Transcript
00:00:03 Speaker 1
Your trusted source for information on the energy transition. This is the insiders guide to Energy podcast.
00:00:15 Speaker 1
Welcome to insiders guide to energy. I'm your host Chris Sass, and with me today is Michael Lee, CEO of Octopus Energy, US. Michael, welcome to the program.
00:00:23 Speaker 2
Excited to be here this morning. Great to talk to you, Chris.
00:00:26 Speaker 1
I am excited to hear about what you're doing. Octopus hats is such a good reputation globally. I know that I saw at distribute tech. I think I talked to octopus before. We've been around you guys quite a bit. But what I'm interested in is a little bit about who octopus US is and what you guys are up to.
00:00:43 Speaker 2
So we are a handful of things. We first and foremost people know us as a retail energy provider and historically that industry has not been a great industry.
00:00:53 Speaker 2
Because of a whole bunch of tricks that those bad companies have played, but we think that by doing a retail energy provider we can do incredible amounts of load flexibility and turn energy into a true consumer product. We also get really excited about EV's and heat pumps. And so we help deploy those finance those and get customers all excited about the.
00:01:12 Speaker 2
Those, and we also have a software stack that we licensed to other big entities like utilities. So we kind of do a lot of things, but it's all in the name of bringing cost down for decarbonization.
00:01:24 Speaker 1
All right, so we're talking bringing cost down decarbonization consumers and that all leads back to the grid. I think pretty much everything you're pointing to ultimately gets back to the grid at some intersection.
00:01:35 Speaker 1
Where are we in the grid? Where are we today?
00:01:38 Speaker 2
You know the grid looks.
00:01:39 Speaker 2
A lot more similar to the.
00:01:41 Speaker 2
The 20 year past 20 years, then, the grid of the next 20 years, and that's what we're excited about changing. You know, when you think about the grid, every conversation we seem to have is around the supply side and it seems to be about these big centrally planned projects and you know transmission and you look, we should do a lot more of that stuff, but we've completely forgot.
00:02:01 Speaker 2
About customers and demand flexibility and optimization.
00:02:06 Speaker 2
And there's a whole new opportunity for us to decentralize the grid, and that is where we are rapidly moving to work. We're actually in Texas at the moment. That is where there is the most retail choice, but we're super focused on demand flexibility, products that keep lowering cost for customers because at the end of the day.
00:02:27 Speaker 2
The lower cost product is the most important thing for.
00:02:29 Speaker 1
When you're talking to man, flexibility or demand response kind of opportunity for customers.
00:02:36 Speaker 1
And and they're preamble to call you and are speaking a little bit. You said less than 3% of folks actually engage in these kind of programs. What is it that you think is there today? Is it just cost? Is it reducing cost because as we talked today, Texas is in a heat wave, it's it's an extremely hot day in Texas. It's going to be putting pressure on the grid. So it's today one of those days where this demand response.
00:02:56 Speaker 1
Would be playing into the utilities and helping the utility.
00:03:00 Speaker 2
Yeah, kind of big picture kind of framework of of setting the table here in Texas. While most people don't realize that we have the most wind production than anywhere else in Texas, also has most solar than any other state in the US we also have our own electrical island. And within that we have to.
00:03:20 Speaker 2
Balance it. But when we think about the next couple of years and the energy transition, ERCOT has already published a report that in the next five to six years, we're probably going to double our energy, our electricity usage and we're one of the largest electricity usage states already and we're going to double that and in the next 10 years, I wouldn't be surprised if we triple or quadruple that energy.
00:03:40 Speaker 2
Electricity usage and that's because of re onshoring the manufacturing.
00:03:44 Speaker 2
Data centers. The electrification of everything at the household level and so there is a huge opportunity as we go transform that grid through this load growth to really not keep copying and pasting the grid of the past, but to do something different. And so you know with regards to your question about what's happening in today's current challenge.
