort of CPO model. Do you see many others sharing EnBWs infrastructure ambitions or do you see some utilities definitely keeping away from that business?

[00:28:53.450] - Alexander Lewis-Jones

Yeah. I think it's been it's been really interesting over the last six months or so I’ve been going out across Europe and exploring who's doing what with this CPO model and there’s broadly two strategies for emobility for utilities. One has been focused on kind of doubling down on providing new services to existing customers. So that means actually they're straying away from doing kind of the CPO side of things and doing more selling charge points and tariffs to commercial and residential customers. The second strategy for people who have been building their networks is there.

[00:29:36.820] - Alexander Lewis-Jones

But it's far fewer players than the more traditional services and products that a utility would offer. The second point I would make is that yes, it is very different in each market and a lot of the multinational utilities are certainly exploring how they can capture more of the CPO market and what type of CPO they want to be. It's no longer possible to just say, okay I'll do public charging as the market matures, there are CPOs that focus on the AC networks and those that focus on the DC and focus on different types of destination as well.

[00:30:26.560] - Alexander Lewis-Jones

So, finding which one of those is going to be the most valuable for them has been very much the focal point of the multinationals.

Jon Slowe - So characterising that analysis as a whole spectrum of a range of utility activities and strategies when it comes to public charging from really no focus and focusing on their return home charging business and tariffs.

[00:30:51.340] - Jon Slowe

Through to probably EnBW at one end of the spectrum which is building out a really strong CPO business.

[00:30:59.530] - Alexander Lewis-Jones

Yes. And I think yeah, I think everybody's exploring to see where those value streams are what are the value streams what are the secondary value streams we can get from different types of destination. And I've certainly had conversations across Europe with utilities who are looking at perhaps one segment, perhaps looking at fleets and how they can support their existing businesses and realising all the software solutions that a fleet would require, for charging, actually marries very well with a destination charging product as well. So, they've actually without choosing to go for it and have actually found that they can cross-sell their one product into more the public charging CPO model as well.

[00:31:52.810] - Jon Slowe

Well maybe that's a topic to dig into on another podcast, Alex. We're coming to the end of this podcast now, so it's that time on the podcast to bring out the talking new energy crystal ball and controversially I'm going to ask each of you different questions. So, two different crystal ball questions. First of all, Amadeus I want to ask you about where you see EnBW and emobility in general in 2030. So, looking 10 years into the future can you give us a snapshot or a pen portrait of.

[00:32:26.980] - Jon Slowe

EnBW’s emobility activities in 2030? And Alex, I want to ask you for the CPO model in 2030. What do you think that will look like in terms of the mix of utilities, oil companies, others who would have built out the CPO infrastructure? So, Amadeus, let's have that pen portrait, that vision of EnBW in 2030 with emobility first.

[00:33:02.360] - Amadeus Regerbis

Yeah, well EnBW will have made this transformation into a company which is a real renewable energy company with intelligent infrastructure. And I'm pretty sure that EnBW will play a major role in the future of charging infrastructure. And when it comes to emobility, in general, I believe in 2030 it will be just as normal as it is to drive in our city at this moment. In all these very, you know it is talks at the moment from people that do not want to let go and people that are trying to convince e-car drivers to already switch to emobility.

[00:33:52.760] - Amadeus Regerbis

They will be much less much beyond them.

[00:33:56.570] - Amadeus Regerbis

So, it will just a normal day for individual mobility.

Jon Slowe - And presumably Amadeus those people will be charging in different places and locations with an EnBW card or account and they'll be using EnBW infrastructure at home, at shops, motorway service stations etc.

[00:34:18.710] - Amadeus Regerbis

Yeah, well I do hope so that they'll be using the EnBW mobility plus app in order to charge.

[00:34:27.380] - Amadeus Regerbis

Yeah.

[00:34:28.160] - Jon Slowe

Okay, Alex your question about what will the charging infrastructure space in terms of the infrastructure, who will have built that out by 2030?

[00:34:41.030] - Alexander Lewis-Jones

Yes, I think firstly you've got to look at the public sector again to see where the ambition is for funding and how much more funding will come from the public sector in order for various ambitions for electric vehicle adoption to occur in local, regional, national or pan-European levels. Once you've understood how much more money there is in the pot for those different funds, I would look at the variety of CPO players out there today from traditional utilities, oil majors increasingly stepping up as you mentioned, as well as the start-up brands as well. We know we're seeing a consolidation of these brands and these companies today.

[00:35:30.200] - Alexander Lewis-Jones

That's only going to continue. But I think we also expect that across different countries, different brands will be will remain popular. Certainly, over the next five years, when we get into last the second five years of the 2020s up to 2030 then we need to start thinking about these other assumptions of how will technology develop? Will we have more simpler ways to plug in and just charge your car without having to use a card or an app? And all of a sudden maybe the automotives will have more of the customer relationship and we think that might be an interesting pulling point on who will really own the EV customer in 2030. Will it be the automotives or will it be the infrastructure providers, the energy and oil majors that we were that we know today.

[00:36:31.220] - Jon Slowe

Well, only time will tell. There's certainly as you say a wide variety of initiatives and activities developing the infrastructure.

[00:36:37.420] - Jon Slowe

But it's absolutely fantastic Amadeus to see a company like EnBW, your level of ambition and aggression in terms of building this charging infrastructure out today and wishing you all the success in meeting those targets for the next year.

Amadeus Regerbis - Thank you very much.

Jon Slowe - So that's the end of today's podcast. Thank you very much Amadeus. It's been a pleasure talking with you.

Amadeus Regerbis - Thank you very much. It was fun, thank you.

Jon Slowe - Good. And Alex thanks for your expert views as always.

Alexander Lewis-Jones - Yeah. Thanks Jon. Thanks for having me.

Jon Slowe - And last but not least thank you to everyone for listening.

[00:37:17.720] - Jon Slowe

We hope you enjoyed today's podcast and start thinking about where you're going to charge if you haven't yet bought an electric vehicle. And we look forward to welcoming you back next week. Thanks, and goodbye.

Jon Slowe, Director, Delta-EE

Arthur Jouannic, Head of Business Development - Europe, Delta-EE

Remi Volpe, Vice President of Residential Temperatur Control at Schneider Electric

Eamon Conway, Managing Director, Climote

[00:00:04.560] - Jon Slowe

Welcome to Talking New Energy, a podcast from Delta-EE, the new energy experts. We will be talking about how the energy transition is developing across Europe with guests who are working at the leading edge of this transition. Hello and welcome to the episode.

[00:00:25.170]

Heating controls is a topic every listener, unless you're listening from a tropical climate, will be able to relate to, likely on a daily or weekly basis at his time of year. Thermostats to radiator valves and switches may not be as shiny and as exciting as an electric vehicle but they play a vital role in keeping our buildings comfortable. And as decarbonisation comes more and more into the spotlight, so does the focus on heat. Much of the focus on heat is on the fuel for heating and the appliance used to generate heat but heating controls are a vital part of the ecosystem.

[00:01:02.300]

And like many parts of the energy sector it's a dynamic sector. We're in the middle of a shift from analog to digital and heating control will have to keep pace with the shift and they'll also have to keep pace with a likely growth in electrically driven heating. To explore what's going on in the world of heating controls, I'm joined by one giant in the sector, one new growing company, and of course aresident expert on the topic here at Delta-EE. So without any further ado, time to introduce my guests.

[00:01:33.890]

My first guess is Remi Volpe, VP of residential heating controls at Schneider Electric in Europe. Hello Remi.

[00:01:44.050] - Remi Volpe

Hi, good morning Jon.

[00:01:45.870] - Jon Slowe

Remi, our listeners will have heard about Schneider, I'm sure. But can you give us a snapshot of your residential heating controls business? A few facts and figures.

[00:01:57.620] - Remi Volpe

Certainly yeah. Schneider Electric is known more for its role in the electric sector of both the residential and commercial areas [...] business units is focused essentially around residential heating so we operate in the UK under Drayton controls. We've had a presence here for over said actually 70 years. This year is our seventieth anniversary.

[00:02:28.500] - Jon Slowe

Congratulations.

[00:02:30.690] - Remi Volpe

Thank you. I wasn't there at the start! Hopefully hear from my voice! But no we've we've got a good tradition in terms of understanding the UK heating market, the industry, and a rich sort of knowledge base on on the applications. We've seen a number of transitions and we're really excited about how Schneider can help us take this step forward into the digital connected world. We're sort of leveraging some of the great experience that Schneider has. Right. Right the way across Europe and and globally. And we think we're adding real richness to the story by focusing in specifically on on heating and the funny ways in which people and consumers want to interact with their heating.

[00:03:17.210] - Jon Slowe

So in the UK you've been active for a long time. You're active with heating controls, working with with gas boilers. You've also got a strong business in France haven't you? And that's a mix of gas, oil and electric heating controls?

[00:03:35.350] - Remi Volpe

It is, I would say yes. I just headed out to out of France. So we have a lot of our businesses with a strong presence in that in that particular market. We are seeing that for heating it's predominantly electric and gas. We know it's one of the biggest markets for electric heating and we've been we've been able to sort of work very closely with a couple of organisations who are working in the electric heating space. It's allowed us to sort of understand some of the challenges that that people have when that when using electric heating but still it's it's an area that that needs more development, I would tend to say more around sort of how to engage with and let the consumer understand what what they can do with their heating. We're really sort of enjoying working with a couple of organizations focusing on demand response looking at how it's not only just sort of usage of electricity. It's also about making the aspects of feeding some electricity back where where itself generated.

[00:04:52.210]

So we're learning a lot where we're working with some strong partners and excited about how we can bring our experience to the new new emerging market.

[00:05:03.310] - Jon Slowe

And Remi, to give our listeners a feel for the size of your heating controls business, can you give us a feel for the number of thermostats or radiator valves or controls that you're shipping every year in Europe?

[00:05:19.020] - Remi Volpe

Yeah well we're shipping over 2 million radiator valves. That's sort of our high volume part of the business so we've we also sort of build on the installed base we have in the UK. We've both time clocks with time switches. Not to that extent but certainly several hundred thousand pieces every year. And I also sort of manage abusiness under the [...] brand. They're predominantly in Germany where we're more of a thermostat business and in that in that market we're selling over 3 million thermostats per year. So it's a strong base.

