Predictions for 2024 with Quentin (CEO) and Wendel (Market Lead) @ Modo Energy

I think my my what I preferred from this prediction was that there would be power market chaos. Well, that's two for two hundred percent hit rate for me. Thank you very much. Well done. Biggest battery balancing mechanism unit.

Dollumens, which is a hundred megawatts. Oh, so you can now see like this hundred megawatt little bit of data going up and down. And shout to dollumens. And then we've got sodium sodium salt, salty batteries are coming down the road.

When I made this prediction, it was gonna be March, April time, I think. This year. Yeah. And it's still hung on there, FFR, the best frequency response service in the world ever.

On there until the end of November.

I don't think it's far fetched to say, like, we might add two and a half gigawatts. We should have, we should have a leaderboard of Vercot versus. We still haven't We should make this a thing. Another leader board.

Too many leader boards is this. Hello, everybody, and welcome back to transmission for our final episode of the year. Last year, Quentin and Alex sat down to give their predictions for batteries in the year twenty twenty three. And in this episode, Wendell joins Quentin to review some of those predictions and share theirs for the year ahead.

As always, if you are enjoying the podcast, please give us a rating and hit subscribe. It really helps us to reach a wider audience. With that, let's jump in and we'll see you in the new year.

And so we've reached the end of another wonderful year on this planet. Wendell, thanks for coming on the podcast. No worries. Thank you.

And last year, we had Alex on for this special a special one. But this year, we've got you because it's his birthday. We should probably say happy birthday, Alex. Happy birthday, Alex.

And, because it is a week before Christmas, we have Well, we actually ran around the office looking for as much Christmas y stuff as we could find, and we found one Christmas y thing.

So if you are watching this, there is an elf on the shelf who usually sits on the shelf in our office, but he's come out today to prove it is Christmas. And so yeah, special episode, a bit silly. We're gonna talk about predictions for next year and review predictions for last year, although you weren't here last well, you were here, but you weren't on the podcast. I was here. I wasn't on the podcast, so I'll be Alex for the first first part.

And he had some pretty good ones, although I think I think we're gonna find out they're not all winds. So, unfortunately, you're gonna get some shade today. Should we jump straight in? Yeah.

Gonna go first? I can go first. Go on. So so Alex slash my first prediction from last year was that the BM value, so the balancing mechanism value for battery storage will not really go up in twenty twenty three.

And I think that has proven to be true. There's been a lot and a lot of coverage words in newspapers. We've seen kind of like reach like headlines.

Even Modo Energy made it onto Sky News on Friday night. Yeah. If you were watching at like eleven pm.

No. It was a big It was a big deal. It was a big deal. It was a big deal.

They couldn't you couldn't you couldn't turn on the telly without seeing Moto Energy. No. Yeah. Thank you for me.

Yeah. Thanks to it. Thanks to Ed.

But yeah, so despite all the talk about it, it's kind of not really changed in twelve months. So batteries aren't really making more in the BM than they were last year. No, despite all of the words. Despite of the words, should caveat that.

We saw the kind of open balancing platforms, this kind of long, helded sort of software release, which been coming for a long time come last week. And then immediately, it was kind of taken offline for batteries because they found a bug, but It was taken offline. I I missed that. It was online for like three days, and then, we got an email on Friday saying they'd taken it offline.

Oh, that's a short short term. I was gonna give massive shout out for that I think it's still, it's it's still still do a we still do a huge shout out. Like, I think when, went to balancing Program event, like just what it launched, and it does look very impressive. I think the huge elephant in the room with it, all is just that it still requires like this big human element.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Hopefully, for twenty twenty four, that'll be something we see improving. Alright. So insert sound here is he please.

I've like ding or something.

Insert sound here. I mean, not doing that. Right. So I should probably go next.

I said that grid connections were well, the whole grid connection thing was gonna come to a giant head and someone would resolve it with pragmatism, and not to blow my own trumpet, but that basically happened. It's happened. Yeah. I think we've seen like all of the kind of parties involved in this thing.

So off jam, we've seen sort of national grid, ESO, and the government all kind of like take steps. They will look and sound very similar, with each other, but it it sounds like some of what Eurydex last year has happened. So last year was essentially all about supply chains. And this year has been all about quick connections.

