Modelling the future with Pete Tickler and Genna Boyle (Gridcog)

You do a lot of analysis of the market. You must have a ton that you can share with us about what you see in the differences between different countries and different asset types. Different markets excel at different elements of the transition. People often talk about kind of postcards from the future. I feel like different markets are posting each other these postcards.

That is beautiful. You should you should train. Oh, I will. Can you say that again?

You start seeing, I'd say, quite a lot of players into this space who aren't familiar with energy, aren't familiar with energy markets, but I think will actually become really large players So I do think behind the meter is back. I think there's a lot of opportunity in that space, particularly around sort of as Pete mentioned optimizing your own supply and due most cost, but also starting to dabble in the wholesale markets as well. Hello everybody and welcome back to another episode of Moto The Podcast.

Today, we have two guests in the studio. Pete Tickler, co founder and Head of Product at Gridcog, and Jenna Boyle, Grid Cogs Director for the UK and Europe. If you're enjoying the podcast, please hit like and subscribe and all the good buttons. It really means the world to us. Let's jump in.

Grid Cog, friend of the podcast, I think. I can't believe we haven't met before now. Pete, we've known each other for a while, but through the internet, you can do that now. That's totally cool.

We can be friends on the internet before real life. Yeah. I think it's awesome. It's the way it's the new way things, young businesses, young tech businesses make each other from the other side of the world, and it's pretty neat.

And there's two of you here today, which is a it's a special double header, Jenna. Welcome to Pod. Thank you. Nice to be here.

And so grid cog. First thing, it's grid cog. It's not grid cognition.

No. We no one could pronounce the middle bit. Everyone got caught up over the over the continent. So, yeah, Greekog now. We started life as Greekogneition.

And, yeah, even I couldn't say it. So, yeah, Greekog it is. To be honest, all of our clients started calling us Greekog almost immediately, so it was the easiest rebrand ever. Oh, okay.

Nice. You didn't apostrophe at the end. Not not not just get rid of it. And you guys have come all the way here from the southern hemisphere.

Welcome to the northern hemisphere. Thank you.

And the UK's big growth market for you. Can I just explain what you guys are doing? What's the Gridcog? What's the problem you're solving?

What's it all about? Sure. So Gridcogs we we describe ourselves as as as one way I like to describe this is the peaks and shovels of the gold rush, if the gold rush being the energy transition. Lots of folks want to make investments into into that space.

And often these these investments are quite complex. You may have multiple assets. Capturing multiple value streams, multi market, multi multi multi sites. And they're difficult to develop bankable projects for the old tool set of Excel spreadsheets are no longer fit for purpose in in Greekog.

Was initially the the the mission was let's help capital to to be deployed into these projects faster. So we make simulation software. All of our clients and they're very diverse, are all doing the same thing, which is making investments into the space. Now they might be doing that as traditional utility businesses, very large energy suppliers or network businesses, they might be doing that on the demand side of the market as large property owners or as project renewables project developers or as consultants, think that they have they all have in common is is is wanting to deploy capital into these projects, and we're providing tooling to to give them more surety when they do that.

And how big is the company? I'm Jenny, you're new to GridC. Right? You we've known you from before GridCOG as well.

Yeah. Yeah. I've been around the the UK energy space for a while, but been at Gergogg two and a half weeks now, so very new to the team. And excited to be here, I think the tech is fills a massive void in the energy space here.

And as we get as Pete said, more and more sort of atypical energy players, particularly entering the space.

They certainly need some tools to nudge them in the right direction. So what's the deal? So someone says it's it's mainly behind the meter. Right?

If I got that Yeah. So initially behind the meter where a lot of our clients were making investments or at least into the distribution network. So that might might maybe be just front of meter. And there's a whole area of of to explore around community owned or community sized assets say, connected to the LV network.

But a lot of our clients initially were behind the meter. It's just the space that we knew.

Probably now thirty percent of our customers are building utility scale projects. I guess what's different now between utility scale projects of yesteryear, which all had a very established tool set around them. If you wanted to model solar yields, you use PBCist. And then, for example, and then you'd go and get your you'd get a PPA offtake for fifty percent of your your yield and you take that to the bank and the job is done.

That's no longer the case for even utility scale. You're now having to collocate And and as soon as you're collocating, the the the sort of bankability question gets exponentially harder. So, yeah, right now, I'd say we're seventy thirty between utility scale and and either behind the meter or sort of distribution connected projects. Because what you guys are working on is a big problem. Right? Building these models in Excel for business cases, for these complex assets with loads of revenue streams and operational characteristics, is just horrible.

