Speaker 1: With the run Segle end from London and Gerard read
Speaker 1: from Berlin. This is redefining energy today.
Speaker 2: On Redefining Energy JA, we're going to talk about the
Speaker 2: behind the mitter.
Speaker 3: Revolution, absolutely and in particular we're going to look at
Speaker 3: the residential area right.
Speaker 2: But first the world from my partner.
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Speaker 1: more flexible.
Speaker 2: Back to the show, and what do we mean by that?
Speaker 1: It means basically, you're going into people's homes.
Speaker 2: With an energy solution.
Speaker 3: You're putting in solar a, you're putting and batteries, might
Speaker 3: be putting in heat pumps, and you're doing it sort
Speaker 3: of as an energy as a service type agreement.
Speaker 2: Yes, but it's much more than that because you need
Speaker 2: to then connect all those systems and run energy management,
Speaker 2: which is gonna literally merge all those decentralized sources and
Speaker 2: talk directly to the grid. And that's what our guest
Speaker 2: is doing and very successfully.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so listen, what we're doing is bringing on a
Speaker 3: German entrepreneur, Philip Shorter.
Speaker 2: It's been really active.
Speaker 3: Is founded a business called einskomerfon one coma five also
Speaker 3: formerly with sonon battery manufacturer Tesla and a really really
Speaker 3: passionate maker of the future.
Speaker 2: I would say, you know, oh yeah, a company now
Speaker 2: as close to one billion euro of annual of news
Speaker 2: three thousand employees. So it's one of the most active
Speaker 2: and successful entrepreneurs in the behind the metal revolution.
Speaker 3: And it's great have them on the show.
Speaker 2: So why don't we bring them on? Philip, Welcome to
Speaker 2: the show.
Speaker 4: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 3: Philip. I'm really excited about this conversation because at the
Speaker 3: end of the day, you've been an entrepreneur and an
Speaker 3: innovator in this energy.
Speaker 2: Space for years.
Speaker 3: At this point in time, my own view of present
Speaker 3: is look after the beginning of this second energy crisis
Speaker 3: five years at this point in time, I think things
Speaker 3: are really going to change. I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Speaker 3: I'm obviously strategist more than anything else, and you're actually operating,
Speaker 3: You're actually doing it, So yeah, I'd love to hear
Speaker 3: your view.
Speaker 4: I would say high level. The view I have is that,
Speaker 4: in particular in Europe, the latest energy crisis is somehow
Speaker 4: the final battle between either a fully electrified, clean energy
Speaker 4: abundant Europe or a high cost fossil fuel, high grid
Speaker 4: prices energy future for Europe. The good news is, yes,
Speaker 4: the energy crisis now is helping the scenario of full
Speaker 4: electrification and renewables totally because everybody can see now how
Speaker 4: resilient it makes us. But at the same time we
Speaker 4: also see sustained pushback on all levels regulatory level, policy level,
Speaker 4: capital market level. Really is in my view, a very
Speaker 4: decisive time on all of these levels at the same time,
Speaker 4: and I'm excited about it because I think it's possible
Speaker 4: to really turn this in the right direction. So I
Speaker 4: share your view that there's a lot of opportunity right now.
Speaker 4: At the same time, we need to win some strategic
Speaker 4: battles now, and they need to be one on multiple fronts.
Speaker 3: What can I maybe ask, what are those strategic challenges
Speaker 3: you see.
Speaker 4: The main issue for renewables and the entire discussion about
Speaker 4: renewables against fossils, is that we have an energy system
Speaker 4: that simply has the grid as a non intelligent huge
Speaker 4: machine which either is transporting peak demand or peak production.
Speaker 4: And if you continue to use that huge copper machine
Speaker 4: that we have in Europe the way we are doing it,
Speaker 4: the energy transition will become a trap. The most significant
Speaker 4: change in my view is that we need to look
Speaker 4: at behind the meta of flexibility as a very low
Speaker 4: cost possibility to optimize capacity usage of grids in all
Speaker 4: of Europe, and we need to find a way how
Speaker 4: grid operators actually can benefit and operate in a flexible grid,
Speaker 4: meaning that they have flexible grid fees, so that you
Speaker 4: change the paradigm from a peak demand peak production towards
Speaker 4: following the rhythm of sun and wind energy production. Right.
