13 - Financing, building, and operating batteries with Amit Gudka (Founder @ Field)

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Hi, everybody. Quentin here from Modo. I'm here sat with Amit in probably the most East London of all East London shared working spaces, and today we're going to be talking about life at Field, Amit's experience, and what's coming next. So Amit, really pleased to have you on. We're absolutely chuffed to be sat here doing this, and thanks for hosting us.

Thanks, Quentin. Yeah, good to see you.

And there's a lot of greenery behind us. And I guess anyone watching, you might notice eating over there, is it a dog?

It's a dog. Yeah, it's a very trendy dog there, as well.

Yeah, so firstly, Amit, what's going on in energy markets at the moment? You come from a background of trading, and you've been around for a long time. Just a quick take before we get stuck into your experience in Field. what on Earth's happening in energy markets?

I think there's been two really big--

well, the biggest theme over the last year has been global gas prices, right? So huge demand from Asia that's taken a lot of the LNG to Asia combined with low storage levels at the end of last year. Sort of the perfect storm on the gas front, but I think what's really interesting is behind that. We've actually had this really--

the electricity volatility story that's been building for a while.

What's your background? Start with the trading experience, and then what's got you to Field, and then we can talk about Field.

But start with trading, because that's--

we haven't had anyone on the show yet talking about what it's like to be a trader. So what does that involve?

Yeah, so it started out as a gas and power trader focused on European markets and the UK market. So yeah, that was the first job out of University starting as an analyst.

There's lots of screens, and phones, and--

Yeah, I think there's probably more screens than people actually need. I think screen's probably become a bit of a status symbol probably for traders than they're actually required. But yeah, started out as an analyst, and so the main focus was on supply and demand for gas and electricity across Europe. Main focus was on UK markets and UK gas in particular. Did that for a few years, then progressed into actually trading.

So was doing that at a bank. What you do initially is take customer orders. So there'll be a customer, maybe a utility, who needs to hedge their gas. And you provide prices to them, and then over time you progress to trading more markets.

So really enjoyed doing that.

I think markets are really intellectually really interesting, and power and gas markets in particular.

I think after a while, just started to just question what maybe the real value out of just trading itself was.

Felt a bit zero-sum game. It's kind of, like I say, it's intellectually interesting, but I question really the value add after a while.

And so got really thinking about energy sector more widely, and that's when I left in 2014 to set [INAUDIBLE]

the energy supplier.

Yeah, really exciting few years there. I mean, obviously it's been in the news being an unfortunate outcome for that business over the last year. I left there just over a year ago to set up Field, and yeah, that's what we're doing now.

So we were talking before we recorded this. I'm just going to turn my phone off. It's making that load of noise. We were talking before this that you started Bulb in the same offices we're in now, right? And you're doing the same thing again with Field, which was called Virmati or Virmati before?

Virmati, yeah.

And you changed the name recently to Field. And so what's Field trying to do?

Yeah, so just the point on Virmati, as well. So the top company, actually--

holding company's still Virmati.

My grandma's name, and you know, is who passed away a couple of years ago. So that's who the top co's is named after. Field is our--

Field is our sort of brand name and go-to market name.

I think, well, as you just found, pronouncing Virmati wasn't probably the most natural thing.

Apologies, yeah.

No, I think it's actually quite hard name to pronounce, so that's why we've--

or one of the reasons we moved to Field. And so yeah, Field, what we're doing, long term ambition is to be a global renewable energy infrastructure company.

And there's a hell of a lot of renewable energy infrastructure that needs to be built over the next 20 to 30 years globally. The biggest amount of infrastructure ever in the shortest amount of time.

It's like wartime infrastructure, right? I think it was Michael Leebright or someone, that I think it's like three times wartime infrastructure in the next 30 years from World War II. It's like, what the?

Yeah. It's enormous, right? And the speed at which that needs to happen is insane, as you say. And there need to be lots of companies and lots of people who understand how to finance new energy infrastructure, build it, and then also operate and monetize it. And I think learning that skill set over the next 20 or 30 years is going to be really valuable and have a lot of impact.