And so what's the idea? Is it you guys do you spit out that Excel model or do you do you get a report or what is the what's at the if I'm a, I don't know, a bank and I wanna build a big solar park somewhere, I use your software, what comes out the end of it? So I think if you're there's our clients have a lot as as as I said, what's common amongst all of our client base is their desire to make investments into the space. But there's a lot of heterogeneity across them, and that's because some are existing players.

Some are brand new entrants to the power sector had nothing to do with power, but by virtue of, say, electrification of a large truck fleet. Are now gonna end up being a player in the in the power sector. So with that in mind, there's still the traditional requirement for for financial models, which, again, you can either take to your internal financial sort of approval process or or indeed to to the to the bank. But there's also a whole load of of Powerflow modeling that needs needs to go with that.

It's all very well saying, well, the MPVid of this project or the IRR of this project looks okay.

But if you're but you need to understand more how is that impacted by the the the constraints that exist within our site connection, and that exists, of course, for utility scale projects, but it's particularly acute as these projects move down into to the LV network. And so at that point, the you'll have a chunk of the output that we generate will be about modeling power flows, and that's the engineers engineers pouring over that and saying, well, can can we actually support, let's say, putting in a whole load of fast chargers at this location? Do we need to co locate a battery to isolate those charging events from the grid. That's very much kind of an engineering question that needs an answer. At the same time, as will this project make money?

And so I'd say that, you know, certainly in terms of what comes out of the out of the the Greekog software, it's it's it's very it's as much an energy modeling tool as it is a financial analysis. And we we'd like to think that we very much straddle those two worlds because there are specialist tools that are very good at at at modeling power flows. There are specialist tools and businesses that specialize in commercials we think that that needs to be brought together, and that's what we're trying to do. And can you tell me a little bit more about the company?

How big is it? Where you are? How long you've been going, who are your customers, all the like, the top trumps card of GridCog. What does it say?

So We're as a as a business, we are three years old almost to the day. We're children of COVID. We bought we were born. Sort of out of the COVID lockdown in twenty twenty, which is one of the reasons that we're still fully remote.

We've got team across Australia most of the major cities in Australia are now London with Jenna.

We are you say, we're we're three years old, We're growing, I guess, the bit our initial focus was Australia's a really interesting place to start an energy business because we have a energy only market on on one coast, and then the one that most people have heard of because of our crazy spot price most volatile commodity market in the world. Five minute market as well, because it's tasty, isn't it? We do the full sixteen thousand dollar swing from negative thousand to plus fifty thousand fairly regularly. Over, you know, two five minute trading intervals.

And then on the the West Coast, we have a capacity market much more like, say, Japan or or GB. And so I think that's a that's a useful place to build the business out of.

I think the other thing with Australia is we're we lead the world in some elements of the transition, and I think it's fascinating as you look between markets, different markets excel at different elements of the transition. In Australia, it's distributed generation and silo. We have over twenty, like twenty two gigawatts now of rooftop solar, growing at about three gigs a year. That's the largest Hold on.

Hold on. It is very sunny there. You do have a bit of a unfair advantage We do. This is not our force for our force.

We do. We do. But I also think that that's I wouldn't say yeah. And I'm gonna say it's it's overstated fact, London yields about seventy percent of the solar yield of Sydney.

Not seven percent, seventy percent. Yeah. And given that solar costs are super commoditize, though, everyone's using the same panels. There is no way so there's a thirty percent delta in absolute yield.

We ran some models just a few months ago that said that based on things like network tariff price signals, you're actually better off with a solo investment in London than Sydney materially better off. Wow. So you get less yield, but you're capturing high high value. And so when we and then you look to the UK, which which obviously has has moved at different speeds.

You know, EV penetrations here way, way higher than than Australia. So people often talk about kind of postcards from the future. I feel like different markets are posting each other these postcards.

That is beautiful. You should you should train them. Oh, I will. Please say that again.

And I and I guess, you know, to to our interests in in the UK and Europe and and particularly with Jenna, bring Jenna on here, you know, super frothy, utility scale, patch space and some areas that are strong in Australia that are still I think kind of there's still an opportunity here in the UK. And so part of part of hiring Jenna was to for us to be able to start capturing that. And also for for Jenna to level us up on on our knowledge of of of the local market. No pressure on it.

Yeah. Yeah. Lots of lots of chat on wholesale arbitrage and battery trading strategies. That's for sure.

And Jenny, you were working in exciting companies before this. Just just wanna mention that because it it put some color around why you're sat here and everyone should listen to you because you've actually done some very complicated things. So Yeah. Sure.

So I started my energy career in New Zealand working in the trading team at contact Energy, is one of their sort of big four vertically integrated generator retailers.

