wow it's yet another glorious sunny day here in Yorkshire (really it's Lincolnshire) and i've taken a trip out today to my
energy to find out about a new government regulation that's gone through parliament
that's going to affect everybody who drives and charges an electric vehicle now when it comes
to regulatory changes we turn to trusted people we've had on the channel before
we're here to see Dr Chris Horne of mynergi to find out what these changes mean so let's go and
see what he's got to say so chris it's great i have the opportunity to catch up in the new
incredibly impressive Myenergi facility it seems like uh managers come a long way in actually quite
short space of time well welcome it's it's great that you could come and visit us here
uh you're right i mean it's just over two years since we probably first spoke
and met in a porter cabin at Binbrook uh we had what 20 - 30 staff then and we're now at 350 and
still growing so it's been a fantastic journey in that time yeah and and look what's happened
in the world now electric cars are everywhere they're always in the news energy is always in
the news at the minute obviously energy prices are going up that's causing a lot of people concern
but we've we're here not to talk about the great Myenergi products the government is now taking
a really significant interest in what's going on inside electric vehicle charge points and
we've got a new act and i don't think ever in in 30 years in the electoral limits i've seen
an act that specifically targets a very specific bit of kit that you put on the wall in a house
well i think the these regulations are trying to address three points the first one is putting the
consumer at the center of what we do with charging so do consumers have the right information about
how much it's costing them to charge their cars how much energy they're using to charge their cars
and you know if you're in a supply contract you don't want to be locked into that supply contract
because of the charge points so there's a couple of regulations there around accuracy of metering
information provided and the ability to move uh between energy suppliers okay so that's like a
customer really wants to know at the moment most people have a reasonable idea of the miles per
gallon for a car it's just transferring that into an electric world so you know
exactly how much does it cost to run a car that's right yes okay so the the second point is around
uh security supply and there are various concerns being raised that if everyone has
an electric vehicle and we all plug in at the same time then the grid won't be able to cope so
part of these regulations are about trying to spread that load out through the day to make
sure that we don't all start charging at the same time but also to try to use the electric vehicles
to support the grid so we'd have a different relationship between the energy in our vehicle and
just switching it on or just turning the load on and charging the car up okay and obviously
i think we're starting to see that in certain smart tariffs that come out that sort of give
you a carrot and stick to charge at certain times but reading through those regulations it
looks like there's it's almost a built-in that there's certain periods will be automatically
blanked out those peak hours that they basically don't want people to be charging and that's right
so the the the load on the grid is at this highest uh during certain hours of the morning and then
sort of late afternoon so in the morning when you get putting the kettle on having a shower
that's an an industry starting up and then in the afternoon when everybody's coming home cooking
turning the kettle on again whatever the load's going up those are the two peak periods
and the new rules say that when you buy a new charger after the end of june that by default
the charge time should be outside of those two peak periods so the off peak um and that's good
for a number of reasons and it's not just about the the stress on the grid actually outside those
periods uh generation tends to be greener so less carbon intensive and potentially cheaper as well
if you're on the right tariff okay now you can at the reading in there you can opt out of that
those default views if you wanted to that's right as well and there's a big change in consumer
behavior here at the moment because most people you turn the kettle on the kettlebells you turn
the lights on the light comes on you plug your car in you expect it to charge straight away
so one of the regulations is don't charge straightaway charge at an off-peak period
but if you need the car straight away or you want to charge up straight away
then you can override it and then it will charge okay so you have that consumer option but which
governments are trying to encourage people to think about energy in a different way
and think about how they can contribute to keeping the lights on yeah and i guess i'm not having to
opt out it sort of makes people think before you push that button and i guess a certain percentage
of people will never even they'll just install things and leave them forever more it stops
that uh you know just plugging in with without thinking and that change of behavior is going to
be quite difficult to introduce there's a big piece it is about education which is why i'm
happy to be taught or very pleased to be talking now about that to share this
understanding um you know you plug your car in and nothing happens you're going to think that
it's broken yeah and then you've got this message like what does this mean i'll press
a button now those first few times it's going to be disconcerting and then possibly annoying
and then it will just become the behavior that we expect to do and it's getting to that point
and then the second thing i picked up on in there is this thing called demand side response
will always agree with DSR yes that's going to be quite a new concept for people as well isn't it
absolutely yes so at the moment or historically if the load on the grid goes up then we turn on