Speaker 4: So this is the main topic I see, and I
Speaker 4: think we don't really have an issue on the production
Speaker 4: capacity side, but on the transport side and the grid side,
Speaker 4: there's a major battle going on how to operate the
Speaker 4: grids and how to build them.
Speaker 3: By the way, I think it's very interesting you say
Speaker 3: this because if I want to compare the energy crisis
Speaker 3: we're in now to the second energy crist in the seventies.
Speaker 3: In the seventies we really didn't have the technological solution,
Speaker 3: so there was one which was called nuclear, and everyone
Speaker 3: jumped on that. We either started drilling in the North
Speaker 3: Sea or we went and built nuclear, and in some
Speaker 3: respects what France did it was absolutely inco credible in
Speaker 3: the years in the nineteen eighties. But today, if I look,
Speaker 3: I go, We've got so many technical solutions in the
Speaker 3: electrical space, whether it's solar, it's batteries, it's evs that
Speaker 3: make economic sense. That's the really difference between That's why
Speaker 3: I'm positive is because of the fact that we do
Speaker 3: have the solutions which we didn't have fifty years ago.
Speaker 4: One hundred percent. I mean, the good news already is
Speaker 4: that we get a lot of validation for them. And
Speaker 4: the realm of politics is super difficult because everybody's living
Speaker 4: in social media echo chambers. This makes it really difficult
Speaker 4: to appreciate the fact that we have so many technologies
Speaker 4: at the same time and all of them are working,
Speaker 4: which I love. Right heatpump is working. It's great technology,
Speaker 4: it's much more efficient, it's much cleaner, it's cheaper singles
Speaker 4: for EV's singles for solar, and it's getting only better.
Speaker 4: I'm with you, but I think the great challenge is
Speaker 4: if you have sixty percent of overall energy costs being
Speaker 4: grid cost, because you are not capable of absorbing overproduction
Speaker 4: in a smart way with existing capacities that we have
Speaker 4: just literally switching them on when there is wind and
Speaker 4: when there is sun instead of just switching them always
Speaker 4: on when there is neither. If we don't overcome that problem,
Speaker 4: the advantage of renewables, the advantage of electrifications are not
Speaker 4: fully leveraged because they're muted by a very static grid
Speaker 4: layer which has become super expensive and which is also
Speaker 4: making up sixty percent of the cost. Right, and electrification
Speaker 4: is always about competitive. If we have more usage by nature,
Speaker 4: then the grid fees will go down, but we need
Speaker 4: to have a very smart capacity management. So yes, the
Speaker 4: technology is there everywhere, and we are in seven markets,
Speaker 4: so we see the same trends everywhere, but it's particular
Speaker 4: in Europe. A grid layer and all the flexibility steering
Speaker 4: behind the meter is something that is not solved to
Speaker 4: really unleash the full potential. Let me give you one example,
Speaker 4: if we take our VPP right now, and even with
Speaker 4: high grid fees, which is like a fixed fee that
Speaker 4: you have to pay per kilar, what hour we are
Speaker 4: capable of delivering to a metering point in average just
Speaker 4: a third of the electricity cost. If you would allow
Speaker 4: the grid to also be flexible, that would go even
Speaker 4: further down. So even though we are muted and the
Speaker 4: options and potentials are muted by a very highrid cost,
Speaker 4: already today the solutions are super powerful. But at the
Speaker 4: same time we see the capacity market in Germany, gas
Speaker 4: power fireplant are being built or should be built. Billions
Speaker 4: are going in there, so there is also some countermeasures
Speaker 4: that I'm more sensitive towards.
Speaker 2: Philip. I'm interested by everything you say because it's not
Speaker 2: like academic paper or lobby's paper. It's the experiense of
Speaker 2: someone a great entrepreneur. In my opinion, you're one of
Speaker 2: the greatest entrepreneur in Germany and probably in Europe, and
Speaker 2: you've built a one billion euro company three thousand employees,
Speaker 2: and what you do is very difficult compared to software.
Speaker 2: It's because you are integrating hardware and software from the
Speaker 2: sellar panel to the heat pumps, the client acquisition. Got
Speaker 2: that's difficult because it's almost flat by flathouse by a house,
Speaker 2: and managing to coalesce all those decentralized pointing to dig
Speaker 2: your load being able to tread it on the market.