So that's what we're doing. We're starting with utility scale, front of the meter batteries in the UK. But over time, the longer term ambition is to move into other technologies in other countries.

OK, cool. So just want to pick a couple of things there. So you mentioned renewable energy infrastructure. So that's beyond just batteries--

so other stuff, as well. And we're talking about UK, but there'll be something--

you're also talking about internationally.

What was interesting is you also said optimized. So is Field going to be fully integrated? You're going to develop these assets--

develop, build, own, operate, optimize, as well, get them into the market. So you're going to do the whole shebang, a bit like Centrica circa 10 years ago.

Is it that kind of--

obviously Centrica--

I don't want to say Field--

no disrespect to Field or Centrica here, right? It's just different companies. But is that what you're going for?

Yeah, so really important. So look, right now, got our first--

and probably come to in a bit--

we've got our first asset that will be a first battery that will be going live in a few months.

It will be commissioning in April. And that first project, we've acquired the site from a developer, and we'll be using a third party optimizer for that. But in the long run, yeah, we will be doing sort of end-to-end.

So we'll be developing projects from scratch from green field state, finding grid connections and land, and then taking it through to financing, construction. And then, yeah, optimizing it was really important. I think ultimately, if you're building assets that are worth tens, hundreds of millions of pounds, ultimately, you want to have control over those assets. So I think it's not necessarily just about price and improving returns by removing a cost that you're paying someone else to do. I think a lot of it's to do with autonomy, control, and also the ability to expand into different markets or technologies. So that's why we want to be doing that.

OK, makes sense.

I think we did some research recently--

I think it was something like 6% to 8% of all the assets in the UK currently use a third party optimizer. And of the--

my numbers, I think, are right here--

and of the other 32%, a lot of those are real fast. They don't really need optimizing.

So when you discount by that, it's like, actually, 3/4 of the market maybe more using optimizers. So it's interesting you're going down this route. I guess as a scale question, when you get to a certain scale, it does make sense to bring it in-house. And if you really can go--

if you can build technology faster and better, if you operationally as a business--

we believe this at Modo the same, right? If your USP is going fast, breaking stuff fast, and having a sort of entrepreneurial mindset, then why not do it all in-house? Because if you believe that way, then you might as well control all of it.

And so what's the vision for Field? What's the world you're trying to build with Field? What does that look like?

So I think as mentioned, we've got targets that we want to build out 300 megawatts next year. We want to build out a gigawatt the year afterwards, and that's sort of on track at the moment. But I think rather than just sort of numbers, and gigawatts, and et cetera, and capital deployed, I think the really--

QUENTIN SCRIMSHIRE: Bragawatts.

Yeah. I think the really important thing is, we want to just build as much infrastructure and technology as possible that helps the energy transition, helps accelerate it, helps all these countries that have made zero commitments achieve them. And so that's the overall aim. So yeah, we're saying x many megawatts over the next few years, but ultimately--

and I'll say battery storage we might look at in a few years and say, this isn't the technology that makes sense anymore. Maybe you want to look at other stuff and something else that actually genuinely contributes to decarbonizing.

And so I think that's the overall aim. I think putting it into numbers and capital deployed in the longer run, I think, is--

yeah, it's hard to say right now.

And also, I like it because basically you're saying, we're going to build as much as possible. And I guess in the next decade, you're not going to overbuild, right? As much as possible is as much as we need to build. In fact, we need more than as much as possible. So why restrict yourself with numbers?

So Field, I want to talk about speed for a second. Because we know lots of people at Field work here. You guys are hiring. We speak to people that who have come across Field, and one word always just resonates, which is speed.

Field is going fast. Field is hiring fast. Field is raising fast. Field is building fast.

What does speed mean to you at field, and what's the--

silly question almost, but what's the advantage, and why do you believe so much in it?

So the case is very clear for--

in our opinion--

for battery storage right now. And it's something that can help decarbonize, and it enables a faster buildout of renewable energy, and it stops renewable energy being blamed for market volatility when actually the--

Those bloody wind farms are cooling up--

yeah.