So it was trading sort of prompt power, I guess, and then curve So for markets, power gas, and emissions.

They moved to the UK just over five years ago now and joined limejump when limejump was about a thirty person startup and how it found and set up the trading team along with a few others there. They're more recently have been leading their commercial team. So across a PPA renewable space and also battery optimization, an offtake. And Blanchip, who we should remember now, of course, part part of Shell, but They're the first to do trading with batteries. I'm pretty sure they're the first and the balancing mechanism as well. We were the first and balancing mechanism. Yeah.

So impressive stuff. Yeah. I was at Kiwi at the time and it was so hard to make that work.

So very well done indeed. Alright. Let's talk about what you guys you you do a lot of analysis of the market. And in running the numbers so much, you must have a ton that you can share with us about what you see in the differences between different countries and different asset type So let's talk about that.

Some parts well, some countries are better at doing energy transition stuff than others. So you mentioned postcards to each other. What What else do you notice? I think there's I mean, I've got some personal favorites.

One of them is, again, with a with with a CB that's very much behind the meter is distribution do cost charges, distribution tariffs, I think it's really interesting to see how different regions are tackling that. And and there's this Nirvana which is really cost reflective price signals from all of the the network, but particularly the distribution network to the demand side of the market, say help us. Mhmm. Market need, you know, the this transition needs help.

It needs balancing. We know we have lots of lots of intermittent renewable energy, but we're also gonna have increasingly peaky loads as we with the adoption of as we electrify more stuff, whether that's vehicles or heat pumps or whatever. I'd say if I was to characterize the differences that we see between Australia and GB, Australia continues to attempt to provide quite a lot of detail in in price signals, particularly in the C and I. And you guys call it I and C.

I think if there's one thing that we should fix, that alone. Commercial industrial industrial, industrial, commercial, whatever you like.

In Australia, you get super, super detailed eye signals, and they're very, very different between the DNSPs or DNOs. So you might have if you're down in Adelaide as a as a commercial customer, you might be charged a big chunk of your your do cost will be based on the median of your demand, let's say, between -- That's nice. -- certain intervals during certain months of the year. And some people look at that and go, that's kind of arcane and and complicated.

No. That's nice. But what it what what they're trying to do is say for our network, there's a particular challenge. And obviously, Australia is a large country in in the the challenges within the networks.

Are different and that they have a lot of flexibility to provide. A price signal that they think is useful to the customer and useful to the network.

Move to the UK market with, you know, targeted charging mirrors, I would call it. And I would say a dumbing down of those price signals. You know, this tendency to want to move towards more fixed cost. Cost a hundred percent. And and what I find particularly bizarre is you is it appears the UK is doing that at exactly the same time as it's now having to invent new flex markets when there was already an element of price signal within a market. I think part of the problem is in the UK, so it used to be we we did policy based on the trilemma, security supply, lowest cost, decarbonization.

And now, really, the things that that I think the government has realized that you don't win votes for decarbonization.

You do, with security supply -- Mhmm. -- because that's a hot topic to man with the war. And you certainly do with the cost of living crisis. Mhmm.

So I think we've we've ended up being overweight on those two parts of that trilemma. And it's a big shame, personally, I think. I mean, I think it's I think what we'll end up having to do is put a lot of these things back. I mean, that's in in in different forms because we need the market to flex, we need it to be.

Helping when I say that I mean, the demand side of the market. And the other thing I think that's interesting so so that's something that's being that folks are are testing out. The other one is community community assets, and that's a vague term to to capture an asset that's connected to the distribution network, but not behind the meter or not necessarily behind the meter. And so and we're getting both use cases.

So we've got a customer in in ours that will find network connections that are effectively underutilized.

So you might have a large stadium that that has very large events, got a whole load of floodlights, but actually doesn't necessarily use that connection much. Can you locate an asset there, say a battery that can do useful things into the into that network and can also arbitrage the market.

Just leveraging the the fact that capacities in short supply and there it is. Can we do a can we do a basic I'm misunderstanding here? So when you say behind the meter, what do you mean?

Collocated with load typically.

Okay. Because I would classify, like, the one that Emirates Stadium that I did in UK, you probably saw that as a good early pivot power one. Or whatever they were called beforehand.

They that was an incredible project, but as you say most of the time there was very little load at the side. I would class that as behind the meter, but would you would you not? It's just important parlance for you to get right. Yeah.

Look. I mean, and I it's it's probably we we joke in turn. It's it's front of meter and behind the meter are the two most useless expressions in the energy transition born out of, you know, people's perspectives. Right?