00:04:04 Speaker 2
You know, when we think about this most stressful times on the grid, even today, it's not because factories all of a sudden happen to use 2X as much power between a May 15th day and a June 15th day. It's because the temperature difference between those days are so stark that.
00:04:23 Speaker 2
At that, household usage is significantly increasing and highly temperature dependent, and so when we think about what's challenging the grid, which is temperature sensitive, energy usage, well, guess what, that's probably going to be what the rest of the grid looks like as we go electrify.
00:04:43 Speaker 2
Everything.
00:04:44 Speaker 2
But that challenge is also our big opportunity because the big opportunity is how do we intelligently use power to absorb when the wind and solar are hyper abundant and then flex away when we see constraints on the grid kind of minute by minute as we look at the grid conditions. And so the things that we're learning.
00:05:05 Speaker 2
Here in Texas, because we use so much, air conditioning is actually going to be hyper relevant for the rest of the country as we go through the energy transition and have a bunch of heat pumps and EV's and all types of other consumer products working in tandem on the grid to kind of balance in real.
00:05:21 Speaker 2
Time.
00:05:22 Speaker 1
All right. So that was a lot. And and that when you started talking about storing electrons basically is kind of we talked about using them cause electron is only good when it's currently made, right? So we need some sort of either storage or if we're talking, you know, air conditioning. You know, there's some thermal capacity of the building. So I can maybe turn that down a little bit for a little bit without an impact to the folks inside understanding that.
00:05:43 Speaker 1
But having a significant impact to the grid are these the type of things you're looking at or are you talking about something different here?
00:05:50 Speaker 2
You're exactly right, and you use the word storage and I think that's often where a lot of people go to in solving the intermittency or or challenges of how renewables ebb and flow throughout the day. And we love batteries and we're going to build a whole bunch of batteries, but that shouldn't be our primary focus. Our primary focus is to reimagine the consumer experience.
00:06:11 Speaker 2
Because when you think about an electric vehicle, well, that's just a battery on wheels. So why put a battery on the grid just to dump charge?
00:06:20 Speaker 2
EV.
00:06:21 Speaker 2
You should just smart charge the EV because that's intelligently manageable with the grid. Well, what is a hot water heater? A hot water heater is a big thermal battery, so if you could just intelligently manage that big thermal battery, you don't need a whole bunch of batteries on the grid to non intelligently manage that. That thermal hot water heater.
00:06:41 Speaker 2
But what is a household? A household is also a big thermal battery. You either are injecting heating or cooling into the household and hopefully it is, you know, the new world of energy efficiency is how tight is that thermal energy.
00:06:55 Speaker 2
Slope to keep that temperature in the house. So if you start reimagining these individual pieces that are interacting with the grid and A and an energy transition, you realize we don't need to build as much storage as we think we do. If we're actually intelligently managing the end user devices to interact with the grid in the right way to both.
00:07:15 Speaker 2
Co manage for a customer preference and the grid, and I think that's.
00:07:19 Speaker 2
Where the new opportunity lies, because historically, we've all thought about demand response as hey, a grid operator pushes a button and 100 megawatts goes away. But that is the least customer friendly way of getting flexibility we need to 1st understand each customer and you know millions of customers with millions of devices.
00:07:39 Speaker 2
What are their preferences?
00:07:41 Speaker 2
And then we can unpack what is the most amount of flexibility device by device to go get to the grid result that we need.
00:07:48 Speaker 1
To all right, so this is not a green field. This is a Gray field, as we would say, there's there's there's homes with grid connectivity today. People are using the power as they are. They have old appliances, they may have a first generation smart meter or something of that nature in place.
00:08:02 Speaker 1
How do we get from today to your vision?
00:08:07 Speaker 2
So we've spent a lot of time over the past five, 1015 years as energy professionals thinking about the energy transition focused on the wholesale power markets. We think about large solar and large wind projects and totally we should build lots of those. That's been my background and I love those, but.
00:08:26 Speaker 2
We've forgotten about the element of the retail rate.