We shall see what next year is all about. I know you've got some suggestions. So that's a big ticket of box me. Thank you very much.

I'll take that. Number two, what's what's yours, Alex slash Wendell? But this was kind of like a two parter. So the first was that we would see big, big batteries, even bigger batteries.

Last year, there were, like, first few hundred megawatt systems.

This year, we've seen three new hundred megawatt batteries, but none bigger.

So that's maybe a Are they wanna is it bigger in energy capacity?

About the same? About the same. Oh, yeah. So it's just on the edge. We have seen for the nerdy nerdy people with the biggest battery balancing mechanism unit has a volume, which is a hundred megawatts. Oh, so you can now see like this hundred megawatt little bit of data going up and down. Out to dollyman's.

But but yeah, I think probably maybe next year, but we'll come onto that. So unfortunately, Alex slash Wendell, that's a no. Although, actually, There's been some pretty giant batteries in in Texas, California, as big batteries going in all over the place. Just still the biggest battery here a year later is still a hundred megawatts in power.

Yes. Yeah. Cool. Oh, it's my turn. My turn. So number two, I said there was gonna be a slowdown in the employment of assets because of interest rates, so higher interest rates.

And I think well, I think I deserve this one as a tick, but I think the answer is different. Right? So I think a lot of the assets that have been built this year, they'd already gone through financial close at the end of last year. So the work had already kind of happened.

But there was a slowdown in asset deployment, but it was mainly due to grid connections. Yeah. Like, I think Well, slow down, but actually it sped up, but not as quickly as we thought slow down acceleration. A slowdown in acceleration, but yeah, a lot of that is just, I guess, like you said before, supply chains from last year and, yeah, some connection problems, whether we start to see some of these, yeah, like, more financial.

I don't, yeah, interest rate issues filter through to, like, the next few years. Well, we'll see. Feds on the term, fingers crossed. Cost Capital is gonna come down next year.

But that's two for two hundred percent hit rate for me. Thank you very much. Well done. Alright.

Thank you. Thank you, Alex slash Wendell. How about you? What's your number two? Number three.

Oh, your number two is a number three.

So so Alex's number three from last year was that we would see both the highest monthly revenues for battery storage. Oh, yeah. This one really annoyed me. And the lowest, this is not a monthly revenues.

Your storage. I I don't even think this even counts. You can't say you can't yeah. He he hedged it and then he oh, whatever.

So I think my my what I prefer to misdiction was that there would be power market chaos in January. That didn't happen. In fact, I say this year has been pretty boring from the kind of wholesale market side of things. But yeah, in terms of that prediction, we have seen the lowest battery revenues and whether December will be lower still remains to be slow.

When was the lowest? November.

November. So last month. Yeah. So we can thank the launch of the enjoying auction capability platform for that.

How low is low? So I think the number in November was around thirty five thousand pounds per megawatt per year. So annualized Okay. Which if you could just turn the three grand the megawatt.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty low. Okay. But we're gonna blame the enduring auction co capability for that.

Yeah. And my so that's a you kinda got a half mark there, I think. Yeah. So I would question whether that was even a prediction at all.

And then my third one was, oh, so that we're gonna have more LFP batteries built instead of n m NMC. And I can't prove it, but we are right. So we're still putting the data together on this. So I can't come up with an actual number, but I'm sure it's more than half.

Yeah. We're gonna follow-up with the numbers shortly. Yeah. And just on that, then that's the the the cell chemistry.

Sorry. Yeah. The cell comes, which, yeah, because I've got people in us probably. Yeah. Spend a lot of time looking at.

Yeah. I mean, you see the big change in the market. You've seen CATL now pretty much dominating.

Yeah. The battery sub the OEM, the battery supply chain market, the cell cell market has really changed last couple of years. And then we've got sodium. Sodium salt salty batteries are coming down the road, which is amazing because they've got way less, well, the the core parts of them don't require going down mines and, you know, on unfortunate conditions.

And, so the cost base for sodium cell batteries should be much much lower. Very excited about that. And there's a ton of R and D to, R and D capital going into that. So watch this space Maybe one of my predictions for next year should be sodium batteries for the win.