You know, when if I'm the if I'm the load, I think I'm the most important part of the transition and everything else is, you know, behind the meter. In it the reality is that we tend to think of behind the meter being that there is some existing load there.

Okay. That that broadly speaking.

And then you can and then, you know, then you move out into kind of distribution connected. So, for example, a battery on a street corner, and there's a lot of investment. Well well well a phrase. Well, yeah.

I mean, that's Literally what they are. Just playing dice on the on the free call. That's what they are. They and and they're they're a hot topic in Australia.

And and there's quite a debate around whether a battery, let's say, you know, instead of gonna use a really kind of dumb example, but instead of, you know, fifty homeowners all putting in ten megawatt hour batteries -- Uh-huh. -- at high relatively high capital cost. Could you go and put a five hundred kilowatt hour batteries? Did I say may Didn't make what?

Yeah. Three six thousand. No. How does that you don't know. Take care of that.

The and then you get rather than, you know, a fifth a five hundred kilowatt hour battery, on a literally on a street corner, maybe a little bit of spare grass, whack it there, connect it to the same feeder, managing the reverse flows. We've got forty more or less forty percent of Aussie homes now with solar. A huge. Wow.

But community batteries or or these ass this idea that you can have an asset that's solving a lot of the problems that are deep down in the LV network. In theory, you have some capital efficiency from building some slightly bigger assets rather than everyone having their own. And again on paper, the it looks good. The reality of that is it is complicated because who controls it the network wants it.

They often want it on their regulated asset base so that they can obviously, you know Oh, don't get me started on regulated asset base. Alright. Sector linkage. I've got those words written down here.

Talk to us about sector linkage.

Yeah. So where I see that is effectively people who has historically haven't been part of the electrification space moving into that. So vehicle to grid is, I think, a perfect example of that. And actually, Pete and I have caught up with a few people operating large fleets out here in the UK over the last couple of weeks. And some of these trucks have, you know, four hundred kilowatt hour batteries like they are chunky. And when you add a whole load of them together, that's suddenly, you know, could compete with, let's say, a large front meter battery.

However, what is pretty neat about those is their main job is to be a truck. Yeah. And so when they're sort of parked up in a depot and now they're starting to, you know, think about how they could actually generate additional returns from let's say wholesale arbitrage or ancillary markets if they're allowed to participate in them.

You start seeing, I'd say, quite a lot of players into this space who aren't familiar with energy, aren't familiar with energy markets, but I think will actually become really large plays.

So that's, I think, super exciting.

And it's a real challenge for these guys as well, because your truck operator is like a logistics person. Right? They're thinking about where can I park my trucks?

That's the team that sort of manages those and, you know, how many trucks do I need, when, But then when they start to enter the energy space, you start having the sort of energy procurement team come in as well and say, well actually, how are we supplying our site? You know, does this make any sense if we now have trucks wanting to, you know, dabble in sort of vehicle to grid? How does that interact with your plier, etcetera. So it starts getting quite complicated, and you have a whole lot of people sort of crossing into each other's space.

But it's something I think is is going to be massive, particularly in that fleet electrification vehicle to grid space.

Awesome. Awesome. You got some work to do, haven't you? What's the who I asked you, but we we jumped around a little bit.

So who are your customers today? Who currently uses Grid card? What kind of customer? We've talked about vehicle to grid, utility scale, solar batteries, the whole shebang.

Yeah. So which bits the bit that you that got you here and then which bits the bit that's the next bit? Yeah. So That sounded a bit to his Yeah.

I think the and the and it and it's a simple question with a simple answer, and I guess that's speaks to the the number of different actors and businesses that are kind of either part already part of the transition or or want in. So, you know, we have clients who are the largest energy suppliers in in Australia, the equivalent of the big six in in the GBia or Greek gold customers. And so for those guys, they have very large portfolios of of of customer load, particularly on the the CNI, INC, but also resi load. And for them, they know that those organizations, their customers are gonna unilaterally make these investments.

So, you know, solar and battery storage, navy charging, whatever is happening with or without the energy supplier.

And, of course, these suppliers want it to be with them. I want it to be they because they have their own energy solutions teams who want to, obviously, go on the journey with that customer, but also because it's absolutely in their interest to have dibs on the way that some these assets perform We've got distribution businesses kind of for similar reasons. For those guys, we've talked about kind of tariff design you know, they're they're they run Greekog models to help them inform, say, what does a tariff look like that participants making these investments would actually find attractive.

Because it's all very well having your your your tariff team in a in a DNO come up with the tariff structure. But if you release it as the market, no one actually wants to play. Well, it hasn't it hasn't done its job. So on the on the traditional, let's just call it the supply side of the market, all of the the the incumbents.