[00:06:00.220] - Jon Slowe

Thanks Remi. Well we'll come back to you shortly. Let's introduce my second guest now, Eamon Conway, M.D. at Ireland-based Climote. Hello Eamon.

[00:06:09.420] - Eamon Conway

Hi Jon.

[00:06:11.080] - Jon Slowe

Eamon, you, back in the days worked for well mainly one of Schneider's competitors Honeywell before helping to found Climote back in 2010. Many of our listeners might not have heard of Climote. So what's Climote's focus and mission?

[00:06:31.930] - Eamon Conway

Good question, Jon. So Climote's focus and mission is with, our expertise is really in the residential home energy space. Currently we market the remote heating control hub mostly in the UK and Ireland but I guess the vision of the businesses as being there providing the home technology that will facilitate the energy transition. Based on the large macro trends of decarbonisation, digitalisation, the electrification of heat and transport - that's really the direction of travel for the business and one which we've been very excited about. We're in we're in. We set up in 2011 and we started trading terms of sales from 2013 onwards.

[00:07:19.180]

So we would have north of between the salesand orders in hand of north of a hundred thousand devices sold at the moment and growing steadily both in sales volume and profitably. So it's all going quite well at the moment.

[00:07:35.170] - Jon Slowe

Great. And if you look back at the time since you were founded in 2011 the biggest achievement so far or what are you most proud of in terms of where you've got to?

[00:07:48.370] - Eamon Conway

Good question. I think a few things really, I mean it's still a journey. I mean we're still very early in the evolution of this industry but I guess from from a standing start being able to build up a team of 20 folks that can manage to deploy north of 100,000 devices. We've two folks in technical support, we can manage build very reliable stable products that customers like and do that get another profitable state. I mean it's been a hard old journey but very enjoyable so it's just a combination of the things that you learn on that journey have all been very interesting and exciting and not without its challenges.

[00:08:35.320] - Jon Slowe

I'm sure. Will maybe hear some more about those and your future plans in a little bit. My third guest is my Delta-EE colleague, Arthur Jouannic. Hello Arthur.

[00:08:43.990] - Arthur Jouannic

Hi Jon.

[00:08:44.100] - Jon Slowe

Arthur, can you tell us a bit about how you see the heatingin controlsspace at the moment?

[00:08:54.460] - Arthur Jouannic

Sure the heating control space has really evolved a lot in the last 10 years as Eamon said Climote to the market in 2011 and at the time a lot of the startup control companies came into the markets and obviously one of the most famous ones Nest was acquired by Google around 2014 which created a huge buzz around how can we digitalise the controls for heating systems across the world particularly across Europe.

[00:09:24.520]

And what happened since then is a huge number of companies have been investing a lot of money in trying to roll out these connected controls for heating systems. Right now you have really three main types of companies trying to produce products. The first one being that the startups like Climote who arereally innovative really creatingcool products that customers like to to engage with. And this has really created some sort of gadget customer, willingness to buymarket.

[00:09:58.270]

The second category is the traditional heating business, the likes of the boiler manufacturers, of the large heating control manufacturers like Schneider Electric for example.

[00:10:11.170]

And these guys have an established business, they have established routes to markets across Europe and they have been really trying to understand transition from analog to digital and the role that they have to play in this and some of them have been slow at innovating some of them have been really good and you can gradually see the amount of controls sold in the markets being increasingly connected which is very good news for the industry.

[00:10:37.530]

And finally the utilities obviously the last stakeholder that we're really interested in this because whereas heating being almost two thirds of the energy bill in Europe you can quickly imagine how you can advise customers to reduce their consumption by having better controls or connected controls that can be better programmed.

[00:10:57.550]

So the utilities have been trying to find a place in this market for a while. Some of them have, some of them of have let's say failed to some degree, but they are still trying to find how they can use heating controls that are connected for the energy transition and some of them are betting on this big time for the future.

[00:11:17.950] - Jon Slowe

Okay so that's a nice description of the types of companies, the start ups or younger new entrants, traditional heating businesses and then energy retailers or utilities trying to create propositions for customers. Remi I'd like to come back to you next. In terms you're managing a business of millions of heating controls a year. What do you see changing in the market at the moment is would you say it's static. Are there particular dynamics in the markets.What are the key issues that you see?

[00:11:52.940] - Remi Volpe

We are seeing at a changing marketplace. I think you know traditionally people have said well you know the heating industry and plumbers are quite conservative in what they do. You know we are starting to see a growing segment where you know a number of consumers are interested in understanding more around smart heating. I think that as Arthur mentioned a number of companies came to this market several years ago and started you know marketing into consumers directly around smart smart heating, smart controls, which I think initially sort of pricked I think people's attention at that point that's really then sort of been built upon with the growth in smart devices like you know Google Home or Alexa and people being comfortable with that as as a base technology in their home and are now looking at what else they can use or build on that particular platform and we've we've seen heating become more of an interest area as well both from an energy consumption perspective but also convenience.

[00:13:04.270] - Jon Slowe

So Remi how big is that segment at the moment do you think. You know are you talking like 1 percent and and a nice of a niche or do you think it's growing quickly towards 10 percent or a third of the market you think things are changing quickly.

[00:13:21.010] - Remi Volpe

I would say it is it's growing quickly off a very small base though and I would still say below 10 percent of the market. So the majority still is dominated by the installer and the installer will play a key part in sort of implementing any new technology into the marketplace. But we are seeing you know a growing number and we're also seeing when people move into into smart heating the level of interaction the engagement with it is much much higher than with sort of conventional products. So it's an interesting dynamic, it's a growing one, but it's still a small segment of the market.

[00:14:03.100] - Jon Slowe

So how have you responded. Have you brought out new products for this segment? Have you looked at new routes to market, new channels? How does a company with a very strong large established business manager a growing trend like this?

[00:14:19.000] - Remi Volpe

I would tend to say all of that. I think the starting point is that although we've been around for 70 years in the UK you know we embrace innovation and we really want to. We don't want to be considered as the you know the old guys in the corner who try and sort of protect and maintain old technologies. We don't. We've really embraced it. That means we've launched a new product called wider heat into the market. It's very much an upgrade for existing conventional controls. So we've tried to make it a DIY. In some instances we've embraced sort of new routes to market. So the product is available through Amazon and through companies like Screwfix and Toolstation as well as the traditional channels of Wolseley or Travis Perkin so we've embraces that aspect and where we're starting to as I've said market more to the consumer and rarely hear directly back from them in terms of what they think.

[00:15:20.260]

So that's one element.

[00:15:21.750] - Jon Slowe

Is that quite a change Remi in terms of marketing directly because the traditional route I guess will be through wholesales and installers rather than creating that customer brand and customer marketing.

[00:15:35.390]

It is, it's been a very steep learning curve and we haven't been perfect but we've sort of embraced the principle of better to sort of you know move down that route and you know learn from the errors and mistakes that we go that we learn. So you do get direct feedback. It hurts at times but it allows us to really sort of develop develop more. We we also are trying to move our installer channel which is important for us as well. People who have used Drayton for many many years in making them understand that the new technology a connected device actually you know isn't that much more difficult to sort of install and use as a as a conventional product so we're trying to take our 9 degree network of installers forward with more confidence into into an era of smart controls.

[00:16:29.380] - Jon Slowe

Okay. Thanks. Eamon, I'd like to come back to you in terms of what you've learnt about reaching customers and how customers respond. So Remi's talked about the direct route and going through installers. For a new company new into this sector, how's it been for you in terms of trying to bring your product to markets, create appetite in the market for your product?

[00:16:54.340] - Eamon Conway

Very good question John. I mean I guess my own background have been 15 years in the corporate world and in the heating and plumbing and electrical sector I would have known you know the traditional route to markets through the big DIY chains and the builder's merchants, electrical wholesalers. But I guess you're an only business you've got to make the choices that you see fit. That that's best your organisation at the time. I mean we were starting off with the businesses set up by myself and my business partner Derek Ruddy with six staff when we started off.

[00:17:27.760]

So one time we launched the product in 2013 that had moved up to about ten or twelve so very limited marketing budget. So you've got to think how can you get the product into and into people's houses. So in our case it was to partner with folks who had access to those houses and we we spoke originally to telcos and to utility companies. And I guess our main partnerships have been with utility companies and what we find is that most of our sales I mean we would be a B to B to C I guess and that our product is effectively gets to Mrs Smith or Mr. Jones' house of the package of some description whether it's with a tradesman who's packaged it up with a new boiler or utility with an electricity or a gas tariff.

[00:18:16.960]

So we find that by bundling the product with the partner who's got access to the customers. That's that's how we've done to get into houses but with a relatively non-existent marketing budget and with relatively low amount of folks on the sale side and what we find is that not dissimilar I mean I guess despite folks in the industry with the bigger resources the penetration of smart heating controls are still relatively small. And for me it's about deployment it's not really about the features and benefits because up until now all the way I think it has begun to change with the with the consumer trend to renewables and the climate change agenda. But energy has been not that interesting for folks. So what we find is when they get the product they really like it and the app engagement is very positive. But actually waiting for them to actually buy it or go looking for it would have been would have been a harder challenge. So if it's presented to have presented to them in a bundle or as a package that's interesting they'll take it and they really like it and it gets them started on the journey.

[00:19:25.580] - Jon Slowe

Arthur what do you think about that. From what Eamon says once the customers got it they like it but it's hard to get a customer to put their hand in their wallet and maybe spend a lot more money or more money than they would on an old analog heating control.

[00:19:40.330] - Arthur Jouannic

But it's exactly as men say its customers would never be willing to spend. I don't know what the price is now maybe 200 euros on on the Smart thermostats. The reality is people are going to spend this money on something else so we have to find a way to get these products to the customer's home without having them to feel like they are paying for it. And the utility bundle on that kind of contract. What we see happening especially in the heating sector is that all the major heating appliance manufacturers have turned now into connectivityso most of the appliances installed in Western Europe so far are connectable and that represents around 8 million heating systems of Europe and the challenge that these guys have is not to install its products it's to make people actually connect the heating systems and often that's there is an issue that installers are not able to or willing to communicate the functionality, the set up to their customers and we result in collectable products being rolled out all over Europe without having them connected.