Speaker 2: So explain that scale because there are hundreds of startups,
Speaker 2: if not thousands, but you know, managing to scale and
Speaker 2: be profitable and raise money with great investors. So how
Speaker 2: does the scaling part works?
Speaker 4: I can absolutely relate to that. In the end, the
Speaker 4: secret source of what we do has been teams that
Speaker 4: are in the industry for a while. Because you're totally right.
Speaker 4: You need to do a couple of things at the
Speaker 4: same time, right otherwise it won't work. And you spoke
Speaker 4: about it. Everybody always talks about the seemingless solution for everyone,
Speaker 4: blah blah blah. But if you describe the solution is
Speaker 4: very simple. You need to be capable of trading each
Speaker 4: metering point individually to get the best result for the consumer.
Speaker 4: That's something new, that's something that has not been done before.
Speaker 4: And the second thing is on top of that, you
Speaker 4: steer the assets behind the meta directly to basically protect
Speaker 4: the positions that you're opening in the energy market. So
Speaker 4: if you are optimizing an individual meter of a customer
Speaker 4: against all available markets, and you actually have full steering
Speaker 4: capability of all electrical assets behind the meter, you have
Speaker 4: a back to back mechanism to actually take the risk
Speaker 4: out that you usually have from forecasting and prognosis in errors.
Speaker 4: So if you do this best by definition, you will
Speaker 4: deliver to that metering point the lowest cost of electricity.
Speaker 4: And we are doing exactly that. But in order to
Speaker 4: deliver that, you need to have electrified hardware. So you
Speaker 4: need to get the all tank out heating and put
Speaker 4: in in electrical heating. The electrical heating needs to be
Speaker 4: integrated in the trading algorithm in the entire software suit
Speaker 4: you have for decades. This is why we have a
Speaker 4: software revenue from our customers, because people are paying us
Speaker 4: to optimize. They don't pay for electricity. They pay us
Speaker 4: to be the last energy supplier they'll ever need because
Speaker 4: they know they we will always optimize the metering point
Speaker 4: for them against all markets. The next point you need
Speaker 4: is a smart meter. Obviously in Germany is a huge
Speaker 4: pain point, and you need full integration of all the
Speaker 4: energy market layers. And what we like about one comer
Speaker 4: five so much about heartbeat. That's the name of the
Speaker 4: VPP is. Those layers have never been automated. These layers
Speaker 4: are individual layers that are one hundred years old, and
Speaker 4: we've found a way which was a very hard, painful
Speaker 4: way to automate those layers. So in the end we
Speaker 4: have an end to end optimization. We open a position
Speaker 4: in an energy market and we can do real time
Speaker 4: optimization of the metering point and the assets, and thereby
Speaker 4: we can take advantage of the disadvantages of the system
Speaker 4: right now. So for example, lots of monatility prices go
Speaker 4: down because there's too much wind power. But also we
Speaker 4: are for example, pre qualified for grid stability services in Sweden,
Speaker 4: so we can actually use these assets and optimize them
Speaker 4: against all available markets. And this is what we do.
Speaker 4: And in order to do deliver this, you need all
Speaker 4: of it. You need to acquire a customer for the hardware,
Speaker 4: the hardware stack needs to be already providing the preconditions
Speaker 4: for the service, and you need to build a back
Speaker 4: end in software system that can actually operate for decades
Speaker 4: and not just for a one time revenue. And that's
Speaker 4: what we've done. And I think the backstory to it
Speaker 4: is we have been as teams in all these markets
Speaker 4: before in one silo. So some of us have been
Speaker 4: part of Tesla trying to scale ev when everybody was
Speaker 4: laughing about it and people said Tesla's going to be
Speaker 4: bankrupt soon. We tried to scale batteries in homes when
Speaker 4: nobody knew that this product was even available, and we
Speaker 4: did this in Australia, in US, in Germany. So literally,
Speaker 4: the only reason why we made it so far is
Speaker 4: because we have learned through our experience every little vertical
Speaker 4: from energy trading VPP to the residential behind the meta assets.
Speaker 4: That's how we actually achieved it. And once you are stable,
Speaker 4: so once you've reached a position where the product kind
Speaker 4: of works end to end, and it does. Now it
Speaker 4: gets nice because what happens is customers refer customers, you
Speaker 4: have a better customer experience, and also our customer quisition
Speaker 4: cost you ask that question is super low. It's probably
Speaker 4: the lowest in the industry in Europe, and that's the key.