00:08:29 Speaker 2
Nine, and this is something that both utilities, CCA's co-ops, munis, and for profit retailers all participate in. They think about what is the rate that customers pay and I.
00:08:43 Speaker 2
Think a lot.
00:08:44 Speaker 2
Of places are in, you know, the version one of rate design, which is a fixed rate all day long.
00:08:50 Speaker 2
And there's no value for flex.
00:08:52 Speaker 2
Ability.
00:08:53 Speaker 2
Version two is time of use rates, where preset times of the day have different prices and so you're kind of financially encouraging people to use more during certain times or others. But the challenge is that's not how a renewable energy grid actually operates. Every day is a little bit different. And so I think Step 3.
00:09:13 Speaker 2
Is what we call smart rates, where it's still a flat rate because that's kind of what customers want. But the load serving entity, whether it's the muni, the Co-op, the utility or the retailer.
00:09:25 Speaker 2
They're they're the ones doing all the flexibility on the back end and what they're doing is that they're saying, hey, if you want, no, if you don't want us to control anything, that's perfectly OK you can pay the standard rate like we're currently offering. But for every device that's interconnected into the system, we'll offer you 20%.
00:09:45 Speaker 2
Additional off your rate so your rates have this lower and lower price effect for the more flexibility because that's what a load serving entity should be doing.
00:09:56 Speaker 2
Is interacting with the wholesale market, finding the times of constraint and then moving their actual usage around the market signals that are, say in either abundance or constraints and creating the lowest cost serve profile for all of their customers.
00:10:13 Speaker 1
Right. So a little bit of a chicken and egg problem. The way you describe it.
00:10:16 Speaker 1
Because what you want is consumers to say great, I want to have my stuff. I'm willing to give you accessibility, just like folks did with smartphones, right? People will give you all kinds of personal information their smartphone in order to get some value. So you're saying, let me get some some value out of my energy provider.
00:10:32 Speaker 1
Who's orchestrating and doing this there? There's a lot of entities. It's not a single entity. When I get, if I'm buying solar or I'm buying some renewable energy coming across from from my utility, it's pretty complex. So how does that get orchestrated down to me charging my car tonight?
00:10:46 Speaker 2
Right. And I think that's why we're stuck in the grid of the past, because that utility should be offering you a smart rate. That utility is the one that is interacting with the wholesale power markets and the power.
00:10:59 Speaker 2
Their grid and they're able to see in real time, how abundant is the wind. How abundant is the solar? And then they're also the ones that send you the bill and so can create a lower rate structure for the trade of flexibly charging your EV or pre cooling your house. When the middle of the day is is out.
00:11:19 Speaker 2
And it's hyper abundant and solar. And so I think right now those entities are not focused on this. But I think we're still kind of living in the grid of the past, a lot of people think that.
00:11:33 Speaker 2
The more power you buy, the cheaper your rates, and that is the grid of the past. That is a fossil fuel based grid. The grid of the future is the more flexibility you have, the cheaper your rates and so that is the kind of the new purpose of a utility, a Co-op, a muni, a retailer going forward is to.
00:11:52 Speaker 2
Think about how do we drive costs out of the system and going forward it will always be about timing optimization. And so yes, utilities will be in this position before you know it to help customers create those cheaper and cheaper rate.
00:12:05 Speaker 1
Two things come to mind during that explanation 1.
00:12:08 Speaker 1
Is mom and Dad shouldn't become energy experts, or they don't. Shouldn't need to become energy experts the way you just described it is from someone that's pretty sophisticated and understands how power works, how markets work and what's going on. But the average person probably doesn't want to be, although it is trending. I see a lot of people that know quite a bit about power. Now they're just the average person.
00:12:29 Speaker 1
But I can't imagine everybody in America is gonna go. Yep, I gotta learn all about all this. So. So how do we get them to a smart place?
