Electrifying Industry: The Grid Access Problem with Mikey Clarke (Relode Energy))

Hello and welcome to transmission. Today, I'm speaking with Mikey Clark, CEO of Reload Energy, who was previously the CTO of Pivot Power and successfully built a two gigawatt battery network that was acquired by EDF Renewables. We discussed the massive infrastructure challenge facing industries transitioning from diesel to electricity, Reload's innovative power parks for providing gigawatt scale access, and why the shortage of skilled engineers is a critical bottleneck for the energy transition. What really struck me was his observation that while haulage companies excel at managing diesel fleets, managing large electrical connections is a radically new thing.

However, their decisions are based in the hard economics of operating businesses. So when fleet operations reach the tipping point to go electric, these companies will move fast. So can power parks really enable the wider electrification, or will regulatory hurdles and skill shortages derail these innovative approaches? Let's jump in.

Hello, Mikey, and welcome to transmission.

Thank you. Awesome to be here.

And let's start as ever with you and what is your role in the energy industry?

Okay. So at the moment, I'm the CEO of Reload Energy, but I've always been an engineer. So I started reading metallurgy and materials engineering, so I love the fundamentals. I spent a lot of time building hospitals and schools and data centers but moved across into power when the Olympics got announced in two thousand six and I've been in power ever since be it building tunnels, leading r and d for distribution networks, being in startups or more recently cofounding Pivot Power and really focusing on batteries at grid scale, particularly on the transmission network.

Okay.

And people will know a little bit of that Pivot Power history.

So could you give us the very quick history of Pivot Power? Yes. So I love I love how we did it. I wouldn't change a thing, but ultimately we were sharing an office with some of the guys from Tesla at the time trying to build a network and they were struggling with DNOs.

They couldn't get their heads around securities and credit ratings that you needed to play on the transmission network. And they came to us and said, like, you guys should have a look at this. And there was kind of a light bulb moment in end of two thousand seventeen. Mhmm.

And we got talking to National Grid and, yeah, we'd raised money within a few weeks. We built a two gigawatt network within eighteen months and sold it to EDF renewables and we've been building it ever since until until reload arrived.

And and that was somewhat unique because you were looking at tertiary windings on some of the largest transformers. Right? That's right. And and like just for people outside of the energy space, what does that even mean?

So a tertiary winding is is if you think of an auto transformer, those that don't know, an auto transformer is just a huge transformer, a super good transformer on the transmission network. They're continuously wound, which means they sometimes struggle with harmonics. And so there's a a nice little winding that goes on the side of that transformer that's wound in a delta configuration, which is wonderfully available to us to take off three phases and connect a battery. So that that was really the genesis of that.

Okay. And this is the earliest we've ever gone into that level of technical detail. So Which is which is gonna be which is gonna be fantastic because I know loads of people in who listen to this are super interested in both the energy, battery, and the engineering space. So I think that I think this episode is gonna have a whole load of content for them.

Well, tell me when I go too deep. Yes. I can talk all day about it.

I I I will. I will. Let's go to let's go on from Pivot then to Reload. So what is Reload?

So Reload was a group of us, some of us from Pivot Power, and we've brought in a COO who I've worked with before. Ultimately, we're a team of people that really believe in our journey to net zero, but we're seeing a massive gap on the load and demand side. We've been part of the process of building batteries and solar and wind, and there's lots of capacity and lots of people doing that. I think we we felt like there was a a whole other side of the equation missing and that's what we focused on.

So we we don't describe ourselves as a startup. We're a special purpose company designed specifically to take advantage of the processes happening in connections reform. We're very pro that. We think it needs to happen.

But we also think load really needs to come to the forefront because ultimately it's these new customers that are switching in some cases from diesel or hydrocarbons into electricity over the next ten years. We really wanna be there as a a huge catalyst for them.

So you're targeting people who are based on sort of conventional methods of energy into power generation on-site, and you're trying to do that in a different way. So for people who are kind of less familiar with the work that you're doing, how do you do that for them?

Fine. So they I'll talk about the concept of of our power parks a little bit later, but ultimately, there's customers like the haulage industry. So road haulage is exclusively or almost exclusively diesel at the moment. They're amazing at buying diesel and they understand how that whole network of new fleet trucks, secondhand fleet trucks go and they understand their residual values.