Speaker 4: Otherwise you will never scale because it's simply too expensive.
Speaker 2: I'm going to ask a question, and if you don't
Speaker 2: want to answer, that's fine, but I still want to
Speaker 2: ask the question from the outside looking in. You know
Speaker 2: we see your name, but you know we see other companies,
Speaker 2: So would you describe them as competitors or they have
Speaker 2: a different business model? So I can name motopers, I
Speaker 2: can name in Texas, base Power, in Germany you've got
Speaker 2: empal Tarmondo, and that there are certainly others. So how
Speaker 2: would you position income affum versus the names are I
Speaker 2: just put forward.
Speaker 4: No issues of running them down and just giving you
Speaker 4: my two cents to each of them. Base Power is
Speaker 4: in the end distributed batteries. They are being used as
Speaker 4: a single product of the tzation against Flexibility, which is
Speaker 4: a product that we also have. So base is basically
Speaker 4: delivering in one vertical that we also provide towards. But
Speaker 4: I would say the difference is very simple. I mean,
Speaker 4: first of all, we are not in the US unfortunately,
Speaker 4: but we do not only single products. We do full product,
Speaker 4: so we basically have all products when it comes to
Speaker 4: electrification on the suite, and we believe that you need
Speaker 4: to not just have one asset. We believe in multi market,
Speaker 4: multi product. And also if you do not have the
Speaker 4: home service capability, so if you cannot really help the
Speaker 4: customer with actually acquiring the system in the first place,
Speaker 4: installing the battery, installing the heat bump, then you cannot scale.
Speaker 4: This is Base. I love Based, It's a great startup.
Speaker 4: It's good to have them. If we look at Octopus,
Speaker 4: I would say Cargan is the shooting star. Cargan Flex
Speaker 4: is probably a contender in what we do. But Carten
Speaker 4: in itself is something like a CRM, right, so we
Speaker 4: would not say that Cartan in its core when it
Speaker 4: comes to the CRM, like power Cloud or Salesforce, is
Speaker 4: a true competitors. Is what they do is they want
Speaker 4: to have many utilities using their system in order to
Speaker 4: operate their customers. We want to have an end to
Speaker 4: end optimization of the entire value chain per customer, so
Speaker 4: that's a bit different. However, the VPP part is available
Speaker 4: now to third parties as well. Termondo great company, but
Speaker 4: I would say they focus on heat pumps and end
Speaker 4: part historically has been really about financing. All of them
Speaker 4: are relevant because none of us knows what the real
Speaker 4: sweet spot will be to break open. Everyone is having bets.
Speaker 4: Our bet is we want to become the operating system
Speaker 4: of decentralized energy. With hutbeat and we are opening up
Speaker 4: to our manufacturers, opening up to all energy suppliers, and
Speaker 4: we want to have the one stop shop service at
Speaker 4: the home because otherwise, we believe you're not going to
Speaker 4: get the customer satisfaction.
Speaker 2: This is our bed.
Speaker 4: It's great to have all of them in the game
Speaker 4: because they attract investor and attention. Each of them has
Speaker 4: an individual strategy that's a bit different, Philip.
Speaker 3: Can I go back to that? Maybe i'd say what
Speaker 3: I think is the greatest challenge to your business and
Speaker 3: the other businesses you just mentioned, and that is the
Speaker 3: fact that most people just don't understand energy in any way.
Speaker 3: They don't understand that until you go to the petrol
Speaker 3: station and there's no petrol or you can't done electricity.
Speaker 3: But at that point it's sort of too late. In
Speaker 3: other words, what I'm saying is that the customer is
Speaker 3: not educated enough to be able to sort of go, okay,
Speaker 3: I should really go with But it's coming from and
Speaker 3: do what they're doing, or how do you see it?
Speaker 3: In other words, that how do you really persuade all
Speaker 3: those customers to go with you?
Speaker 4: The only way to persuade all of them is if
Speaker 4: they don't even think about it. You know, there are
Speaker 4: many companies and we are one of them that invest
Speaker 4: into market education. But the best that can happen to
Speaker 4: you is if you don't need to do that, because
Speaker 4: you just have a much more compelling and cheaper offer.
