Speaker 1: With Laurent's segal end from London and Gerard read from Berlin.
Speaker 1: This is redefining energy.
Speaker 2: Today. On redefending energy, we're gonna talk about resilience and
Speaker 2: jab you have demonstrated resilience when you went a few
Speaker 2: days ago in Davos.
Speaker 1: Yeah, resilience is about recovering Laarn and it takes your
Speaker 1: time to recover from Davos because it is the craziest circus,
Speaker 1: certainly in Europe anyway, because what you've got is obviously
Speaker 1: global leaders from across the world meeting, and then you've
Speaker 1: got global business leaders, and then you just got a
Speaker 1: whole pile of hangers on. Obviously, I think there was
Speaker 1: people there who thought I was a billionaire because they
Speaker 1: were going up to me and asking if I would
Speaker 1: like to set up a foundation in Lichtenstein. And I do,
Speaker 1: But that's all the side of ends. It is crazy,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: Crazy, crazy crazy. So what did you do there?
Speaker 1: Obviously what I did was I took part at in
Speaker 1: various different breakfast debates and attended quite a lot of
Speaker 1: events and that paper. That's what I did. And what
Speaker 1: do I take out of it? Well, I suppose we
Speaker 1: used to talk about energy dominance in the United States perspective.
Speaker 1: I think I just call it American dominance now because
Speaker 1: the whole main street in Davos, which is called a promenade,
Speaker 1: it was just full of US tech businesses. What I
Speaker 1: came back with was just the sense of, I suppose
Speaker 1: the strength of technology in the United States. I think
Speaker 1: that was the big thing. And obviously the US government
Speaker 1: took over a church. Yeah, the church is usually the
Speaker 1: highest place in a village or a town, so that
Speaker 1: tells you something, you know.
Speaker 2: So no, it was interesting in particular meeting well.
Speaker 1: I think really the most interesting thing was not really
Speaker 1: in the energy space. It was just in the AI space.
Speaker 1: It's just so much changing there. Because of the speed
Speaker 1: of change there, it's even more difficult to predict what's
Speaker 1: going to happen from an energy perspective. The words we're
Speaker 1: moving beyond large language models to what they call world models,
Speaker 1: which probably require even more energy usage empower usage. And
Speaker 1: then also then just the usage cases for AI are
Speaker 1: just expanding. And again it's just even the experts themselves
Speaker 1: finding it very difficult to predict. So anyway, very exciting
Speaker 1: and actually, by the way, there was beyond all seriousness
Speaker 1: there was an awful lot of talk about resilience as well,
Speaker 1: which in other words, resilience in and around the wider
Speaker 1: energy system. There was obviously talk about cybersecurity, physical security,
Speaker 1: the grid and really do we have enough energy? That's
Speaker 1: the other thing. Certainly, I'd say from the United States
Speaker 1: point of view, there's a scramble there to get energy.
Speaker 1: The grid is not in a good situation. And then
Speaker 1: from a European perspective, it is definitely just making sure
Speaker 1: that there is something that happens to your power system
Speaker 1: that you can recover really quickly. And that's sort of
Speaker 1: what resilience is, and I suppose that's what we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about on this podcast.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we have invited Ronnie Furen, the founder of
Speaker 2: Militia NMG. It's one of your friends who probably describe
Speaker 2: a bit what he does.
Speaker 1: Ronnie is an expert in the whole energy space and
Speaker 1: has done a whole pile of stuff in and around
Speaker 1: generation grid, you name it. Based in Norway, knows that
Speaker 1: space very well and I thought it'd be good just
Speaker 1: to have someone come out up from a Nordic point
Speaker 1: of view. And the reason for that is because the
Speaker 1: Nordics as we look at them, I've sort of already electrified.
Speaker 1: They've electrified heat, They've electrified a lot of industry, and
Speaker 1: someone like Norway will be a leading electric EVA is
Speaker 1: exactly exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they're very close to the Russians.
Speaker 1: And they're very close to Russians.