[00:20:52.810]

So there is a beig need to train installers to educate them maybe even too motivate younger generations of installers to be motivated to sell and install and help customers whereas this products otherwise as Remi and Eamon says so this will remain a niche market and will never grow beyond the 10 20 percent market.

[00:21:15.790] - Jon Slowe

I mean Remi your route is through installers predominantly. And the anecdote is often used anecdotes about installers who say they want to get in and out as quick as they can with no risk of a callback. So how have you you know. Briefly how have you seen installers responding to this or how are you trying to work with installers in this way?

[00:21:39.230] - Remi Volpe

We're trying to you know bring them along the journey I guess and sort of do a number of training sessions face to face training sessions where you know that the principal we're using as this is it's an easy upgrade if you want but if you're going through a housing you see that you've got an out of control controls already installed into that system. You know it's very easy to upgrade that in to a connected system. We talk when we walk through that particular aspect it gives them confidence to try that. We're also doing a lot of online training as well.

[00:22:15.560]

So it's like you can only reach a limited number of organisations face to face or people face to face. So we've now put some training modules online that people can work their way through and at the end of each module there's a few questions that people need to answer to progress to the next steps. The way we're trying to sort of bring people along the journey ensure that you know it is regarded more as an upgrade and it's in a simplistic way to add some added value to that to that particular customer and the consumer.

[00:22:51.980] - Jon Slowe

As you said earlier on it's a traditional industry so it is changing but it's probably not going to change overnight or in a very rapid way.

[00:23:04.400]

I'd like to move on now to the second area I'd like to focus on which is electric heating and across most of Europe we're likely to see more electric heating in the next years and the next decade with a mix of other types of heating low carbon heating I'm sure. So electric heating operates in quite a different way to gas boilers.

[00:23:36.080]

Remi from Schneider's perspective what would you say you've learned from your work with electric heating in markets like France where it's is already widespread. And how could you bring that experience to a country like the Netherlands or or the UK where we're likely to see more electrification in the next year.

[00:23:54.660] - Remi Volpe

So I think the the aspect of moving to an you know more of an electrified basis for heat means it actually increases the ability to control you know when not to have heating as its own separate independent vertical if you want or system. What we've seen and what we can leverage is the move towards more of a so-called home controls solution is more viable as the electrification into heating moves along as well. So the interoperability or the way in which the electric heating will work with your EV charger, will work with your lighting and your blinds and your shutters can all but all come under one control system.

[00:24:44.730]

So we've got experience with EV charges. Schneider has a business where where we actually provide EV chargers. We also have an energy business in France where we can monitor and see what the usage and consumption of the electricity is. Make that make that sort of digital. And then we can combine that with the other uses of energy being ones that that are there are moving towards electrification. So that total home control I think becomes much more manageable and viable. What what we've learned as a lesson and where we're trying to do is this to make sure that there is beyond interoperability all the systems work with each other by having some common protocols defined.

[00:25:34.350]

So it's very easy for a consumer to connect the various parts together and we're not using sort of systems that are really hard to get them to work together. So we think that certainly open protocols that the industry will will embrace and make the simplicity of the consumer able to manage their total energy.

[00:25:57.120] - Jon Slowe

And how far forward are you with that at the moment Remi because of course electric vehicles of course smaller number today is going to get a lot bigger, everyone knows, photovoltaics, storage, smart homes with smart blinds and shutters and so on. Is this something you've got in the market that you see growing really quickly, is it something that's more development at the moment?

[00:26:21.310] - Remi Volpe

I would say the technology is that today and and in certain markets like France we already have our energy business which is is it being installed and operated. We've got our EV chargers not only in France but in the U.K. and other European countries. But they're still operating a separate system. I think the role of regulation the role of of of standard protocols still needs to evolve and be clarified, driven by I would say sort of governments to then make it happen at a much faster rate. Technology certainly is there and the products as individual systems are available today.

[00:27:01.710] - Jon Slowe

Okay. So yeah the individual bits are there; bringing it together, that's probably more for the next years. Eamon, you've you've focused on gas boiler controls to date but I know you're also busy and active with electric heating. Can you tell us a bit about what you're doing in this area?

[00:27:22.110] - Eamon Conway

Yeah. Jon. I get it as an evolution of what we currently our strengths and expertise in home technology and linking it to the energy transition. So by way of a wee bit of background we were involved with the project with the Irish National Grid and the ESB group a couple of years back whereby we built a platform to to turn off the signal from the National Grid for 100 homes that took to turn off immersion controls hot water tank controls at the wish of the grid. That was a fairly early pilot but it got us on that trajectory off of how you could what would be required to facilitate the electrification journey so effectively I guess at a high level we're looking to match the increasing generation from renewables being able to create a home for those renewables through being able to store it withretrofit devices and probably the first one we see would be the immersion tank and hot water tank.

[00:28:28.950]

We've done a lot of work on that and we'll have some announcements in the new year with with products and partnerships that'll be the start of that journey. So we would see the potential for you know flexible storage and to electrify existing assets such as an immersion tank to create tens of gigawatts of flexible storage which will really facilitate the energy transition.

[00:28:56.390] - Jon Slowe

Well I think asmany of our listeners know thermal storage is a lot cheaper than the batteries and electricity storage. Even with the falling battery cost today. So there are lots of homes still with hot water tanks in them so tapping into that.

[00:29:12.270] - Eamon Conway

Absolutely. Yeah I mean if you take if you take the UK and Ireland every home got an immersion tank UK there's probably eight or 10 million still there but. Well one of the challenges on that journey as well though will be the pricing obviously from the consumer because at the moment if you would if you were to heat your your hot water which is 20 percent of your energy bill with electricity it would cost you more than it would do fossil. Yeah. So there's a transition that has to happen there between bringing all the stakeholders onboard and probably over time of it that we'll see we know what we would see as it will be you know new tariffs created to match the flexibility that the technology can provide so that you can see that it's really starting to see some of the some of the UK utilities and others have that sort of tariffs offering lower cost electricity you know for for overnight charging and the like.

[00:30:01.800]

So I think that's the direction of travel and our view is that bring in our expertise of being able to bring low cost reliable home technology products to facility at that is where we see our space and the electrification of heating transport and also on the topic that Remi mentioned that it's important that you know that the technology can manage all of the future requirements. So doing one piece in isolation won't do the trick. Therefore it has to be thought through that if in the future outside someone's there's an electric vehicle, they could be using renewable electricity to heat their space heating under and hot water tanks and that has to be managed to the to the to the fact that the relevant energy actors such as the networks and the grids are all happy with that and that doesn't, one action doesn't cause someone else a problem.

[00:30:58.080]

So that's where we'll be coming from to look at it from a whole energy system point of view.

[00:31:02.980] - Jon Slowe

Yeah and I guess the market starts with with point products and then those products linked together within the home in the way Remi you described and then Eamon as you describe they linked together across see electricity value chains that they're working for maybe a a dynamic time of use tariff and also for the network company and also for the system operator Reid.

[00:31:24.460]

So as always time is marching on, so it's now crystal ball time, how we and all of our podcasts. So let's set the crystal ball now to 2025. And the question I'd like to pose to each of you will be the proportion of us that will be using heating controls or controlling the temperature in our buildings via a digital interface or even by voice.

[00:31:57.450]

So today most of us will press a button or turn a dial up or down to manage the temperature in our in our homes in 2025. What proportion of us will be doing that to our voice or a digital interface on a phone for example.

[00:32:15.950] - Jon Slowe

Arthur let's start with you in terms of where where you think that will in five years' time, six years' time.

[00:32:22.780] - Arthur Jouannic

Well I was trying to dig out the forecast that we did at Delta-EE on this but actually I think I think a lot of things changed in the last year. A lot of the service companies, utilities, have been talking about home energy management, about heat as the service, about energy service, where you basically for example get a service where you pay for your heating system and you just have 21 degree as a service.

[00:32:51.750]

And before this year I felt like this was a dream or something really far ahead and now I see everyone talking about it and trying different solutions in order to bring new solutions to market. Companies have to bring connectivity to the heating systems. So I actually really believe that there is enormous value in providing the services and therefore connectivity and heating controls and cooling controls even will become mainstream relatively quickly and quicker than we saw so potentially around a third or half of customers I think willl be connected to their are heating or cooling systems by 2025 and potentially even more as a service and energy companies want to bring the services industry.

[00:33:38.400]

So really moving out of today's niche even if it's a growing niche into the mainstream. Eamon, you may have a vested interest in answering this but how about yourself?

[00:33:51.840] - Jon Slowe

I'd say it will be two strands, Jon. I would agree with Arthur probably on the digital heating controls as a point product I would probably think 25 to 30 percent penetration but I think the more interesting development will probably be the electrification of heating transport whereby I see I see technologies such as ours being linked with flexible tariffs with utilities and folks able to turn on their devices as when there was a price signal and I think that there's a lot of value for for the energy industry and getting that right. And I think as as most industries people find where the money is and where the market value is and I think that will drive most of the activity.

[00:34:34.350]

So I would I would think there would be from a standing start probably a lot of penetration in that area where the energy utilities will will be providing time of use tariffs or flexible tariffs based on having technologies to facilitate that.

[00:34:51.600]

Okay. And last but not least Remi you've got a foot in both camps you've got a big foot in the analog, traditional world and a foot in the new world. So what proportion, where are you going to place your bets?

[00:35:06.090] - Remi Volpe

I think I'm I'm more in line with with Eamon around or around sort of 30 40 30 to 35 40 percent is where my my head's at and I think that what will drive this is is a number of I would say sort of three key areas. I think the first one is what the governments across Europe decide and you know we know that with this sort of recent announcement to become carbon neutral by 2050 you know that the initial focus is is on new build by 2025. My feeling is that some governments may well start to drive that into the installed base as well.

[00:35:45.690]

So I think the government will could potentially determine an acceleration of you know a big move into more you know electric heating sooner than what's currently in place today. That then lends itself to make sure that the interoperability and the way that the various verticals in a house can easily communicate with each other I think that's got to be paramount that people don't engage with the heating only, they can they can integrate with all the other aspects in their house like the EV, the lighting et cetera. And then I think the third key important parties we've got to get the installers onside as well that they are comfortable with what's going to be required, that there's a major sort of you know sort of training and upskilling and we're embracing new entrants to come into the into that professional channel who who really can help accelerate the uptake of smart controls.

