Bonus Episode - our guests' hopes and dreams for the future energy system

What's radical and what excites you? What is your message to our industry? And where does energy storage fit into that? What next? Thing that you think we need to discuss or talk about more? The answer "no" is also OK.

I want to get your thoughts on where you think the future energy system is headed? What really excites you? And where does energy storage fit into that? We've talked about a few things today. But what are the big problems that energy storage needs to solve? And what can we do as an industry to get this thing moving faster?

Yeah, I have this really nice job where I am looking at whole system integration. And there is work going on in this space with the government as well. All the government regulators from different industry sectors are working together.

And there's total flexibility. This is what--

I don't know if it'll happen before I retire, you know? But total system flexibility, where you're producing electricity according to the weather pattern that's required. And there's a demand for something on the system.

And that demand could be for electricity. It could be for heating. It could be for molecules for e-fuels, or something like that. But you're totally able to flex in real time what you do with your production. And that's going to require a lot of storage in all areas, whether it's electrical, electrical energy, whether it's hydrogen storage, whether it's heat storage. We're going to need some form of storage for everything to be able to provide that flexibility, so we've got on-demand access to resources according to how they're being produced.

And for me, that's kind of like my nirvana. And I feel like I'm right on the very beginning of that journey. And I will never--

I probably will never see a full system integrated. But that's the way we've got to go.

Anything that you want to talk about? Anything exciting that Zenobe is doing that you think our listeners should know about?

I think the second life piece is really cool, what we're doing with re-using old EV batteries to decarbonize construction in the event space, the film space. I think it's a small part of our business, but I think it's really exciting, because we're closing the loop. And I think it's really important, because I mean, we talk a lot about carbon. And everybody talks about net zero.

But I think personally, that's getting into the foothills of where we need to get to, right? The Everest is still there to climb--

microplastics, water drought, all that sort of stuff. So I think, yeah, we need to look at the bigger problem and not be daunted by it, but do these small, incremental steps, but still not lose the fact that net zero by 2050 is a pathetic ambition. We need to do it as quickly as we can so we can start focusing on these other aspects if we want to keep this a livable place.

--at the forefront of industry. I think I'd just like to talk a bit more about our settlements role and how that could be more relevant going forwards, even when, well, essentially, balancing is increasingly happening at a local level.

Yeah.

And we see that gaining momentum because you've now got markets that essentially DS--

well, also DSO, but really LDNO-led markets, like UKPN, for example. And you've got--

they're willing to do 1 kilowatt sort of activities in the market, which is very, very low threshold and should see far more participation. But at Elexon, we've got a huge amount of experience and expertise just doing settlements at the centralized basis. There's absolutely no reason why we couldn't gain some entry into that space if--

Oh, so DNO-led balancing to manage this.

Local balancing--

Local balancing.

Yeah.

A bit like what the Piclo platform are doing.

Yes.

But you guys could do the settlement bit of it in the same way. Interesting.

Well, we're--

there's no reason why we couldn't. Let's just put it that way. So, yeah, we're definitely interesting in getting involved at that level as well, definitely.

Oh, so if it's--

I'm sure it's already happening. We need to get the Elexon people speaking to the DNO people.

Yes.

And make this--

link this thing up.

And despite short-term supply constraint, actually the demand for storage is never larger for all these other reasons, right? We just need it partly to decarbonize, but partly it just helps improve the reliability and affordability and accessibility of energy for everyone.

Absolutely nuts. I sometimes wonder whether--

I do believe this stuff, right? But then I wonder, do I believe this just because I work in batteries? Or is it coincidence that I work in this industry, and I'm really bullish on it? And I think we're only just going out and starting to go down a rabbit hole.

And do I live in an echo chamber? Probably yes, but I'm doubling down on it.

Yeah, I think about the same thing, right? It's easy to not realize you're in an echo chamber. And you can be, but--

So if you have to ask, are we in a bubble? You're probably in a bubble.

But yeah, sorry. I cut across you.

No, that's all right. I think I'd more or less finish the point just to say, the opportunity and the growth--

coming back to the start, we are busier than we ever have been. We are getting more RFPs than we can physically respond to at the moment, which shows you that despite near-term uncertainty on these things, in general, investors, capital flowing into this space, are very, very bullish about where energy storage and flexible technologies are going to be.

Awesome. The last thing I want to ask you is, where do you see energy in Bitcoin mining going long term?

You've obviously done a lot of thinking about this. You're involved in--

you're on the board of a company that's doing this.

What is your message to our industry, our community of folks in energy? What next?

Yeah.

You're right. I have been thinking about it a lot for--

what I've come to realize is that it's such a big shift that it's not really possible to know what's coming. But I think we have unlocked a whole host of opportunities going forward. And we don't really know what those are yet. We need the best and brightest of the energy industry to get behind this because the number of opportunities that are lying in there and the amount of good that can come out of this is unbelievable.