Okay.

And then I've got I don't really know what this is, but it just says bonus eat my hat.

So so this was because you you very confidently said that, when it comes to twenty twenty four, monthly FFR, so firm frequency as long as it will still be a thing. And I've said I was gonna eat my hat, didn't I? Said you'd eat your hat. And is fat And I was basically right. So it was supposed to so Monday of the first.

Like, it depends which, like, It depends which calendar, firstly, that you're using. But so monthly FFR was supposed to be phased out at the end of last year, originally. Remember? Before especially before winter, it's been ongoing a while.

Yeah. And then it's gonna one, I think. And then when I made this prediction, it was gonna be March, April time, I think, this year. Yeah.

And it's still hung on there FFR, the best frequency response service in the world ever, and I'm still my favorite, the o g, hung on there until the end of November. Yeah. So one more month and I wouldn't be here eating my hat. I don't really have a a hat to eat.

There's an energy. It can be kept. There's an early recap. I actually don't come back to that.

I've just had a crown. I don't know. I don't think I don't even be able to tuck into that. I'm in quite a lot of pain actually.

It says specifically in inedible on it. So I don't know. We'll have to figure something out. I'll eat your hat.

I'll eat your hat. It's not now. Alright. There's the first bit. That's all about past.

Past. What a wonderful year it was. And now let's talk about twenty twenty four. Twenty twenty four is quite I think it's our fifth year of existence as mode of energy.

I can't believe that's gonna happen. We need to have a big party. That'll be around May time. And hopefully lots of other exciting things for us to talk about.

So when will do you wanna go first? So clearly I've not deviated much from what Alex was talking about. So my my first prediction from twenty four is still about the banister mechanism.

So so despite, you know, this the launch of the open balancing platform, all the kind of stuff we've seen I think that really, like, when we look at, like, fundamentally how batteries are used and that revenues are earning, like, nothing's gonna change until we get to the end of next year. Which is when hopefully we'll see this big update where essentially the control room can actually see how much energy each of these things has. What's that called? It hasn't really got a name yet.

It's called, like, the overall thing. It's called enhancing storage in the balance mechanism. Okay. But it's the solstice thing really good.

It it it sounds good. Yeah. And it's to solve this thing called the fifteen minute rule, which essentially at the moment, the control room, so the person sat in the control room looking at all these batteries, only knows that they can be used for fifteen minutes, and actually a lot of stuff that happens in the ballast mechanism is longer than fifteen minutes.

And so, yeah, hopefully that will be a pretty, like, fundamental change to what can be done in batteries. And when is that coming? Q4 twenty twenty four. Planned.

So hold on. Your prediction is not a prediction. It's just the status quo for longer.

Well, my prediction is that until that happens, probably some of the, you know, what we what we've heard and what we've seen might not quite come to fruition. Okay. Alright. I still these status quo that doesn't count as a prediction.

Alright. I've put my I've put myself on the line online. I just want you to know that. Alright.

My first one's, I think, is massive.

It is that demand flexibility is gonna be way bigger and quicker and sooner than everyone thought. So what is demand flexibility? It's residential and small stuff essentially turning off or turning down. In when when the Ukraine war happened, and we had the gas crisis, which was like a supply weirdly, actually, was a supply that never really happened.

It just ended up being a price shock. Yeah. But anyway, I suppose the price the price incentivized people filling up storage and things, which is what markets are supposed to. Anyway, then there was octopus brought out the demand flexibility service, and then octopus have been working the background to get this thing off the ground and the other suppliers as well.

And then now we've got demand flexibility being used in non crisis times. I'm gonna put you on a spot here. I think it's I think it's gigawatts, isn't it? It's a big number.

I think it's like, yeah, at least like five hundred six hundred megawatts, but I wouldn't be surprised if it kind of gets up to the gigawatt scale quite quickly. And I think now, I think that the the gas crisis forced demand flexibility to be a thing, and now the genie's out the bottle about how useful demand flexibility can be. I mean, how you pass that on to, you know, how actual, like, onto people's bills and all that. The the stuff behind it, I don't know whether it's all there yet, and a lot to us.