[00:36:49.470]

Okay. So I think we've got the 25 to 30 percent, Arthur a third to a half and Remi 30 to 40 percent. So all three of you agreeing that we're going to see a lot of growth in more sophisticated heating controls in the next five years.

[00:37:06.360]

And I hope I'm encouraging all the listeners to this podcast to go back home and look at your heating controls. Have a think about what you could do with smarter digital controls and maybe upgrade, who knows. We hope you enjoyed the episode. Time to wrap up now. Thank you listeners as always for listening. Thank you Eamon for your time.

[00:37:32.990] - Eamon Conway

Thanks Jon.

[00:37:34.130] - Jon Slowe

Thanks Remi.

[00:37:36.290] - Remi Volpe

Thank you I look forward to an invite to 2025 when we can see who's won!

[00:37:41.390] - Jon Slowe

I'll hold you to that. And thanks Arthur as well.

[00:37:46.400] - Arthur Jouannic

Thanks Jon, thanks Eamon, thanks Remi.

[00:37:48.020] - Jon Slowe

We'll be back with another episode of Talking New Energy next week. Thanks and goodbye.

[00:00:04.560] - Jon Slowe

Welcome to Talking to Energy, a podcast from Delta-EE, the new energy experts . We'll be talking about how the energy transition is developing across Europe, with guests who are working at the leading edge of this transition.

[00:00:22.900]

Hello and welcome to the episode.

[00:00:24.820]

Energy is becoming more distributed. We're seeing millions of energy assets across countries, comprised of rooftop photovoltaics, demand response enabled products, batteries EV charging infrastructure and more. Now this is opening up opportunities and challenges for financing energy infrastructure. Financing large numbers of small assets is really different from financing a small number of large power plants which is what we've had over previous decades. And in this episode we'll be exploring this financing challenge with a particular focus on EV electric vehicle charging. And within that this area looking particularly at public charging electric vehicle infrastructure.

[00:01:11.140]

As electrification of transport gathers pace, so grows the amount of charging infrastructure and with that the need for finance for this infrastructure. So I'm joined today by three fantastic guests to explore this area. My first guest is from the finance sector, Stirling Habbitts, who works with Dutch based Triodos Bank on financing renewable energy and sustainable infrastructure.

[00:01:35.530]

Hello Stirling.

[00:01:38.510] - Stirling Habbitts

Hi Jon. Thank you for having me on the podcast.

[00:01:42.510] - Jon Slowe

You're very welcome and Stirling for those listeners who aren't familiar with the finance world. How would you describe your role in the energy transition?

[00:01:54.900] - Stirling Habbitts

Yes sure. So Triodos Bank is a Dutch bank. We've always focused on environmental and and sustainability as part of our mission. And in practice that means that we have done a lot of finance of renewable energy. That would be solar farm, wind farms, hydroelectric projects across Europe and also in the UK, where we've been active for about 20 years already.

[00:02:22.150]

And we are actually one of the leading banks in financing of renewable energy. And as part of that we've also done rooftop solar and related areas such as smart meters and electric vehicle charging as well.

[00:02:37.090] - Jon Slowe

Okay. So you're you're moving Stirling from financing larger assets or small numbers of larger assets maybe a big wind farm or a big solar farm to many smaller assets. So smart meters, electric vehicle charging, rooftop solar. These are very small in size. Are you comfortable or would you say you've made that transition to be really comfortable with financing smaller assets or is that still something you're learning about as you're moving more or more in that direction.

[00:03:10.750] - Stirling Habbitts

I would say we the transition's already being made not only by us but by some other banks as well.

[00:03:17.230]

So rooftop solar for example has been quite widely financed by banks and that is many small rooftop installations of course across many buildings. One of the more common is rooftop solar on social housing for example. And in the UK for example it's not widely known that a lot of the smart meters in the UK have been financed by banks. So the techniques and the structures to do that are fairly established and we're now we're now using those structures to apply to finance of electric vehicle charging.

[00:03:51.870] - Jon Slowe

Great. We'll come back to you in a bit Stirling and hear more about that. My second guest today is Mark Henderson, chief investment officer at Gridserve. Hello Mark.

[00:04:01.800] - Mark Henderson

Hello Jon, thank you for having me on board today. GridServe may not be as well known as Triodos to many people listening but we are a rapidly growing tech enabled International Sustainable Energy business founded just a few years ago and we really cover the spectrum of developing, building, owning and operating solar energy and battery storage projects. And the aim of these projects is to provide services for what we term critical power infrastructure of which electric vehicle charging is a key focus for us. My role as a chief investment officer is to raise funding for the projects and for the company. And in that regard I'm a bit of a classic poacher turned gamekeeper having spent about 25 years financing infrastructure projects mainly in the power and renewable energy sectors.

[00:05:04.650] - Jon Slowe

Can you give us an idea have the scale of Gridserve, Mark I mean you're a few years old so I'm sure you, I know you're growing quickly, numbers of projects amount of money invested orwhat ever metric you prefer.

[00:05:18.750] - Mark Henderson

Well we've already got 60 megawatts of projects commissioning literally as we speak at the moment in the UK. These are solar and storage projects. And actually the first in the UK to have both by facial technology and tracking systems as well. So that's 60 megawatts so right about 60 million pounds of cost.

[00:05:44.880]

And we are about to launch our first electric vehicle charging station in Braintree in Essex hopefully breaking ground during the course this month says going to be a very busy month for us here at Gridserve. And we are planning on building over 100 electric vehicle charging stations in the next five years.

[00:06:08.340] - Jon Slowe

Great. Well we're excited to hear more about that in a minute after I've introduced my third guest. My colleague here at Delta-EE, John Murray. Hello John.

[00:06:18.820] - John Murray

Hello Jon, great to be here.

[00:06:19.760] - Jon Slowe

So two John's on this podcast. So John Murray John you work on our snappily named Electric Vehicles and Electricity Research Service. And can you start by breaking down the electric vehicle charging infrastructure space of it and how we should think about the different forms or type of easy charging.

[00:06:48.820] - John Murray

Yeah sure Jon. So at Delta-EE when we are considering EV charging we refer to three different types of charging locations in a very simple sense. We've got home charging, workplace charging, and public charging.

[00:07:05.420] - Jon Slowe

So home is of the essence in my driveway, workplaces obvious, public could encompass a few different things. How would you how should we think about public in the range of different things?

[00:07:18.150] - John Murray

That's right. Thanks. Yeah. So public charging. So yeah it's a bit more complicated. So again we've put this in to three different types. First of all there is destination charging which includes for example topping up when visiting the supermarket or the cinema, there is on street charging which as the name suggests refers to EV chargers that are located on roads and streets. These are particularly important for drivers that do not have access to off street car parking. And then there is what we refer to as transit. And these are the chargers that are typically higher speed higher powered devices that enable drivers to recharge their batteries in a relatively short time period to enable them to continue with their onward journeys.

[00:08:09.050] - Jon Slowe

Okay. So that's very helpful breakdown of public. And Mark if we can come back to you now and the project you described in Essex just outside London and 100 that you have in the pipeline, which one of those three types of public charging would you say Gridserve is focused on. How would you how would you match what you're doing to John's definitions?

[00:08:32.840] - Mark Henderson

That's quite simple and a very good series of definitions. We are very much a transit charging focus. We want to be along major roads - they don't have to be motorways - A roads are perfectly good but it's definitely high frequency of traffic. And we want to be close as well very close to urban centers so people can also easily nip out here within a 10-15 minute drive and quickly charge up while they're also getting their groceries as well. So it's slightly perhaps backs on to the destination definition as well but we see it overall as a transit approach.

[00:09:13.100] - Jon Slowe

Okay. And for our listeners paint a picture of what your charging station's will look like - maybe pick the one in Braintree in Essex. Yeah. What would we see. What would it be like turning up to one?

[00:09:26.420] - Mark Henderson

Well I'm delighted to say actually if you go on to Youtube and type in Gridserve you'll actually see a mockup of it in a virtual reality format. And the important thing is that these are scale infrastructure projects. So they are capable of taking multiple cars 24 at a time charging together very like a petrol forecourt and we can call them electric forecourts. So they can take multiple cars doing ultra fast charging that that 350 kilowatts and upwards. But it also has under a nice solar canopy a convenience retail area as well because we don't think range anxiety exists any longer.

[00:10:12.230]

At Gridserve we very much believe it's actually charging anxiety: if you turn up does it work? How easy is it to make it work and what do you do during the time you're waiting for the car to to charge up? So you want to make this ultra fast, very convenient and something which really can be fitted in to your normal day to day travelling and shopping and everything else.

[00:10:39.230] - Jon Slowe

So that's quite a sense of in terms of footprint physical footprint and trying to think of a petrol station you're talking about sort of a number of petrol stations equivalence physical footprint from the sound of it?

[00:10:54.810] - Mark Henderson

That's right. It's perhaps more easily envisaged as more like that though some motorway service stations to have with multiple car parking bays as well as the convenience retail side of it as well. And some of these projects as well will have solar, an actual solar farm, physically attached to them in the adjacent fields.

[00:11:21.620] - Jon Slowe

And how... it sounds quite capital intensive. So what sort of numbers are we talking about per project or the Braintree, Essex example, ..or how much investment. What's the price tag on that?

[00:11:37.130] - Mark Henderson

It is millions of pounds... single figure millions. I mean I suppose the easiest way to do it express it is that are over 100 sites that we're planning to build in the next five years is going to cost about one billion pounds so you can quickly do the maths on that. So these are serious 'bits of infrastructure. It's not just this individual charging points in a supermarket car park. These are standalone infrastructure which we expect to be here still in 50 years time.

[00:12:10.220] - Jon Slowe

And quite capital intensive or very capital intensive... So can you tell us a bit about that... the revenue model the the business model.

[00:12:22.610] - Mark Henderson

Well that's right. Because we are creating really a mini a whole new infrastructure class with each one being really a mini business in its own right So unlike a solar farm where we're just used to selling electricity and that's it, here we've had to model and develop programs for our whole series of different revenue streams. Where we're generating solar, you've got clearly the electricity generation, all of these projects will have a meaningful and I mean for at least five megawatt size of battery next to them in order to provide buffering to the grid and actually support the grid in places.