Yeah. So gas prices have driven the gas price. So gas has driven the gas price. So you know, I think it's really important to scale up renewables, but really important to scale up storage alongside it as quickly as possible. So that's why we need to go fast.

But then, as a business, what's the benefit?

Yeah, we're hiring a really great team. I'm so impressed with the people that we've been hiring. And people are really interested in contributing to the energy transition and making it happen fast.

And so as a business, if you are moving fast, you can attract better talent, as well.

And then I think the other really important reason for moving fast is there's a lot of other people who are also doing this. And you want to be getting into the best locations.

In battery storage, location's going to become increasingly important. And so moving quickly and being in those places.

And also supply chains, bottlenecks. Prices have gone up recently for the first time, and we want to be ahead of that, right? We want to be moving quickly and making sure that we're actually able to deliver on the plan that we've spent a lot of time putting together.

Yeah OK, cool.

And so what's holding you back? I mean, you've mentioned a few things that--

bottlenecks. Operationally as a business, you can hire the best talent, you can optimize the business to run really fast, to make decisions quickly, and perhaps without all the information. Just do the operational stuff that startups do.

But then the whole energy world around us is quite slow. And so what's holding you up right now? What are the things outside of your control that you can't control which are frustratingly slow, and it's holding up the whole thing? Not holding the company, but you know what I mean. Holding up the energy transition as a thing, and how are you managing that?

Yeah, we talked about speed and moving fast. I think it's really important to also just be really mindful of the fact that we're not just building an app to--

we're not building a food delivery Apple.

Just Tinder for batteries, right?

Exactly, so we're not doing that. It's meaningful infrastructure that has an important role to play, but also needs to be robust, and reliable, and safe. So there's certain things that ultimately you can't cut corners on. So this is, I think, really important to note that, and I think that what you said about moving fast and break things, that's also not something that we can't--

with an expensive expensive piece of kit that has safety protocols that you need to follow, that that's not something you can do.

So there's an inherent speed at which things need to go, and there's an inherent sort of lumpiness to the infrastructure business that you just need to respect.

I think the things around operational within the business. And I think, you start to see it, right? You have multiple sites.

In your ideal world, when you put your business plan together at the beginning, you think, right, we're going to have every single standardized site, and the battery's going to look the same. The site's going to look the same.

And then obviously, that's not how the world works. Every site is different. Each distributor's different, and you have different things that you need to manage. So--

I hope you've got a comfy pair of wellies if you're going out to all these sites in the middle of winter.

Yeah, I think I went on the first with Chris. He's our technical director. We went up to Scotland, so to our site in near Loch Ness. And Yeah, definitely was--

yeah.

The sort of city boy unprepared for that. So yeah, I'm definitely improving the kit that I've got.

But yeah, I think moving quickly on those sites is something that we want to do. But you have to respect what you have to deal with health and safety. But operationally, you want to standardize as much as possible. So that's really important. Framework agreements with your main counterparties, not having lots of different sites. I think those things are super important.

Contracts get really complicated. There's big contracts that you need to deal with, and again, having a really good organizational structure where you can manage those big contracts and make decisions on them quickly and effectively as a team. Those things are what you can do as a business, and they can actually hold out months.

Yeah. That's the alpha, if you like.

So any ideas on how we can change the rules of this game that we're in to make things go faster? So for example, grid connections, I know it's been a while since we've been involved in grid connections, right? But it used to be, I think, 60 days we have to wait for a grid connection, or 45 days. Once you put an application in, like a G99 or whatever it was before, and you have to wait ages to get it back from the DNO.

So these kind of things that take a while, that's just one idea. What else can we do to reduce barriers and get this stuff done faster? What's frustrating you?

I mean, the DNO--

yeah, the time it takes to get a grid connection off the bat. Like I said, we've not actually done--

these first sites, we haven't actually done the connection applications ourselves.

So it's like ready to go sites, spade ready.

Exactly. But it's something that we're moving into.