When it comes to electrifying those and we're not miles away, we're not many years away from a volume getting onto the roads. Buying electricity is a radically new thing particularly as it's a lot more complex than diesel. Connecting into large volumes of power, often they don't own their own sites, often DNOs aren't incredibly helpful when it comes to giving them a timely and affordable connection. So we're really talking to the haulage industry about maybe an alternative and and look at our power parks.

Same thing with the shipping industry, probably a slower burn, but ships run almost exclusively on heavy fuel oil, which is like a a thicker diesel. They tend to switch to a low sulfur solution in once they're in inland waters. But again, they're gonna need in the fullness of time to switch to an alternative. We don't know what that is.

Whether it's e methanol or a hydrogen derivative, ammonia, etcetera. All those are gonna be manufactured using electricity. So as the move goes from hydrocarbons to electricity, there's a gaping hole as far as we're concerned in timely affordable and sizable grid connections. Our power parks really are the we think are a really major part of that solution.

Yeah. And there's a really fascinating part of this which is in a in a power system, everyone knows that networks and locations are really important in terms of how much energy you can flow down a certain line where certain transformers are to connect.

That is a huge part of how power networks are put together. You're also then thinking about other networks in terms of haulage networks or transportation networks. And so I suppose you are in terms of how you're planning this, you're almost sort of sort of crossing over these two networks to try and find availability on the power side, but also pinch points on the transportation side as well?

Absolutely. And so the the layers have different kind of attributes. So we we are grid led generally, like there's no point turning up and building a power park when the grid's not gonna get there till twenty thirty eight or something. So we're we're we're grid led, but equally we have this overlay of kind of golden transport routes.

Again, there's no point building something in the middle of nowhere where there's no traffic. So we overlay that. We also overlay planning. So we have a huge amount of sites that go into the top of our kind of filter, our funnel, and then we have a really hard look at what's the possibility of getting power, what's the potential of getting planning, and then we work with our land agents to make sure we're getting the right sites.

And obviously, the new rules that have come in over the course of connections reform where we need letters of authority, they're all things you should be doing anywhere and from our point of view. So it works really well, but yeah, there's a lot to look at.

And we've covered a little bit of where and we've covered a little bit of who, but maybe we haven't covered the the when. So is this a kind of is this all pointed towards twenty thirty eight or how quickly might this be able to to deliver sites equipment on the ground?

So we think this needs to be timely. So what we're not trying to do is build it and they will come. So we think anything from twenty thirty onwards is a really good date for us. I think before that when not realistic to get the sort of the size of sites we're talking about through planning, doing the surveys correctly. So we're really looking at twenty thirty onwards. We're obviously constrained by connections reform, but actually not being constrained with load not being constrained at all by CP twenty thirty and a really good need case for bringing these new whole new energy vectors into electricity system. We think there's a really good argument, and we're being quite vocal about the need for directly connected demand to really get to the front of the queue.

I mean, we're seeing negative prices in the middle of working weeks, so the system is frankly desperate for demand. So this is a huge need, but also need for the system, but also an opportunity for people, right place, right time. But you talked a little bit about your like, what you're installing, but perhaps we could put it in the context of some megawatt numbers just so people get the idea of the size of one of these parks. Are we talking sort of one megawatt or are we talking a gigawatt?

It's definitely towards gigawatt. So at the moment, our applications are in in the region of four hundred to nine hundred and fifty megawatts on each on each site. Ultimately, we want a network of around fifteen to twenty sites across the UK. They won't all be one gigawatt. But depending on where they are in the country, how many different vectors we think are viable in that area, and there's a big data center question on top of that. So where we think there's far more potential, the sites tend to be bigger. There is also a constraint on on land in some cases where there's a certain energy density you've got to hit from a land point of view.

I'm really interested in that in that WEN side because that size between four fifty megawatts and nine hundred plus megawatts is is is is a very large project effectively as a simple way of describing it.

But you can't build that and then only have a couple of HTVs coming through Yep.

Per week for example. That just won't work. So so how do you how do you manage to time it and locate it or contract it with the right group so that once it is built, you're getting that volume coming through from day one?