00:12:36 Speaker 2
Ohh, they don't need to know any of this. In fact this is what the utility should know. You're exactly right, this is our job as an energy provider is to figure this all out, we have to translate this into a very customer friendly product. And the way that we do it, you know, here in Texas is that when customers are shopping, they see both rates and one rate.
00:12:55 Speaker 2
Pays them $600 a year in order if they connect their EV to their platform.
00:13:00 Speaker 2
Or their thermostat to our platform and that's the simple you know, if you have a nest thermostat in order to use the app, you have to create a username and password anyways in order to have a Tesla, you have an app. And so those customers have a user name and password, so it's about linking that car or that.
00:13:20 Speaker 2
Thermostat.
00:13:21 Speaker 2
To our system, which is just a one time thing and after that we do all the magic on the background through technology to go figure out. Hey, when you charged when you plugged in at 5:00, you shouldn't be pulling from the grid right away. You should be charging in the middle of the night. Oh, wait a minute. It's actually a low wind night. You actually may want to start charging in the middle of the day to try to grab these last hours of solar.
00:13:43 Speaker 2
Because we think these are going to be the most abundant hours over the next 12 hours, so that optimization layer is all done by us.
00:13:51 Speaker 2
The customer experience is they get a cheaper rate and they wake up and 7:00 AM their car is fully charged. They don't really know how or when it happened because that's not the thing that they should be thinking about going forward.
00:14:03 Speaker 1
How do you play with their number of companies? We've talked about that kind of democratize energy in their words, and allow me to sell my solar to my.
00:14:10 Speaker 1
Neighbors or produce?
00:14:11 Speaker 1
Locally and and sell it locally and not have to go there. How does?
00:14:14 Speaker 1
That play into.
00:14:14 Speaker 2
This equation it's a great question. So I think the opportunity is that.
00:14:21 Speaker 2
That.
00:14:22 Speaker 2
We as a we're like one of the big guys who interact with the ISO so we can go create a lot of value from those devices because PJM and ERCOT and all these ISO's have a full stack of ancillary products day ahead.
00:14:42 Speaker 2
Energy products, real time energy.
00:14:46 Speaker 2
Because we're a big energy provider, we can go create value in those products and and probably the most full stack way, right? There's not just like one side demand response pool of of value that we're trying to tap. It's the full stack what it cost literally.
00:15:06 Speaker 2
What it cost to serve a customer their energy bill, we can collapse that.
00:15:11 Speaker 2
Because we're getting charged less from the Isos, that's really unique. It costs a lot of money to go post capital and participate in wholesale power markets. So I think we're a little bit different in that we're controlling not just for kind of ancillary value streams, it's the whole value stream that your energy.
00:15:32 Speaker 2
Villas and in some places it's twenty 30-40 cents a kWh, so we can try to reduce that full cost structure by managing more intelligently.
00:15:43 Speaker 1
All right, I I get the the three elements there, the the one thing that tends to sometimes come up is base load.
00:15:49 Speaker 1
Right. We optimize everything for renewables, we get there and you know we get the cheapest price all the time. But you know I need to have some something there to generate what we've traditionally in the old grid as you would call it consider base load.
00:16:01 Speaker 1
How does this new world handle base load and who pays for it?
00:16:07 Speaker 2
You know, in some ways the concept of base load is a little bit of.
00:16:13 Speaker 2
A myth, OK?
00:16:14 Speaker 2
I know that's controversial, but let me unpack.
00:16:16 Speaker 2
That the reason why we have base load is there's very weak signals to have any flexibility in load. So of course there's going to be massive amounts of consumption without even thinking about it. But the reality is if there are opportunities for customers to have lower prices.
00:16:37 Speaker 2
For them to especially automate how they use power.
00:16:41 Speaker 2
Then a lot of that quote UN quote base load kind of goes away. Not all of it absolutely, but a lot of it does, right, because why have the hot water heater just turn on whenever when you could actually intelligently be charging that hot water heater for when renewables are abundant? Well, that's a heck of a lot of base load that kind of disappears.