Speaker 2: Now for our listeners, this is a super hyper geeky interview.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, yeah, sometimes you have to have them. Let's bring
Speaker 1: him on the show. Ronnie. Great to have you on
Speaker 1: the show.
Speaker 3: Thank you and really looking forward to me part of
Speaker 3: the show.
Speaker 2: Ronnie. I'm going to start a quote with somebody Jard
Speaker 2: and I we admire and came on the show a
Speaker 2: few years ago. It's Doug Houseman and du Gasman said
Speaker 2: on the difference between reliability and resiliency. Reliability is how
Speaker 2: well you keep the light on. Resiliency is how fast
Speaker 2: you get them back on after an outage. Is that
Speaker 2: the definition that you would share?
Speaker 3: Yes, absolutely, that's summons up quite well. We tend to
Speaker 3: mix those two words, so yeah, I think that's a
Speaker 3: good way of putting it. That's what you can understand
Speaker 3: the difference, because that's the daily work of ad so
Speaker 3: or a grid operator trying to establish one out of
Speaker 3: those two.
Speaker 1: And I'm glad Laurent started with that actually because it
Speaker 1: leads on to them. What you're talking about is when
Speaker 1: something goes wrong, how quickly can we sort the situation out?
Speaker 1: And I think that's really what we want to talk about,
Speaker 1: because I think earlier in the year what we saw
Speaker 1: was this attack on part of West Polin grid where
Speaker 1: ultimately there was a power cable that was burned through
Speaker 1: and suddenly it took them five days to get it
Speaker 1: back on. But that doesn't sound to me to be
Speaker 1: very resilient.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we have seen that many times in a way
Speaker 3: where I work. If it also just be a tree,
Speaker 3: it could be snow creating trouble and a tree accidentally
Speaker 3: hits a power line and then the same thing happened.
Speaker 3: So this is part of our daily job trying to
Speaker 3: solve these issues and try to be as resilient as possible.
Speaker 1: I think we live in a world today where we
Speaker 1: can't do it out electricity. It's just we're so dependent
Speaker 1: on it that again, the resilience you're talking about, seeing
Speaker 1: snow falling on a tree or you know, sys on
Speaker 1: a line, or the line falling over resilience then is
Speaker 1: you have to get there quickly and get it up again.
Speaker 1: There's a question I'm asking as a great prosers, So
Speaker 1: how could you really preventing or seeing the risks instead
Speaker 1: of dealing with the risks so that you don't have
Speaker 1: to go and go into resilience mode and go out
Speaker 1: and repair and all that type of stuff. Would you
Speaker 1: look at your industry and say, we do a good job,
Speaker 1: do you do bad job?
Speaker 3: First of all, I would say there are as many
Speaker 3: answers that there are companies to the company that I
Speaker 3: represent fifty or so and they do an amazing job.
Speaker 3: But you have to remember that a resilient grid, that's
Speaker 3: a digital grid, and it's a secure grid in many layers,
Speaker 3: and it's getting more and more decentralized. That challenge the
Speaker 3: operators and the company itself to handle, and it is
Speaker 3: getting more and more intelligent as well. And then you
Speaker 3: get the integration part. You need to see the integration
Speaker 3: with the customers and the partners that we have and
Speaker 3: the tech providers that we have. But also you need
Speaker 3: to be flexible and dynamic, and you need to be automated.
Speaker 3: You also need to be real time data. And then
Speaker 3: you also need to be autonomous in the future. So
Speaker 3: just imagine all those buzzwords into answering the question are
Speaker 3: we resilient in upper or not? So it comes down
Speaker 3: to we need to be much more resilient than we
Speaker 3: are today. It comes down to we need to add
Speaker 3: more layers and your types of tools that we didn't
Speaker 3: have ten years back or five years back, but even
Speaker 3: last year.