The connection side, I think, is really interesting. So everyone will complain about the speed of distributors here, or National Grid, or whatever to respond.

But we've started looking at international. We've started looking at Europe, and the grid application processes there are just not standardized. There's not a standardized way of going about it with--

the way that DNOs are run here, there's quite a lot of rules around how they have to respond, when they have to respond, what the response needs to look like, what they commit to, and that's definitely not the case in Europe.

So we're kind of--

and that's the reason why the UK is much more mature as a storage market, as a merchant storage market. Because--

There's rules of the game.

There's rules of the game that are set up that enable new players to come into it. And so I think in that sense, the UK is actually in quite--

in a relatively good place.

I think it's going to be interesting as we move from--

the move from distribution connected storage more to transmission connections. It'll be interesting to see because I think the distribution connection storage model actually is running relatively effectively.

And you can see it scaling up quite fast. It'd be interesting to see how that goes as you get to these much bigger projects. Which again, I think you're having 400 megawatt batteries that go up--

you know, this is power station size, right? And arguably, you can't go as fast as you can with a 20 to 50 megawatt distribution connected battery. So I think that would be an interesting step change.

Yeah, we had Bridget from Orsted on a couple of weeks ago, and she was talking about co-locating storage on wind sites. So I think it was Dogger Bank or one of these offshore wind sites.

And they're looking at like two--

the sizes they're talking about is like two gigawatts, eight gigawatt hour battery. Dude, that's like four times the whole--

five times the whole UK market.

So things are going to get much, much bigger very, very fast. Not necessarily grid connected for just the standalone model, but co-located, as well. All numbers are going up.

I want to talk to you about investor sentiment. You've been out in the market, and you've started Field, and you're building assets. And I'm assuming you've had to bring on some external capital to do that, right? I think that's a pretty safe assumption. And so you've been speaking to investors and probably getting a lot of attention.

What does investor appetite look and feel like now?

And I ask that because the merchant case for storage is fairly well established now, but it's taken a few years to get everyone's head around it.

And the market is changing so fast. And it feels like investors, as soon as they understand one model, it all changes.

So how are you dealing with the ambiguity of that, and how are you communicating that to investors? Is it becoming easier? People becoming more comfortable with it? I'm putting words in your mouth now. I don't know. What's it like on the road show with Amit?

Yeah, so I started looking in detail on batteries probably 2, 2 and 1/2 years ago, and I think the whole--

everything's moved on in terms of lender appetite and also equity investor appetite. And so previously on the lending side, you definitely needed floor price from your optimizer contract from someone with a really big balance sheet. And the floor price, and also the amount that you paid in commission above the floor price was really high.

And that's completely--

so I guess in the optimizer side, it's become more competitive. And so you can get floor price contracts paying lower commissions now.

And then also lenders don't necessarily just require a floor price. They've got sufficiently comfortable and understand the market enough that they understand what a kind of base level real downside case level of revenue that they can expect from batteries. And they've got more comfortable with that.

So I think that's a big shift, and that really opens up the low cost of capital money into storage. So that's been quite a big change, and I think there's something that's becoming almost quite standardized there. So I think that's a really exciting development.

I think on the equity side, huge interest in energy transition like ESG.

And there sustainability, every fund out there has some angle on that.

I think, then, when you actually get into the detail, though, of battery storage--

and it's funny, we're in the battery storage space. You think, God, it's moved on so far. It's so mature. We're going too slow.

Like you have all of those things. Then actually, when you go out further, you realize how new an asset class it is. So it's finding within all of those hundreds of different firms that they're out there and funds that can invest, it's finding the ones where you're pushing on an open door. So not many are fully educated about the battery business case, but there are quite a few out there that have started thinking about it. And they're interested.

Also think about previously it's just been, let's just invest in software.

And I think software alone isn't going to solve the energy transition. It's like, there's a lot of hardware involved, as well. There's a lot of infrastructure. So I think that's the sort of mindset shift that I am seeing a bit more of, or at least we're starting to speak to the people in that space who are interested in doing that.

