Batteries for hire with Peter Paul van Voorst tot Voorst (CEO & Co-Founder @ Skoon)

The y of the marketplace for us is is much bigger, and that is it's the fastest way to get a very large fleet of energy systems connected and directly available to those who need it at very large scale. And if we look at the energy transition, that is what we need. We look at grid operators, they're not gonna be able to figure it out. So they need a flexible layer around their grid to be able to keep up with all the energy demand. And also with all the added energy supply.

And that's one of the biggest reasons why we build a marketplace is so that we can provide global skill, scalable, solutions, and just basically a a one one stop API for grid operators to be able to plug into. So that they can patch up all those holes. They're gonna have more and more of in their grid.

Hello, and welcome back to transmission.

Today's conversation is with Peter Paul Vanvorch Tophorst, CEO of Shgon Energy. The conversation covers the challenges faced while building a marketplace platform, and how mobile batteries can be used to support the grid as clean energy demand grows. Don't forget to hit subscribe wherever you get your podcasts so you never miss an episode.

Let's jump Hey, Peter.

Hello, q. How are you doing?

Yeah. I'm good. I'm good. Thanks for taking the time to speak to us. Now I know This is a special day for both of us. This is actually at the year's anniversary since we first met at the energy storage summit in London, and we were doing an after party to launch the energy academy. I'm getting a good chat at the bar.

Yeah. We did. That's how it all started.

That is where it all started. And since then, there's there's a lot that's happened since then. So for the audience, let's talk about scoon. So, Peter, what is scoon?

Yeah. So it's SCoon or as we would pronounce it in the Netherlands, Skoon, we are an online marketplace for clean mobile energy.

And it basically brings together two groups of people, of businesses.

One side is rental companies or owners of clean mobile energy systems like battery containers or hydrogen generators that manage their systems using our software and list them on the marketplace for extra revenue.

And that revenue comes from the other group of users, which is energy users that traditionally use temporary energy solutions like diesel generators.

Or that are slowed down by grid congestion interconnection queues, all the latest and greatest grid challenges that we have. And what we do is we make sure that for every energy use, for every energy challenge, there is a solution close by. Because of having that marketplace operate globally and and always being able to move the energy systems to where they're needed post.

And can we put some numbers around school? So how long has or SCone? Sorry. How long has the company been going?

How many people are involved? You just raised around. Can you talk about that a little bit? Who's involved.

Sure. Yeah. So we've been running just over six years. So, Dan Federmons, and I founded the company, and Luckily enough, it's not just the two of us anymore. We're, thirty two people now, and that is roughly half software engineers and the other half, sales and operational people that are all energy experts. So they all know the subject matter of energy. Subject matter of mobile energy, storage, generation.

And together, we make sure that we, you know, we serve customers currently in fourteen countries.

And we we have indeed raised around our funding last year. Our series a round, was a five million round led by Blue Bear Capital out of the US. With a graduate entrepreneur fund as, the Dutch Fellow investor, and they joined Colin Industries and Diamond Shipyards as our already existing investors that have been with us for a couple of years now.

And Diamond Shipards, you were at Diamond Shipards for a while, weren't you?

I was.

Yeah. It all started with photography, actually. So I used to be have a little photography business on the side while studying naval engineering.

And I was able to combine the two by joining Diamond as one of their photographers and basically picking it each ship that I wanted to sail on and do a photoshoot with that chip. And that was a lot of fun and and through that, I started talking to a lot of people within them and, which included getting a part time job there. And, and then also when I told them about scone, they actually were interested to become one of the investors. So The rest is history.

So the rest is history. And let's just get this let let's just talk about the the product for a second. So if you forgive me, it's basically Tinder four x. Right?

So you're matching just an easy one for marketplace businesses. You're match you're you're essentially matchmaking in the market between folks who are selling something and folks who are buying something. And I guess there's there's lots of intricacies about marketplace businesses that we're gonna get onto in a minute. But could you just break down some example customers on each side there?

Yeah. So We like to use the analogy where the booking dot com of mobile energy.