So I think the benefit of what we're doing is because there's multiple different vectors that will land at different times. I don't know yet whether a data center is gonna be in the area and we can contract with them or whether EHGVs are gonna have a massive uptake because we're on this kind of amazing route between, I don't know, Tilbury and Liverpool.

So we will contract with enough volume to get past an investment committee as long as there's also other conversations happening at the same time. So so anyone that's been through funding knows you can't just you can't get away with building it and they will come. So there will be an anchor tenant and we may also build our own electric HTV parks as well.

Okay. And so we we just when you're talking about vectors, you you I think mean sort of e HTV, data centers, potentially some battery assets. Is is that is is that a kind of a good description of three of the options? Do are there are there more options that you'd consider for those sites?

Yeah. There's we're having some really interesting conversations because cross channel ferries are now talking about being thirty megawatts per ferry, and they need might need to charge two or three of them at the same time. That's a hundred megawatt plus connection once you've reinforced the the kind of the whole ferry ports as well to accommodate that. Those things don't come out of nowhere.

So so yes, there is data centers are a hot topic whether they form a core part of our proposition. We don't know yet. We hope so. But yes, there's also e fuels.

They've kinda had a bit of a rough journey over the last couple of years, but ultimately if sustainable aviation fuel is gonna happen, we want to be there in the right place to provide them power.

Okay. And then this is this I think a really funky thing in the in the GB power sector and also in other power sectors that you have really good network connection to certain power stations on the coast because that's where the power stations are for the cooling water. So you have very good grid connection to those points. But the port that might be slightly adjacent to it might not have the same quality of of kind of grid getting to it. Yeah. So again, is that another part of how you overlay kind of the network of transportation with the network of power to try and find those hotspots where you think it's the right place to locate?

Yeah. A little bit. So we're not we're not afraid of laying some cable ourselves and having some having some local network. So we've done this previously under another kind of another guise.

Really proud of that previous project we built with EDF powering multiple EV off takers from the same connection our battery came from. So we're not afraid of that. They don't need to be absolutely on the same campus as it were in our power park. But if the port is ten kilometers away, we shouldn't be afraid of that.

If the connection's material enough, that that can be absorbed.

Okay. Super interesting. Maybe just for a few few of the commercial heads, let's ask the question, how how does this all make money?

So we make money not just similarly to a an ID and O or a distribution network where we will we will take care of the the large transmission connection, but backed off from that. We'll have customers that will come to us and pay connections fee. They'll pay an access fee, kind of an annual volumetric annual fixed fee and then a volumetric fee based on energy. We we want to make it look and feel like any other connection. Just hopefully turning up at the size and time they want.

Okay. There's a lot of there's a lot a lot of facets to this in there to kinda pull it all together into like that successful.

It's been in my head for years. Okay. Okay. It's slowly coming to fruition.

And maybe to to on on that theme, has this been done before?

They kind of is there a blueprint out there that you could look at and and kinda copy?

Or is this a a new way of thinking about this? I think it's genuinely new, but we're not breaking kind of we're not the bleeding edge of anything. And I I'm really deliberate never to never to be the bleeding edge of anything because it's really difficult to get scale investment and I don't want reg changes. That that's kind of my my golden rules for for any company I've been involved in.

But what we are doing is bringing together some of the things we did at Pivot Power and Lately EDF where we took a a single asset that use that connection for multiple things and it was phenomenal. That was a cable we ran through a difficult part of Oxford. Oxford's hugely struggles with air quality and we built the most powerful charging station in Europe at the time with amazing Tesla bays, amazing fastener bays, etcetera.

So so that part of kind of a private wire network has been done before. But private wireless networks aren't new. I mean, you look at most massive load centers in the history of the UK networks, there was often a power station sitting behind it. Slightly different configuration, but nothing new under the sun. So we're just bringing some of these together in a package that's fit for the next stage of the energy transmission Sorry.

Mhmm. And and in terms of then things that this would offer back to the grid, so we've talked a lot about HDVs, data centers, things that you're sort of you will have on-site and you will serve on-site.

Like with other sites that have a lot of money being spent on power electronics, is there something that you're looking to offer back to the grid in terms of something that will be valuable for the grid?

So at the moment, our vanilla proposition is load only.

