Exploring Vehicle-to-Grid with Raphael Hollinger (CDO @ The Mobility House)

When we have a V two g car, so a car that can also discharge into the grid, then we increase the flexibility provided by this asset significantly.

It's a very small change on the technical side. So, from a cost perspective, from a weight perspective, volumetric, it's minimal additions in the car, but, it boosts the flexibility, especially when you have, EVs that stand for a longer period of time. Because when you have charged the car once, the power is gone. The flexibility is gone when you cannot discharge it. So it really increases the flexibility significantly, and therefore also the value.

Hello, everybody, and welcome back for another installment of transmission.

Today's episode is with Rafael Hollinger, chief data officer at mobility house. The conversation covers how vehicle to grid technology enables electric cars to be flexible assets to the grid and the opportunities that open up with increased market access. As always, if you are enjoying the podcast, please hit subscribe wherever you're listening so you never miss an episode. And if you've got any topics you'd like to hear discussed, please get in touch. We'd love to hear them. Let's jump in.

Hello, and welcome to another episode of transmission. Today, I'm joined by Rafael from Ability House. Rafael welcome. Thanks.

And we're gonna be talking about the role of EVs in the future energy system. And before we kind of talk about who mobility house are and kind of your role within mobility house. I'd like us to kinda do a little bit of, maybe a thought exercise here. Right?

So if you fast forward ten years from now. Like, what's your perfect vision for how electric vehicles are operating in mobility and in the energy space?

Yep. So I'm sure we are talking about zero zero, when we talk about, the time in ten years at the mobility house. So, the vision is that we can drive for free. That we have free charging because the battery in the car can be used as a flexibility asset and earn its money or the energy necessary for driving, by providing this flexibility service to the electrical energy system.

Okay. And in terms of, like so that that is a concept, right, being able to drive for free because your EV is giving you that flexibility to the to the system. Like, what's what are the what are the things that are stopping us from getting there?

I think in many countries, we are in a good way. So what you need is a smart meter. So you need to be able to make to see the change in charging or maybe the change in discharging.

A high resolution in your balancing group to be able to trade, the energy and provide the flexibility, beyond ancillary services or DSO service. I think that's a very important, step. We need a communication infrastructure. So we need to be able to communicate with the EV driver to get flexibility provision.

We are you can use an app or a UI in the car.

And you need, of course, the possibility to change the charging power to adopt the charging, via the charger or via the car.

Okay. So you need the sort of total system in terms of being able to see what the systems are doing, be able to control the systems to be able to make money from it in order to pay for that charging.

So that that's kind of one big set of challenges.

What are what what are the things that will enable us to go faster to sort of meet that? You said zero zero vision. Right? So could you also explain what zero zero means.

So, zero the first zero, let's say, means money. So, that you can charge your car for free. And this is only possible if there is a high flexibility need in the system you are operating, because then the flexibility has a high value And, you have you need to have regulations that allow you with this distributed resources, to provide this flexibility.

And, for example, in Germany, and I think also in UK, we have some challenges with double taxation, in this distributed case, especially also in stationary applications, in many countries.

So there are many details in the regulations that are not perfectly suited for what we do. But in most countries, it's possible, and so we can do first steps in this direction. The second zero stands for zero emissions.

So in a system where you have high costs for emissions, for example, for because of, high CO2 taxation, what you do with the flexibility will also lead to a a very or to the to the case that the flexibility is valuable for the system to reduce, CO2 emissions.

So the goal or the vision is zero emission charging. Obviously for this, we need high shares of renewable.

It'd be good to ask about what the key challenges are in terms of we've talked a little bit about what enables this. But then also what what the key challenges are in terms of getting there. But I would also, before we do the key challenges, I would love to ask about this kind of concept of being able to do something for free. Right?

We've all heard the expression, you know, there's no such thing as a free lunch. Yeah. So maybe just to dig into that, what does that zero look like? You're saying, as someone who owns a battery asset, there's value from that asset in terms of being able to provide services to the grid, and that is this value for the asset.

And what you're gonna do is you're gonna take that value and match that with a charge profile for the battery. And then those two things will net off to something which kind of gets to zero. Is that is that more or less how you envisage it working?

Yes. So, when you imagine the value or the investment into batteries that are in cars, This is a huge investment nobody could take for a storage, built as a flexibility asset only in, in our energy systems. So we have huge investments into these batteries that are in cars, and we use them only five percent of the time. So ninety five percent of the time, cars are standing around and are a dead asset, or even annoying people on the streets. So I think we can, make this a valuable time and a valuable investment.