On the demand side of the market, some of the largest property businesses.

And also, one that's on the public record, Ampol owned two thousand service stations or petrol stations. Do you guys So for them, it's about, okay, we want to electrify those. We need we're gonna turn off liquid fuels. We need to add fast charging, but we've only probably got fifty kilowatts of of load at a normal petrol station, and we might be looking at two meg of load. So how much solar, how much battery storage because we're gonna need battery storage to isolate the charging events. So we're split between on the supply side, the demand side, In the middle layer, there's the consultant space. So there's an active group of consultants both connect with engineering specialties, but also with kind of financial modeling specialties, who who who who again, the excel spreadsheets are broken.

And and so, you know, they need tooling. We've got I think exultancy model is broken personally. But That's a big question. We we're we're friends with someone else.

No. No. We're good friends with Tonsys too. I just don't see a future for them charging you up per hour for information that is available on the internet.

Sure. I think the whole knowledge we've charging for knowledge game, whether it's consultancy or whatever, I think we'll be disrupted. Yep. Yep.

Fair point. And I think and then we have, you know, we have projects sorry, product vendors, so people making this kit and needing ways to objectively convince customers how it will perform. And of course, there's lots of vested interest in in in that space, and there's a need for independent simulation that says, well, actually, if you procure a particular asset from a particular vendor, that it will perform in a way that that that's credible and not simply in the interest of the salesman who's who's who's trying to get you to buy it.

And then project developers, so be you know, the the again, the the more traditional folks who have built out solar, preps, solar farms and wind farms, but now need to co locate, now need to think about adding either storage, and maybe that's DC coupled, and that's, again, a whole new world that's complicated. Or or load. I mean, don't know if we wanna go down the hydrogen rabbit hole, but, you know, you can add a high if Not again on this podcast. No.

How'd you go down to this one? The I get fair enough. No. No. No. No.

I'm joking. Let's do Yeah. Well, no no. I mean, I guess I guess as a practical example, if you have large, you know, utility scale assets, you can either add storage or you can add load.

They give you a hedge. And, you know, if if if you're so inclined, that might be a hydrogen electrolyte. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. No. I'm I was being facetious. Some hijacking use cases are necessary, and we'll make the world a better place.

Just a small rhythm. So So Okay. And I appreciate that. It's a it's a broad answer to the question.

I think that speaks to the to the space. We don't have it's not just one slice of the energy sector that that uses our software. There's some big names there. It's a big some big logos.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think That's that's huge. Yeah. It's good. It's good. And inevitably, with with Software like ours, we need to win that, win the the argument, you know, but a lot of these have internal modeling teams, and they have folks with Python LEDs and Excel.

Surely. Right? If your software is good enough, which it either is or you're gonna get there, right, that's a dream, then you don't need the consultancies.

You like, if you're a soft device If you wanna draw me into I am a little bit. Alright. Why if if you if you if you get it right, then it should be so usable once people should be able to come up the knowledge curve themselves, where you cut out the middle of that. Possibly.

But one thing I would say in in in this big speaks to both, you know, the you know, have a product roadmap. We have more guardrails to build. Yeah. Yeah.

I think a view that a customer takes on when they're running Greekog on what asset might be allowed to access, for example, a certain mark. Everyone is value stacking. And, obviously, as your assets get deeper into the distribution network all the way behind the meters of colocated in load. Theoretically, there's more value to be stacked, not less.

Because they can do many of the things that a utility scale. Bachelor can do if they're allowed and obviously things like ancillary service markets, In Australia, you can have a residential VPP virtual power plant with a a ten kilowatt hour battery providing frequency support. That is a thing.

Here, I gather that that's much harder.

And fair enough, I guess there's remissuring requirements and and all the rest of it. But the point being that as you as you move these these assets, in in different locations, there are more revenue. And then there are rule changes. So we have customers who might be running scenarios or what'll you know, what happens if the NEM ends up with more of a capacity component, which has been long argued for particularly with the suspension of the market.

East Coast of Australia ends up with more of a capacity market rather than pure energy market like it has at the moment. Change at everything. Yeah. And so to to the the I guess back to your point about, does that we we often say to our clients, you need an adult in the room with these projects.

And that's with or without the Gridcog software to to to help you. There are questions that you need to consider that are beyond pure software simulation.

Now whether that's the role of the consultants or whether that's the role of people spending their emails on chat, TBD.