more generations so you boil the kettle somewhere there's a generator that's producing a bit more
uh power to supply that that kettle as we get more renewable generation on the grid which is more
dynamic the less easy to maybe turn up and turn down or predict as we get more controllable loads
on the system we can change the way we think about this so rather than doing i turn the
load on i turn the generator up we can have the world of well actually the grid's not got quite
enough power at the moment so let's turn some of the loads down and this is what the demand side
response demand reduction is all about okay so i could be plugged my car in it started charging
and then uh you know i don't know football match ends yeah and kevin's all going on
kettle's all going uh you know everyone's got the grill on for a bit of get a bit hungry
somebody the energy company can then choose to either slow down or stop the car charging so we
don't have to bring in another power station yes and it might not be the energy company
it could be an aggregator or another party that you've said i'm happy for you to control
my car charging and they'll just turn it down a bit or delay it and to be honest you you
probably won't know this even happened we've done quite a lot of trials with demand response and
a lot of the customers feedback is i had no idea that you'd done anything my car was charged like
i drive it when i want it isn't that great yeah and there's i mean again it swings back to those
smart tariffs as well isn't it there's a carrot and stick by allowing somebody to take a little
bit of control over your charge point there is a there is a there's a trade-off in terms of energy
price as well that's expected yes yeah so i mean that's a and that's i mean that's a on the scale
of ev cars are going to be installed that's a massive amount of power swing you can do just by
yeah sort of tweaking everybody's car charge but there's a second level to this as well so
if if everybody if we don't have demand reduction what that means is you've got to put more copper
in the ground more cables more transformers more generations there's lots of capital investments
and that has to be paid by somebody so it comes through to the bill to the consumer but if instead
of turning the loading turning more generation up buying more cables we could just control the
load dynamically demand response we don't have to pay for all that infrastructure so we can don't
have to pass it on to consumers it keeps the bills lower yeah that's it i mean we're all yeah we all
want endless amounts of power but yeah somebody has to pay for it yeah and it's uh i can almost
see daily mail headlines and the in the running on this someone takes charge of my charge point
um does that bring in another aspect obviously with all these connected infrastructure out there
they're smart they're connected to the internet yeah what if someone else can interfere in that
process and that's the third part of the regulations there's all about cyber security
and tamper resistance and making sure that that can't happen so um you know your your smart your
charge points connected to the the internet you know everybody's used to virus protection on the
computers and phishing and all that sort of thing now when we go down to the internet of things
connected devices we have to be really strong on that security so encrypted communications uh
certificates being exchanged to make sure that it's secure it gets incredibly complicated and
that's the third part of regulation to say make sure the data's secure make sure if the
charge point is updated that we know where that update's coming from and that's secure
if someone does try to tamper with it there's a message to the end user to say look something's a
bit odd here are you sure you're okay and that's what's being brought in as well okay so that i
mean that sounds like a lot of work oh yes yes so by my energy charge point from june onwards
what physically will i know it's different about the charger from that point physically
nothing right absolutely nothing it'll look exactly the same as one you bought on
the first of june the first of july okay the difference will be when it's installed
there will be slightly different messages to the installer about the smart regulations when you
start your charge you may get a message to say there is a delay random delay we've not talked
about that have we but before your your car starts charging uh and that opportunity to override it um
that's fundamentally it everything else is hidden away inside the the device and
the firmware we put in it okay i mean it's yeah so you mean when you say tampering that's mainly the
software level they're worried about the tampering as we understand it yet so the charge point has
to have a tamper-proof boundary so you've got a case that you've got to physically get into
okay in order to get at the device and you know try and locally plug into it to tamper with it
so how can how can you cyber attack you can come down the internet cable yeah so you've got all
the security and on that side of it or you could physically get into the charge point and try and
reprogram it or tamper with it inside so yeah all right so you're in so we've been saying the fusion
someone takes the cover off your charger when it's powered up they're going to get a message to say
somebody's open the cover yes right and then you watch outside for a little transit van with
someone in the back with a laptop yeah and that's they're attempting to hijack the power grid from
from your charger that is part of the sort of the theory yes right so i mean that's you know
as soon as people you know we see loads of charge points coming to market from all sorts of places
and and that sounds like a a big risk for business to take on isn't it if you get it wrong you could
be responsible for a big big uh yeah and on one side i mean the the attack on an individual charge
point and the impact of that is going to be quite small so we're looking i think the government are
looking at if there's a cyber attack could it do damage to uk infrastructure so could we get