00:17:02 Speaker 2
What about EVs, EVs kind of feel like base load right now because there's very weak signals for customers to actually charge when the grid is abundant.
00:17:11 Speaker 2
But if you had those signals, meaning the rates that customers pay being lower to more intelligently match when the grid happens to be quite abundant, well then a lot of that base load goes away. So I think base load is more of a reflection of inflexible load. And then the grid of the future.
00:17:31 Speaker 2
Remember what we're rewarding in the future is flexibility, and so you'll see the elements that can be flexible start moving away, but those elements that are inflexible, you know, we talk about data centers, for example, that's kind of often perceived as base load well.
00:17:48
Just.
00:17:49 Speaker 2
Maybe a premium going forward for those inflexible assets if they can't?
00:17:56 Speaker 2
If they can't start time matching to when renewables are abundant, that's perfectly fine. But that's the reason why we're over building the grid and using very dirty and expensive power to power those inflexible loads. So I think the concept of base load is kind of antiquated. I think what we're really talking about is inflexible loads, but we haven't found.
00:18:16 Speaker 2
The right structures, yet to incentivize all the flexible loads to come out of the base load concept that we experienced.
00:18:23 Speaker 1
And I guess.
00:18:24 Speaker 1
Along the base load conversation and the last question and we'll move on is what about, let's say, a snowstorm in the Northeast or some sort of an event that's outside right where I want to be able to quickly ramp up power or something of that nature heat wave in Texas today, right, all those handled by the renewable structure, the way it is today and obviously we talked about renewables, this whole show is about the energy transition renewable, so I'm not.
00:18:48 Speaker 1
Promoting that it's not. I just want to know what your take is of how we handle that going.
00:18:52
Forward.
00:18:53 Speaker 2
And these are very important questions because this is what grid operators think about every single day. They look at the interconnection queue and they see massive amounts of renewables come in and they're sitting there thinking, how is that going to line up with my energy consumption.
00:19:07 Speaker 2
And so the the answer is, well, these are slightly different problems, but actually quite related I would say let's kind of take Texas and or just heat in general. Well, we tend to have heat.
00:19:20 Speaker 2
Because the sun is out and it's the middle of the summer, right, like cloud, cloudy and rainy, days are not nearly as hot as the cloud. Less super bright, super sunny days in the middle of.
00:19:33 Speaker 2
August.
00:19:34 Speaker 2
Great, those are the days where we have pretty much guaranteed an over abundance of power.
00:19:40 Speaker 2
Between 8:00 AM and 3:00 PM. So the answer to that is how do we super cool houses during the middle of the day. So that way at 5:00 on that same hot day, they're not pulling.
00:19:52 Speaker 2
On the grid the the heat, the Northeast heating challenge is kind of similar. You don't necessarily have it driven by the same dynamics, but you have still a lot of wind as you have these nor'easters kind of come through that are creating these, you know these cold events. And so I think there's opportunities.
00:20:14 Speaker 2
Two, you know, super heat, you know, not like 80° or anything but.
00:20:18 Speaker 2
Make it so that way you're injecting heat at the right times as you see the wind ebb and flow with these storms. So that way in between you're able to kind of ride through these multi hour flexibility events and that's why energy efficiency is so important.
00:20:31
All right.
00:20:34 Speaker 1
All right, so we're, we've.
00:20:35 Speaker 1
We've we've covered a lot of the the hot buttons.
00:20:38 Speaker 1
Here, if I'm a utility, how am I currently engaged in? Are you conceived as a competitor or are you an ally?
00:20:48 Speaker 2
I think it's a.
00:20:49 Speaker 2
Mix of both and I think the reason is that we are a load serving entity. We are a retailer and we are here to go transform the grid.
00:20:58 Speaker 2
To be highly customer centric for millions of devices interacting for millions of customers. So we want to serve that load and we want to go flex those devices. Now we do realize we can't do that everywhere, but there are about a dozen states in the US that we can go do that.
00:21:17 Speaker 2
But the software stack that we have developed called crack in that actually is.