Speaker 1: Can we build on that? Because you used all those
Speaker 1: buzzwords and that's all very twenty first century. But if
Speaker 1: I look at the twentieth century and the grid that
Speaker 1: was built, then I don't believe that your grid operator
Speaker 1: is actually applying these technologies today. And I'm going to
Speaker 1: just use the example of that Berlin grid, But if
Speaker 1: I could go and take the German grid as a whole,
Speaker 1: there ain't any smart meters there so you can see
Speaker 1: what's going on in the distribution grids. If you don't
Speaker 1: see what's going on, how can you build a resilient
Speaker 1: system with all those beautiful buzzwords you talked about.
Speaker 3: Oh, I totally agree, And that's why it's buzzberds because
Speaker 3: most of the companies don't have all those tools. So
Speaker 3: someone probably don't even have any of those tools, and
Speaker 3: I didn't even mention AI because AI is part of
Speaker 3: every single part of those toolbox. What it can say
Speaker 3: is that when I talk to about these buzzwords, that's
Speaker 3: the future that they need to put into degree operators.
Speaker 3: But you also where the typical is see now that
Speaker 3: they've been working inside and operations center, working with fantastic colleagues,
Speaker 3: there are so many reasons why, even though they have
Speaker 3: heard about the persberous years, there are many barriers that
Speaker 3: they need to handle. They can be how they invest
Speaker 3: in them, how they start using them. There could be
Speaker 3: regulatory frameworks that are keeping them moving slower. So there
Speaker 3: are so many reasons why, and it all comes down
Speaker 3: to having a strategy where you have decided how resilient
Speaker 3: do you want to be according to the realistic budget
Speaker 3: that you have, but also how can you try to
Speaker 3: turn it around to create resiliency within the future technology
Speaker 3: because every single layer needs hands in its minds in
Speaker 3: these resources, so you have to prioritize those quickly to
Speaker 3: address basically all of them. At the same time, if
Speaker 3: you don't go into the discussion about how you told
Speaker 3: this in general, you might lose out on some key point.
Speaker 3: So I totally agree. There are many operators that are
Speaker 3: lacking a lot of data.
Speaker 2: So you look about tools, you talk about metadurgyes, and
Speaker 2: you talk about operators. First of all, are operators discussing
Speaker 2: one with another and can exchanging best practices or not really?
Speaker 2: And you talk about tools, I mean what tools?
Speaker 3: Of course, the operators are talking together, but have remembered
Speaker 3: that the gift is going really fast. You often see
Speaker 3: you have a key group of operators that are actually
Speaker 3: working on operating desk, and then they are the brains
Speaker 3: and hands trying to navigate whatever meets them every single
Speaker 3: day twenty four seven. They need even more information that
Speaker 3: they can get from their systems because the greed is
Speaker 3: moving so quickly into the new world that if they
Speaker 3: don't have quick tools that can help them analyze the
Speaker 3: situation or help them making decisions or even predict what's
Speaker 3: going to happen, you end up running around asking questions
Speaker 3: to your colleagues inside operation center, outside operating oeration center
Speaker 3: her and that is where the future grids more about
Speaker 3: having information, giving you the correct day information at the
Speaker 3: correct time to help them do a lot of good decisions,
Speaker 3: but also doing decisions without manpower that could be done
Speaker 3: by artificial intelligence or knowledge rule based sessions.
Speaker 1: Like if I look at Norway and I look at
Speaker 1: the Norwich in general, I sort of say, you've already
Speaker 1: electrified your societies, right, You heat with electricity, A lot
Speaker 1: of your industry is electricity based, and obviously you're very
Speaker 1: trom digital. And the reason I'm saying that is because
Speaker 1: the rest of your electrifying our energy systems. So there's
Speaker 1: probably a lot that we could learn from you. So
Speaker 1: what do you think we can learn from you?