And therefore, we have this, yeah, as you said, so we can compensate the costs with the value, of the ninety five percent of the time.

Mhmm. Okay. And and maybe then let's talk about the challenges. Right? So what what the what are the challenges that you see, preventing this kind of zero zero, this this zero zero vision?

At the moment we have cars that can be charged depending on price signals, for example. So we do have the technical capabilities. We have the in in UK, the half hourly resolute measurement with the smart meter. And with this, we can already reduce the costs of charging significantly.

When we have a V two g car, so a car that can also discharge into the grid, then we increase the flexibility provided by this asset significantly.

It's a very small change on the technical side. So, from a cost perspective, from a weight perspective, volumetric, it's minimal additions in the car, but, it boosts the flexibility, especially when you have, EVs that stand for a longer period of time. Because when you have charged the car once, the power is gone, the flexibility is gone when you cannot discharge it. So it really increases the flexibility significantly, and therefore also the value.

Yeah. I think it's it's it's interesting to kinda compare that alongside the station restore space. Right? Because they're they're both kind of in the same market.

And I know that we can kind of come on this later, but mobility has to do a little bit of both. Mhmm. But you've got this In the UK, when we look at the future of energy storage, we see there being, say, fifty gigawatts of stationary storage by the time it gets twenty fifty. And so this need for this this need for frequency response, by the time it gets twenty fifty, we might need ten gigawatts of it.

So imagine we've got a fifty gig fleet that's stationary that can do bi directional charging and discharging. And you've also got a need for say ten gigs of frequency response. The stationery storage market is is way big enough to deal with that. And so maybe one challenge would be, well, do we actually need to use vehicles to do the V2G or So the the vehicle to grid, as you say, so the ability for cars to be able to charge and discharge, or and I think I've read this on your website, v one g, which I've never heard before.

V one g, which is just you're describing that as kind of just a singular just charge from the grid into the system. And so so my question to you is given the size of the stationary storage market, do we actually need V2G from that vehicle from from the vehicle fleet?

Yes. That's a very good question. So first, looking at the ancillary services. So, in central Europe, at least, most stationary applications are active in the, frequency containment reserve. So fast response to frequency deviations.

And this markets are very small in size. In Germany, so the GermanyOs are responsible for, I think, six hundred forty megawatt of tender of this service. And we already have sufficient amount of stationary applications. So grid scale station applications to provide this service And therefore, there is pressure on the price and the market.

I think you see, equal set to obvious equal situation in in Great Britain at the moment. With cars, I do not strive towards this services immediately because prequalification is a pain and, rules are really not made for this very small assets. And they might also not be the best fit for this service. Therefore, what we what we do is or we believe, is the value in the wholesale markets.

So we really believed already early that short term trading is a very important revenue stream for also for stationary applications and started already in two thousand nineteen, with short term trading with our stationary applications.

And we could practice how this works, how the asset behaves, and where the values lies value lies in. And today, we are able to use the same concepts on the EVs.

And this market, obviously, is much bigger in size and volumes. And, we will see a lot of value also in this in the future with more and more renewables and higher CO2 prices.

Okay. And that's and that's put a put a put a note to come back to the German energy market gonna revisit that later on and we're gonna talk about how that market has been transitioning and kind of like what the key challenges are within it because being a podcast that focused quite a lot on the UK but also US markets. It would also be nice to kind of be able to shine a light on on the the transition in Germany. But but if we could just kind of focus on that that V2G case, you mentioned that we could be going into to to wholesale markets Could could you kind of just talk through some of the high level economics of that? So let's say you have a car that you are able to take into a wholesale market.

Yeah, if I have, if I have a car, what does the, what does the, kind of, rate of return look like for me if I am able to put my car into a VETG Yes.

So we did a very interesting field test, with the stationary application. So in these days, we only had stationary applications and no V2G cars was two thousand and twenty two.

And we used one of our stationery filters. Only one megawatt in size. I think, built from eighteen Audi atron batteries.

And we operated them in a way as if they would be EVs driving around. So there were times where we are slowly discharging the battery simulating driving.

And there were times where we assumed the car to be blocked. And, we simulated a V one g time and the v two g time. So being able to discharge what for trading or only, charging for in the, trading or plugin times.