00:21:24 Speaker 2
The products that will help that that is core to the energy transition for utilities to flex all these devices, you know utilities in general.
00:21:36 Speaker 2
Are still broadly living in the grid of the past.
00:21:39 Speaker 2
Where these antiquated systems that are on Prem, it frankly looks nothing like Amazon, right? It's like the inverse of what Amazon looks like today, right? They they they look more like a Walmart than an Amazon, right. And we want to help move them into a highly digitized Amazon experience. So we do have a lot of utilities.
00:22:00 Speaker 2
That are looking at licensing our software so that way they can go do all the highly customer centric engaged.
00:22:07 Speaker 2
That that is required as part of load flexibility in the future.
00:22:12 Speaker 1
We've been all over the place in, in the conversation. I guess. What's your you? You said you're in Texas right now. What's your plan? To expand out? Where do I expect to see you in North America? If I'm an energy customer? Said. Hey, great. Michael, this sounds amazing.
00:22:28 Speaker 1
What states am I going to be able to get you if your service?
00:22:32 Speaker 2
So broadly, before I answer that quick question, just as a concept about octopus, we've only been around for just slightly under 10 years. And within that we've grown to 8 million customers globally and nearly $8 billion of equity valuation. So we've it's, it's been an incredible growth globally.
00:22:51 Speaker 2
In many, many countries in the US, we are right now, just in Texas there are about a dozen states that went to went through retail restructuring in the past.
00:23:03 Speaker 2
And those are broadly call it, New England through Chicago all the way down to DC that kind of little triangle broadly.
00:23:10 Speaker 1
I'm just laughing cause you called those states.
00:23:14 Speaker 1
DC and Chicago are clearly not states by the.
00:23:14
So.
00:23:16 Speaker 1
Way.
00:23:18
Well, Illinois has its own.
00:23:20 Speaker 2
Challenge because it's two different power grids between MISO and PJM, but probably those are the areas that the opportunity is.
00:23:31 Speaker 2
Texas enables us to send a bill to a customer, and I know that sounds really silly. But when we think about load flexibility, Chris, you just mentioned earlier in the show like, yeah, the average person doesn't want to have to think about all this. But what what do we sell as an energy provider?
00:23:50 Speaker 2
What do we really sell? We sell trust.
00:23:53 Speaker 2
We sell an invisible product and then when you think about load flexibility, that is a second layer of trust that we're effectively selling to a customer. So how do we communicate trust if we can't even have a brand relationship with the customer, that's a big challenge. So in the Northeast, retail energy providers have just done the wrong thing.
00:24:15 Speaker 2
For too long, like I think, the vast majority of people in the energy transition has never thought about retail energy as a spot to actually go transform the markets. The reality is that because we have rate design, it's actually the perfect place to go do the energy transit.
00:24:31 Speaker 2
So what has inhibited us so far from growing in those states is that we can't send a bill yet. There's a couple states that are piloting that where we can have a branded relationship and put a little pink octopus and talk to customers about what we're doing and why we're doing it and why it's good for them personally as well as good for the grid and so.
00:24:51 Speaker 2
Will we see pilots in Maryland? Illinois is open to this. We Pennsylvania is actually kind of interesting too.
00:25:00 Speaker 2
And then places where they reward flexibility and quite frankly, what we're dealing with in Texas, it's not because there's a state level program that rewards flexibility. In fact, there isn't. There isn't one. It's because the grid is so stressed from all the load growth as well as pairing that with the renewable energy that we're massively putting on the grid. There's a lot of value.
00:25:22 Speaker 2
For a retail energy provider to just go more, optimize the timing of when people are using power. And as we look at the future in the Northeast.
00:25:33 Speaker 2
We see a challenge of balancing the grid because we see decommissioning of large dirty coal plants like in Maryland. We see load growth happening as well. We see a lot of renewables that want to come on but are very delayed in the interconnection process. And so the financial signals to go balance the grid.