Speaker 4: We still struggle to get all the capacity that we
Speaker 4: would need to actually scale a million buildings a year
Speaker 4: for us. The bottleneck is not customer acquisition right now.
Speaker 4: Our bottleneck is to get it really through the books
Speaker 4: and to have the infrastructure set up ready. From a
Speaker 4: demand perspective, we even went to court with this. We
Speaker 4: have the lowest electricity cost for these assets.
Speaker 2: You would have to.
Speaker 4: Have an end to end optimization on each metering device,
Speaker 4: totally integrated, full stack in order to compete with us.
Speaker 4: So from a perspective of what we like most, as
Speaker 4: customers understand it increasingly and they make a lot of
Speaker 4: advertising for us, they understand that it gets cheaper if
Speaker 4: I have lower electricity costs obviously to acquire a heat
Speaker 4: pump and my return on a vest counts earlier. Then
Speaker 4: if I don't have that, and they see that the
Speaker 4: assets that they are acquiring are probably it's not so
Speaker 4: much about an updron cost anymore. It's about total cost
Speaker 4: of ownership, and what we can prove to our customers
Speaker 4: is that we will be capable of keeping their cost
Speaker 4: at the lowest possible point when it comes to electricity
Speaker 4: for a very long period of time and that works.
Speaker 4: So I wouldn't even say that once we have smart
Speaker 4: meters everywhere in Germany, we can take the customers from
Speaker 4: me on who have relevant assets for us. It's always
Speaker 4: important that you have an asset that we can actually optimize.
Speaker 4: If you do not have assets to optimize, you're not
Speaker 4: interesting to us.
Speaker 3: And can I go back to and then we talked
Speaker 3: earlier on about and I'd agree on a macro level,
Speaker 3: if you want to electrify, what we need to do
Speaker 3: is deal with a quid cosse. But I could argue
Speaker 3: that for your business model you actually prefer to have
Speaker 3: higher energy prices because the higher they are, the more
Speaker 3: likely they are to put in behind the media solutions
Speaker 3: and to allow someone like you to go and you know,
Speaker 3: manage it in an intelligent way.
Speaker 4: Film I would disagree. In the end, you have all
Speaker 4: those lobbies who simply want to invest in CAPEX, so
Speaker 4: they either want to b build batteries or they want
Speaker 4: to build power generation or they want to build the
Speaker 4: wind part. And the real issue for us is we
Speaker 4: are interested in allowing the system to function at its
Speaker 4: best capacity and efficiency level. The software that we are
Speaker 4: building is always going to optimize the system for everyone.
Speaker 4: Let me give you an example. In Sweden, you have
Speaker 4: flexible grid fees, meaning if there's too much electricity in
Speaker 4: the grid, grid prices are high. If there is no
Speaker 4: usage so there's lots of capacity, grid prices are low.
Speaker 4: So this helps to actually make it more attractive to
Speaker 4: switch lows from a high price zone into a low
Speaker 4: price zone. We actually just facilitate that because the algorithm
Speaker 4: and the solution that we have is switching the loads
Speaker 4: of our customers from the high price zone into the
Speaker 4: low price zone. For us, it's really important to have
Speaker 4: those flexibility spreads. Obviously, if there's no spread value anymore,
Speaker 4: then how can you optimize. But it's not like old
Speaker 4: solar would like to have high electricity cost and high
Speaker 4: grid cost because then people buy lots of solar systems
Speaker 4: new energy. What we do we want to use the
Speaker 4: systems and leverage them not only on site but also
Speaker 4: for example against wind farms. In simple PPAs right. If
Speaker 4: you now look at the PPA market and wind farms
Speaker 4: in Germany, you have a redispatch. So we are actually
Speaker 4: turning off windmills. Tell a what hours of production capacity
Speaker 4: that is lost forever it can never be retained. There
Speaker 4: are penalties paid for that. Obviously we could swallow that
Speaker 4: and use it. Yes, we try to arbitrash for our
Speaker 4: customer good, but the system itself is built to become
Speaker 4: the operational layer to harmonize a renewal production with consumption.