One of the reasons is one of our investors, was the one that grew booking dot com to a global scale. So we have a lot of learnings from from their side, but also because it's it's really a data driven approach to doing that connection and especially in a new market like we are. We need a lot of help in that match because otherwise you're gonna end up with a system that is way too big, way too expensive, or even worse, way too small, and you're gonna end up with a blackout. So To just give you a few examples, we power construction sites that typically use diesel generators for their accommodation units or for charging their electric machinery.

And these generators are running idle most of the day burning fuel for nothing, and then the few moments a day that they come to make some coffee, the generator kicks up a little bit, and then it goes down again. And there's a lot to win there. And even just by making those hybrid and then as soon as possible, fully zero emission using all of our data tools, we can help these companies get used to the new way of powering the construction site. We do similar thing at film sets. Film sets also use diesel generators, which are noisy and Just imagine this podcast having to be recorded next to a generator that will be a lot of editing afterwards to get the rumble out So they just love using these clean solutions.

You can hear my dog in the background barking. If you got an electrical version of a dog, because I've been I've just been what's happening with my wife, Rachel, saying please. Can you show the toggo?

I don't know I don't know whether you can hear that.

Yeah.

I think there's Boston Dynamics or Actually, there's a Japanese.

Is it a Sony? Used to do, like, a little Avo dog. Do you remember that? Is that you're buying anyway, a couple of ground for this thing that hardly move, but anyway, Anyway, sorry. Yeah. Back to you guys. So so film sets using diesel generators and then you can put batteries on instead or alongside.

Yeah. So in many of these cases, they do have some electricity available, but the only question is do you have the the right cable laying there for the peak power demand if you turn on all the lights and if you turn on all the all the cameras at the same time. And that's mostly the problem and the reason for them switching to generators.

So we can use that local small grid connection trickle charge a mobile battery and then use that mobile battery to provide the peak power to the film. It.

And so the the the software that you guys are building, the marketplace, or the booking dot com, we'll leave Tinder out of this one. The booking dot com for the mobile tree community.

So how does a customer use that?

So it starts with having them fill in what we call the decision tool. And what that is is a tool that is built based on literally hundreds of customer requests and us doing it manually. To understand exactly what that user flow is and break that down into a few simple questions that help us define the energy profile of the customer. Super simple. You just fill in. I have these machines.

I am this type of film set, and then most of the time, we already know what you need. We then connect that and help them decide which product they want to pick or which energy systems they want to pick. And then they book it. So it's right away. It's available. It is it is exactly that unique product that you need. Then the system starts operating.

Our platform takes care of live monitoring so that you're also comfortable with checking how while the system is performing, if it's still doing well, if it's the right size, And then after it's finished and our platform takes care of all the invoicing and everything that you need administratively, we also generate an energy report that shows you exactly what your c o two savings were compared to if you would have used. For example, a diesel generator and how much cost you saved, And the next time you come back, we use that same loop. So we take the energy report from your previous booking. We start with that in the decision tool. And help you decide, okay, given my profile from the last booking, how can I start over again and have an even more optimal setup?

Okay. So a bit like booking dot com will learn, you know, you like a certain class of hotel, you like there to be an on-site gym, you like that kind of stuff you guys are learning more and more about your customers and what they want so that they have a better experience from the user platform. Yeah. Just to get this straight, You guys don't own assets.

Right? You're not you're not owning the batteries. Like, who who owns those those battery systems? There there must be a balance sheet somewhere.

Yeah. Where is it?

So it's mostly currently at rental companies. So rental companies that rent out batteries only or also a lot of other equipment. A good customer of ours in the UK is Sunbelt. They use our platform for, for example, the energy reporting and also to get more revenue.

And they own them. They then use our software tools to save a lot of time in their operations and the marketplace to make extra money so they can buy more.