I'm not gonna There is that role. There's that knowledge and there's that knowledge gap. And again, when we come back to sec sector linkage, particularly so because the folks who are coming in from outside of that sector are not gonna understand. I'll just bias it because I hate hearing knowledge from like consultants and rather just go learning myself. Yeah. Just maybe it's an and maybe maybe it's because I'm just a stuck up millennial, but I just think I just there's nothing in this world that you can't learn. It's self on the internet one way or another.

So, yeah, I'm just I'm I'm I'm entrenched in this position. That's fine. Yeah. We we use we, you know, we work with consult some of the consults are our customers and -- Yeah.

-- you know, we work with world them.

Anyway, we don't wanna bother on a consultative thing anymore. We've got lots more to talk about. Network price signals. Okay.

So the UK and Australia have got different paths. We talked about that a little bit. Where did what what's the second order effect of that? Yeah.

What what what so what? I mean, I I think that the so what of it is is largely that the transition will take longer and be more expensive. I mean, if you if again, if you kind of zoom right out, if we're not able to link to hook up the the supply side of the market to the demand side of the market properly, have those guys absolutely in or, I mean, there's there's talk in Australia has been for a lot of a true double sided market. So and by that, I mean, not just so that that isn't just supply bidding in, that is demand bidding in -- Mhmm.

-- kind of simultaneously where someone who who can flex their demand up or down just a live price signal, and they can they can trade a market just as actively as as someone who's generating that power. And that principle is the right what principle if we're gonna have you know, hundred percent zero carbon grids and all of this balanced. So I think if you if you say well that's that's the goal, then you need as much price signals as you can possibly get. Yeah.

And I think that I don't think anyone would argue against that. And and I guess that's that's our position.

And certainly, we when you look at and our clients are often modelling, they have interest in multiple markets. And the question that they'll be asking is quite literally.

If I can make investments into Australia, either coast or New Zealand, or the UK, or or Europe, or Texas.

And I've got capital, and I I have no particular.

Vested interest in any of those markets. Which one is going to encourage my investment? And if you you know and I think the the markets that will that will decarbonize quicker will be those that have the the best price signals to those investors, plain and simple. And if you give dumb, reductive price signals, and you start you for example, in networks, you you trend towards fixed cost.

People will not invest in you -- Yeah. -- in in that market.

Now for networks invest in the network infrastructure companies. With fixed costs. That's worth doing. Sure.

And and exact and and I guess the point being that there's, you know, sometimes these these these questions and these projects are zero sum. Are one of the things that the software allows you to do is model the impact of your project on other people around you. Oh, yes. So if if my project is winning, am I actually creating new value, maybe?

Or am I or am I just capturing value off other people and how much? What about the forecasting side of it? So we, for the last twelve months, have been building forecasting capability within the company. And this job, I doing my job at Moto, one of the things that comes back and back is I just feel like an idiot and I underestimate how hard some things are.

And some some other things are easier and that's nice. But I mean, constantly thinking, yeah, we can do that in three months. We can do two months, and actually scaling teams and building really complex software is actually quite hard. Anyway, so we have spent last twelve months building long term forecasts.

Products for just the UK and Ercot at the moment in Texas. Mhmm. What an what a huge endeavor with you know, double digit number of people, modeling, testing the market, coming back around, rewriting it. So the reason why I say all this is because I know from the scars that we have, that is it's a very tricky thing to do to build those kind of long term forecasts.

So how are you going about you need that for your models. Right? Are you doing that in house or you're buying them in? Or Yes.

It's a good question. And I'd say that for for our customers, there are there are forecast required for lots of elements of these projects, and some have existing sources and and and some have will need those all need to be developed. So you gotta take a view of, you know, CapEx costs, for example. Now, if I make an investment this month versus in twenty four months time, what is the likely implication of of of that in terms of say CapEx and OpEx of of the hardware that I'm buying or of network tariff, you know, do us cost.

Yeah. The one that you're referring to with the obvious one is market cost. We do not currently, we're we're we're firm. We do not take a position on market forecast forecast.

Greatcog does not.

So that means two things for our clients, they will often already have relationships with the consultants and economic forecasts that can sell you a curve, and they and there are rightly or wrongly established.

Vendors and and channels for that, and and, you know, and some of our clients will buy all the curves. Another area that is asking the disruption -- Yeah. -- watch this space.

And so right now, yeah, if you're building a model in Greekog for the wholesale price, signal, you will either bring in your BYO curve that you've you've and, of course, some wire can't have their own in house curves as well. Yep. Big there are a thousand pound gorilla customers all have their own forecasting teams, and they'll be loading that curve into the Yeah. The software and that's that's obviously, you know, very, very proprietary to them. So, yeah, right now, we're not taking a view on on market forecasting.