I've I've done it, but whether a few quid off your bill makes a meaningful difference and encourage that I don't know. Yeah. But anyway, the genie's out the bottle, and I think demand flexibility is gonna be huge. I even think perhaps that electricity suppliers will see it as a big point of competition against each other about who can provide the best demand flexibility service.

Which is great because in a market that feels a bit commoditized, sometimes, energy suppliers, it's their job to make it not that. There's a real tangible thing they can put their self on and say, look, we have loads of volume in demand flexibility or whatever. That's quite exciting. I think it's really exciting.

Like, I think there are definitely some sort of problems with how so essentially it's all based around this market called demand flexibility service, which the ESO brought out and brought back this year. There's some problems there because, like, it's if you were to look at it, like, with a sort of there we go. Well, if you look at it in one way, you'd be saying that they're paying quite a lot for power that they nest don't necessarily need. Who's playing ping?

Yeah. So. Okay. The national grid. Natural grid. But Why? DFS is expensive. Yeah. So I think in the so I think in a few weeks ago, they were paying, like, upwards of three thousand pounds megawatt hour for some sort of turn down through DFS.

But then the wholesale market was clearing in the region of about two hundred and fifty pounds.

So that's a big a big gap there. But but yeah, I think that's probably something which, I don't know, maybe in twenty twenty four, we'll we'll start to kind of bridge that gap. Well, yeah. We'll see.

We'll see. I think it's your your turn. Yeah. Back to me.

So so actually, yeah, what we haven't talked about yet is, is Rima? Oh, I mean, Rima gong. The review We must come out. The review of electricity market act.

And at some point soon, I think it's now been pushed back to the the start of next year. We're expecting Rima two So Rima one was actually just a big load of, like, kind of words. When you say the start of next year, start of twenty twenty four. Start twenty twenty four. But basically my big position is that by the end of twenty twenty four, we will still be arguing about locational margin pricing.

Versus zonal versus national, like nothing like fundamentally we're gonna be in the same position in time.

Okay. Another status quo prediction or whatever. Well, there's a few things happening actually. We've got, yeah, we are gonna be arguing about that stuff.

Gonna have the new FS natural grid ESO will become the FSO. The FSO. Yeah. The system operator.

Which what color is it gonna be? It was blue. The website was blue. Was then it went.

That's not orange. It went orange. Yeah. So maybe we should predict the color of the website.

I'm gonna go green. Greens back in vogue. Think it could, yeah, maybe green. Like, I so the big thing with That's what we do, actually.

Matches that. So the big thing with the FSO is that in theory, they might now have a mandate. Actually progressing the electricity system and the gas system to net zero.

So at the moment, the ESO essentially, it does that doesn't come into the the way they operate.

But the FSO, in theory, because it's set my government, it will do. Okay. So green, green works.

What what does actually mean in practice? I think we need to see, but it basically, the FSO at high level will pay a much more active role in sort of shaping the strategy, which I guess working much closer with government in order to actually work out what can be done. So it's not gonna become it's not gonna be this private entity anymore. It would just essentially be a part of sort of non private part of government.

I think it means that they can probably be a lot bolder in taking certain actions than they have been to date.

I wonder whether this means they can go away from being agnostic with types of generation or types of thing? Well, that's, yeah, that's that's where it comes into this net zero perspective. Like, if they've got a mandate to sort of push the electricity system towards net zero, then I don't think they can be technology agnostic forever.

Well, we do a whole podcast on that because I've got some pretty contrarian views on that. The market do the thing, but that's what I that's my answer to everything. Just let the market do the thing. My second one is consolidation, which I believe will be consolidation of pretty much everything. So we've had We've we've had a period of higher rates, and some there's lots of business models and companies that have come into some stress. There's firstly, I think that's gonna be consolidation due to that. Secondly, which is kinda normal in market cycles.

Secondly, I think the world of renewables and flexibility is quite disjointed. There's lots of small players and there's lots of doubling up on people doing jobs that brought them all together, you can get efficiencies there. So we can see what happens there. And then I guess the third thing is private equity deal making has been down this year.