Building building marketplace business, I've always thought market play marketplace businesses are really interesting. I'd love to build one because there's lots of complexities that you don't have in a normal software as a service business or a or DTC business. There's loads of things you have to consider. So you need, like, a critical mass of people on both sides of the marketplace for it to kind of work. You there are real network effects. But once you have them, you are so sticky with customers. So can you just talk a little bit about what it's like to build a marketplace business and some of the challenges that you have and how you're thinking about those problems?

Yeah. Definitely. I'll tell you how we built the business, but also especially why we chose a marketplace specifically because there there's more to it than just we want to be the Booking dot com of energy.

So starting with how we built it, it's it's constantly balancing supply and demand and balancing the value we bring to both sides. And to give you an example, we launched the marketplace for the first time in two thousand nineteen.

Then twenty twenty came And if you're all at home in a pandemic, the last thing you need is help with sales because there is no sales to be done. And everybody who's doing sales has plenty of time to do that from home. So we had to find a way to continue bringing value to our suppliers that were on the marketplace.

And when we were talking about that in our team, we realized that we had actually never listened to a big question they were always asking us for, which was the tools you build are great, but can we also use them for just managing our entire company? Rather than just our marketplace listing and our marketplace presence.

So we also used our time sitting at home to build what we now call a rental management software, which basically means even if you do not get the value from the marketplace that we promise, and we have overpromised in the past, you still get the direct value from using our suite of rental management software.

And that gives you all the tools to run a successful energy rental business. So you can manage bookings, you can manage reporting, you can manage your team, you can manage everything in one place. So you come for the tools. That's how we start working together.

That's how we provide value to the, supply side. And then as soon as that's up and running, we connect you to the demand side. On the demand side, it's the same thing. So we we actually only focus on demand side customers that have a recurring nature because when you have a recurring nature, you have value from that data profiling.

From coming back every time and using the energy profile from your previous booking to have an, more optimal setup for the next booking. So one example is ITV that just launched a global partnership with us a few weeks ago, where ITV would like to use energy data on every film set globally and be able to use the energy profiles and the learning so that they can switch away from diesel generators which is one of their larger carbon sources in a way that is fast but also affordable because in the end, we're all running a business. And by using our software tools and by, you know, taking advantage of the value we bring with the platform, we we make sure that they can switch quickly.

You have these force multipliers, a bit like, how eBay had to build the architecture for people to manage their own in front of shop. And all the inventory management and even tax and account. All all sorts of stuff came out of that. And when Amazon launched their marketplace, it did the same.

To be a marketplace business, you have these additional bolt ons that you can build. Sounds like you guys are doing the same, such as managing a battery rental business.

That end up just pushing way more users into one side of the marketplace equation and increasing the value of the whole thing. I I think I think it's absolutely fascinating. What's the other thing? You're gonna say something else? Sorry.

Yeah. So I think it's also nice to to see the why of the marketplace because for many for many people, it might be a goal in itself to build a marketplace, and I can definitely recommend it because it's very challenging, but a lot of fun and you have a lot of people that are your friends because you provide value to a lot of people. But the why of the marketplace for us is is much bigger. And that is it's the fastest way to get a very large fleet of energy systems connected and directly available to those who need it at very large scale. And if we look at the energy transition, that is what we need. We look at grid operators, they're not gonna be able to figure it out. So they need a flexible layer around their grid to be able to keep up with all the energy demand and also with all the added energy supply.

And that's one of the biggest reasons why we build a marketplace is so that we can provide global scale, scalable, solutions and just basically, a one one stop API for grid operators to be able to plug into. So that they can patch up all those holes. They're gonna have more and more of in their grid.

And what does the typical rental look like? Is it a day, a week, a month, a year, and what size batteries are these? I think it was within kilowatts or megawatts. And then the last question I have is How much does this kind of thing cost? Is it cost competitive with diesel, or is it still that nice to have?

Yeah. So to start off with how long a general rental is, and that's just increasing. And we're talking mostly in months of rentals. So many of the customers we work with have seasonal effects.

So in the winter, they use a lot more heating. Their grid cannot cope. So for four months or six months, they place battery systems to boost their own grid connection. We have film sets that are filming somewhere in in in the outback They're filming there for nine months or for one year, and they don't wanna have a diesel generator running all the time.