And, we did this for three months each.

And in two thousand twenty two, the prices were, pretty intense. Let's say volatility prices were very high. But the advantage of what we did with our short term trading charging as compared to immediate charging was was more than seven hundred euros for v one g.

So only, the charging case and, one more than one thousand five hundred euros per EV per year for the v two g count. So when you then take levies and taxes and group charges, on on the bill, then this would mean to, have half the costs for charging in the V1G case and zero costs for charging in the V2G case already. So this two thousand twenty two face maybe was a glimpse into the future of of volatility in in short term market, prices.

And, yeah, we could prove that zero zero is possible already today. Okay.

And and just kind of making you the kind of the the personal investor.

So you're you're buying an Audi e tron. Right? You're you're you're the person who's gonna commit to, and I'm gonna guess at a price. Let's say fifty thousand euros to buy this car. Yeah. Don't know if that's the right number or not. I did not do a research on the e tron e tron price, but the fifty thousand pounds.

Yes. It's a cheap one.

It's a cheap one. Okay. It's a cheap one. Great. Well, they can get in touch with me and they can sell me a each one at that price if they want to.

The so so so you're looking to buy that and and then someone comes to you and says, okay. You're gonna have charging costs and you're charging costs, as you said, to get to zero zero, you might need to get, say, fifteen hundred, euros back from a from V2G. So someone comes to you and says, alright. If I put this extra thing onto your site, I can save you fifteen hundred pounds per year, fifteen hundred euros, sorry, per year.

But I need to I need to use your battery.

I'm gonna borrow your battery for a bit. You've just invested sixty thousand, seventy thousand euros into a car, and then someone's saying, oh, trust me. I'm gonna use your battery for a bit. You won't notice it.

How do you how do you build trust to get people and fleet owners and and private investors to be able to say, yes. Okay, don't worry. You can use my you can use my my battery because what they'll be worried about is are they gonna use all the range on it? Are they gonna use the state of health?

Am I gonna have to go and buy another twenty thousand euro three because it's been, you know, overworked.

Yes. Very good question.

Obviously, that's something, we are looking into intensely We made some research with, a university in Munich, and, the result of this research showed that immediate charging is not necessarily, less, does not lead to less degradation than, v to g, when you have degradation in mind. So you need to manage this degradation topic, and you can even be better than immediate charging with a v two g application.

Obviously, if you do intense trading using the whole battery in the extreme SOC ranges, for example, having a lot of cycles, This will, degrade the battery or might degrade the battery stronger than, battery, charged immediately for for driving. That's also possible. So you have to take care of it. Then we are talking a lot to the OEMs, to the warranty provider of the battery in front of the end customer, and defining together with them the rules we are able to use the the battery in or the limits we are able to use the battery in. So, normally, we design certain SOC thresholds and cycles and that's full cycle equivalents, including the driving. So a driver who only charges, or has a lot of fast charging on the German outbound and drives, drives very fast and long distance might have less value, less flexibility for us.

But we can see these cycles in our communication with the car and then trade less aggressive with this, physical asset.

And use another battery in our portfolio, if we need to, have a physical fulfillment of a trade.

Yeah. Yeah. It's just a it's a assinating kind of look into the future, right, that you will have some smart, dispatcher slash portfolio analysis that's looking at the usage of each of these EVs and working out where they can get the best value from those EVs. So I'm fascinated by that, but let's just go back a touch on to some of the things you were running through.

So OEM, original equipment manufacturer. So that is someone who has kind of made the sale or put the car together. So anyone thinking what on earth does OEM mean. And then the the the other part you were just mentioning, so, let's let's talk through the kind of concept of the degradation on an immediate charge versus using V2G.

So so to to the kind of to someone outside of that, you'd think, well, v to g, I both need to charge and I need to discharge. So I'm kind of doing double the distance whereas just an immediate charge, I'm just charging.

So, so how can V2G not be degrading my battery more than just running an immediate Yes.

So this is caused by the calendaring aging, which also depends on the state of charge and many people charge their car to one hundred percent, immediately after plug in. And when they seldom drivers. Let's say they have a average SOC very close to one hundred percent, and that's not very good for the Calendric, aging.

And we can avoid this. But via V2G, it's avoided, because we normally do not want to reach this vulnerable person. We do not want to be full. And we are also having algorithms that punish, extreme SOCs.