And if rates come down, I think there'll be a lot more private property deals as batteries and renewables mature, especially batteries mature as an asset class, there's much more interest in holding them by the big players. I think we could see a lot of consolidation next year, which is exciting from a kind of efficiency perspective, but I hope it doesn't take away some of the magic Yeah. I mean, I think it's it we're starting to see it happen. Like, the KKR deal for Snowby, the deal for Straterra, you know, these are big, big, like, private equity players who previously haven't really been involved in batteries.

So that's like very kind of exciting for the industry that has now kind of been the as this infrastructure, infrastructure asset. But yeah, if you look more idea, I think the consolidation point, yeah, I think I think it's kind of natural. Like, we we've been in area where it's been hyper competitive. We we have so many competing kind of, companies essentially offering very similar services.

And I think it's only natural that at some point you start to see kind of like the bigger fish eat the smaller ones. Is next year the year that Moto buys Bloomberg? I think it could be the year. Think it could be.

Alright. What's your third one? So my third and final one is that, so for those who kind of were watching maybe a bit of the power prices this year, we had this time. I think it was in June where for the first time we had like negative power prices and like loads of it. And I think in twenty twenty four, that number is gonna just keep going up and up. So twenty twenty three, I think we had a total of seventy seven hours of negative pricing having been at essentially like zero the year before. I can't remember exactly what it was, but it's it's it's happened very quickly.

And in twenty twenty four, I think that number's gonna get like way bigger, like, kind of days or like, I don't know, maybe like hundreds of hours. Seventy seven hours. What is that? I should be able to do that in my head.

Like, why is that in percentage terms? That's like well, I know it's three days. Three days. It's about one percent, right, one percent of negative pricing.

Wow. That's quite a big number. And then you say that number is gonna go up. That could be quite bad for isn't there a rule to do with offshore wind or wind in general, where if you have loads of negative summer periods, you basically lose your payment.

Yeah. So, yeah, so new safety. So I think as of auction round three or four, Yeah. Essentially, any negative payments won't result in a sort of any negative wholesale power prices won't result result in you receiving.

Your CFT payments. So basically those wind farms then start to self curtail during negative prices, which we started to see this year. It's kind of the first time then we've actually seen that happen. But that will happen more and more.

What else does that mean? Right? So let's say you're right. Let's say we go from one percent to I'm putting your number in your mouth here.

Let's say you go from one percent to three or four what does that mean for batteries? What does it mean for the system? Well, I think it's good news trees in general, like it's the whole point behind batteries is they both can, you know, take actions, make money when the system's really tight, when there's really high prices, but also they can kind of profit when the complete inverse is true, there's way too much pound system prices go to zero or negative. So essentially if a battery is charging up when the price negative is getting paid to charge.

So yeah, I think that is probably gonna be a much, much bigger portion of what battery we spend a minute as I'm doing, they'll be earning more from that in twenty twenty four. But you could you gotta be careful though, right? Because the battery business case depends on to locate the thesis why build a battery.

Build a battery because there's gonna be a load more renewables, its intermittent, intermittent c means volatility. Volatility means bachelor's make money. Right? But if if there's a low if if prices go negative too much, There won't be a load more renewables because you're basically cannibalizing your own business case, and therefore, batteries might make money on the negative prices in the short term. But long term, your there's probably a phrase better than this, but you're sort of eating your own, like, cake and eat it. There's a there's a thing to say there.

Yeah. And I think I guess that's where like the changes the CFT are trying to kind of get ahead of that because that was a big driver is when, yeah, the very first few rounds of the CFT, they can just continue operating through negative prices and still get paid. I thought it was six hours or six settlement periods or six. I think there is a time. Six hours, but I think in the late very nice round, it's getting bought to essentially just any any settlement period.

Interesting.

Well, okay. So your three, b m, no change, reamer, no change.

They are not predictions, but fine. And then you reckon loads of negative pricing. What's gonna drive the negative pricing? Why do you say that?

So I think what we've seen from this year is, like, two things. I think firstly, we're just getting more and more win. Like, I think the amount wind coming on the grid is happening probably, even though you look at the numbers and the forecast, it happens actually a lot quicker than you think in real time. But alongside that, like, like, this sort of massive explosion in rooftop solar which is really hard to get the numbers for.

Like, we don't have the old fits and things with the fit registers. So it's hard to know what the number is for that. Hold on. What are you saying here?