So then they rent a hybrid system through us.

They they are typically the size of around two hundred and fifty kilo wattage, ten foot shipping containers, but deployed in sets also.

So we've seen a kind of balancing of of a perfect sizing that makes sense on its own so you can deploy two hundred and fifty kilowatt systems separately to where it's needed. But to where you need the more two, three megawatt sized systems. You can just combine them together and make sure that they provide the the larger power up So that's more of an economic feasible feasible size. And then switching to the costs, what we see is that in most of the cases nowadays, in Europe, the cost savings on fuel are far higher than what you pay in rents for the energy system. So whereas you pay two or three thousand euros per week for a battery container, your savings can easily go to seven, eight thousand a week in diesel costs.

Okay. So I imagine it it's it's very dependent on what the duty of that system is gonna be. So if you're gonna be running at full power the whole time, then you probably do need these over cost you a fortune in fuel anyway. And maybe maybe doing that for nine months isn't such a good thing anyway. But if you're in the middle of the outback, as you say.

Yeah. And and that's also why we built a decision to So that decision tool helps you make different scenarios, make different combinations, more battery, more generation, what type of generation, time frame to generation. So solar is only during the day. Generators could potentially only run at night because during the day, they would be disturbing the production.

So our tool really helps to make those different scenarios very quickly. And the output is generator only is gonna cost you this. Afterwards, whatever setup you choose is gonna be this. And then you can just objectively see it's gonna be cheaper to run it clean.

There are still cases that maybe it's cheaper to run a generator only, but then when you see those c o two savings, And that isn't is a KPI from many and many more and more companies. Those are the cases that then they still switch to the more expensive option.

How many megawatts are on the on the platform?

I'm not sure what the latest number is, but it's it's in it's getting into the address of megawatts.

Okay. So you've now got hundreds of megawatts of batteries to to put around the place. And so these assets, there's there's one thing which is reducing the the emissions of a film set or a temporary power installation. But then if you've got all these assets, I'm just thinking we can use them in other ways.

Right? So we can use them for grid services. We can provide other localized support. What are you guys thinking about making the best of these assets beyond just getting rid of diesels?

Yeah. And that's that's to the why why of the marketplace. So The first thing we needed to do is get them all in one place by providing value. We do that by providing them with the best tools and with extra revenue in the rental business. Now that they are onboarded and that they are a fan of using our platform, we can then open up the next part. And one such example is grid hubs So in the time between rentals, which in the rental market is called downtime or dwell time, we can bring batteries to those grid hubs which are literally locations spread around the country with some grid capacity available with the right local monitoring and control available.

And through our platform, they can then be connected to a grid service provider.

And that grid service provider then gets a signal from our side This is your availability of this size system of this location.

Go ahead and support the grid with it. That's the first step, and that's up and running now. And we're also deploying that in other countries.

But the next step And we are doing some projects there that will be more public soon that we directly plug into the electricity grid and the grid operator takes control over those assets for a certain amount of time, especially to fight congestion.

And I should have asked the the the beginning, what which countries are you in at the moment? So, of course, the Netherlands. Are you operational in the UK and other places?

Yeah. So the Netherlands is of course, where we started. So where we are most comfortable, and we are also operating in Belgium, all of the UK, Spain, Italy, France, Germany, and now also taking the first baby steps in the US. And that is done by first working on the supply side with the local rental companies to provide them with our rental management tools. And with that, get them onboarded, get them structured, get them ready to scale. And then when they're ready and when we're ready, we can then also launch the marketplace in the US.

You have to stimulate one side first. So you either there's the the marketplace only works if there's batteries on the marketplace. So I guess you gotta go around and sign some partnership agreement and all those things in the US. And, yeah, lot lots of countries in in Europe very quickly.

We at Motor Energy, we are launching in Europe very soon. And the big question that's that that we have, have you done it all in in local languages?

Mostly. So I think we're now in five languages.