Speaker 4: That's really core for us because if you build something
Speaker 4: that is just an arbitrass model, to be honest, it
Speaker 4: wouldn't be worth my time. You need to build something
Speaker 4: that solves the largest energy problem we have in Europe,
Speaker 4: which is harmonizing overproduction or underproduction on the electricity side
Speaker 4: with the consumption layer through the grid. That's the operating
Speaker 4: system that we're building. So, yes, there are some benefits
Speaker 4: from us from higher electricity prices, but it's much more
Speaker 4: important for us to have the flexibility and don't underestimate.
Speaker 4: If the electricity price is high, nobody buys evs. If
Speaker 4: the electricity price is high, nobody wants to have heat pumps.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so can I ask just building them as I'm
Speaker 3: listening to you there, if I take your vision, does
Speaker 3: it mean that you need to take a step beyond
Speaker 3: the customer? In other words, you actually end up with
Speaker 3: some of these utilities and distribution companies almost as your customers.
Speaker 4: The plan has always been very simple. We understood that
Speaker 4: it's very difficult to not have a home solution. On
Speaker 4: the electrification part, we'd call it home electrification building electrification.
Speaker 4: So the solution part is like you need craftsmen. You
Speaker 4: need to be capable of fulfilling with the customer, because
Speaker 4: if you can't do that, it's very difficult to enter
Speaker 4: the game. That was the first step we did. This
Speaker 4: is when people labeled us as solar companies. The second
Speaker 4: step then was to prove in an end to end
Speaker 4: environment that we can actually beat the electricity price of
Speaker 4: everyone else, so that we really show the end to
Speaker 4: end optimization. Now we've just taken Heartbeat GmbH this separate
Speaker 4: entity and HARBRED is now open to all energy utilities
Speaker 4: and much more important manufacturers to use it as an
Speaker 4: operating layer, because in the end, we want to be
Speaker 4: the the central operating layer that enables whoever to take
Speaker 4: their assets and leverage them against the volatility in the system.
Speaker 2: And we did a.
Speaker 4: Studying on this, like, if you just apply Happydai to
Speaker 4: a couple of millions of consumers in Europe, you could
Speaker 4: save up to two hundred and fifty five billion euros
Speaker 4: each year system cost. I'm not talking for them alone,
Speaker 4: but system costs because you very simple. You transport more
Speaker 4: electricity through the same copper and that makes a lot
Speaker 4: of sense, brings down cost for everyone.
Speaker 2: Now, Philip, I'm going to ask a tricky question, because
Speaker 2: I'm the tricky question guy. Go, I hear you, But
Speaker 2: I would say the incubans will try everything in the
Speaker 2: book to prevent you to eat their own cakes. Now,
Speaker 2: what if you are acquie or you get the keys
Speaker 2: the management of a distribution company, how would you restructure
Speaker 2: that old distribution company? Because at the end, the goal
Speaker 2: is not to fight the system, is to enter the
Speaker 2: system and change the system from the inside. Right now,
Speaker 2: you're changing it from the outside. I'm a big private
Speaker 2: equity fund. Here are the keys to the distribution company
Speaker 2: of Padochtenberg. What would you do?
Speaker 4: I would deny the keys of the dso, yeah, I
Speaker 4: would not take the obligation I think the source of
Speaker 4: all I agree with your assessment. You have to fix
Speaker 4: the problem from within. What we are now doing is
Speaker 4: we're handing the keys to Heartbeat two grid operators to
Speaker 4: enable them. I give you an example. The problem of
Speaker 4: a grid operator right now is very difficult for them
Speaker 4: to earn money with flexibility. They actually want to transport
Speaker 4: over capacity down to Italy and then they want to
Speaker 4: transport it back from Italy or from France to northern Germany.
Speaker 4: Why because it's their business and it's a money printing machine.
Speaker 4: Because they have a fixed price for every cured hour
Speaker 4: that they are transporting. So why would they have an
Speaker 4: interest in using the surplus electricity on site in Northern
Speaker 4: Germany for example in EVS instead of sending it through
Speaker 4: the grid and then getting it back. They don't have
Speaker 4: this incentive right now. The regulator also the DSOs, they
Speaker 4: have to find ways how they can actually make money
Speaker 4: with that. And one way is already possible is that
Speaker 4: they have regional grid fees. Every of the six hundred
Speaker 4: DSOs in Germany can actually come up with their own
Speaker 4: grid fee, flexible grid fee, so they can say in
Speaker 4: the afternoon cost is higher and in the night it
Speaker 4: is lower. So they cannot come up with all ways
Speaker 4: of designing the flexible grid fees. The problem is they
Speaker 4: lack the data points so that they can be sure
Speaker 4: that they make the same amount of money or even more.