What about a merchant case? Investors comfortable with that kind of--

with the whole thing around merchants. So much deeper markets they should be happier, you'd think, because the frequency response becoming full, if you like, kind of diminishes when you can make money on spreads.

But are they comfortable with the--

I'm not going to say unpredictability of that. Because if you believe in [INAUDIBLE]

of penetration and volatility long term, then it's going to be there. But are they comfortable with the idea of merchant now in a way that--

has that changed in the last couple of years, or has it been--

it's been fine?

Yeah, that's changed definitely, right? So merchant is--

I think there's clearly a base level of revenues that people understand that they can expect from the batch. So there's a base level of spread.

And obviously, it's well below the level of spreads that we're seeing today, or we've seen over the last six months. But I think there's definitely people have got comfortable with the fact that, yeah, you're not just putting--

these are deep markets. The wholesale market is a deep market, and there's a certain level of spread that can be supported by these assets. So yeah, the appetite to invest, therefore, in merchant projects is really increased.

Awesome. Let's talk about one of your assets at the moment. So you mentioned earlier you're building an asset right now. Is it a one in Scotland? If you could talk through what you're building, and how that works, and how you found building your first asset, and what you've learned, that'd be awesome.

Yeah, so the first one is actually in Oldham, so near Manchester. So that's a 20 megawatt one-hour duration project.

It's on an industrial site.

It's actually--

so we're kind of steep learning curve, right? So first thing when you go into it, you speak to a number of developers. We found this site had a really sort of attractive grid connection, and date, and also cost. And so we moved forward with that.

Then obviously, we start on unpeeling.

You know, what's actually going on with the land, with the planning permission. The one that we've got initially is actually in an energy barn or a warehouse. So that has its own challenges, as well.

So we've learned everything along the way of doing that. And I think, yeah, it's been a really important learning curve for us to be on.

Again, I think the really important thing for us has been, let's move quickly on this. Obviously in a low-risk manner, but for that first project, I think we could have spent a lot longer going around every single site that was available. And we ultimately end up with a much shorter list, and we just went for something that we could work on soon.

Because developing the actual understanding of how batteries work, how construction works, how planning permission works was so important, and it's--

even for members in the team who have worked in batteries, but potentially at optimizers or developers, actually doing a full project from end to end is new.

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Yeah, a really good experience. We've learned a lot from that. It's all on track commissioning, so I say right now publicly.

Someone's going to walk past and put a no on the window.

Yeah, exactly. But yeah, all on track for commissioning in Q2 of this year. So we're really excited with the progress on that.

So we have first field battery on the [INAUDIBLE]

leaderboard, as well, soon. Very excited about that.

Yeah, exactly. Well, yeah, until--

you know, and then we've got to see the performance.

So yeah, it's all very public now, how that performs, which is what you guys do so well. So yeah, I think that's really exciting with the progress that we've made there.

Behind that, we've got two more projects that we would publicly announce that we've acquired. So there's one in Gerrard's Cross, so towards the west of London.

Oh I used to live in Beaconsfield, so that would have been in my backyard, and I would have voted for it.

Yeah. And yeah, Beaconsfield, they've got a nice model village there.

Oh, they got a lovely model village. Yeah, yeah.

So yeah, that's the next one. And again, that will probably be a one hour duration battery with connection and energization due in Q1, '23.

And then we've got our sort of largest one so far is a 50 megawatt, and likely to be two hour duration. It's a 50 megawatt, 100 megawatt hour project up in the north of Scotland.

QUENTIN SCRIMSHIRE: Wow, big projects.

Yeah.

And again, that location, it suits itself better for longer duration. It's an area of constraint, so a lot of the wind farms there and the substation that goes into a lot of the wind farms get constrained. So I think that could be quite an attractive place to do a longer duration asset.