You're saying that there's loads of they're going on to people's rooftops. And we don't we don't have the data on where it is or I so after the, yeah, after the Crane War, after the kind of gas price crisis, you know, all of a sudden the payback period for rooftop soda has kind of, I don't know, honestly carved. I mean, it might even be quicker than that now. And so Do you seem it just seems talked about I I know a few people who have got it in the last twelve months, you know, don't really I don't even think they even care about the payment, but No.

I think that's it's more about they wanna be self- yeah. I think that's the, yeah, I think that's probably the bigger driver. And the second part of my two parts, which is pretty linked, is that actually that's happening a lot more in Europe. Okay.

And so we're getting these periods. So Netherlands, they have, like, minus five hundred pounds mobile. They've got so much soda. It's like nuts.

Like, look at the numbers for it. It's actually mad how much soda capacity they've got for the size of the grid. And in any time they're getting those visors with the interconnectors, then it's basically flowing over to us. And so, you know, it's, yeah, it's all kind of linked, but I think it's, it's Europe is even more the case than here.

Well, I've got nothing more to say about.

We shall see. Okay. So b m no change, rima no change, negative pricing, late lows. My last what oh, well, it's election year next year.

Well, might not be, but property.

Okay. How could it not be? Oh, so I think they can. They can push that. It could be in election twenty twenty five. Yeah. I was actually thinking about the US election, but, yeah, so it's US election and UK election.

So UK, I mean, you only have to stick your head outside, look at any poll, and it looks like we have a change of government. What does that mean? Probably This if it's assuming its labor gets in, we should do a podcast on actually on what the manifesto say, but there's not a we don't expect a great deal of difference. I think it's I think there's some like headline increase in renewables, but I can't, yeah, in the short term, it's hard to see anything kind of changing on back of it.

Let's see what come well, we when it comes on this year, we should we should read them and review them. And then in the US, I mean, the big risk really is the inflation reduction act is there's elements of the inflation reduction act, which are at risk if Donald Trump gets in, he's pretty much said that, although to what extent and how that happens, it's to do with some nuances of how tax credits are applied. That's a whole podcast in itself. But, yeah, watch the space on that one, but there'll be lots of elections here.

I love elections. Election years, something to talk about, isn't it? It says that your election, that's gonna be lots of election. No.

I was trying to tee up some I remember it's election. I just wrote down election. I just wrote down elections. No, I did have another one, the third one. So the carb carbon.

Finally, I reckon someone is gonna fix this carbon situation where carbon price and the carbon certificates are not matched. We're gonna have matched carbon on a time basis, a half hour or hour or I don't know. I don't care. Someone there's some companies trying to solve this right now.

I I really hope that we get to time matched carbon certificates next year. What, like, what do you think? What, why is that gonna change? What's gonna be driving that?

Okay. So I think the reason why that's gonna change is, but I might be biased because I've just done a lot of reading on it recently. I think there's a lot of press on the on the the way the card market works and how it could be improved. To put it lightly.

And I think that the amount of press coverage of that has hit a tipping point where something will end up being done about it. I think you, like, you got to a point where, I don't know, whether zero percent of the population know about it, and now, like, ten percent of the population know about it. It's probably less than that, isn't it? Yeah.

And that is like a forceful ten percent, which ends up having a, got a force multiplier. That's my assumption, but then I have also just done loads of reading about it, and the more I read about it, the more I think we need to solve it now. I think it's really cool. Like the and I think what's interesting about it is that that you can see it with regos, but the price went from basically like zero to, I don't even know, like, fifteen pounds, but if you were to look at like the economic value of what that's like it's not really worth that, but there's clearly a big kind of consumer joy for it And, yeah, as soon as that switch is to wanting, okay, well, I want to match, yeah, match hourly rather than just this kind of monthly matching, then you can see that change.

So what's the space? Carbon matching? I've got some bonus ones because I got excited. Have you got any bonus ones?

I didn't come with any. Wasn't prepared to eat my own hat next year. Alright. I got a couple of bonus ones.

Firstly, this is one of yours, actually. It's just like there was no capacity market event next year. So my prediction is more nothing burger of faster market events. Yeah.