Speaker 4: And what we can help them with is to have
Speaker 4: a system where they can actually design those germanys called
Speaker 4: module three. It's already part of the regulation. Every DSO
Speaker 4: could do that, but they don't know how. So why
Speaker 4: would they switch from a fixed system where they print
Speaker 4: money and take any risk of going to a flexible
Speaker 4: but they don't ye know how it will really work out.
Speaker 4: We can help them to do that. We can help
Speaker 4: them to make money on flexible teriffs and when it
Speaker 4: comes to the grid fees and give them more control.
Speaker 4: The units that we have are right now the enemy
Speaker 4: of the DSO. They say, like, there are so many
Speaker 4: heat pumps and they're stupid and they just go on
Speaker 4: all at the same time. And ah, there's so many
Speaker 4: e these and they do exactly the same. They all
Speaker 4: go on when there's no solar, when there's no wind,
Speaker 4: and nobody knows when they will come on. But there's
Speaker 4: always got to be the worst time. We can control those,
Speaker 4: We can control every single modules. We can group our
Speaker 4: assets in a street, we can group them in an
Speaker 4: area code, we can group them in a DSO area.
Speaker 4: So we are making it possible to have the automated
Speaker 4: infrastructure for grid operators and energy companies and also the
Speaker 4: manufacturers to actually leverage us. And that's where I'm in
Speaker 4: agreement with you. I would not at all go into
Speaker 4: a managing director position or be co owner of a
Speaker 4: DSO right now because it's simply not the most interesting
Speaker 4: part to be there. But why do I believe that
Speaker 4: this will happen. The cost pressure is too high. It's
Speaker 4: too high. Even if the nationalistic parties Lippen are after
Speaker 4: in Germany, if they come to power, they can't change physics,
Speaker 4: and the physics are we have those huge production from
Speaker 4: wind and solar and we have to actually curtail them
Speaker 4: because we're too stupid to transport it. We lose electricity
Speaker 4: in power. And on the other hand, look at gas
Speaker 4: powered plans. Right now, the turbines are sold out. There
Speaker 4: are no turbines available until twenty thirty. They are very
Speaker 4: expensive because the American AI companies are buying all of them.
Speaker 4: Gas is too expensive right now, it doesn't have sufficient
Speaker 4: operational hours. Nuclear is not going to be available for
Speaker 4: the next even if you start building it for the
Speaker 4: next fifteen years, even if you want to do it,
Speaker 4: and if you talk about fusion, even the Chinese are
Speaker 4: not seeing relevant base load prior to twenty fifty. So
Speaker 4: in the next thirty years you need to solve that problem.
Speaker 4: And it's a pure capacity problem. You need to harmonize
Speaker 4: production and consumption. The good news also is we see
Speaker 4: it happen. Denmark, Sweden, Netherlands and Germany is also going
Speaker 4: in that direction and it simply makes sense. So no,
Speaker 4: I don't want to be a DSO managing director, but
Speaker 4: I definitely want to make sure that politicians understand that
Speaker 4: an efficient capacity management of the grid will lower the
Speaker 4: cost for everyone immediate and now we need to find
Speaker 4: a way that the grid operators actually make money.
Speaker 2: If you are a meeting with miss Reischer ten minutes
Speaker 2: one on one, what would you tell her.
Speaker 4: I had the meeting with missus Reiser, and I did
Speaker 4: tell her what I'd like to do, and what I
Speaker 4: told her is that only if you use existing assets
Speaker 4: to streamline production and consumption, you can significantly and without
Speaker 4: subsidies immediately low up electricity prices. She actually understands that,
Speaker 4: but she is driven very much by her legacy position
Speaker 4: within a grid operator. They don't actually believe that they're
Speaker 4: going to be fast enough in the smart meter rollout
Speaker 4: that they can actually steer all of these assets. She
Speaker 4: totally gets the point. You need to be really stupid
Speaker 4: if you don't get the point that it makes sense
Speaker 4: to use twenty gigabat in already paid battery systems that
Speaker 4: are there. They are all there, we could steer them
Speaker 4: all that you use one hundred gigabot of EV capacity
Speaker 4: that's available. But she and also say the lobbyists that
Speaker 4: are educating her are basically denying that that's possible. They're
Speaker 4: simply saying, we don't believe that the smart meter rolot's
Speaker 4: going to be fast enough, and we don't believe that
Speaker 4: there's going to be a provider who can steer all
Speaker 4: of these assets. They are not at all saying that
Speaker 4: they would not follow that strategy.