So we are only going in the area of one hundred percent, if it's a very valuable trait.

Mhmm.

And therefore, we can help to reduce calendaring aging, but we add cycles and therefore cyclic aging. Okay. But again, we are talking about different c rates than in stationary applications. We do not have a c rate of one. But we have eleven kilowatt of charging in Germany, normally, and, a battery often above fifty kilowatt hours.

So, the charging power is very low and therefore also the the thermal stress for the battery is very reduced Okay. And it's very well, the thermal management in a car is also good.

And c rates. Would you mind just explaining what a c rate to someone outside of the battery industry.

Mhmm.

So the c rate compares the power to the capacity of the battery. So a c rate of two would mean that I have two times the power as compared to the capacity.

So I can discharge the battery in half an hour with a c rate of two or end in two hours with a c rate of zero point five.

Perfect. Okay. This was a really good kind of look into the the vision and the future of kind of what we see in EVs. And I'm aware that we've kind of skipped over a little bit of kind of actually who mobility house are and who you are. And so I'd love to kind of, let's let's cover that. So, so who are mobility house?

What have you done so far and and how do you fit into the mobility house business? Mhmm.

So we talked about zero zero division, and, the company was founded with the vision already, two thousand and nine. So that was very early for this vision, to be honest. So there were no EVss and also the value of flexibility was limited let's say. And therefore, the the company had some journey of, building infrastructure in charging. So we really made our name in in charging hardware l and end to end solutions for big electric fleets electrification.

So we have the biggest online shop in the German speaking region and a product called Chargepilot that enables charging at, big at sites with many chargers and limiting the power necessary as a grid connection power, for example. Mhmm. And around this product, we built many many different, product like billing and end to end solutions.

And and just to talk about that that charge pilot, like, when you say it's a product, like, what what actually what actually is it? What's what's the thing?

You can imagine it as a raspberry pi sitting in your electric installation, talking via ethernet, to your all your chargers.

And then being able to control the charging of all these charges and measure the energy and manage things for you. And visualize things for you as well. Mhmm.

So what, like, one of the biggest costs, we did a really good episode, last week on EV charging, and one of the biggest costs that we were talking about came from this a bit this kind of need to sign up to have a big power connection to the grid. And so potentially one of the things that you might be able to do is to better manage how, say, ten or how fifty charges draw power from the grid so that you're charging so so that the cost from having that connection to the grid could be slightly lower.

Exactly. And that's a very important topic and has huge huge CapEx impact So sometimes it's hundreds of thousands of euros we are saving with this, solution.

For example, big sites like the Shippel Airport in Amsterdam where we charge the electric bus fleet or also the Irish post or the Austrian Post. So the very big fleets we are helping with our product to reduce significant costs. And, obviously, this is the first step towards the vision again. So we can reduce the costs of installing the infrastructure to be able to charge, but then we have already the capability to change the charge behavior. So if there is flexibility left after we reduce the max power, at the will connection point, we can use it for shifting to cheap times or even use it in a closed group, loops solution, in the short term trading.

Mhmm.

And making revenue with this disability given.

That's always a always a plus. And and and just to just to talk a little bit about how sort of mobility house fit into the to to the space. Right? So With these projects, you have your grid connection that gets designed installed.

Someone will own the EV charging point. Potentially, there might be a fleet that connects to that EV charger. There might be individual private cars. There might be from a range of kind of manufacturers.

It feels like one of the most crucial things that you've done is work very hard on your partnering. So your sort of up to speed or you're happy to connect to various different EV charges, various different cars. Was that something that you kind of you saw from two thousand and nine and said, actually, if this is all gonna be a success, we have to be sort of real experts in partnering across that EV chain. Or is that something that you've learned over the last ten, fifteen years?

No. I also think it's a it's an idea, of our product development these days, to be, agnostic and to, yeah, use the standards that are there. So there is OCP standards, for the communication with the, charter.

And, we are supporting this communication protocol that is very common. And, therefore, we can work with many different manufacturers on the charging side. And the EV to charging, there is a standard and it's very dominant. It's type two.

Or CCS in the fast charging Mhmm.

Environment. So there, we only support one technology more or less at least in Europe.

Yep. So CCS learned this last week. That's the that's the charging cable that you would plug into your to your vehicle and is pretty pretty much the one of the two main charging options that you have. And you also mentioned o c p p, which is the communications protocol.