Although it would be really exciting if there was something. I think it would be. I think Yeah. I think the conclusion from this year, and I think it's not gonna change next year is that actually there's it's quite a lot of capacity.

I think we've we've got we're okay for now. We're okay for now. Oh, triads though. Tryads don't talk about triads for a second.

Yeah. So this is the first winter since there was this big change to triads and so triads was just this sort of whopping great big payment you get for avoiding importing in the one of like three settlement periods three half hour periods over winter, which kind of drove like a lot of business cases for I mean, like, you know, behind the meter storage, you could basically make it work just based off this one thing. And you could make it not work, not based on and you can make it not work if you missed one of the triads. But wasn't, you know, when they said they were gonna take a carbon of what it was.

It was, like, twenty seventeen on than that. When they decided they were gonna it was a targeted charge review, TCR. So that's what's that's what's finally it's finally happened. Oh, yeah.

I think like when I started working in batteries, that was like one of the first things I went to, and then it's just still yeah.

So one of the arguments back then was you can't take triads away because the system will get too tight because you've got, I know, gigawatts and gigawatts of all this behind the meter stuff that you can't see. And if you take triads away, You're gonna have no reserve. It's like hidden reserve, basically, and the lights will go out. And that didn't really happen, did it.

Look. Actually, it's not well, even January or February. I don't know. I think I think we've so the one kind of very cold period, so ending November beginning in December.

Like, we saw almost like higher demand than the highest demand we saw all of net last winter. And that was when we had to kind of like that ice and and snow, and it was like, this like blizzard. So Trans growing away is that you can push up peak demand because net net, they're not running for triads. Yeah.

The north. I think we'll see peak demand increase just because tribes just don't exist as a thing. Well, for like, probably seventy percent in the country anymore. I'm gonna make that a prediction that there's gonna be, a capacity market event because they took strides away on the third Wednesday after Christmas as it always is.

Alright. I think Another bonus one. I've got a lot of bonus ones. Sorry, is he, have you expecting this to be a short podcast.

More yeah. There's gonna be more batteries built in Ercot in Texas.

Then the whole of GB in one year. So we got three what we got at the moment? Three point five gigawatts. Three point five gigawatts in Great Britain.

I reckon they'll add three and a half gigawatts of new batteries in our cut next year, which is absolutely insane, but very doable. But I don't think it's far fetched to say, like, we might add two and a half gigawatts. Here. We should have we should have a leader board of berkaught versus.

We should have a We should make this a thing. Another leader board. Too many leader boards as this as it is.

Okay. And another one Okay. They're they're all getting a bit silly now. I think there's gonna be more I think the ratio of hydrogen press releases, so press releases around hydrogen projects. Too. So that's like the numerator, and the denominator is actual hydrogen projects getting built. I think that's gonna be infinity.

I agree.

Alright. So so to recap, it's the end of the year. Happy Christmas, everybody. You've l be listening to this podcast. We've been doing this now for how long have it two years?

So is he the producer is nodding? We were this is completely off the cuff, but a Christmas message to you Chris has measured to you from all of us at Moto is thanks for supporting the podcast, and all of us, it really is a delight to do this. And, predictions for next year in recap are Wendell, BM won't change. There you go. There's a reminder.

My predictions next year. It's a balancing mechanism for batteries. Won't really change until the end of the year. Yep.

Snort. Rema will still just be talking about LMP Zonal national pricing at the end of next year. Not a prediction. Yeah.

And we're gonna see loads and loads of negative power prices like loads. Loads. Can you put a number on it? So then seven hundred and seventy hours.

Seven hundred and seventy hours times what we noticed. Cool.

And then for me, a few bonus ones, but demand flexibility service is gonna be big consolidation of everything, half hour, carbon. Well, just carbon market, a carbon market that is matched to time. And there will be two elections next year. And there's a chat. Yeah. And so bonus ones, capacity market event, there won't be one, but that's not really a prediction.

More batteries in Ercot built next year than the whole of GB right now. Lots of press releases about hydrogen and some sodium So that brings us to the end of the podcast. Wendell, thank you very much for wendell slash Alex. Thank you very much for joining me.

No worries. Thanks for having me. And we should probably say Merry Christmas carefully. So if you're listening, Merry Christmas.