[00:13:01.880]

So that means that the battery has a number of different battery streams which you would probably familiar with in terms of frequency response and just load shifting and arbitrage of power loads and then you've got the revenue from the cars charging and also revenue from the retail itself. So we obviously think that this variety is a great thing for investors and lenders to to be supporting because it does give it reduces the risk by having that diversity of revenue streams.

[00:13:37.880]

And that's before we start getting into additional ones like advertising and charging our cars et cetera.

[00:13:43.620] - Jon Slowe

And I may be digging into commercially sensitive information Mark so tell me if I am, but how do those four revenue streams you outline compare? So for the car charging for example is that half or two thirds of the revenue or can you give us a feel for the relativity between those streams.

[00:14:01.220] - Mark Henderson

Yes it's early here. So it is a slightly delicate area but I think the easy one is that to begin with they are fairly, all fairly comparable. The big difference is over time the scale of the growth of the EV charging itself.

[00:14:19.970]

So at the moment we are having a wonderful revolution in terms of electric vehicles coming onto the roads in Britain but it's still a very very small number. So we have worked out a model of what do we have to believe in? Do we believe we'll get at least 5 percent utilisation in the first year? Now that's not a challenging number for example. Not saying it's the right number we picked on but if you can you can at least back sort of to that go right - that's something which everyone should be able to sign off on.

[00:14:50.000]

So if we've got that then overlay that with the growth of the EV sales over the next few years and then you can start mapping out how you feel the charging growth can can increase as well. And that gives a lot of upside but I think the community retail is perhaps less exciting in terms of growth but it's actually a very very meaningful and reliable source of revenue stream. BP have now gone public in saying that in their petrol forecourt half of the customers they have do not buy any petrol at all but purely go there for the convenience.

[00:15:30.670]

So you know even if there's no EVs, no electric vehicles going past, we think we'll be selling these coffees and food and the like.

[00:15:39.190] - Jon Slowe

Yeah and I think that's fascinating on us picking up what you said earlier it's a different type of different class of infrastructure because you are blending revenue streams that haven't been blended in that way before.

[00:15:52.460]

For financing, so clearly that's you know 100 of these sites a billion pounds of investment. Can you tell us a bit about how you're looking to finance them or the thought process you've gone through or the journey you've gone through and thinking about the financing of these assets.

[00:16:11.760] - Mark Henderson

Yes we are looking to a mix of debt and equity. Each project will be ringfenced in its own special purpose vehicle and into a good project finance style then raising debt and equity against each project itself. So they will be standalone and and capable of repaying any debt.

[00:16:37.060]

Clearly that with the revenue streams being uncontracted on the whole - this is an area which, Stirling, I'm sure it doesn't get you jumping out of bed in excitement in the morning because people are a little bit wary of uncontracted revenues. So we are looking at a range of solutions where we can be financing each side but I can guarantee today that these projects will not be financed once and once only, they'll be financed and they'll be refinanced as more of them are built out and can be aggregated together and they'll be re-refinanced every few years as the revenue streams start becoming more proven and more established and therefore more leverage can be applied to them. So it will be very capital intensive and we are always looking for different sources of capital that can come to play a part in it.

[00:17:35.750] - Jon Slowe

Great. Thanks Mark. That's really exciting to hear.

[00:17:38.960]

Stirling I'd like to bring you in at this point. Now Triodos you have outlined at the beginning the range of things that you finance from large wind farms down to the smaller rooftop solar on social housing. Looking at electric vehicle charging infrastructure and maybe the public different types of public infrastructure that John outlined at the beginning, how challenging is electric vehicle charging infrastructure for someone like Triodos? Is it just a case of a cookie cutter. We've done it for solar we've done it for smart meters do it for EV charging infrastructure or does it bring some very different challenges to you?

[00:18:23.280] - Stirling Habbitts

Thanks for question, Jon. It does it does have different challenges, absolutely. So I think it's a bit of a mix mixture. I think fundamentally if we look at the a few of the aspects starting perhaps with the technology I think we're relatively comfortable with the with the technology and on the whole it's relatively simple technology. For the most part it is a bit too simplistic to say it's a plug. Yeah it's a big plug and with perhaps an inverter and a bit more kit in it. Technology wise, I think we've become quite comfortable quite quickly so that's definitely a plus.

[00:19:08.130]

Certainly for example in the early days of solar there were questions about the solar panels and viewed as quite new technology. But I think in EVe charging we've become comfortable much much more quickly. The distributed nature of the assets, again it depends on the project, but having assets in many different locations we've tackled that and that's already been proven to be bankable for example with rooftop solar and smart meters so that is also okay you know probably the big challenge in the finance is the revenue actually that that's where we see the big challenge.

[00:19:45.810] - Jon Slowe

Yeah because of the utilisation rates of a lot of this infrastructure will be very low in the early days. And presumably when you model that revenue flows there's a lot of uncertainty and risk around that revenue. So that must be tough.

[00:20:06.410] - Stirling Habbitts

Yes. So we we have what we have found though is there's a lot there's a lot happening in the space that a lot of different opportunities out there. And so we we have found quite a diverse range of approaches and models. So one of the - I'll give you a couple of examples of projects which we have progressed further with. One project that we're working on at the moment which we're actually quite advanced on is a project for a large UK corporate. So it's quite different to Mark's project and this is something I think this type of project we will see more of as well.

[00:20:43.840]

So the corporate OEMs, I would say a household name corporate in the UK, they own a lot of buildings across the UK - thousands - and lots of their buildings do have parking in front of them and they have like many corporates now decided that they need to provide easy charging because their building is a destination which people are coming to and there's an expectation that they should be able to charge EVs. So we've said we've worked for about nine months now on a structure which is quite advanced and we're close to finalising it to finance the installation of a charging for the corporate. And what what the structure has in it which is quite unique is that the corporate is willing in the structure to pay a fixed monthly fee towards the revenue of the charge of the SPV that contains the chargepoint but the corporate wasn't willing to pay any or very little CAPEX upfront but they were basically looking for a model where they could get the charging points installed and and then without upfront cash outlay.

[00:22:07.070] - Jon Slowe

Okay. And in that model Stirling, it's easier for you with those monthly payments because they're taking some of that you're not reliant wholly on customers turning up and paying themselves to charge. Have you been presented with many projects where the sole revenue stream is from the utilisation by customers turning up with their electric vehicles? And in those projects is that more challenging a more challenging model for you?

[00:22:37.600] - Stirling Habbitts

Yes. So to answer your question maybe stepping one one step back. The first the first question there is of course also revenue from the charging in the model with the corporate because the people arriving at those buildings still do have to pay to charge their cars. And that is revenue that's channeled through the porfolio of chargepoints. So it's actually a mixture in that one of some fixed revenue if you like from the corporate monthly payments, or service fees they're called, and revenue is dependent on usage but to answer your second question Jon yes we've also looked back and worked on projects where the revenue is only from the usage and therefore has the risk of usage in it.

[00:23:28.030] - Jon Slowe

Okay. So that can work but with a bit more challenge for you.

[00:23:34.580] - Stirling Habbitts

Yes it's quite there's quite a lot of diversity out there at the moment in the different approaches and different business models. Another example I can give, which we we did receive approval for inside the bank, was a portfolio of electric vehicle charging for a medium sized town in the UK specifically installed for the taxi fleet of the town.

[00:23:59.710] - Jon Slowe

OK.

[00:24:00.060] - Stirling Habbitts

In that particular, so to elaborate a little more on that one... There are a lot of initiatives across cities in the UK to electrify taxis (different cities taking different approaches) but essentially cities can control and regulate their own taxi fleet and can require them to become electric. That's a very interesting area because of course if a city says the taxi fleets must become electric within a certain period of time then one has a bit more certainty around the demand for electric vehicle charging customer to those taxis of course.

[00:24:44.090] - Jon Slowe

Yeah I see that yes.

[00:24:48.780] - John Murray

Stirling, a question from my side if you don't mind. I mean well we've been monitoring the sector for a few years now and even over a relatively short period of time over the last three or four years we've seen the sector evolve very quickly from having what were so-called fast chargers being superseded by even faster rapid chargers and those almost to some extent being superseded by what have now been called high powered chargers. So it is a sector which has moved very quickly in the last just few years and the technology that's going in the ground.

[00:25:25.840]

How can you as an investor sort of mitigate the risk that that technology might be outdated and even just in the next three or four or five years time.

[00:25:35.970] - Stirling Habbitts

No it's a very valid question I think the main mitigate to the risk is for the the repayment of the loans, in our case it's mostly loans that we're providing, for the repayment of the loans to be within a period that doesn't expose the underlying assets to redundancy risk if you like. And we think that that's what we have seen quite a bit of time on that and we think that that is that is something we can become comfortable with a loan that could be repaid for example five six seven years that would would we don't believe that would have major redundancy risk with the underlying assets depending where it was actually put in. I think a longer a longer period of time one has to think more carefully but it's very much related to the period of the finance.

[00:26:27.960] - Jon Slowe

Maybe Mark, that's an interesting question for you with investment.

[00:26:31.680] - Mark Henderson

Yes absolutely. Yes.

[00:26:34.260]

I wanted to pick up on that because I think the redundancy is when we're used again to looking at standalone infrastructure projects which don't really change very much - take a power plant for example it sits have producing away - and whilst on an electric vehicle charging station you may have the actual chargers being a bit redundant or needing to be replaced butthat can be done within the if you like that the framework of the whole charging station and the charging station will still remain there and it will still be being used. So I see that really being an operation and maintenance sort of a general cost which will be incurred every year. I don't think there is any risk at all of these charging stations suddenly having to be closed down in a five or 10 years' time at all. You know look at the petrol stations and petrol stations have reduced in number but that's for other reasons. I think it's more akin to airports.

[00:27:37.890] - Stirling Habbitts

I would agree with Mark.

[00:27:43.520]

I think that what we'll probably see actually is that the the chargepoints, more chargepoints, get installed where chargepoints are already installed and that we will probably see with the newer chargepoints as they come in those are the ones that are faster and more sophisticated but that the existing charge points are still utilised because the the existing charge points are often what will they will be for electric vehicles that are rolled out now and those electric vehicles that have been rolled out now most of them probably won't be able to charge as fast as some of the future vehicles will be able to charge out but will nevertheless willhave to charge so there will be electric vehicles on the on the road that can use both the older electric vehicle charging point to newer ones. So having a mixture of technology as the technology changes and as more chargepoints get put in is probably also part of the mitigation.