Exactly. It's communication protocol between the backend and the charger.

It's often used by the CPOs, the charge point operator. So then it's cloud to charge a communication.

In our case, we also have a local device Mhmm.

That makes us independent from internet connection or disturbance outside. So even if there is a no internet, the all the system works very fine and controls the charging.

And so I think, hopefully, the thing that listeners are getting from this is that in terms of actually being able to build something into an EV charging ecosystem or working with EVs, like your ability to be able to partner with the general varieties of equipment that's out there and and, b, building things that are standard and very much too protocol is a really important part of how you actually can grow your business to be, like an important chart important part of that EV space. So just talking a little bit more about then how you have developed your solution from twenty from two thousand nine through to today.

Yes.

Like, what's what's different?

I think one key step was, in two thousand fifteen or something. Our founder Thomas Kafiner. He was, visiting Mercedes and the Tesla batteries of the smart came back of a test fleet, I think. And they there was a discussion somehow that they wanted to, throw it away so they didn't have a use for it. And he say, hey, we can build a stationary application from this. And, they were very fast in decision making and building the first, storage together with Mercedes Benz Energy as an integrator.

And, yeah, then we had the the first stationary storage built from EV batteries. By now, it's more than five thousand batteries. We are operating like this, with more than, or close to one hundred megawatt of power in France, Netherlands, and, Germany.

And, this stationary commercialization is really a very valuable basis today for generating value with the flexibility that lies in charging and discharging. So that's the energy side, I would say, the nucleus where it really started off.

Yeah. And then, actually, this would be a good chance to talk about EV and sort of second life batteries being used because for for me, we we kind of see both sides of this. Right? So you see EVss that come out of being electric vehicle and their mobility, and then they could be used in a sort of second life as stationary storage.

That's definitely one application, but you also have like this hypercompressed of space where people like CATL are kind of announcing lower costs of batteries. They announced something recently that was sort of down at sixty dollars per kilowatt hour for just for just the cell. So not the whole not the whole thing, but just just for the cell.

Good price.

Which is an incredibly low price and potentially driven by a little bit of supply and demand economics and a bit of a flood of sales onto the market. But, like, how how do how to kind of second life EVs compete with those prices? Because for sure people like CATL and other manufacturers will continue to post that price down. So so do do you see the kind of second IVVs being kind of worth the like, worth the effort to put into stationery storage?

It's it's complex, to answer this question because things change a lot So at the moment, I'm not very deep into this topic, but there something changed in the recycling.

So, the manufacturers are driving towards recycling batteries. So they might be not so interested in the second life approach because they need to get up their recycling rate.

Right.

Okay. But it's a bit far away from from my expertise. I I'm not so confident in this.

We have some similar things that that go on within the UK and it's certainly the recycling is kind of becoming a much more important part of being able to produce and put EVs into the market. So, yeah, I can I can see that happening?

But before, for example, in, in two thousand and fifteen, it wasn't possible to cycle the batteries. So it would have gone to thermal recycling. So it would have been burned most likely.

And therefore, it's good to have this possibility to use it in a second life, application, to also collect batteries and increase the stock, for then having a recycling in the latest step, maybe. Yeah. We have more volume. So the market changes a lot, I think. And therefore, also, the how cheap we get the batteries for building the station applications, has many dependencies.

Yeah. And I think that's kind of just kind of the things you touched on there. So Evie's not being able to recycle them. Okay.

They come out. They go into second life. As soon as you're actually able to recycle them to say maybe ninety five percent, and it becomes mandated for people to that that rate, all of a sudden, second life as stationery stories becomes less less clear and perhaps more complicated picture. And then as you say, like, in terms of getting things like, nickel manganese and cobalt back out of the system, very expensive materials and things that you want to get back out of the system.

So you were talking about some essentially, like, heat based recycling, which is one one part, but I know there's a lot of innovation in this space. And there's actually something that for for a future guest on this on this podcast. It would be great to get someone on who is a a huge expert in the recycling space because we'd we'd, we'd love to talk about it.

So so maybe one more topic to to mention there because we are not only using second life batteries.

We are also using serial life. We call it, so batteries that are not yet in the car. So it's when you have batteries on stock. You need to manage the SOC because they have a self, discharge.