If you with it, we also have connectors to all the market operators for the markets that we support. So for the you can also historicals and mechanically transform them if you want, I'd also say that because a chunk of our customers are making investments into the say, into the distribution network or behind the meter.

The relevance of market price signals is is not necessarily exactly. It's diminished by virtue of the fact that other price signals are amplified. Yeah. Half our wholesale prices in twenty forty two. Don't that make that much progress. They are not the kicker to whether, you know, you're electrifying your truck fleet. And managing where few the the focus will be on things like that grid connection constraint.

Can I job number one, is can I actually continue to operate the business that I need to to to operate? And then the and then the opportunity might be okay. I can. I've managed my physical the physical side of this project.

And I've got massive amounts of latent capacity in my rubbish trucks that are parked up on the weekend. Now do I get involved in vehicle to grid? Now I'm interested in maybe in a wholesale price forecast, and then, you know, go off and -- Yeah. -- with your one.

But but that's kind of a second order question. For for a chunk of our customers who are working on those kind of projects. And I would say rather, yeah, rather kind of boringly for those who are doing utility scale, they are bringing those forecasts in in the traditional way for now. If Moto want to come up with alternative forecasting.

Yeah, man. So we're just into great via API and we'll do it properly. Yeah. Yeah. Apparently, that's easy.

Alright. So the last two questions, one of them I have to give you, the other one is way more exciting. The first one is What do you wanna plug? So is there anything that that's big about the company or a big release or a news in that announcement or I don't know.

Whatever. Now is your chance to talk about that. Then the second one is the controversial one. So what is your contrarian view?

But let's start with the plug.

Awesome. I think the plug is certainly the Greek Cogger here in the UK and Europe. Obviously, as Pete has mentioned, founded in Australia, but with me joining the team, we've moved over here.

And then also thinking about that sort of energy transition Obviously, my background is more sort of front of me to big assets.

But as we're seeing more and more people into that space, it's getting incredibly exciting for both the sort of larger assets and the, you know, atypical energy players coming in, all of the distributed behind the meter stuff. So, yeah, if you wanna learn more about that, and how Gregor can help, hit us up. So it's behind the meter sexy again. Is that, like, is that Is that happened?

It's always been sexy. No. It what like, it was sexy in, like, twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen, and then it just sort of died died. I was explaining that to these guys that, you know, that was twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen, big VPPs with all sorts of things doing sort static f f r and -- Yeah.

-- other bits. But then, obviously, all the sort of big batteries came in and sort of dominated the space. Because TRI there was so much uncertainty around tried, which of course has just gone on and on and on, but the triad thing taking that way destroyed the business case. That's why it wasn't sexy, but you're saying it is.

I think it's coming back if you think of your energy supply cost being, you know, so incredibly high due to obviously the conflict in the Ukraine.

Introducing our front of mind for so many people, it's, you know, hitting the bottom line of, you know, INC supply business. Oh, INC businesses everywhere.

And also on the resi stage.

Certainly, in the last twelve months, my friends have been much more interested in what my job is and what's going on than ever before.

And so I do think you're starting to see, you know, certainly, even more people entering this space. I was reading something the other day. I think it was so the energy UK put out. You know, q one this year is like the highest ever sort of residential solar installs in the UK since all the subsidies vanished about seven years ago. So I do think behind the meter is back. I think there's a lot of opportunity in that space, particularly around sort of as Pete mentioned optimizing your own supply and due most cost, but also starting to dabble in the wholesale markets as well.

And if you add electrification of vehicles and and in particular fleets. And and we kind of we like fleets because I think as a as an asset, they've got so much more. You've got real control over them. You've got operational control over them.

Again, if if if that's going in behind the midrand, it's not participating in in the energy transition. I mean, it it's driving energy transition if it's not excuse the pun. Is not participating in this. That's idiotic.

And so I think it will. I think just while we're shamelessly plugging in terms of look into the the Grickogg product roadmap. We've got a new feed. A whole new module coming out this year.

Grickogg up until now has all been about pre investment simulation. So helping accelerate the deployment of capital into these projects by allowing folks kinda simply to work out which firstly, which projects they shouldn't do But if they're gonna do a project, what the right version of it is, where we have a tracking module that's that's just in beta now, which is if if the if the upfront pre investment simulation is kind of the picks and shovels in the gold rush helping folks find the goal, the tracking is the weighing and measuring, because you've now done it. Operationally, these assets have now been deployed.

Are they working? Are they delivering? Right. We have a we have a beta customer. Where that's already up and running, and it's cool.