So my first thing that I think is going to happen--

and I don't think this is--

this might sound radical, but I don't--

I actually don't think it is. I think that mining, Bitcoin mining and energy, are going to fully converge. They're going to become one industry. Energy companies will mine, because it's going to be one of the fundamental ways that you monetize energy, and that's really their goal at the end of the day.

And if the energy companies don't move, the miners are going to buy--

--companies.

They're going to buy energy companies. These companies are scaling up. They're large, publicly traded companies now in the US.

They're on the NASDAQ and stuff. They're not hobby shop type. This is not a hobby industry anymore. It's been corporatized. And they are looking for reliable, low-cost, clean energy.

--and that's what an amazing place it is to work. We're doing really cool stuff. Not only is it good for the planet, it's cool. It's great big bits of kit that one turbine rotation can power a home for two

days-- that that's cool.

I think it's cool, anyway. I might need to get out more.

But we do really need to make people realize what an attractive place it is to work and doing good stuff and the breadth of opportunities.

In our organization alone, we've got people with legal backgrounds, environmental backgrounds. We've got engineers. We've got social sciences. We've got--

oh, you name it, we've got it.

And I think that's the point with the renewable sector and floating wind in particular. There's something for everyone, whatever the skill set is, to come and make and have that contribution, so yeah. The risk of not doing this is too great. We climate change is a thing.

We are, as you say, boiling the oceans, warming our planet. We have to take action now.

The threat from climate change is bigger than the threat from COVID. It's bigger than the threat from anything else that we

It's not bigger than the threat from bureaucracy, though, which is possibly the biggest threat to humankind's--

to future energy system. What's radical, and what excites you about that?

That's a big question to ask.

I tend to agree on the digital and on the decentralization part. But I think these are not the only components. For me, if you would pin it down to one point, I would say let's do it right, and let's do it smart. I think, no, I can't really put it into visionary words.

But my idea of it would really be let's really look at it thoroughly. Let's take a really comprehensive perspective on how we can couple things in a smart way and use all the kinds of technologies and measures that we have to combine it in a way that it will make societies thrive, because after all, it's the backbone of where we're heading.

So what happens next? Will there be consolidation, or is there enough space for everybody?

I think we've been through one phase of consolidation, which is the sale by most of the EFR assets. And we bought 120 of, I think, the 200 meg that got awarded contracts in 2016 and got built in 2018. So that was one phase of consolidation, where we bought assets from those exiting the sector and then one other asset as well from a player exiting the sector.

So that is our first wave, I think, of people entering the market and going, yeah, not for us, or whatever they decided. There's bound to be a second wave or third wave. And to the extent that they're waves, or whether it becomes continuous, you have people who build assets, choose to run them for a bit, whether they think they're going to get a better return as a result of doing something like that, and then sell them or just pivot into something else.

Whatever the reasons are, there's bound to be consolidation. But I--

at the moment, as you say, there's--

I'm not sure the right word is "fragmentation." But there's certainly a lot of new entrants and a lot of, yeah, new players. And we'll see how they all get on.

Just to finish out, and I want to talk about the future energy system--

what your vision is for it. And we've talked a little bit before about technology in the future energy system and operational improvements.

What do you think it looks like? Decentralization we've also talked about. What do you think it looks like? And, yeah, 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, we will get there.

Future energy system--

what's your vision of the future energy system? What are we looking at in 10, 20, 30 years? And how is technology going to enable it?

I spend a lot of time thinking 10, 20, years in advance. So this doesn't--

this comes easy to me. So I have quite a clear view. And this actually comes back to what I was doing before Piclo, Open Utility, thinking about the internet of energy. I think that, for me, is the right concept of where this--

where the energy system is going to go, is think a bit more literally about creating an internet of energy.

Now one way to describe this is what we're seeing right now is decentralization of energy resources so that the grid edge device is going from a few big power stations to millions of end nodes. But we still have basically one network that's centrally controlled. I think the way to describe this real disruptive change is actually decentralization of network control.

That, for me, is like having--

rather than thinking of it as one network, having a network of networks, i.e. an internetwork of connected island--

these networks that can operate in island mode and operate, connect, together.

And that, for me, is the real disruptive change that the sector's gonna go through over the 10 to 20 year time frame. Now energy storage is key to all of this. Energy storage everywhere is this--

maybe a nice note to end on. But, yeah, that's my view.

--thing that you think we need to discuss or talk about more, or something that you've been pondering? The answer "no" is also OK.

I don't know if this is an age thing or being a parent thing or a deep level of imposter syndrome, maybe a combination of all of them. But I'm not trying to lecture, but play to your strengths and be proud of those things. And own the shit out of your weaknesses, your shortcomings, things you haven't done, probably never will do.

And I just--

it's funny, because I think that with Mikey, Matthew, and myself, and then everybody came into it, we never talked about it. We never wrote down, this is what I'm good at, and this is what I'm not good at. And then you try to--

but in building a company, I think that that's an ingredient that's just so important. And I think if we all did that from a society standpoint, just think how much better we would be. I'm good at some things, and I'm not good at many things. And that's OK.

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