So what we do, we connect them quickly, but we not only, stabilize the SOC, but we use, the batteries to commercialize and we can earn money with it in in frequency con containment reserve. And this frequency containment reserve, if you do it in a way that without a lot of trading, for example, then it really is very good for the battery to, limit degradation and yes, this batteries can still be built into cars and sold as new.

And and just and just so I understand what a zero life battery is. So that's a battery that is that has been built and is is ready to go, but is sitting on-site at a factory that's not yet into an EV. It will go into an EV, but you're finding, a knee shop a niche where you're able to cycle that battery before it goes and start its life as an EV. Exactly.

Yes.

Wow. I didn't know that existed. So, you know, you you you learn something new every day. I mean, how big is that market?

It's limited in size. I think in the beginning, it was more relevant because when you built or designed a a car and then you bought the batteries in Asia somewhere, you couldn't be too sure that you get the right sales or the right battery packs in a later step. So the OEMs, the, producer of cars, they needed to have the stock, to be to make sure that they can repair the cars of their customers. Mhmm. Even though the supply chain is not secured, maybe.

Suppose it would almost be a nice thing for them as well. So if you have a battery that you've tested for, say, ten, twenty cycles worth before it starts life, you can say, I know that battery works. Whereas if you're taking a battery from an OEM testing it once once or twice, maybe you might not be finding a fault And the one thing you don't want to do is to put an EV out there that has a fault very soon. So additional testing sounds like it's probably a worthwhile thing alongside providing the frequency services.

Yes. For sure. So when you work with old batteries, second life batteries, you have different, technical concepts. Because you need to be aware that the batteries are not all as equal as, yeah, all the batteries coming new from the factory from cattle.

So that's that's a a a different concept tech from the technical side. Yeah. When you build it up new, exactly. You sort, for example, based on the SOH or the internal resistance on this on this topics you have to have in mind And I think also what we did there helps us to be able to operate batteries that degraded already.

So, many of the companies today, they have new batteries. They do not know how batteries behave when they are in a later SOH stage. And we have this experience already today.

S o h. Would you mind explaining that for the non the nonbattery listener?

So s o h is a state of health so it describes the initial capacity, usable capacity to the capacity to the to the usable capacity after degradation.

Mhmm.

So, so age of eighty percent means I have eighty kilowatt hours usable of a initial one what our battery.

Great.

Okay. That was super useful to to run through. If we could maybe actually take a step back and it's nice to have a guest on from Germany. And so it'd be nice to to be able to check-in and see how the transition is going within Germany.

So we see a lot trends within the UK and in the US in terms of, reduction of gas running hours. Coal, not so much in the UK. It's not really a a thing anymore, but obviously for Germany, it's a massive part of how of the history of your energy market, but also how the transition is happening. It'd be great just to get a feeling of where that transition is kind of what are the key things that are going on and perhaps some of the, like, the biggest risks and opportunities in the space.

Mhmm.

So I think Germany was pretty early, to starting off with the renewables.

But in the last, twenty years, we had some ups and downs. So there were, phases where we really increased fast, our, renewables and then faces where we were very slow. And this was very challenging for our industry. So I'd heard that just the last, big PV manufacturer in in Germany gave up, and we had a a very big three once upon a time.

So there's challenges with these waves of building, renewables in Germany.

But at the moment, or the last year, we reached the fifty person mark, and that's, I think, a great success story. That fifty and all the energy consumed in in Germany came from renewable production. And, it not a lot of stress in the system due to this renewables. So fifty percent with the, liberalized energy market that we have short term market, the tenders for the ancillary services, a rather good, grit, I would say as compared to other regions in the world, is no problem at all.

From a stability per perspective.

Yeah. What you need to make sure is that you are not dependent on the fossil, power plants in terms of grid services. But with stationary applications, I think that's the perfect fit on on the normal TSO services at least.

Exactly. I mean, what we've seen in the UK is that if the stationary battery storage dominates the frequency response market, and I not really a surprise that it does that. It's very good at responding quickly, whereas big thermal units require time to be able to shift. To to to move to respond to those services quite quickly, and and storage has been able to undercut them.

Let's go back into the space of of mobility and EV. So you're active across a wide range of of European markets, but you're also a little bit into, California as well. Could I ask you kind of, like, what what does the what does in terms of those markets, like, what does best in class look like for mobility? Which are the markets that you love being part of because you can be really effective.

