At times, I’m fairly pessimistic about the
damage we’ve already caused.
The language should no longer be preventing climate change,
it’s more of a damage limitation exercise now.
There are far too many
companies whose
economic interests
lie in the past,
and they are unwilling or unable
to reimagine their future.
And there are different opportunities.
Renewable energy was seen as sort of
a premium or expensive option.
At scale,
it should be the cheaper option.
I was very intrigued, I thought "This is interesting,"
you get a car that you can use
for energy storage
and then providing back to the grid.
I've got solar on my house as well
so I thought, "This will be quite interesting."
I like my technology. I like my gadgets.
And I thought, "Well, this is a perfect stepping stone
to get involved with electric vehicles."
For me,
it was more about the technology.
Now, for my wife
it was more about being green
and reducing carbon footprints.
So, this was the kind of
equal balance of everyone,
you know, getting what they want, really.
Long term, it's going to,
if everyone sort of carries on like this,
it's going to be better for our environment.
This is all contributing towards
helping us to have a much more healthier, cleaner planet.
For a hundred and fifty years,
you know, we've been able to
dig up, coal then oil then gas,
and burn that as a very
high energy source.
But we now know that when we do that
we are releasing carbon dioxide
and that is causing the greenhouse effect
and a warming of the planet.
The important thing is
that we all need to move towards
leaving the remaining fossil fuels
safely buried under ground.
We need to find sources of power
that are not burning fossil fuels from under ground-
therefore, sustainable for the long term
but they're also clean,
and they're not going to generate carbon dioxide
and other gases,
which cause health issues.
The trilemma is how do we
make the supply of energy
affordable, sustainable, and reliable.
The energy industry is evolving
probably at a pace that
we've never seen before.
Because, so much is dependent
on technology.
And, more citizens
across the globe
are needing better,
more reliable access to energy.
It's not the most intuitive
that data and climate and sustainability
are linked,
but they are inextricably linked.
And that data
is going to come from
traditional forms of fuel
and energy sources
but at the same time
how it interacts
with newer forms of distribution,
and electrification,
electric vehicles,
how we're tying into solar facilities,
how we are tying into wind farms.
You need all sorts of
organizations to come together
to solve this big problem
of meeting our current energy demands
but also helping to transition
to a more sustainable energy future.
So, you have big companies
multi-national, global organizations
that are starting to develop new
innovative business models
make investments in new fuel sources
but it's also
these upstarts, these new organizations
that are also tackling it from a very different angle.
Octopus is a group of companies.
We are an original energy retailer.
We exist to bring innovation
and technology solutions
which can help people
save money
and to reduce the amount of carbon they use.
There is a wholesale price of energy
at different times of day.
It actually costs more
to buy energy
at times when there is lots of demand.
In the evening time when people come home from work
and want to use lots of appliances in their home
it's more expensive.
We burn fossil fuels
at the evening peak
in order to meet that demand.
With vehicle to grid technology
we can take energy out of a car battery at that time
and actually support the grid
reduce the amount of fossil fuels
we burn
and so make it cleaner and greener
to use energy in the home at that time.
The Powerloop Project
is a great example of
a technology, which can help people save money
and to reduce the amount of carbon they use.
It's a very clever system,
it's very easy to use.
You just state how much charge you want
for the next day
and the car will automatically manage
how much to discharge and charge up for you.
He has a car that can do
exporting of energy from the battery
back to the house and the grid.
And, he has a charger,
which can enable that as well.
And then the final piece of the puzzle
is that he has the Powerloop app,
which runs on his phone
which allows him to
schedule when he wants his car back in the morning
and how much charge he would like in the car.
And then, the rest of the system runs automatically.
Within Octopus,
we use AWS to host our Kraken platform.
Kraken is our customer management system.
So, it really underpins
all the elements of the backend system
and the apps that we are using to help customers
not only understand their energy billing
but more and more to control their EV charging.
So, it really is the technology behind the technology.
Hey, how are you doing?
Good to see you.
Good to see you as well.
Shake hands.
Yeah, let's go inside.
Claire, this is my wife Reshma.
Hi Reshma, very nice to meet you.
Nice to meet you.
Thank you so much for having me.
Oh, no problem at all.
I find,
especially when you've done the times slots,
then that makes it much more easier for us to
know exactly when to put the car in,
when to put the tumble dryer,
washing machine,
dishwasher on timer.
And do you time your devices,
to come on over night?
Yes, yes absolutely.
Oh, that's great.
We really need these technologies
to help us balance the grid
and to use and store energy when it's
green and cheap,
to be able to then use that
at times when there is extra load
on the grid to avoid burning fossil fuels.
The kind of innovative tariffs we are offering now,
say to customers,
"Let us control when your car charges."
So, we can not only be
responding to the demand of
when customers are needing charge,
we can be directly influencing it
through price incentives.
On the generation side,
we know when there is likely to be
excessive capacity
or spare capacity
to be using.
Within a day or two's notice,
you've got a pretty good forecast
as to what power you're going to be getting.
Solar power
is available when the sun is shining.
Wind power
only when the wind's blowing.
Where we'll use data
is in both forecasting
the available power,
but also
trying to shape
customer demand
so we can balance the generation of renewables
with meeting the needs of customers.
You start to get a very different way of
balancing the grid,
and it's a way which really is going to work
far better with
optimizing the use of renewable sources.
With this wind farm,
there's thousands of data points being collected now
in terms of production, how it's tying into the grid.
And it allows for real time optimization for
how you are actually procuring renewable energy
and how that ties into natural gas
and other sources of energy.
As we start to see different parts become smarter,
it means that
each part of that system is starting to be able
to interact with other parts
to understand and monitor
where energy is needed
and where it is actually being produced.
We're bringing together EVs with
electrification of heating technologies
as well as
things like solar and battery,
we're starting to see
all of these technologies coming together
to make a super smart,
energy home of the future
and that's what gets me really excited.
My oldest child is nearly six,
and they've got a really good grasp already
on how energy is produced
when it's produced cheaply and greenly.
If young children
can understand this technology,
when they become adults
they'll be able to take things forward
and bring things we haven't even thought about today.
Do you want to open that up girls?
So, I feel like we are building foundations now,
for the future,
that's something definitely to be hopeful about.
Jump over.
We've actually made a shift
in the way we use and consume our energy,
because the way the pricing structure works
it incentivizes you
to make those changes.
And it's going to be technologies like this
that are going to solve these problems.
Give it a decade
or five years
this will become mainstream
these cars will become part of our energy system.
So, that when I turn on the lights,
when I turn on the tv,
when I charge my car,
I know that it's tied in
to a more sustainable ecosystem.
And these energy companies
are now embracing it
and making meaningful impact regarding it.
And that's a big difference from what it was
twenty years ago.
We're able to build new services
supporting customers on the journey
to a renewable future.
Doing our very best to
look after the planet
and prevent further climate change.
If we can make a contribution to solving that
then it's a pretty worthwhile thing to be doing.