Speaker 3: Besides being an advisor for a So I also work
Speaker 3: with one of Norway's largest business areas. I have four
Speaker 3: hundred business buildings, tens of house of people, so I've
Speaker 3: been most of my time, I've actually been sitting on
Speaker 3: the other side of the desk helping customers, households and
Speaker 3: businesses doing energy efficiency and or kinds of investment now
Speaker 3: and I both sites and one of the things that
Speaker 3: we really and would do more of that. But you
Speaker 3: also can learn from Europe is how these smart meters
Speaker 3: actually also started the enablement of getting customers and grid
Speaker 3: cooperating closer together, being more integrating. Now certainly they can
Speaker 3: care more data in between each other, so you can
Speaker 3: make better and more efficient decisions. But you also have
Speaker 3: to remember that these smart meters that you typically have
Speaker 3: today are not as fast as would like. That's typically
Speaker 3: data also that we can summon up historical data. We
Speaker 3: need even more submeters connected to the grid. And one
Speaker 3: very specific example with Norway is the electric vehicle fleet.
Speaker 3: As you know, we have a huge amount of evs
Speaker 3: being sold, more than ninety five percent last year at
Speaker 3: TV on one point two were petrol and diesel together,
Speaker 3: and that was a big concern many years back, you know,
Speaker 3: how could we even tackle all those evs around the grid.
Speaker 3: But over a few years we realized that smart charging
Speaker 3: infrastructure actually moved most of the stress that we were
Speaker 3: actually and not looking forward to get. So the price
Speaker 3: points were basically telling the smart chargers and the smart
Speaker 3: meters that don't charge when you plug in. So the
Speaker 3: system solved those heaks that were we were afraid of
Speaker 3: by moving most of the charging unite without doing anything
Speaker 3: from the greed. Basically, they're just the market solved itself,
Speaker 3: and many of that was because of smart meters and
Speaker 3: then smart submeters on the charging infrastructures and we see
Speaker 3: that on other components as well, So I would say
Speaker 3: smart submitters and giving data, but also smart meters or
Speaker 3: other infrastructure that I can also collect data from the
Speaker 3: grid for example when you need flexibility or you need help,
Speaker 3: so then you actually can respond in millisecond That would
Speaker 3: definitely help. That we've done a lot of that in
Speaker 3: a way.
Speaker 1: Can I follow open that? Because I think it's very
Speaker 1: important to hear this because if I understand, what you've
Speaker 1: done is you don't have a centralized approach where you
Speaker 1: go and switch on and off the charging. What actually
Speaker 1: happens is you're incentivizing the customer or maybe even the
Speaker 1: retail electricity provider to provide taras to the customer so
Speaker 1: that this is done automatic. Am I right when I
Speaker 1: say that? And it's so because you just enlarge on that.
Speaker 3: So you have different price points that you could use butuse.
Speaker 3: You have the spot price itself and the cost of energy,
Speaker 3: and you have your plan. They are typically high afternoon
Speaker 3: or in the morning, and the smart charging infrastructure are
Speaker 3: directly connected often to the price point, so that means
Speaker 3: that they don't want to charge when it's expensive because
Speaker 3: it makes no sense for the customer which by doing that,
Speaker 3: you're basically moving the charging times away from the peak
Speaker 3: hours because they are represented in the price points. On
Speaker 3: top of that, the grid operators have created an API
Speaker 3: where you have the different layers of tariffs, so how
Speaker 3: much power they want to take out that specific hour,
Speaker 3: and you can also add that on top, so it says,
Speaker 3: even though it's cheap, don't go beyond this limit because
Speaker 3: then you will get higher grid fees. So that is
Speaker 3: not dynamic at a moment. Hopefully it will be in
Speaker 3: the future, but now it's layers of tariffs and that
Speaker 3: is also digital, so you can add that on top.
Speaker 3: See and when I've done that, the customer really don't
Speaker 3: think about the charging or enership price anemorely a smart
Speaker 3: system at home or your charger, busy handles all that
Speaker 3: kind of signals. And the same thing happened when the
Speaker 3: grid sense of flexibility, which can ask kill a lot
Speaker 3: of capacity or make a lot of capacity at one
Speaker 3: specific in overdoor area in the grid, and then the
Speaker 3: system will automatically then give that to us if they
Speaker 3: are part of that flexibility market.