So I'm looking into the the German, the French, and starting to look into the, Great Britain market. And the German and the French market are rather similar in the general concept, but, the devil lies in the details. So for example, in Germany, you are not allowed to trade into the, imbalance market. So imbalance is something you need to make sure to use as to be be as balanced as possible by regulation And that's different than France. And I like the German concept of having a a wholesale market where all the flexibility need is pushed into because it's more transparent than the imbalance market. So if you are able to trade into the imbalance market, For example, the players who have, the possibility to participate in secondary control reserve are more aware of imbalance in the system and they or have a better view on the on the pricing.

So, it's harder for newcomers to enter the market, I think. So I'm really a fan of of this a short term, I would say, market. Mhmm. On the other side in France, we have concepts that we will have in in Germany.

I'm pretty sure in the in in the upcoming years. For example, the capacity market. And that's very nice for batteries as well. Because we can provide a service, this power we have to the system and earn capacity revenues.

And, yeah, also had the system to live without the the peakers or the conventional power plants. And, yeah, in UK, my feeling is, but, you're the expert that things are pretty dynamic, and you have a lot of, changes in regulation, but you have all the services on the different levels. So tiers also versus DSO services trading.

So I'm really looking into diving deeper into the UK market, together with the mobility house.

Yeah. Yeah. And, I think the the there's one thing that UK's been very good at for its energy market. It's kind of being innovative in terms of the the products and how much we're pushing to open up frequency response markets and reserve markets to things like battery storage. And we are one hundred percent seeing as consumers in this market. We're one hundred one hundred percent seeing the benefit of actually having things like storage being able to provide the services that thermal generation was providing for for for many years. One interesting thing on the capacity market we we have a capacity market.

In fact, it cleared moments before we started doing this podcast, a exciting news flash, and And it's very high prices.

Yeah.

I think sixty sixty five to seventy pounds per kilowatt. So, yeah, I think it'll reasonably high price. But before you count your chickens, the battery market in, batteries in the capacity market in the UK have something called derating. Mhmm.

And so affect and we are going off topic, and and I'm supposed to be asking the question is not you. So, but but let me I've started to finish. So, the capacity market, the the way that it works is that works out the contribution of each of the systems to meeting potential periods where the grid doesn't have enough generation. And so because the grid has lots of one hour and two hour systems, effectively, the capacity market instead of getting sixty five pounds or seventy pounds, per kilowatt.

You actually get a derated number, and it's more like ten percent or fifteen percent of that because the grid says, ah, we have lots of one of our systems. We have lots to our systems. And it's it's weird. It's creating this it's this really different dynamic.

So what's happening is that you're getting these really big payments going out to gas turbines because they're always available, but they don't run very much. And the storage that's working quite hard to keep the system first is getting a very small capacity payment. And I don't know what the answer is, but I am sure that will kind of evolve as we get into a more net zero system because I think, you know, you should be paid fairly for the capacity and flexibility you provide the system.

Yes. Maybe there is some best practice. In in France, for example, I think they differentiate between participating in short term trading and participating in frequency reserve.

Mhmm.

So when your asset is limited in capacity, like a lithium battery normally is as compared to gas or coal power plants, then it's better to go to frequency control reserve in times in the relevant times for the capacity market because then your power is volume has a higher value, as compared to trading where the capacity limits are having an effect on on your availability for the system.

Okay. And just in terms of just in terms of then, oh, I think one one sort of final question for me is around what the future of power demand looks like. So very soon I'll ask you if there's anything you want to plug in and for your contrarian view, which I'm excited to hear. But before we go into that, I'd I'd your view on the the kind of future of power demand.

Do we think that with more sort of v one g, more v two g, the future of power demand is very flat and very sort of non spiky? Or do you think that sort of consumers will be consumers? And when I get home and I want to plug in my car, I will plug in my car and I will charge it as fast as possible. What what do you think the future looks like?

Yeah.

Maybe first have a look on the on the theory side a bit. So Germany strives towards fifteen million EVs in two thousand and thirty.

Okay.

That's equal to every assume every EV has a charger with eleven kilowatt that's equal to one hundred sixty five, gigawatt of charging power. So that's huge power. So in Germany, I think the base load is in the area of fifty gigawatt.

Mhmm.

So if you would imagine the all these cars being charged at the same moment. It would be infeasible, of course. Mhmm. But us are, having high probabilistic or, statistics behind itself, them because they are very small in size and there are many and people are very different.