So we let customers will still pick their own supplier. They can probably do play some tunes on their own supply contracts as well if they want. But ultimately, we've got we will have some very large connections straight onto the ultimately onto four hundred kV network. So if NISO and if the government think it's appropriate, then yes, we're all for plug in long duration storage or some sort of inertial support device.

I can't think of anything better than to use these complex but large scale connections to really be a all encompassing solution and really contribute.

And and with where kind of connections reform is going, I think we will see a lot of planning permission is already granted for a lot of battery projects of kind of the vanilla kind of that two to four to maybe just slightly over four hour duration. So the it might be that outside of connections reform, it's those sort of more strategic type things like longer durations or inertia type provision that might be the things that get accelerated and and can be added on to sites outside of the current process of connection reform.

We hope so. We're certainly whispering in as many ears as we can to make sure they they know that's what we can offer and we think this country has been very good at kind of sweating assets. This is a a different way of optimizing instead of just letting things go old and using them as long as possible. This is really using high quality new connections and really make the most of them.

Okay. And if I'm on the network operator side, so transmission or distribution Yep. Am I looking at this proposal? Am I saying, oh god, I'm really not sure what's happening there?

It's kind of multifaceted, there's there's multiple vectors. How how am supposed to think about this? I like this is very difficult for me to compute. Or are they sort of welcoming it with with open arms in terms of just things like the load that it will bring onto the system?

I I won't speak for them because I can't. I think and I I really hope what we've submitted for our technical declarations within our applications are I think they're very sophisticated. I think they have we've tried to preempt some of the questions they had. They got processed quickly, but there's a lot more that went into our applications than a standard kind of one technology type application. There's multiple technical declarations.

Okay. It's a fascinating space. Let's move from the technical to the commercial and a little bit on reload. So in terms of fundraising planning, what's what's next for you?

So we've got the most amazing set of angels that have supported us. Some of them have been on the journey with us through Pivot.

And so I think they hopefully, they like us and trust us. And it's like I say, there's six of us that have come from the the old Pivot team. So they've been amazing. They continue to support us. At the moment, we're we've just gone out to the market for our next funding round.

And we're looking at the moment to close funding to get us through to probably twenty twenty eight such that we got first projects spayed ready, ready to have a the next round of investment kind of on a project by project basis. So it's a it's a big raise for a small company, but there's a lot to do and we wanna grow the team a little bit.

But Okay.

We're we're we're pretty lean and we're we're very happy with that.

Okay. And I'm just gonna just date stamp that. So we're fifth of June today Yeah. So that people can have context on kinda when this was recorded.

Okay. And I think perhaps one silly question for me is that is is that funding to support Reload the Company and then each of these individual projects will then get sort of project finance and support it that way? Because it feels like a huge amount of infrastructure land connection that you're gonna have to be buying. I I imagine that that will go through a sort of project finance type structure.

It it depends who comes in in this round. So we'll we're talking to everyone you would expect, kind of the big infrastructure players, some of the slightly smaller infrastructure teams that have more of a front end mandate. And it depends on the size of their balance sheet as to whether they're hoping to follow through and finance first projects or whether actually they'll be part of the team that support us funding those individual projects. But you're right.

These are they're big sites. They're tens of millions of pounds to build. So we've gotta get it right. But equally, there's there's money out there that needs to be deployed in quality projects and and that's what we're here for.

I suppose you one of the things we always hear about within the energy space is the kind of the ability of getting people on to these projects who are suitably qualified and can actually deliver these high quality electrical networks as needed.

That requires a high number of engineers, electrically qualified groups to do that work often through EPCs or or sort of subcontraction. Yeah. How do you feel about that? Because on one hand, I can see this really positive story that huge amount of jobs will be required in order to deliver one of these parks, which is a great new story. But the the others the other side for you, there's there must be so much work going on within the power system over the next few years. Like, do do you feel confident that you're gonna be able to kind of call in the right groups at the right times to be able to deliver these projects?

So I think it's a team effort. And what we found when we worked with particularly National Grid on previous battery projects, it is once you get past kind of the application process and you get awarded a connection date and sign a bilateral contract, etcetera. Once you get into the thick of it and you get to know the commissioning engineers, it's more of a team effort. So I'm confident of that and confident of recreating what we've done before and we've had some we have some fantastic relationships.