[00:28:44.500] - Jon Slowe

Yeah I can I can see that. Mark, earlier on you talked a bit about the grid services so you have batteries, those batteries will be setting into ancillary services market. And Stirling I'm interested in the sorts of things your financing and looking at. That's an important revenue stream but how risky do you see that revenue stream of thosr grid services from from chargepoints?

[00:29:16.250] - Stirling Habbitts

Yes it's a that's a that's a very important question. So far we haven't quite got to tackle that yet but we haven't yet tackled the question of how to finance battery plus chargepoint. Projects that we're currently working on this year have been porfolios of only chargepoints and that has largely been possible because the number of charge points per location in the projects we're working on has been small enough that the there's no need for a grid an upgrade to the grid connection and also no need for battery to go alongside. But I can certainly see in the coming years as more chargepoints are installed in particular locations that that's going to be a more important question.

[00:30:03.350] - Jon Slowe

So Mark, those revenue streams, would you say that's the icing on the cake or is it a slice of the cake or is it just a cherry on top of the icing of the cake?

[00:30:14.230] - Mark Henderson

It's certainly a meaningful slice of the cake. And I think actually that the cherry on top is the charging itself. It came back to what is the growth going to be like in electric vehicles. I think everyone in this call will be saying it's going to be phenomenal. We're going from very low standing start almost to being something which would be the dominant form of of transport in most countries. And so that means there's going to be a lot more charging and that growth is is the real cherry and that's the the real equity upside if you're looking to invest in this.

[00:30:52.550]

I think the good news is that the battery revenues and the others say the convenience retail revenues mean that you don't lose your shirt you get to capital back but how many shirts you get back will depend on the scale of the EV uptake. And so that's what I think makes this actually a very interesting investment for people who can be more flexible. And in fact one thing I should have mentioned about the financing is that for all of our charging stations we want to introduce an element of crowdfunding because we want people in the local communities to share in it, share in the benefits of it. It is a community involvement and it's only right and proper that they should be enjoying the benefits of it as well. So we'll be making that available as well to people.

[00:31:42.140]

That's an interesting angle and what I found really fascinating to explore so far has been how from both of your perspectives you canderisk the utilisation of the charging infrastructure. I've seen so many uptake curves for electric vehicles out there. They've all got slight different shapes. Hockey stick point in the plan was slightly different. So Ito try to structure finance around to follow those curves will have quite a lot of risk around it. And both of you have described ways in which you can derisk that.

[00:32:19.320] - Stirling Habbitts

Tthe different methods are, one is to mix the revenue with other types of revenues as in Mark's projects and another one is to look at the demand side. So when you have a more of a captive fleet of taxis or captive fleet of delivery vehicles you know the buses that's another route now.

[00:32:44.450] - Jon Slowe

Time is as always getting the better of us in this podcast so it's crystal ball time and I had a slight challenge this week planning the podcast in the crystal ball question was going to be because to get a sharp crystal ball question around finance was was tough. So I'm gonna go back to John, your definition of the different types of TV charging.

[00:33:10.480]

So we had home, work and public if I remember right.

[00:33:15.610] - John Murray

That's right. Yeah.

[00:33:17.840] - Jon Slowe

And of public there were the three different types of public charging. But if we put all that public charging together what I'm going to ask each of you to do is to set the dial to 2030 on the crystal ball and I'll ask each of you what you think the split of EV charging will be in 2030 that will use public infrastructure rather than home or workplace so you can give a range, a precise number, up to you...

[00:33:49.790]

John would you like to go first and what do you see in the crystal ball for 2030?

[00:33:55.530] - John Murray

Yeah thanks Jon. Well I mean it's a really interesting question. I mean there are some in the industry that are advocating the so called forecourt model that we're all very familiar with similar to how we refuel are petrol and diesel cars today. And so doing that by rolling out very high speed chargers that can charge up an EV in maybe say five or 10 minutes and then at the other end of the spectrum there is the opinion that home and workplace charging will be able to cater for a large majority of our charging needs. And we've not really talked actually on this podcast about home and workplace charging, there's been much more focus on the public charging space.

[00:34:34.980]

But the public charging and home and workplace charging they cater for different needs. We didn't really talk about home charging at all but that is a very convenient and relatively cheap way to charge our vehicles today. So I don't know if I'm in a position to really give some numbers but I think the reality is that we're going to see a real mix across the different types of charging locations to cater for the broad range of drivers needs because no two drivers have the same driving patterns, right

[00:35:09.310] - Jon Slowe

Yeah and if you would have to say which would be most or the least out of those three what would you say?

[00:35:14.150] - John Murray

So in the research that we've done, I mean home charging is very much the most common way to charge vehicles today. I think we see that home charging will continue to be the most predominant one into the future but that's not to undermine the role that public charging has in terms of giving driver the confidence that they will have enough juice in the battery to to get from A to B. So home charging, workplace charging and public charging are all really important but they play slightly different roles. But I think if you had to put me on one to go for one I think most charging will be within the home.

[00:35:53.180] - Mark Henderson

Okay that's interesting. I slightly disagree with that you see because I think you're absolutely right on that it will depend on the drivers habits. Sombody who's just bought a small EV just to do a quick run round to the shops or the school run, clearlythey'll be wanting to to charge at home, but where I think there is a flaw in your argument is the actual grid capacity and energy capacity. National Grid have already published studies showing that in the average UK street no more than five cars can be charging simultaneously. So if we really are moving to mass adoption of electric vehicles that means that people who are lucky enough to have charging at home are going to be in the minority. And so people will need more public spaces just the same way if you've met a petrol station with a couple of miles of them and go and try and fill up tey'll be doing the same thing with even charging. So I say I say this green believe it will be much more public charge and then people perhaps appreciating at the moment.

[00:36:59.610] - Jon Slowe

Well Mark, given your business I'm not surprised and I think that's [...] Stirling last but not least how do you see that mix of home workplace and public?

[00:37:12.990] - Stirling Habbitts

Yes, well there's two different views there. I'm not going to take sides this other one I'm going different into the mix. I live in London of course and actually many people in the inner cities in the US they don't have off street parking and we already see in my neighbourhood and around London cables across the across the pavements to charge EVs that are parked on the street. So I think that the on street parking and charging on street is an interesting one to watch. I wonder if a solution could be found there or not and if it could that could change the game quite quite dramatically if we see a lot of on street parking on street charging of cars. I don't I don't know if that will happen or not. That is difficult one to solve but I think it's quite an important part of the puzzle how to how to potentially provide on street charging.

[00:38:14.500]

And I had one other general thought actually. I think that if we if we look at the the diesel and petrol infrastructure to for fuelling vehicles this is this is a massive indu,stry billions in this industry, and in this conversation we're talking about it which is very exciting because what we're essentially doing is where the government has a net zero targets here in the UK now essentially we are moving towards replacing the diesel and petrol fuelling infrastructure with the very assets which we're talking about. That's a phenomenal amount of investment in assets that what coming to into existence and in the coming decades. It's very tough to say.

[00:39:00.510] - Mark Henderson

I agree very much that's a very good point there Stirling and people have to remember at the moment we've got something like eight thousand four hundred petrol stations in the UK. So when we talk about building 100 electric vehicle charging stations people seem to say oh that's an awful nice view and if it turns out there's a lot of space we're all going to fit in [...] roadside so there's definitely room for everyone in this industry.

[00:39:29.720] - Jon Slowe

Well I think that summed it up nicely, Mark.

[00:39:33.590]

The electric vehicle charging cake, coming back to the cake analogy, is going to be very large and different customers will charge in different ways as John explained and there will be no shortage of opportunities and need to develop public and charging.

[00:39:48.560]

So thank you to all my guests today, it's been a great discussion. Thanks for sharing your views. And thank you listeners for joining the podcast. And we look forward to welcoming you back next week. Goodbye.

European Utility Week: Our key takeaways

Jon Slowe, Director, Delta-EE

Arthur Jouannic, Head of Business Development - Europe, Delta-EE

John Murray, Principal Analyst, Delta-EE

Welcome to Talking to Energy, a podcast from Delta-EE, the new energy experts. We'll be talking about how the energy transition is developing across Europe with guests who are working at the leading edge of this transition.

Jon Slowe 00:00:21.160

Hello and welcome to the episode. Today we're discussing highlights from Europe's biggest meeting place for the energy transition, European Utility Week. Held over three days in beautiful Paris last week, the organisers boasted a heady 18,000 visitors. We didn't count them. We don't know whether that's right. But there sure were a lot of people there. And this year it was actually co-located with a ongoing exhibition called PowerGen Europe which has more for the megawatt scale gas engines and gas turbine market.

Jon Slowe 00:00:56.330

I'm here today with my colleagues Arthur Jouannic and John Murray who were part of the Delta-EE team in Paris. Hello Arthur.

Arthur Jouannic 00:01:05.860

Hi Jon.

Jon Slowe 00:01:07.070

Hello John.

John Murray 00:01:08.140

Hi Jon.

Jon Slowe 00:01:09.050

So we might get a bit of trouble John with two Johns here. One John with an H on John without an H!

John Murray 00:01:17.600

That's right. We'll try and we'll muddle through.

Jon Slowe 00:01:19.730

I think the three of us will manage.

Arthur Jouannic 00:01:20.870

The trouble is really for me actually!

Jon Slowe 00:01:27.530

So between the three of us and our colleagues, we presented at the exhibition we met clients we met new people, we talked to our network, we had people come and join us at our booth. We listened to other presentations. So I think a perfect mix of experiences to talk about the highlights and help our listeners understand what was hot at the event, what's changed, what's upcoming, maybe what wasn't there as well that we expected. So we'll have I think two highlights from each of us if that's okay with you both.

John Murray 00:02:01.850

Sounds good to me.

Jon Slowe 00:02:03.710

And we'll maybe, Arthur, start with you. So, what would one of your two highlights or takeaways be Arthur?