00:25:53 Speaker 2
Are become.
00:25:53 Speaker 2
Being quite interesting in the Northeast and then that point, yes. Then we'll be in many of those states because we'll be a partner to many PUC's to help them find creative ways to balance the grid without layering on additional cost.
00:26:09 Speaker 1
Think I got the the bottom line is when you can do billing and the states facilitated.
00:26:14 Speaker 1
Allow you to do that. That's where it is. What? You said that I disagree with a little bit. I I think the consumer relations.
00:26:20 Speaker 1
Chip is one of the challenges is it's been opaque so far is transparency and seeing what's going on that develops the trust that you call trust. I think it's transparency, right? So if you're going to find me the best price, I just want to know that you really are that I'm getting the best deal and I'm not signing up for a 10 year PA for something that I have no idea and no visibility to. I think that's the first concern and this second.
00:26:42 Speaker 1
Concerned because we as Americans are used to flipping the light switch and having the lights come on is reliability.
00:26:49 Speaker 1
And and I've noticed even I spent a few years in Europe and moved back to my own home here in Maryland. And since I've been back, I've had multiple power outages. It's not as reliable as I seem to remember it. And maybe it's idealistically, or maybe because I'm an energy I'm very sensitive to it, but it reliability seems to be it. So people want to pay as little as possible.
00:27:10 Speaker 1
They want to make sure they are through transparency, but they want reliability. I think that that's the average consumer. And then if you layer on top people that are concerned about the environment, I think they put that after those first few. I don't I think everybody would argue that they want a healthy planet no matter who they are, but they don't want to pay more if they don't.
00:27:25
Two.
00:27:26 Speaker 2
I think you're completely right, and I think that, you know here in Texas, we deal with reliability challenges all the time and it's not because of the broader power grid, although we do think about that quite a bit. You know, we just had a tornado come through Houston a few weeks ago and a million people got knocked offline, right in Dallas, we just had another windstorm a couple weeks ago as well, 600,000 people.
00:27:47 Speaker 2
So reliability is both the transmission network and the broader grid and the energy power plants as well as the local distribution.
00:27:54 Speaker 2
Centers and you know we already pay quite a bit for our power bills. So we don't have a whole lot of room to keep increasing costs to have a more reliable grid, although we do want a more reliable grid, increasing cost is the number one barrier to our energy transition. However a distributed.
00:28:14 Speaker 2
Grid is both cheaper and lower and more reliability, meaning. Imagine a world, Chris, where if you got a battery at home and your utility said you get 50% off your rate.
00:28:29 Speaker 2
Sounds pretty good, and in exchange, we're kind of power trading that battery for when the grid is most constrained. And then if the grid locally happens to go down, well, you'll still have some capacity to keep using your power for yourself as we go ride through a momentary outage that happens to be on, say, the distribution network.
00:28:49 Speaker 2
And so I think there's a world where.
00:28:51 Speaker 2
Where those we can both marry lower costs and higher reliability, but that's going to be through technology and distributed assets and then they have to be synched with the broader grid in order to achieve the the most amount of value for the customer.
00:29:09 Speaker 1
Well, this has been an amazing conversation.
00:29:11 Speaker 1
I have enjoyed having you on the podcast. I thank you so much for coming on and sharing your thoughts for other audience. It's been a pleasure.
00:29:19 Speaker 2
Thanks, Chris. It's an incredible point of time to be in this energy transition. I I have a lot of friends in Silicon Valley and I keep telling them it doesn't really matter what you're working on. There is no more interesting of a place to be than this industry at this point in time about what we're about to go do.
00:29:39 Speaker 2
As a as an industry. And so it's very exciting to talk about what the future may hold for.
00:29:45 Speaker 1
For audience, we hope you've enjoyed this episode of Insiders guide to Energy. If you did, don't forget to subscribe. Certainly take a second and hit that like button and subscribe to us on YouTube. We'll see you again next time on the insiders guide to Energy podcast. Bye for now.