We've we've built everything in a way that it's easily localizable on the language level. Of course, it's another question about taxation and and all the different structures there. But luckily, we have the European Union, so that does make things a bit easier on our side of the pond.

Rubbing it in there, pizza.

I would never do that. But I spent a week in the UK last week, and, for some reason, it keeps coming up in almost every conversation. Oh, man, if only.

But It's We'll be back.

You'll be back.

Just watch this space. We'll be back.

We're we're still working great together, so I'm happy about that. But the the wonderful thing about our market is the rental market is already cross board. They're already used to it. Last summer, we shipped systems to Spain from three different countries to power all the all the events in the summer in Spain. And so it's it's a regular thing to move around and that, I guess, is the luck we have of having started this marketplace on the rental side and being able to use that market for our growth to then be the reliable and and scalable flexible layer to the electricity grid.

So as a marketplace, one of the things that other marketplaces have had to double down on because you don't own every part of the user experience. Right? This defender.

So in in your case, the the battery rental company, the company that owns these assets. They assume I assume they do the delivery and collection and connection and all that stuff. Yep. But if you don't own their operating practices, there is a chance the customer can have a wildly better experience than than you would expect or a wildly worse experience than you would expect.

And, thinking about how eBay eBay dealt with this in in the past, Yeah. They they just went really hard at customer service, and the customer was always always right and really fast response times. In the end, they had to get into payments, bought PayPal, all of that stuff. How are you guys thinking about that problem in that you don't own the total customer experience yet your brand is associated with it.

And there are some very technical and tricky problems related to installing batteries on sites.

Yeah. So lovely.

And how do you solve that problem?

I like that you started with the eBay example because I also believe that you can only do it by being extremely good at something.

And that something should be why the customers keep coming back to us. And that is indeed customer service were always on top of our projects we're always supporting. We we don't give up until something is up and running again.

It helps a little bit that in the past, we have owned our own systems to train ourselves and to fully delve into every little detail it takes to run a successful rental company. So the largest system we owned was a twenty foot battery container with six hundred and kilowatt hours of of energy storage. And that experience taught us a lot of things that can go wrong and also by doing them wrong. And so in our team, we also really focus on how smooth is that customer journey, how happy are they?

Are they being helped? And because this is such a data rich experience, because these batteries and these hydrogen generators, they pump out so much data every minute that you want to be in a place where all that data is centralized and used to the best of our ability. So we we are have regular check ins with our customers to see are you getting out of our platform? What do you think you can?

Are you looking for more insights. Are you looking for more reports? And together, we really built that platform in a way that is gonna help them, eventually always take the right decision on clean energy.

So that's enough about marketplaces. Let's talk about the the last two questions. So firstly, is there anything you wanna plug? Anything that you've launched or are launching soon and want our listeners to know who are mostly battery and energy pods from Europe and the US.

Yeah. So The decision tool has been plugged already. And today there, we have a block coming online today, so they were recording. So people can read the decision tool blog there, but What is most interesting now is the launch of the grid services from our marketplace.

We have these batteries available. We know when they're available when you want to start using them. They are fully yours.

And I think that's a very interesting thing. It you can compare it a little bit to vehicle to grid, except that a car always needs to be able to go to the hospital. So you can only use a small portion and you always need to be able to disconnect.

This is managed in a b to b setting, and you can use a hundred percent of it or at least eighty percent of it.

And we'd love for flexibility service providers, battery owners to come to us and and and connect to us and, yeah, make use of that capacity we have available between rentals, but also in the near future during rentals.

Alright. And now for the controversial one, what is your contrarian view? So what do you believe that perhaps most folks in the industry or the world don't.

Yeah. So I was talking to this with Ed, your colleague as well last week, and What I believe is that a big portion of our electricity grid is going to be mobile infrastructure.

And just to throw it out there, let's say forty percent of our grid infrastructure will be mobile.

And not because it's all going to be rented, but because we have no other option. If you look at every challenge around energy transition, It's all around materials, supply chain, availability, speed of execution, everything is being slowed down by the fact that we're placing stationary infrastructure.