Arthur Jouannic 00:02:15.610

Well John I've been attending that conference for the past seven years now and what I can tell you is that it was really different back in the day, seven years ago. You were walking into European Utility Week and you were facing a marathon of walking from booth to booth. Basically all the companies exhibiting there were huge manufacturing companies having huge booths and really trying to show off how big they are and how great they are to potential utility customers. So it was a very very formal, you had to be dressed very formally. This year what really struck me was the fact that the event was much smaller in a way. But nonetheless with as many companies that they used to have, it's just that the the size of the booths and the number of companies were completely different from previous years.

Jon Slowe 00:03:15.890

Arthur, so you're trying to say people were a lot scruffier as well than they were before?

Arthur Jouannic 00:03:20.710

Yeah in a way. There was a lot more of a startup innovation culture compared to to previous years, which means there is more dynamics in the room, a lot more discussion, a lot more fun between people. Delta-EE were located next to the innovation hub which was a lot of small startups showing their cool products and software and that was very exciting place to be, it was really buzzing. And that wasn't something we have seen before at European Utility Week, at least not seven years ago. It was really fun, really fun event for for us to go to.

John Murray 00:03:56.480

That was one of the things that I took away as well. It was my first time at European Utility Week, but I have been to the twin event PowerGen Europe before and while you had the traditional companies that have been there for many years, you know, they were still present, the established utility companies, the network companies, but you had lots of different companies from different backgrounds like the tech startups, the industry associations, the network companies and car manufacturers and mobility service providers. They were all there, all exchanging views and giving their perspective on the market. It was a really great high energy event to be at.

Jon Slowe 00:04:35.560

One thing I noticed was that the the only two utilities, and you might correct me here, that I saw exhibiting were Centrica with Centrica Business Solutions, and Enedis, the French DSO. So maybe because we were in Paris, I don't know, whereas in previous years virtually all the big European utilities have had their own stands saying 'hey look at me I'm doing this I'm doing that'. So they weren't there although the people were certainly all there and we even had stands from Google focusing on their smart home, Microsoft on some of their capability around energy insights and managing data in the home. So yeah I think that's a good characterisation, John a real melting pot. And Arthur, do you think more more software than hardware or not at that stage yet just a bigger mix of software and hardware?

Arthur Jouannic 00:05:30.700

Well the thing is that before these companies were trying to sell physical products to utilities from electricity products to metering products etc. And what you realise is that now noone is really actually selling products anymore. Everyone is talking about how the software works and what it can enable, what services you can provide to utilities. And that's really one of the reasons why the types of companies change. The ones who are exhibiting are the ones who are trying to offer software to utility companies and that's a very different offer to the huge hardware stands like you used to have.

Jon Slowe 00:06:11.200

Okay. So some big hardware stands were there, like Siemens with a very big portfolio, they were exhibiting, so theme number is more software and less hardware. John - how about your number one takeaway?

John Murray 00:06:29.790

My number one takeaway, well one of the topics that I'm looking at very closely within Delta-EE is electric vehicles. And it's been, if not the hot topic of this year, maybe the hot topic of last year. It's a huge thing that that's kind of taken the energy world I guess by storm over the last few years. So I was there expecting to have lots of conversations about the different EV type players at European Utility Week and there were lots of people there talking about EVs, but it just wasn't quite of the scale that I had been expecting. I remember when speaking to you guys in previous years there was really high energy about electric vehicles. I'd expect a huge buzz around that. And I had a lot of conversations with people, but was it just wasn't quite at the scale that I had been expecting.

Jon Slowe 00:07:22.370

John for me that's a sign that the utility world, if I can use that slightly all encompassing word, or I think the electricity world and the EV world still have a lot further to go to come together. Our hypothesis here at Delta-EE is that they will become very very significant, particularly for the utility sector. But I think we're still quite early on in that journey between the two different worlds becoming one, maybe that's too strong, or getting to know each other better.

John Murray 00:07:57.240

Yeah I think you're right, they're sort of at the fringes I think of the energy world, trying to understand how it can best play into the EV space and vice versa. So yeah, I guess some companies are a bit more advanced than others when it comes to that interplay. But there's a huge opportunity there, and that's what we are certainly seeing. So I think it's a good observation, Jon, actually that there's still questions there about the role that energy companies, the utility guys, can play when it comes to moving into the e-mobility space and vice versa. And one of the other observations that I had is maybe just that there are so many EV events going on today so maybe an element of sort of 'EV event fatigue'. There are a few other EV events going on around about the same time. So an element of that as well.

Arthur Jouannic 00:08:55.880

So, one thing I realised actually about the utility business is that it seems to me that the EV teams are usually not part of the same teams as the rest of the core innovation services part of the business. Could it be that potentially the guys that we usually see at European Utility Week are people focusing on services and innovation? They are not the same guys that are looking at the EV world and that this is a completely separate business unit for most utilities still?

Jon Slowe 00:09:28.300

Yeah I think there might be something in that, Arthur, if I circle around different utilities in my head, then I think you're right, they generally are quite separate teams and whether that's right or wrong I don't know. It still feels it's like a little arm of most utilities or electricity retailers or electricity companies. And it's got some way to go before it becomes a core part. Maybe that's fair and right given the small number of EVs on the road at the moment.

John Murray 00:10:00.870

But I think it's also a nod, that when you look at some of the large utilities that they are actually investing quite a lot into the EV space and they are actually developing their own whole teams and business units looking at EVs. I think is a nod in how seriously the utility companies are starting to take EVs, but it's just not become integrated into the 'business as usual' part of their main operations.

Jon Slowe 00:10:25.850

Well I'm going to summarize this second point as, maybe a bit provocative, but 'where was the EV sector?'. So far - more software less hardware compared to previous years. Second, where is the EV sector. Now it's my go. So my takeaway number one will be around energy insights and services. So, I think like in previous years there were a number of energy insight vendors present. Arthur you spoke at Eliq's breakfast, for example, event talking about how they're developing their energy insights business.

John Murray 00:11:08.970

And very good it was too, by the way! I was there and you presented very well Arthur, it was a great conversation.

Arthur Jouannic 00:11:15.170

Thank you very much John.

Jon Slowe 00:11:16.910

What I still see as a lack though, is customer centricity and that's a horribly overused word but there was still a huge amount of what I'd call tech. Look what the tech can do - whether it's a virtual power plant, home energy management, energy insights - a huge amount of 'hey I can do X, I can do Y, I could do handstands, I can do forward rolls!', but still for me (and I'm happy to be challenged by people listening to this), a big lack of developing this into really strong customer propositions. Now we know that people are trying to change that but I came away from the event thinking wow, there's still a long way to go here before the sector can say at all whether its energy centric or really becoming more so more customer centric than it is today.

Arthur Jouannic 00:12:14.840

I kind of disagree with that Jon, actually what we saw four years ago was two groups of developments. One being energy monitoring/energy insights software companies, and the other one being these macro generation, home energy management companies trying to optimize self consumption within the home. And it feels to me like this year the two worlds are starting to emerge a little bit where the leading home energy management companies are asking the software specialists in energy insights and customer engagement to help them better engage these customers that are really engaging really well with their own self generation and consumption. So, you're right it's not mainstream yet, but for the new energy world it's seems to me that it starts to be much more integrated with specialist energy customer engagers and and software solutions that help home energy management companies do a better job with their customers.

Jon Slowe 00:13:15.100

Okay, well I take your point that maybe those two worlds of energy insights and home energy management are beginning to merge, and we see capabilities of one in the other and vice versa. What do you think about the point though Arthur, that this is still a bit 'tech push' because I still saw lots of 'oh we can create a graph of how you use electricity' and most customers just don't care about that. So I still feel there's a long way to go to turn it into really strong service propositions.

Arthur Jouannic 00:13:47.060

Yeah, I mean there are more than 25 million customers in Europe using energy insight apps. A lot of the apps actually are really good. They are less talking about kilowatt hours and consumption and they are much more trying to empower the customer to do things about it, to help them on a day to day basis and a lot of these companies now talk about collaboration with the customer. So we see a lot of propositions like an idea of service or heater service emerging which require a lot of understanding about the technicality of the devices in the home, but also working with the customer to to understand how best to optimize the services. Actually think I've seen a few demos for these products and I think they're really really good and engaging and we could potentially see the chasm being crossed with these sorts of products in the next few years. So I'm very optimistic about it.

John Murray 00:14:43.600

I think the companies that are making these products though Arthur, and maybe to you as well Jon, you know they're providing the energy insights but are they are they profitable, are they making money? I mean the might of millions of customers and doing these cartwheels that Jon mentioned but, is there money to be made at the moment in providing these services to customers.

Arthur Jouannic 00:15:02.810

Most of them are a 'software as a service' business model, where they are not owned by the utility itself, and yeah I see them making money, they are growing. We have seen them five, six years ago and they've been growing quite nicely. Perhaps some of them still require external investors to scale the business up, but I know some of them are doing quite good business in the SAAS business model and as long as they manage to deliver their products on time with the expectation in collaboration with their utility clients, I don't see why there's no business to do in this space. There will be lots more demand going forward.

Jon Slowe 00:15:44.590

Okay. Well I'm going to I'm going to compromise with you Arthur, and lets say where takeaway number three is we're on the journey towards more customer centric propositions and service based models. And I think you're right. There was evidence of this. I just think it's gone. And there were some great companies with great propositions but there's I think a lot further to go with that. So takeaway number three - on the journey to more customer centric propositions. So, Arthur I think we come back to you now for your second takeaway.

Arthur Jouannic 00:16:23.870

So I just mentioned it in the energy insights discussion that there were some companies that need more and more investors. What really struck me was the number of, or the larger presence of, investors around the exhibition. Back in the day there were investors but mostly focusing on fixed fee energy and now now it seems like there is a lot of VC from oil majors or from utilities. There are a new independent group of investors who are seeing an opportunity in new energy particularly around the customer end of things and all of them really believe that having a portfolio of investment in this space will be highly profitable in the future. And I think from two or three years ago the big change, people believed at the time that investing in new energy and the customer side of the meter was interesting but there were better investments. And today these guys seem to think that actually this is the better investment and are solely focused on that. So to me it was a clear change from from a few years ago to this year.