Awesome. And you mentioned, so not shopping around too much for--

obviously, you've found some sites you're comfortable with, and they meet your risk profile. But so we did some analysis that pretty much it's like the Bitcoin story, right? Anyone who bought Bitcoin and didn't sell up until a certain point was always in the money, and it's the same with batteries. If you go back to 2016 when the first asset started being built, pretty much all of them have outperformed what we estimate the business case was apart from a brief blip where FFR hit 5 pounds in 2017 and 2018 for a bit.

And everyone was like, oh, the market's oversaturated. And like six months later it switched on again, and the people who are winning in this market, who people who've got operational assets, not just talking about operational assets. So yeah, I mean, I can completely understand why you went down that route.

So three assets. One's going to be built soon. Two more coming soon, as well. And then are you looking beyond the UK for the next ones, or are you going to stay here?

Yes, we've got a couple more that are like basically planning decisions are due this week, and then we would acquire those and take those into construction, as well. So yeah, and with the target of 300 megawatts by the end of 2023, which right now is still on.

Yeah, yeah.

And I think that's thing, like we moved quickly initially on that first site, but things are becoming more locational specific. And I think, again, like I mentioned, for something that's situated in somewhere like Scotland, I think longer duration makes more sense.

And yeah, I think that's going to be interesting how that unfolds. Probably going back to your point around what are things that could almost help move things along or blockers.

There's still quite a lot of uncertainty over embedded export tariffs, et cetera. And I think that stuff obviously changes your outlook on places like Scotland, right? It changes the business case.

Especially when it's in the first couple of years of business case, because it matters so much. It's funny, the Scottish thing. So for me, the biggest issue is--

so if you think it through, wind gets bit down in Scotland in the BM, and there's thermal constraints. And so it makes sense that you should be able to capture loads of value by building your assets in Scotland.

The problem is the market doesn't really let you do that too much yet because you're limited by the transmission constraint license condition and other stuff. And really, for the good of the system, we should be encouraging people to build shed loads of storage in Scotland. For the market, the way it's designed isn't really--

you don't get the reward that you should get for doing that since it's such a long way and it's so cold to go around in your wellies.

But other than that, you don't get a reward that it provides to the system, which is a real shame.

One other thing you mentioned earlier, I just want to pick up on before we finish up. So you talked about CapEx and prices--

prices going up. Well, I don't want any details because it's all commercially sensitive, but what are you seeing out there in the market, and is it a worry?

I mean, it was probably going to happen at some point.

So battery costs have been a downward trend for forever, and now the raw material prices are catching up with that increased demand.

But a 400% increase in lithium prices last year ultimately is going to find its way to into battery costs. I think lithium prices are up again--

lithium carbonate prices are up again significantly again this year.

So it's very likely that battery prices will go up again this year. And you know, that feeds ultimately into your CapEx for your total system cost, 5, 10%. And that's material for your business case.

So I think that changes--

no, it doesn't change whether you actually build batteries or not, but it changes the way you finance them. It changes the amount that you can borrow against it. It changes the return profile.

So I think, yeah, it's going to be the feedthrough of that. And obviously, we've seen such excitement in the space. And obviously, we're part of that, right? We're in there, and we're building.

We're trying to go fast. It would be--

what's the knock-on effect on that into batteries?

You know, everyone's always thought, oh, what's going to happen when dynamic containment revenues go down, or what happens when volatility reduces? But I think no one was really thinking, what's going to happen when battery prices go up? The expectation was the battery price would continue going down forever.

Because the solar and the wind curve has done that.

Exactly.

And so I think that's going to be interesting. Does the speed, at least, of announcements that we've seen this year, is that going to change that?

And it remains to be seen. And it does impact your return profile and how much you can borrow, so ultimately it must slow things down a little bit.

Yeah, definitely. And, I mean, you're a commodities trader, so you'll understand this a lot better than me. But for me, the supply and demand of lithium prices, for example, or just commodities in general, but particularly lithium, anything that's required for a battery.

So price shoots up. What's going to bring price down again? Either demand is going to be suppressed, or supply side is going to get oversupplied.