Speaker 3: So you know, Philip, I notice is a strange thought
Speaker 3: that's coming into my head there. I was thinking to myself,
Speaker 3: if Werner von Siemens was able to come back from
Speaker 3: death for half a day. He come back down onto
Speaker 3: the planet. He showed my mobile phone and he go,
Speaker 3: what the hell is that?
Speaker 2: I want?
Speaker 3: How to use that? Oh my god, it's crazy. But
Speaker 3: if you show them the power system, he go, God, Christ,
Speaker 3: nothing changed in one hundred and fifty years. I suppose
Speaker 3: that's what comes into my mind. And I suppose I
Speaker 3: think myself and Roman agree with you. But there's a
Speaker 3: mentality and a culture that needs to be changed, and
Speaker 3: that's really, really not easy. So I suppose I'm trying
Speaker 3: to ask the question she is, how do you bring
Speaker 3: them with you? Because you don't want them against you either.
Speaker 4: Totally think some of them are against us without even
Speaker 4: really knowing what we do. In general, there's a lot
Speaker 4: of things that we have in common with great operators
Speaker 4: when it comes to the understanding of the challenges. You
Speaker 4: need solutions where it's not about where you don't need
Speaker 4: to change a culture, where you simply don't need to
Speaker 4: do it, Like nobody needed to change a culture to
Speaker 4: get the smartphone rolled out. Once the smart meters are there,
Speaker 4: and all of those great products we talked about that
Speaker 4: are functioning, by the way, also are conditioning, right, I
Speaker 4: mean just cooling, electrical heating, electrical charging, but also battery
Speaker 4: flexibilities that are available once they are all there and
Speaker 4: the smart meter is available, which is the central corner piece,
Speaker 4: and there is regulation that actually equalizes them in terms
Speaker 4: of that they're equal to every centralized power plant. That's
Speaker 4: the only thing we need. Then it will scale and
Speaker 4: it will not need their support. And that's where we
Speaker 4: need to get towards, right. I mean, we just need
Speaker 4: technological equality between a central power plant and a decentral
Speaker 4: power plant, and we need the last missing pieces. Without internet,
Speaker 4: you cannot operate at Netflix, and without a smart meter,
Speaker 4: you cannot start applying new energy to buildings. Right, So
Speaker 4: this is the main point we need. Other than that,
Speaker 4: I would not say that we are so negative. It
Speaker 4: could be much better and much faster. But if that's
Speaker 4: not meta, all that happens. I see that every asset
Speaker 4: owner who has a relevant asset that has a value
Speaker 4: in the flexibility market will switch to such a service.
Speaker 4: It will happen regardless of cultural changes or attitude.
Speaker 2: Well, if we thank you so much for coming on
Speaker 2: the show and bringing us hope success with what I
Speaker 2: would call the behind the metter revolution.
Speaker 4: Thank you guys for having me great pleasure.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Philip, and I really wish you were all
Speaker 3: the best in revolutionizing the electricity space across Europe. Lauren,
Speaker 3: what do you think?
Speaker 2: Well, I love it so much. He on the show,
Speaker 2: We rant and we complain, and those guys are idiots,
Speaker 2: and those guys don't understand. But here I've got nothing
Speaker 2: to say but just admiration about his drive and changing everything.
Speaker 2: But now with his size is you know, he's starting
Speaker 2: to be attacking the incuban, So I really hope it's
Speaker 2: going to win. But I'm always afraid that the system
Speaker 2: is going to fight back. I really wish him the.
Speaker 3: Best, exactly. The dark side always fights back, Laurent. That's
Speaker 3: the reality of us.
Speaker 2: Don't don't don't total Anyway, we thank Philip for coming
Speaker 2: on the show.
Speaker 3: Good and Laura, I look forward to seeing you next week.
Speaker 1: Cheers by Thank you for listening to Redefining Energy. Don't
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