Cars are very different. Charg situation is very different. And, they are standing around ninety five percent of the time. And therefore, there is not a big challenge, I think, I'm on a global scale for the energy system, but, there will be grit So distribution grid areas where you have challenges and where you need to have some solution to limit the power.

In Germany, we just introduced, it's called paragraph fourteen a, in the German TAMs. Yes. Yeah. And it needs that the DSO has the possibility, if there is a grid conjection congestion to limit the power to four point six kilowatt And, I I'm pretty sure this is, a step that will limit the real great challenges to a very, really, really minimum in the diesel level.

We saw something similar in the UK actually of, the grid operator wanting to limit the output from solar from solar generation in peak summer. So where we were getting constraint problems They had the ability to step in and and kind of provide that. Yeah. But it but if I can kind of sum up the beast you're you're making about EV, you're you're effectively saying that with the sort of fifteen million EVs albeit, some won't be plugged in, and some will be being used, and some will be fully charged, and the person won't want them to be sort of used for v one d or v two g you're saying that with the flexibility that you have there, so a hundred and sixty five gigawatts versus a kind of sixty gig ish system, you think that there's There's effectively a much more smooth energy demand in the future because people will be flexible with how they charge their system.

This was rather describing the problem state. That was a problem statement. So I only already think that without managing it a lot, it's not a big issue. Then you have some good restrictions and you can limit power. That's reasonable.

But what with with the things we do, So to commercialize flexibility, it will lead to a situation where the batteries really help the system. It's not, the EVs bringing additional challenges, but resolving challenges.

So these batteries, in two thousand thirty in Germany, the fifteen million, they could charge the PV Energy, and they could discharge in a way to completely cover the whole load of Germany in the complete night.

So even in a situation without wind, we will have a smooth consumption or we we can take the PV peak and we can feedback to to cover the whole load. And I think that's really impressive.

So, when we do things right in regulation, the technology is there. We can have this huge flexibility and the distributed flexibility.

So we can resolve DSO challenges and TSO challenges and really integrate renewables with this system.

Yeah. I think it's all it's a fascinating space where there's just so many solutions that seem like they are possible provided we get the the set up from a regulatory point of view and we're able to kinda enable them. So to to to move on to kind of the final two questions of of this this podcast.

So is there anything that you would like to plug Yes.

Thanks for the chance. So, v two g. We talked about v two g, and it seems always far away. But, this year, who knew and mobilized.

That's the energy brand of of who knew, powered by the mobility house will launch the r five. It's just launched on YouTube, Tube, etcetera. I saw yesterday, and it will be a Vitujika, not only on the paper, like, many of the, Vito Chikas driving around today, but there will be a charger available from Gurnoo. And, you will be able to discharge this car not only into your home, but also into the public grid.

And with our energy tariff, we we provide together with mobileize.

You will be able to charge for free if you have sufficient time of, clock time as compared to your driving distance.

And, yeah, we will make this available in the end of this year in Germany and France and one year later in, Great Britain.

Okay. Exciting times in the BTG space having having covered that at length. I think it's exciting to hear it actually being delivered in in in practice. So good to see. And then Could I ask you for your contrarian view? Something you believe that ninety percent of the market doesn't.

Yeah. So in Germany, we have, challenge that the regulation really gives a lot of, incentive to optimize behind the meter. And I'm not a big fan of behind the meter optimization because we use all this flexibility, for example, provided by solar battery systems, behind the meter and waste the flexibility for, individual optimization instead of using it in front of the meter. So I'm really, always pushing and striving towards, regulator system and incentive system, which, yeah, enables us to not make the same mistake with v two g. So that not all these batteries are only used to, yeah, have a behind the meter optimization, but we that the whole society can profit from this, valuable asset.

Mhmm. Because from a systems perspective, if everyone tries to solve their own equation behind their own meter, So, you know, meeting their own demand from solar and battery, then we as a whole network will have to invest much more to get that done rather than what you're saying, which is actually, if we're already transparent and we connect up all the dots, then we could do this at a lower cost.

Yes. I'm sure.

I think so. There'll probably be a lot of behind the meter people who might say, well, actually not. Brilliant. Okay. Well, look, thank you very much, for coming on for taking us through all things, EVs, mobilities, and the few feature of of of energy, particularly via, a journey to to Germany and France as well, which I think our listeners will have found fascinating, Rafael.

Thank you very much for coming Thank you for having me.

It was my pleasure.