I think I do generally worry about the UK space and how many t p one four one commissioning engineers there are and how many t p one four four substation design qualified engineers there are. If I had my time again, I'd have set up a whole company that trained these people from the start and contract them out at huge huge fees. But at the moment, no, we need to make sure we get the right people at the right time. It it's always gonna be a challenge because there's so many people fighting for a finite amount of results.

I totally agree. We we and we do we hear this conversation a lot. May maybe just for for listeners, of the pool of those people in in GB, do you think we have sort of are we talking about fifty people who are kind of qualified to that standard? Is it more like five hundred or is it more like five thousand? What how big is the pool of these kind of these the on these pinch points of of sort of project design, how many people in UK can actually do this work?

I think first of all, I'd say our networks are amazing places to learn and all the best engineers have come through National Grid or Scottish Power or SSC or any of the distribution networks. And I think it's it's the network companies that actually struggle to keep hold of them because they can earn so much more money in the offshore wind industry, etcetera. I think in terms of the number of them, it's it's probably in that range you said between fifty and five hundred in any particular discipline. We've always struggled to get hold of t p one four one engineers because they are you need one on the opposite oppo side, you need one on the network side and one on your side.

And they genuinely it's it's pretty old school. They sit there and they follow a minute by minute schedule. And if things go wrong, that's when they earn their money. And and things do go out of sequence and and not behave as you wanted.

I think we are concerned about it. It's on our risk registers, no two ways about it. But I think good quality companies with good quality kind of that will have good outcomes. So the people that start planning ahead for that as quickly as possible have done it before.

The whole reason we support connections reform is there's some really quality outfits in the UK that can build things. And there's some that are there just to flip it and probably run. So we very much pitch ourselves on the quality end. Part of our job is to make sure we've got those resources available to us or at least on call when we need them.

Okay. And maybe this this is not gonna sort of come through in time for the plans that you have to execute. But if you're listening to this and you're interested in electrical engineering, how do you get into one of those spaces and and go on to take on one of those roles?

So I would do your maths like it's it's absolutely key. Be really confident with that, but also get out there and talk to talk to these companies. They're really really good actually at talking to kind of younger potential engineers. I think there's probably not enough apprenticeships, I'll be honest with you, out there.

And I think a consolidated kind of a reconsolidation of effort on that would be really helpful. I mean, just to give you the context, then the in very round numbers, the transmission network is currently trundling along about a billion pounds a year of investment. They need to be at six or seven billion a year by twenty twenty eight to twenty twenty nine. So the the scale of what's about to happen in front of us is is is we kind of it's an uncommon moment in my career Yeah.

That there's gonna be such change. And whilst we want to capitalize and and be a supporting part of that, I think there's probably an education side that needs to come along that journey and now is the time to do it.

It is that there is this almost unique thing that's happening within the power sector.

Right now. About it.

Yeah. I totally agree and maybe groups like GB Energy kind of if there is sort of a a head scratching of where to put money, things like apprenticeships being supported to bring through technically qualified people feels like a sort of ten x way of being able to spend some of that war chest on on upgrading power systems.

Absolutely. I mean, if we want growth in the UK, you want to bring in quality jobs and and quality quality people will carve out quality careers for themselves. And and the electricity industry is one of the highest growth areas there is for that. So yeah, we we'd support that, we'd we'd take that on and I'd love to be part of it.

Okay. Superb. Well, I'm gonna I'm gonna move us on to our final two questions that I'm hoping to cover today. So the first one is, is there anything that you'd like to pluck?

I think anyone that's got a uncertain future that isn't how can I put it? Anyone who isn't electricity industry knowledgeable at the moment that deals that knows they're gonna have to switch into the power industry and buy a lot of electricity or connect large connections that don't have connections at the moment. We're we're all ears and and happy to talk to people. Once we really know when we're locking connection dates, we'll we're we're making huge strides within certain industries. We've had some amazing responses from people like who who are very happy to work with people that they can build some trust with. So anyone that wants to come talk to us, we're we're here and we're we're ready for those conversations. There's lot of people out there hopefully that we've already spoken to.