And of course, there's new mines setting up, and people are digging for lithium in places that they never thought of, but it's still slower than expected. And then on the demand side, where is demand going to slow down? Where on Earth are people going to stop buying lithium ion batteries for cars, or for electronics, or for stationary storage? I just don't see it. The demand side is only going one way.

And if they overbuild capacity on the mining side, which doesn't appear to be happening, you can still be bullish on lithium now, which is nuts. You look at the chart, it doesn't make any sense. But it does.

Yeah, totally. And I mean, as you mentioned, as well, it's not just lithium, right? It's copper, it's graphite. Those costs have been--

I mean, it's shipping, as well, right?

So we saw a five-fold shipping on our first project, which was we locked in prices at a very attractive level. But the shipping side moved considerably during that contracting period, and shipping is so volatile, right? So those all--

It shouldn't be, right? For like decades it hasn't been.

Yeah, exactly.

And suddenly

There was a 5x increase in shipping costs. And when you're shipping lots of containers of batteries from China, that's a significant increase in costs. So all those things are moving around a lot. It's not just lithium.

And so just to finish up, I want to talk about the future energy system and what your vision is for it. And we've talked a little bit before about technology in the future energy systems, operational improvements.

What do you think it looks like? Decentralization we've also talked about. What do you think it looks like, and what's the dream?

I think decentralization is something that, yeah, we just see that happening. So I think that's where we get to and I think you get to this--

the future energy utopia where the home is an energy hub, and you have your solar, and your battery, and your EV. And I think that stuff will all--

we will get there.

But I think the progress of that takes quite a long time. It's taken so long to roll out smart meters in this country. Like we're years behind where that should be. So I think that, and also the shift in consumer sentiment.

Why was that, by the way?

We always talk about front of meter batteries. We never really talk about supply side. So why is it so slow for me to roll out? Put you on the spot here, sorry. I know you're going to know the answer.

I think it was because it was--

like in other countries where they rolled them out really quickly, it was done by the distributor. It was done by the grid. And then they just go street by street and install smart meters, as opposed to here where it was a supply led rollout. And I think then there were lots of suppliers, as we, know and I think that just complicated the rollout of it.

So I think that's the supply-led probably made sense when there were only a few very large suppliers. But I think that's all got muddy during that time.

Sorry, I threw you completely off guard into the old Amit.

New Amit, so future energy system, decentralization. Everyone's going to have this little self-fulfilling--

that's not the right word. Everyone's going to make their energy themselves--

Yeah, self, autonomous, self-sufficient, yeah.

It sounds like a good utopia.

Yeah. And I think we do sort of head in that direction.

Well actually, there's two ways of that. So I think my view has been that just shifting consumer sentiment in order for that to become a reality, and it's quite complicated, and it can be expensive. Would actually take a while. And in the short run, there are things such as front and meter utility scale battery that can achieve a lot of that transition that needs to be made.

On the flip side, I think the energy price shock that we've seen over the last year has been so significant, and it's been so extreme that actually, maybe it will push some of that stuff forwards faster than it was going. So I think you're seeing quite interesting pilots that happening. There's one between National Grid and Octopus, I think now, which is a sort of demand reduction at a customer level--

at a domestic level. I think that stuff's starting to happen quite fast.

You're seeing other things like the capacity market price that we saw yesterday for the t minus 1.

75 pounds, for anyone who's watching. Yes, bizarre.

And I think those--

they're like extreme--

they're faster or extreme reactions to the extreme price events over the last year. So you could actually see things accelerate almost quicker as a result. So maybe be what we've seen over the last year ends up being a blessing in disguise

Kick up the backside.

Yeah, for improving flexibility and speeding up decentralization. So that's the hope.

Awesome. So I think we've run out of time. I just want to say thank you for coming on, and thanks for hosting us in this utopia in East London. Coolest place I've ever been, I think.

Thanks for hosting us. Thanks for coming on, and yeah.

If anyone's got any questions, if you're watching this, comment. Let us know what you think. Have some questions that we can try and get back you, and make sure you hit the Subscribe button. That's it. Thanks very much.

Thanks. Thanks, Quentin. Cheers.