every charge point in the country all turning all at the same time and blacking out the grid
and that's not it's unlikely to happen from the guy in the transit van hacking the one outside
your house yeah but if they could get onto one charge point and then send a message to the next
one and the next one next one so that they then that virus spreads then that could be a problem
yeah so yeah from an industry point of view we've got to take this seriously we already do take
security very seriously so the risk is low and the government are now making sure that everybody
takes it just as seriously yeah now i mean you mentioned that obviously that random delay as
well that's another another part that features in this it's it's yeah it's got to be corded into the
charger a random delay yes why do we need a random delay well i mean that goes back to this idea of
everybody plugging in at the same time so part of the regulation to try and shift the load to
the off peak at times so that's the the offbeat charging periods preferred say um everybody gets
home from work roughly the same time and we all plug in together the the surge in demand
on the grid could be too much for the grid to deal with so what the regulations say is
introduce a random delay of up to 10 minutes when you first plug in to try and spread that load now
when you come home from work there's a bit of randomness there anyway so that's probably not
too extreme but if we've all signed up for a a low rate tariff and those tariffs all come in at
half past midnight then that's a lot of load to come on at the same time and whether that's with
a random delay we'll have more of a bigger effect in protecting the grid okay so that's that's part
of it there is a side effect though which we need to understand as an industry and the government
need to understand as well is that if i've got a low rate tariff which runs from half past 12
to half past four i want to make the most of that four hour period now if i've got a
10 minute delay that's pushing me in i've lost 10 minutes of cheap electricity yeah well okay that's
boo-hoo that's not a huge amount is it yeah but if i do that every night for the year that's quite a
lot of electricity that i've had to pay for at a higher rate than i that i'd like to yeah so
there is a subtlety around the regulations that still needs to be worked through at that point so
the minute is the random delay fixed in the charge point yes so if i've got a five minute i've always
got five no no it's random on every event right okay so so you could plug in now and it might be
immediate one second delay yeah you plug in tomorrow it might be ten minutes
next day it could be six you know it's all over the place yeah okay but collectively yeah it will
and we have customers who i know that contact us and i speak to them who say well you know i had
a a charge period set from half midnight half four and my zappy didn't start charging until this time
and i've lost and people are really very conscious of the of the cost of energy and trying to charge
at the cheapest possible time so i can see some challenges around that part of the regulations
yeah i'm with them chris we're in yorkshire and we're always a little bit careful with
the money i'm on economy seven and that one as soon as that time clock clicks over oh yes i'm in
but you can see obviously the problems it causes at a grid level if you've got
yeah literally what could be you never invited me for a drink you know so just talking about
watching the pennies yeah we're here chris we're not we're not we're not buying but yeah i mean
yeah you can see the the sense in that document it's obviously a major challenge for obviously
manufacturers adopting this is there anything yet to come you know we started with what we called
smart charges and we got a nice app and connected to the internet now we've taken that another stage
fill we've got all this demand side response we've got uh yeah periods you can't charge
is there anything is this the end of the road for the smart charger are we expecting other things no
there's more to come so this is the phase one of the smart charge point regulations
so phase two is planned to come governments are beginning to consult on that so we'll see
more broad in i think the direction of travel will be around
interoperability between charges and also to be able the fact is you as a consumer can move
from one maybe demand response provider to another in the future okay but it's early days for those
regulations they're coming in with these now which is keep the lights on yeah and and then there will
be more developments as the industry develops so yeah the market develops okay so in the future
i'll have my charge point that's the the great app that you've got that lets you track things but
then it's obviously then somebody else providing the demand side response management that may or
may not be my energy provider as well yes okay so that's i mean this is going to be this is a
massive step shift for it's very complex where it's going and what we've got to make sure is
that as whatever we do the government industry we have to make sure this is understandable and easy
to follow and easy to use for consumers because i've got an electric vehicle i want to plug it
in i want to be able to drive it when the next day when i need it and i want to pay the right amount
for the energy and i'd like that to be as green as possible so that's me as a consumer is quite
simple my needs and in the background there's all this complex stuff going on with computers
and schedules and algorithms and security and oh yeah yeah no no i mean it's a fascinating world
we're going to follow it with with keen interest you know we came to my energy first when all
this penfold protection and you helped us out with that enormously you've certainly helped
us today with this new uh regulation coming in and yeah follow the clause base i'm sure we'll
have some more content on it soon so chris thank you very much okay it's been a pleasure thank you