Jon Slowe 00:17:35.510

You know I talked with both a number of investors who are looking for opportunities and a number of companies who are in the middle of raising capital. And I think that's there was a nice meeting point of more investors, more more impact investment money (looking for a home) and lots of opportunities to invest. I do think that the energy sector is a potentially tricky sector to invest in because every market is so different, the complexities of the electricity markets country by country, the policy and regulations. But it is encouraging, I think that we see this meeting of more capital looking to come to the sector, and obviously the need for capital as you say Arthur to scale these promising businesses.

John Murray 00:18:32.170

I mean this is another example isn't it. If it were required of new energy becoming more mainstream and the money follows isn't it. And you need both don't you, you need the new energy sector to actually have the credibility and to progress and to provide your compelling products and services for customers but then also you need the financial backing to get to scale don't you.

Jon Slowe 00:18:54.040

Well let's call this takeaway number four - more investment interest. Either of you got a better word than interest? It's a bit weak.

Arthur Jouannic 00:19:05.820

Appetite. So there is there is money to make for investors and that's the big change from before.

Jon Slowe 00:19:11.920

More investor interest and appetite. Let's stick with that for number four. John - two more to go, one from you, one from me. So what's your second takeaway?

John Murray 00:19:23.440

Yeah okay. A second takeaway. We've talked a lot about actually what's happened on the European Utility Week side but let's not forget the other twin event which was PowerGen Europe, and that's an event that I've been to for a number of years before and this is really sort of talking about the hardware, the the gas engines, the gas turbines, and the power generation sector really.

Jon Slowe 00:19:45.710

So companies like Rolls Royce, like Kawasaki...

John Murray 00:19:48.910

Siemens, G.E., those sorts of familiar names that go across lots of different verticals but they've historically been very much involved in the power gen sector and they were present again at this event with the PowerGen Europe hat on. My observation here is that in the past when I've been to these companies for many many years there have been maybe a sort of a resistance to the change going on in the energy sector to some extent, maybe just not sort of believing necessarily the scale of the change they were seeing from old energy to new energy, the pace of change things like that. That for me has in the past led to questions about the role that these sorts of companies can play in the new energy world. But at the event last week and also in conversations I've been having with the industry more recently I think these guys have really changed their narrative about new energy and the role which they can play within that, so much more chat around flexible generation if you like. So being able to provide dispatchable power generation to complement intermittent renewables for example, much more in terms of distributed power, local energy systems microgrids. So providing that sort of very local energy for local consumers and then also the way in which these companies can use either low carbon or zero carbon gases rather than sort of the fossil fuel gases like natural gas and things like that. So it's an observation that actually this transition is potentially having quite a big impact on these guys. You know the names you mentioned before, it's taken a while for these companies I think to really consider how best can they play in the future. But actually I think now they're at the point of actually being able to have a much clearer direction in the role they can play in the proposition to make and develop and complement this whole new energy world that we are moving towards.

Jon Slowe 00:21:55.900

So John I'm going to try and characterize that with a key takeaway so something like old generation finds its niche in new energy?

John Murray 00:22:07.240

Yeah. I think that that captures it.

Jon Slowe 00:22:11.870

Okay. Niche is maybe a bit unfair. Old generation finds its place in new energy.

John Murray 00:22:16.650

Finds its place, complements new energy. Words to that effect. I think there really is a role, a really important role I think for that dispatchable generation. But the key is to look not just in the next 5, 10, 15 years where around the world there is always going to be a need for your access to power generation but actually what's going to be the role in sort of 20 or 30 or 40 years time from when we're at sort of a net zero.

Jon Slowe 00:22:48.020

So the three elements of that - old energy finds its place in new energy, flexibility, micro grids and low and zero carbon fuels.

John Murray 00:22:56.200

Yep that captures it.

Jon Slowe 00:22:56.310

Okay. Which brings me to my - I've got a choice of two for my last one. My less serious one is that the Belgian pavilion served the best beer at the event...

John Murray 00:23:11.010

Well let's start with that one. What do you think?

Arthur Jouannic 00:23:16.550

The two Johns have been spotted every day at this pavilion. I can attest to this!

Jon Slowe 00:23:21.340

Arthur you will make the case fo the French, I'm sure. My more serious one is around the flexibility, so for me it was interesting seeing the different angles on demand side flexibility. I think there were a number of really interesting home energy management companies looking to aggregate demand from the home, parcel it up in a platform or a virtual power plant, and be able to use that flexibility. And that's not new, but there was a big focus for example from the European Federation of Energy Traders, so the mainstream electricity markets starting to have more focus on flexibility. The start of distribution network companies using flexibility. That emerged a little bit.

John Murray 00:24:10.490

We've seen the emergence of haven't we Jon. We've been looking at that as a business in terms of the emergence of sort of flexibility markets in some countries. And in your view is that something which is just beginning to emerge across all of Europe or are some countries ahead when it comes to that sort of thing?

Jon Slowe 00:24:28.370

I think some are definitely ahead. I think it depends where, what angle you're taking. If you're looking at distribution networks, the UK or GB is definitely ahead. If you're looking at self consumption then that's a German market with PV and some of the inverter manufacturers doing more around that. Companies like Greencom, other companies who've been doing this for a while looking to monetize the flexibility in different ways for balancing services in the electricity markets, ancillary services for system operators. So I think flexibility across the whole value chain is getting a bigger focus. Arthur you've been looking at home energy management in this area. What was your your view on flexibility? Do you see much change?

Arthur Jouannic 00:25:17.600

Well the main change is, everyone is talking about flexibility in home energy management. That's clear, a lot of companies have their own views on what's happening in their own markets, in their own niche, and now this starts to sense an opportunity to grow somewhere else and do other things. And the number of questions I've tried to answer, linked to these two topics - flexibility and home energy management is huge. I've pretty much felt like I talked about it for three days. So to me the interest is really fascinating around this. What else is just a buzz, or the start of the industry believing in this market? I don't know but I really believe actually people start to think this is going to grow fast and I don't want to miss the boat. So yeah I felt a real buzz around that topic, yes.

Jon Slowe 00:26:13.740

Okay so I'm going to characterize this last one, number six, as flexibility across the whole value chain from the home to all elements of the electricity system. Okay. I'm going to run it through now all six and then I'm going to ask each of you for what you think the key theme will be next year if you have to pick out one. Well, next year or the next years. So the first theme was more software less hardware. The second theme with yours John - where was EV sector? The third theme was mine on the journey towards more customer centric propositions. Fourth, Arthur, with you about investors increasing investor interest and appetite in this area. Five, John, with you co-generation and old energy finds its role in new energy - flexibility, local energy systems low and zero carbon fuels and the last one was flexibility emerging from the home across the whole electricity value chain. So there are our takeaways. Get the crystal ball out now put it down on the table. And set it forward from one to three years so fairly short term. So Arthur what are we going to see in the next years at European Utility Week? Apart from a change of name.

Arthur Jouannic 00:27:40.380

So yeah the first thing, the change of name which I think characterizes the change in industry and I think the European Utility Week organizers want to to do something brand-wise to to make sure this happens but a very interesting to see the name changing. But anyway I think two things will happen next year. First one is the amount of people talking about communities and how we can capture value from energy communities, local energy system communities of consumption, all the stuff from making local communities use and generate their own energy and how this market will develop in future. The second thing actually is maybe not a market, but I really believe Europe is ahead of everyone else in the world in terms of new energy. We are starting to see a few North American and a few Asian companies coming to this event to learn a lot about Europe or to do business. I really believe a lot more non European companies will come to the European Utility Week (or it's future name) to make business, to learn about new energy and they probably are going to see Europe as a leading continent for this space, so a lot of things are happening. A lot of things will happen in the next few years and these countries will want to know about it.

Jon Slowe 00:29:03.700

Well you sneaked two in there, Arthur, but I think a sign of that second one already was a big Saudi Arabian delegation. So maybe that's a sign of that we'll see. John how about you? One or two

John Murray 00:29:18.100

One or two points, so for me, I want to stick my neck out and say the return of heat. We haven't really talked too much about heat during this episode here but I think as you know one of the biggest challenges I think facing the energy sector as a whole is how you decarbonise heat. So I think we're going to see a lot more of that in the next couple of years especially around the growth of heat pumps, the removal or the kind of slowdown in terms of new gas boilers going into homes. So lots of talk I think about heat pumps, heat as a service, topics like that.

Jon Slowe 00:29:56.170

And maybe hydrogen as well?

John Murray 00:29:57.490

Well that could be my sub-bullet point to that was hydrogen, we haven't really talked about hydrogen, well we haven't mentioned it in this podcast (episode) but it's been one of those topics which could potentially be the hot topic of 2019 and I think we'll certainly hear a lot more about hydrogen in the next one to two years.

Jon Slowe 00:30:13.150

Okay. And my point will be I think the thing that we felt maybe could have been stronger this year which was EVs, because I think what they'll mean for the sector in terms of demand, new business models, new companies coming into the space, flexibility from smart charging of EVs, maybe more in the longer term vehicle to grid will become a such a central part of the electricity sector that it's bound to be a big feature at these events. Yeah.

Arthur Jouannic 00:30:41.230

And Jon, which country do you think will have the better beer next year?

Jon Slowe 00:30:46.790

In Milan. Well Italy , I would have thought would have a bigger presence. I'm going to stick with the Belgians, I'm a big fan of Belgium.

John Murray 00:30:58.020

Hopefully there will be a French stand Arthur.

Arthur Jouannic 00:31:01.580

We'll do our best!

Jon Slowe 00:31:05.650

Although I must say the Belgian beer did run out rather quickly. Maybe that's because it was so popular and so good.

John Murray 00:31:10.440

We might have some Scottish beer, we might have a Tennents stand.

Jon Slowe 00:31:13.840

Yeah, or Brewdog?

Jon Slowe 00:31:14.380

Okay, well beer joking aside, I hope listeners you have enjoyed that and got a flavour if you weren't there of European Utility Week in Paris. And by flavour I mean not only the beer flavour, the energy flavour. Arthur, thanks very much. And John, thank you for sharing your insights.

John Murray 00:31:37.150

Thanks very much.

Arthur Jouannic 00:31:39.430

Thank you Jon and John.

Jon Slowe 00:31:41.210

And we avoided any John confusion...

John Murray 00:31:42.690

Until now....Jon!

Jon Slowe 00:31:46.870

And we'll look forward to talking with you, my listeners next week. Thank you very much. And goodbye.