Speaker 1: So what you're really saying is digitalization is a critical
Speaker 1: part of this new I know you said this earlier on,
Speaker 1: but that's really what you're saying, and that's a very
Speaker 1: practical example of her. Right.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, you talked about the operator not having these insights
Speaker 3: or the vision of what's really going on, and that's
Speaker 3: the whole point. Do you need information? It needs to
Speaker 3: be digitaled. You need to give the operators insight, not
Speaker 3: just with the customer. Of course their own equipment as well.
Speaker 3: So there's a lot of sensors getting out their cameras,
Speaker 3: monitoring temperatures, tons of information now being sent into operator
Speaker 3: which helped them to maneuver whatever goes on.
Speaker 1: Can I ask if we talk about the transmission and
Speaker 1: the distribution group, right, TRANSMISSI gives obviously long distance and
Speaker 1: distribution grid the last mile. Right, What we see across
Speaker 1: most of Europe and the Western world is that we're
Speaker 1: very very good at the transmission level, and we're very
Speaker 1: good at seeing what's going on there and making sure
Speaker 1: the frequency stays and balance and all that type of stuff.
Speaker 1: But I don't see that the distribution grid, And what
Speaker 1: I'm hearing from you is that actually Norway really is
Speaker 1: doing good job. Maybe just talk about the distribution transmission
Speaker 1: and how they work. Together and how you also see
Speaker 1: that there in the future.
Speaker 3: Often we also talk about three layers. We also talked
Speaker 3: about the low the lowest one as well. That's also
Speaker 3: could be really hard to manage. The transmission part is
Speaker 3: important for us, especially in the area where I'm helping
Speaker 3: at the moment. That's actually very interconnectors also comes into
Speaker 3: Norway South, part of Norway's the d SO needs to
Speaker 3: work really really close with the TSO or the dot
Speaker 3: net in Norway because you have hundreds of megawa is
Speaker 3: coming in from Europe and at the same time you
Speaker 3: have hundreds of megawads locally produced from higher power plants
Speaker 3: in our area, and at the same time you have
Speaker 3: data centers or industries within it. And then you have
Speaker 3: to push it towards the next region, towards us Law
Speaker 3: or other parts of Norway. So we are helping are
Speaker 3: in between basically Europe and Norway at the same time,
Speaker 3: and then we have our own problems that in our regions.
Speaker 3: So there's actually right now going on project where we're
Speaker 3: trying to look into the regulatory issues where the d SO,
Speaker 3: the Distribusion Network actually getting more insight and more mandate
Speaker 3: to even better operate in between this landscape because normally
Speaker 3: we had to rely totally on that part. But now
Speaker 3: I'm even even further into the big lines because just
Speaker 3: imagine shifting those amount of power from one hour on
Speaker 3: second to another. So yeah, it's troubling, but also it's
Speaker 3: easier where we here to manage many lays at the
Speaker 3: same time.
Speaker 2: We talk about interconnector and sometimes they are a bit controversial,
Speaker 2: like they're going to increase prices or not. But overall,
Speaker 2: and that's our opinion here the increased residiency and we've
Speaker 2: seen them to restop the blackout in Spain. They were
Speaker 2: really critical last year. So what's your your inter connectors
Speaker 2: and should we be more interconnected? That's a very good question,
Speaker 2: especially for the Innuisians at the moment. You're totally right,
Speaker 2: the interconnectors are not very popular in Norway at the moment,
Speaker 2: depending of course who you ask.
Speaker 3: When the enershire prices went skyrocking few years back, the
Speaker 3: ordinary Norwisian were basically woke up. We taught electricity as
Speaker 3: cheap or even close to free, even though it wasn't.