And what we're seeing now with those grid operators that work with us and that get the taste of that mobile flexible the ultimate ultimately flexible infrastructure.

So not just flexible in time that you have with the battery naturally, but also flexible in space. So you can move them away from where they're causing congestion, and you can move them towards rather solving congestion.

And I really believe that as soon as people get the hang of it, and also as an as an industry together, we make sure that that whole journey of an electron is super reliable.

Then we can actually run this energy transition on mostly mobile infrastructure, and we can make our goals. Because otherwise, we're not gonna make it if we have to depend on permitting and waiting for all the materials to be ready for what we need.

Wow.

So you've done a lot of thinking about this. Do you include so you said forty percent there? I'm not gonna hold you to that, of course, sometime in the future. But interesting what you said about commodities and minerals and moving these things around. Do you include electric vehicles and transportation in that? Or do you think even outside of electric vehicles and transportation we still have, you know, somewhere between the quarter and a half of this stuff is gonna be mobile.

Yeah. I think even outside of that, so vehicles are gonna be great. And and they're gonna play a key role in in especially local local grades, but But we see in the mobile infrastructure that we place that's by the megawatt each, and that needs to be moved around by a larger trucks and And that's gonna be a big portion of what the grid needs because of the reliability, because of the availability of these systems that needs to be high and a hundred percent. So because of that, I do believe that a lot of the infrastructure should be movable, container size, foldable so that you can really use it where it's needed most.

And what what's the my next question is what are the second order effects of that? So I think that is pretty contrarian. And what does that mean What's the what's the next bit?

So ownership of these assets will probably go from grid companies to Infrastructure investors.

Infrastructure investors who are happy with them being mobile. Okay. Yeah. And then what are the other things that are gonna fall out of this?

So a few things. One is the infrastructure investors investing in these mobile systems are going to make a whole lot more money. Because you can move them to where the dollars are, and you don't have to wait until it's the right season for your stationary battery to make money.

So that's that's the first. And and second also, it's going to require a lot of trust and a lot of training of algorithms. So You could compare it to switching from on premise data servers to store your data as a business, to trusting an algorithm that they take your data and they'll move it to where there is capacity, and they'll keep it there until you need it.

And we are kind of that algorithm for the energy industry. And grid operators are going to have to trust us at some point that when they do an API call asking for five megawatts for three months at that location, that we will deliver what they need and that when it's on-site, they take control in the right way that it is reliable. If they call five megabytes for fifteen minutes, they get five megawatts for fifteen minutes.

So it requires a lot of development work also on our side, but also on the operators good operator side.

But that's, I guess, why we're lucky that we can practice in the rental industry.

But you you could also, if a large proportion of this kind of infrastructure is gonna be mobile. And if you believe, which I do, I do, which is that all grids are moving towards, I think And I've banged on about it a lot in this podcast. I I think locational pricing is is a is a marvelous thing. And, yes, it's complex, and, yes, it's hard to implement But I think, all grids will tend towards location pricing one way or another over time. And so you have assets that are therefore mobile.

You can you could spend a couple of years in one location to support a grid constraint or where prices are high or you get high spreads.

And you can then move those assets around to take advantage of where location or bottlenecks are or opportunities are. Or most importantly, where the grid needs you and therefore the price signal tells you to be. Yeah. So, like, spatial differences and, you know, being in different locations, rather than just thinking about time shifting energy, like a lot of battery folks think about, there is a geographical movement of these things. I love it. I absolutely love it. Yeah.

Thanks for your help, Chris.

Yeah. Alright. That's all we've got time for. Peter, I wanna say a massive thank you for coming on the podcast.

You mentioned couple of things in there, your your blog your blog article that's just come out, we're gonna put a link to that in the show notes. So if you're listening to this, check out. Check out Peter's blog, and you'll see you'll also see links to Scoon or Scone, and and everything else we talked about. Peter, thanks for coming on the podcast.

Thank you very much for having us.