And I and I suppose from the like the Holiar side, is there obviously, there's an attraction of working with groups like yourself in in in terms of the electrification of that process. Is there also within your business case, is there also like almost a push factor as well to move them away from being where they've been for donkey's years, which is running sort of diesel trucks?

There's a lot of European legislation that is doing the pushing by twenty thirty, I think it is. But certainly, as you get get towards twenty forty, if the fleet is not a hundred percent if the new fleet of sales is not a hundred percent electric by twenty forty, the fines are phenomenal Mhmm. For manufacturers. So I think the the main driver has been from the manufacturers.

And they're doing some really innovative things now because the the biggest headache is residual values of trucks. They know what a diesel truck is worth at five years. They have no idea what a battery powered truck is worth at five years. So we were with a manufacturer the other day who are starting to look at underwriting that.

So they so they know what the chassis is worth, they know what the cab's worth and if someone can underwrite what the battery's worth, there's a whole industry ready to to take them up once they're five years old for example. So there's really they're starting to be innovative things happening like that. But once it comes to purchasing power and getting grid connections, there's a bit of a gap that we we're very happy to to support people through and fill.

I think there's there's a lot of analogies between what's happening in the haulage industry to what's happened in the battery industry and that as you get volume coming through in the battery side, you all of a sudden get this data on how do individual cells perform, how are inverters working alongside batteries and it just means you can start to get these additional impacts in terms of longer life or better swapping out of components or avoiding issues in certain ways by being able to track certain data points. And I I think that that exact thing you described, which is, okay, how does a electric powered truck, how does that mature over time, and what can we do to kind of extend the life of certain parts of it or potentially swap out certain parts of it? Yeah. That just feels like we're right at the beginning of that journey.

We are to a certain degree, but having built some of the earliest very large batteries in the UK and looked at how batteries perform, there is actually a wealth of data there that probably isn't being tapped into enough. I mean, you guys at Modo have have some of the biggest datasets there must be on on batteries and how they're performing. But actually getting to the owners who are looking at the real proper state of health of their batteries.

The batteries are pretty good. So we we have that wealth of data. So actually, think we can quickly get things like hauliers there.

I think the biggest problem is probably availability of old fashioned things like transformers Mhmm.

Switch gear, cable even. We're we're looking at lead times of three years on a on a two hundred and forty MVA transformer.

And and a little plug here, if anyone wants to come on to talk about the process of actually manufacturing and testing transformers, we'd love to have we'd love to have that episode join us because it's a fascinating part of the energy industry and is I think listeners will really enjoy hearing about how those those particular assets are made. Just to move us on to the final question, so a contrarian view. Is there a view that you hold that that the majority of the market doesn't agree with?

I think we are gonna move quickly, very quickly into electrification of transport.

I think we're probably got a tipping point in not many years time.

I think once we can get power contracts at kind of twenty pence, twenty four pence and we can get hauliers kinda hooked into that. I think things are gonna accelerate way quicker than even Fez suggests. And Fez is always Fez always underestimates things and that's fine. We we we know that and I think haulers haulage and particularly large EHGVs are gonna accelerate way quicker than anyone can hope for. And the the gap we're trying to fill is the chicken and egg because what you've seen with domestic EVs, there's not enough infrastructure caused expensive range anxiety. We wanna just get rid of that. That doesn't exist in trucks but the infrastructure will be the problem.

So I think that's gonna the uptake and the business case is gonna be there far quicker than anyone realizes and we're gonna be there to fill Super interesting.

So you're almost kinda calling out that an EV decision for whoever is almost a subjective decision and there's an element of maths that doesn't feed into that whereas actually for for fleets, it's much more a objective or an objective decision to okay. From a business perspective, should we actually be doing this? And as a result, you could get whole fleets shifting quite quickly.

If the infrastructure's there and the contracts are there for the cost of electricity, I I think it happens quick. And I think the other factor that drives that is once you realize how few moving parts there are, these trucks will blow your mind about how they can drive up a hill without worrying about losing all their speed. I think they're amazing. I'm doing my HGV license just so I can start driving them myself and and walking the walk.

Superb. What a fantastic place to end this episode on. Mikey, you've been a fabulous We wish you the best of luck with the reload and and as you get those assets onto the ground and and running, we'd love to have you back on to talk through how it's going.

No problem at all. Can't wait.