Speaker 3: It was super cheap, even though we are fully electric,
Speaker 3: especially on heating and also vehicles. We didn't see the
Speaker 3: problem with price points, and suddenly we got ten times
Speaker 3: or even twenty forty times higher prices three years back,
Speaker 3: and that's where everyone's starting to realize that electricity is
Speaker 3: something that we might not have as much as we
Speaker 3: were used to. We're used to exporting energy, not importing energy.
Speaker 3: So there having a lot of controversy around it, and
Speaker 3: it ended up with the government in all Way basically
Speaker 3: splitting one year back in January February last year, and
Speaker 3: they were election year last year as well, so they
Speaker 3: basically created what they called the Norwegian Price, which is
Speaker 3: a flat price on all parts of Norway political set price.
Speaker 3: It's actually lower than the ACH so it's a no
Speaker 3: brainer for households, not businesses, but households to jump into
Speaker 3: that agreement. And that was just for the politicians to
Speaker 3: try to stuff that discussion on interconnectors and energy price
Speaker 3: points because on an energy perspective, of course we need
Speaker 3: the interconnectors. We have too much production at the moment,
Speaker 3: you know, we need to share them with Swin, we
Speaker 3: need to share them to Denmark, UK and EU. We
Speaker 3: want to help on the transition to the zero of
Speaker 3: low emissions, but at the same time, we can't forget
Speaker 3: that we also need to change our own industries and
Speaker 3: data centers also is now clean to play where the
Speaker 3: many data centers want to move to Norway because it
Speaker 3: is cheaper than many other European countries and it's also
Speaker 3: a green hydro. So there is a huge concern both
Speaker 3: on the consumption of energy and Norway, but also the
Speaker 3: energy price is being moved over to especially the southern
Speaker 3: part of Norway. You can see on the prices last
Speaker 3: year and see that the South path of Norway were
Speaker 3: much higher than the rest of part of the Norway.
Speaker 3: So it's a huge different in offense south of norwegn
Speaker 3: prize points and of course interconnectors DESI is huge reason
Speaker 3: to that. So yeah, it's a very controversial discussion and
Speaker 3: the politicians don't really dare to decide what to do with.
Speaker 3: For example, have a couple of connectors to Denmark that
Speaker 3: need to be renewed and they haven't really decided yet
Speaker 3: if they should because they know this is a political
Speaker 3: mindfield basically to discuss what to do with the cables.
Speaker 2: Something that the Norwegian politician must have missed is the
Speaker 2: following when the cable with Scotland was put together. The
Speaker 2: plan was to export surplus hydro, but then the following
Speaker 2: into a twenty two other draught, so in fact you
Speaker 2: had to import. Now in order to import, GB had
Speaker 2: to run more gas plans. And where does the gas
Speaker 2: come from? Equinor Okay, the gas was expensive because Equino
Speaker 2: was charging a maximum and that's the year where they
Speaker 2: made more money than Saudi Aramco, but they didn't really
Speaker 2: publicize it. So the Brits came to see the Norwegian
Speaker 2: and said, look, you want a cheaper power. You one
Speaker 2: hundred percent government owned. Why don't you talk to your
Speaker 2: colleague on the other side of the street, which one
Speaker 2: hundred percent government owned. So they reduced the price of
Speaker 2: the gas, so we can reduce the price of power
Speaker 2: and guess the lets say so read the regulation blah
Speaker 2: blah blah blah blah. So you're going to pay top
Speaker 2: dollars for your gas, but we want chiap electrons. Excuse me,
Speaker 2: you need to tell your politician that they are hypocrites.
Speaker 3: I'm so happy that you bring it up. First of all,
Speaker 3: Economy is not a fullyvernment owned company. It's only change.
Speaker 3: But yeah, yeah, is maorly owned by by the government.
Speaker 3: I would say that the politicians and Lada quite well,
Speaker 3: the problem wasn't at that point in not just the politicians,
Speaker 3: it was the average person. Because just imagine being the
Speaker 3: Minister of Energy in no Way and we have all
Speaker 3: the people living in always saying that cut the interconnecting
Speaker 3: cables a sap and we don't want this expensive energy.