So that's kind of asset level data on, you know, what are the what are the chart what are the EV chargers doing alongside the PV alongside the the grid draw alongside the battery. But bear in mind, that that combination of four assets is not uncommon, and that -- Yeah. -- we're gonna see that a lot. Collectively is that investment, and you might then be doing that across a hundred or a thousand sites, is it delivering?

And so, yeah, that's that's cool. It's very exciting. Again, a bit like you're you're in your wholesale forecasting, you know, surely that's only three sprints. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, this job is very humbling. Turns out the biggest idiot in the room is always me.

Okay. And then now your contrarian view. What do you guys believe that is controversial?

Well, we we could arm wrestle this out given that you know, my background is behind the meter Geners' front. I mean, I think I'm gonna say should we be you got two two guests and they can try against each other. I don't know if that was the plan. I'm gonna say I my my lived experience in Australia behind the meter assets can and do school utility scale. We need utility scale. We need a building out of the transmission.

Network for sure. But there will be assets out there that become stranded.

Would you like to elaborate? Well, I mean, it's happening right now. In Australia, if you look at the finance the solar farms in particular are coming under serious financial duress, that's driven by two things. The economic catelment of deeply negative wholesale prices.

Why are they negative? Because the solar is being generated on roofs, collocated with the load. So no losses relatively no no Well, that's very that's very scary, isn't it? And so they're they're curtailed off economically, and they're also curtailed off physically because constraints, which speeds, you know, the you guys have got La Wind in Scotland that should be curtailed often isn't.

And they shouldn't be paid for it, but they are.

There's a lot of shoulds there, Pete. Well, I mean, the cup Yeah. No one can argue that surely, I know it's scary.

Yes. We we love you, but surely no one in in Jibic market can argue for the current state of of of all that money going into to that arrangement. So I think so I'm gonna say Hold on. I'm gonna call that.

Right? Go on. These people built wind turbines when they're the technology curve hadn't really come the the price curve hadn't come down. The technology was still immature.

They had the conviction to build complicated stuff on the top of their windy hills.

And they were promised a certificate.

And then so I believe that you should stick to your promises. So therefore, they I I look, you can argue about whether your grandfather in you know, positions for people who have made those investments, but that but there's a live situation where assets are still where this problem is not being resolved. And I think that's the bit to me. It's clear what the problem is now, and it's clear that there are examples in other markets.

What's the problem? Well, you're overpaying for effectively, you pay you have huge costs within the energy system for for renewal generation. It isn't actually getting to market. I mean, that's That's something and there's no strong disincentive as I understand it, and I should be careful talking out of Turnline, understand the Australian environment better, but in the Australian environment, if you wanna go and build a Siler farm or a wind farm in part of the transmission network, which is already constrained, and where there's a low likelihood of that kilowatt hour ever actually getting to the load center where it's required.

You will get a crap price for it. To the point where you might not get any price at all. And that is a disincentive to build and an incentive to build somewhere else, which is more useful to the energy system as a whole. I think that's the that's that's the crack of it.

Yeah. I get Kind of like oh, sorry. Like, locational pricing. And you're the guest. Tell me to show up.

Be quiet.

So locational price I think is, you know, sort of hits, taking the middle view here between behind the meter and front of the meter. It's of personnel on the head at least in my perspective that, hey, if you've got the right location or pricing to go build a whole load of industry up in Scotland near the wind farms, then go do that or the right incentive to go build a battery, you know, on the outskirts of London, that makes But right now, we don't really have that in the UK in the same sense of certainly, I'm used to New Zealand with over a hundred different pricing nodes, which is relatively extreme, but you can sort of send those signals to market for people to build the right thing, where that be front or behind the meter.

Without sort of the control room having to come up with so flagged actions to turn off Scottish Wind to turn on a CCGT. But then your system price is still high. So random battery starts just charging up in Scotland and makes the whole problem bad, you know, even worse.

So I think we could do we could come a long way in the UK to send some of those signals straight to market. Yeah. I absolutely agree. I mean, the it sounds like the thread here if I'm gonna pull this all together as some sort of thing at the end. It's basically, locational pricing needs to come fast and thick and now and it's gonna have a huge impact.

And with that, I guess we need to go get some lunch don't we because it's absolutely boiling in here.

And what have we got outside, we're gonna get attacked by pollen and -- Rain. -- by rain, and by cricketers. He won't like you guys. I know you specifically.

I know one nice for Kiwi's. Alright. I just wanna say a massive thank you for coming on the pod. If you listen to this, please do hit like, subscribe, all the good buttons.

It just it's bloody fantastic, and it gives us a little boost. And we'll see you next time. Thank you very much. Thanks for having us. Thank you.