I spent 20 years in the old energy world of oil and gas. (I know – mea culpa. On the plus side I so far have 10 years in new energy, so only another 10 years to go before I am in credit...). During the first 20 years of my career, I experienced first-hand the critical role of banks and financial investors to fund projects or invest in infrastructure. It’s hard to think of two worlds – oil and finance – that are more closely intertwined.  

However, over the last 10 years, it’s been apparent to me that investor interest in the new energy world is largely absent. Yes, there are clean tech investors, and some of these have even made decent returns, but the sector generally has not prospered. Indeed, for many people, it has a negative reputation.   

OVO’s ‘Future of Energy’ event at the Tate Modern on the South Bank in London was ostensibly about celebrating the company’s 10 year anniversary – in which the company, founded by CEO Stephen Fitzpatrick, has grown to around 1.5 million. 

With the announced acquisition of the SSE retail customer base of 3.5 million pending – subject to regulatory approval as Fitzpatrick was at pains to point out – OVO will become the second largest energy supplier in the UK with circa 5 million customers - quite a journey and something to be celebrated for sure.  The company has relentlessly focused on customer service and experience, and its success in doing so shines through in its customer growth and the numerous customer service or industry awards it was won over the years.  

Mostra MCE is a biennial trade fair in Milan covering heating, cooling, water and energy – while having a strong focus on the Italian market, it’s a major international event.  Maria Synodi from our Connected Home team and I had the opportunity to visit and we enjoyed meeting many of our subscribers and industry contacts there (and also escaping from the snow in Edinburgh!).

In this short blog we share some of the things we learnt, and hope you find it useful. As always, we welcome your feedback and questions so please feel free to contact us directly.

It’s been a fascinating few days in Amsterdam at European Utility Week 2017 and it has been great to be able to talk to so many of our clients and friends in the industry, so we wanted to share some of takeaways from the event. In our view it remains the most important ‘new energy’ event in the European calendar and we are pleased to be associated with it as a Game Changing sponsor.

Best Presentation?

Energy storage has been the hot topic in the distributed energy industry since Tesla made its move into stationary storage a couple of years ago.  As is often the case with ‘new’ technology, the headlines and the hype has been quite far ahead of the reality.

The reality in Europe today is that behind-the-meter (BTM) battery storage markets remain very small in most countries.  Market growth is mainly concentrated in just three countries: Germany, Italy and the UK.  And Germany is easily the biggest market – it accounts for over 90% of the total European market.  So the impact to date on most European energy retailers is very limited.