Speaker 3: And at the same time, as you mentioned, you have
Speaker 3: record income from EQUINOI and all the other companies paying
Speaker 3: tax to Noway for gas and oil. So you were
Speaker 3: at the point where NOE earned more money than ever
Speaker 3: done before, not just oil and gas, but also on electricity,
Speaker 3: right because their high price of electricity made the hydropo
Speaker 3: brands and windmills better investment than any time. So the
Speaker 3: government were earning huge amount of money also some of
Speaker 3: the municipalities that owned the power plant, but the people
Speaker 3: living in Norway didn't see that income. They were actually
Speaker 3: just paying more levels of energy. So the people in
Speaker 3: Norway were saying that we don't care that Noway is
Speaker 3: earning a lot of money in gas and oil and
Speaker 3: power because we are not. We are still paying the
Speaker 3: bill on all those energy resources same as others. And
Speaker 3: that's where the politician were standing in between their motors,
Speaker 3: and then when we have the election last year, that
Speaker 3: was exactly what happens. So you have a politicians trying
Speaker 3: to both say, we need the oil gas interconnectors, that's
Speaker 3: a huge income. We also need the interconnectors on power.
Speaker 3: We cannot disconnect them. We also need to help Europe
Speaker 3: on both areas with energy. So it's not a political
Speaker 3: sense of stopping that, but I would rather say it
Speaker 3: was the politicians trying to tell the people who didn't
Speaker 3: know how it actually works, how do we solve this,
Speaker 3: And that's why they ended up making this fixed price.
Speaker 3: And then magically, a few weeks later, no one talks
Speaker 3: about energy prices, you know, anymore in any households because
Speaker 3: they basically took the income from gas and power and
Speaker 3: subsidize then the consumption on top, and then suddenly the
Speaker 3: political debate change and now you can go back to
Speaker 3: brook as they normally did. So, yeah, that was a
Speaker 3: special moment. I remember, Gerard, I talk about that a
Speaker 3: few years back, so you're totally.
Speaker 1: Right, Ronnie. I've got one more question, which is, as
Speaker 1: I look at the grids across the western world, the
Speaker 1: concern I have is the risks in and around an
Speaker 1: attack on the system, whether it's a transformer or a
Speaker 1: cyber attack or whatever it is. How do you look
Speaker 1: at those risks and how do you then make sure
Speaker 1: the system is really resilient if there is attack on
Speaker 1: something that is really critical.
Speaker 3: That's a very hard discussion going on because just imagine
Speaker 3: trying to monitor every single component, not just as we
Speaker 3: try to do on the technical aspect, and now I
Speaker 3: was certainly adding a security layer on top of it.
Speaker 3: How do you do that? So there are many ways
Speaker 3: of doing that, but it comes down to the costs.
Speaker 3: You have to decide how how defensive can you be,
Speaker 3: how quick you can respond. Then it all comes down
Speaker 3: to the cost of it and the cost of high
Speaker 3: security from threads that are beyond traditional cybersecurity that we
Speaker 3: are used to. We have probably daily attacks, and we
Speaker 3: have had for decades, so that's not something new, but
Speaker 3: having external physical attacks is something very new, and that
Speaker 3: is going to be super hard because it comes down
Speaker 3: to you need to have a whole probably a whole
Speaker 3: new investment Burdshaed plan saying how do we monitor and
Speaker 3: how do we restore how to respond to threads that
Speaker 3: we are not used to. That is not weather or
Speaker 3: components or cyber security threats. This is a discussion that
Speaker 3: is really going on, and of course I'm quite sure
Speaker 3: that most tzos in a way as elsewhere are having
Speaker 3: backdoor discussions as how should we respond to this and
Speaker 3: that scenarios. We even see it from the business aspect,
Speaker 3: and municipality is also calling the d S always saying
Speaker 3: that can we have meetings about that specific topic. What
Speaker 3: do we as a city do if we lose power
Speaker 3: all over in the city, you're parts of the city.
Speaker 3: What do businesses do if that happened? What the hospitals do?
Speaker 3: You can just imagine all the meetings and discussions going
Speaker 3: on after the Ukraine situation in general that this is
Speaker 3: a topic, but it comes down to framework when it
Speaker 3: comes to investment, and it comes down to regultory framework
Speaker 3: on how could we try to use the purchase. We
Speaker 3: have to create more security for external threats and there
Speaker 3: is a lot of work to do there at the moment.
Speaker 1: Sally, well, actually, I'm really glad that you guys are
Speaker 1: doing this because we don't really hear this in the media,
Speaker 1: and I know there's been a lot of concerns after
Speaker 1: this Berlin attack in particularly in the German market. But
Speaker 1: I'm glad this is happening because we need to do it.
Speaker 1: And I just want to thank you for coming on
Speaker 1: the show.
Speaker 3: Thank you for inviting me.
Speaker 1: Okay, Ron, what do you think?
Speaker 4: Sorry, you just woked me up for the sleep. Too
Speaker 4: geeky for me, too geeky for you. I understand two
Speaker 4: geeky for you. But I think it's really critical.
Speaker 1: I think we have to sort of face the reality
Speaker 1: large part of society is we're all dependent on electricity
Speaker 1: and the question is whether we have a resilient system
Speaker 1: or not, and I do not believe we do. And
Speaker 1: I think we just need to change the way we
Speaker 1: manage the system and how we recover from disasters. And
Speaker 1: that means you need to really refocus in and around
Speaker 1: what could go wrong and making sure that in the
Speaker 1: event of something happening, that, as I said, you can
Speaker 1: recover really quickly. And I know that in certain circumstances
Speaker 1: we can't recover really quickly. And that's my concern.
Speaker 2: My concern a much more down to us. My concern
Speaker 2: are coup of theft, because copper now has become so
Speaker 2: expensive that you've got gangs who are happy to steal
Speaker 2: the copper wires. Then drones, Oh yeah, if you look
Speaker 2: at the progress made because of the Russia Ukraine war,
Speaker 2: there's gonna be much more drones around and they're gonna
Speaker 2: be much more powerful couple roons. That's gonna increase risk.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, you're absolutely right on the drones thing. I'm
Speaker 1: totally with you that my biggest concern is transformers, to
Speaker 1: be honest, just the need to make sure that we
Speaker 1: keep them on their very close scrutiny and then you
Speaker 1: also have backups for these critical transformers. That would be
Speaker 1: the way that the biggest concern I'd have. By the way,
Speaker 1: we're doing a very good job in terms of cybersecurity
Speaker 1: and stuff like that, because what you do pick up
Speaker 1: is here we are there are still daily attacks on
Speaker 1: the power system across Europe. That's the reality. We don't
Speaker 1: talk about it anymore because it's been gone on for
Speaker 1: so long, but go to Ukraine and you see what
Speaker 1: a real war and also a critical infrastructure war is.
Speaker 2: Like okay joah. So as we conclude, first we like
Speaker 2: to thank our guests Geeky and just to share with
Speaker 2: our audience that a few days ago we had the
Speaker 2: Amber Europe Atlecricity review came out. We can put a
Speaker 2: link in the show notes. There's a lot of great findings.
Speaker 2: But to summarize to twenty five, another record breaking for
Speaker 2: the EU Clean Energy Transition win and solar overtook for
Speaker 2: sil full generation for the first time. Yeah, it's really
Speaker 2: about solar. Solar group buy another twenty percent last year.
Speaker 2: But a lot of other great stuff in that report.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this solars unstoppable, you know, simplea starch.
Speaker 2: It's just too cheap. Okay, yard, all right, pleasure to
Speaker 2: you next week, look forward.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Reade Finding Energy. Don't forget
Speaker 1: to rate the show and subscribe on Apple Podcast, Spotify,
Speaker 1: or the platform of your choice.