Speaker 1The pace at which the industry is moving is, I think, super exciting. It's one of the industries undergoing some fundamental change. We thought about all of the roles that existed in the energy system 20 years ago and what people were doing versus what's happening today. The change has been radical, and I don't think that's stopping.
Speaker 2Hello, Mai. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1Thank you. Lovely to be here, Peter.
Speaker 2And nice to have you here. So, Jenna, I have a big opening question for you out of the gate. So, you guys are helping energy companies make smarter decisions in the times of the grid being reimagined. What is the biggest shift happening right now in the industry?
Speaker 1Yeah, great question. I'd say the biggest shift is flex. So, historically, when we spoke about renewable energy projects or energy projects more broadly, that was typically tied to solar or wind assets predominantly. And the biggest shift we're seeing is the critical need for flexibility. Both from a grid perspective. So, we're seeing this across the world this year with things like blackouts in Iberia to really scarce grid connections and massive queues to connect assets to the grid, coupled with huge renewable deployment targets globally. And what that's really driving is a need for flex, both from the TSO and the grid perspective, but also from the site to protect the site or protect those assets against some of the price volatility coming from renewables. So, yeah, I think flex is critical. Flex is making modeling energy projects really much more difficult, but also much more interesting. And I think it's a new frontier ready for the energy industry to properly embrace flex into things like battery storage to no longer be a novel or niche technology and very commonplace and part of the fabric of the energy system.
Speaker 2For sure. And one thing that I keep hearing on almost every single recording is that batteries, batteries, batteries. The year of 2025 is the year of batteries. And most people are actually realizing right now that we cannot just build solar or wind or storage separately, but we need to do a little bit of more of a holistic system level thinking. So I appreciate you guys' software is actually tackling all of those elements and all the full picture as well when those things come together. Can you speak to that?
Speaker 1Yeah, absolutely. And I'd say, of course, batteries are one of the biggest drivers of flex, but we're also seeing flex come from things like electric vehicle flex. They're obviously electrifying and do have inherent flex and how they work. They charge or also flex are on the demand side too. So yeah, it's a broad topic that batteries certainly grab the headlines. And so what we're doing at Greekog is we're built as modeling software for energy projects. And so, you know, if I have a site and it's to start with a utility site, scale site as an example, you know, there are thousands of different options, right? When it comes to how much solar do I deploy, how much storage, maybe how much wind. But there's also tens of different commercial options, right? How am I? How am I procuring energy to my site? And speaking to your point, right? Maybe I've already got existing solar that's on a long-term PPA. And if I'm looking to co-locate storage, what does that mean to my PPA? Or how's that battery actually operating in energy markets? And so Greekog allows clients to stimulate all potential thousand variations in one hit because, you know, one of those options is objectively the best one. And we're seeing a similar pattern, you know, also more at the distribution or behind the meter scale where maybe, you know, I've got a live logistician warehouse and I want to electrify my fleet and I don't have the grid connection to do that. And so again, the question becomes, how do I co-locate storage and or other energy assets onto my site to allow me to electrify my fleet? And then also what's the best way to operate that fleet as well? And with all of that comes questions on the physical side, you know, what assets am I building, but also how am I procuring energy? How am I selling my excess? And so, yeah, I'd say certainly the story is shifting towards co-location. And, you know, that's obviously utilized. The grid connections and cables and wires that we do have much more than if they were purely serving a load or a generation assets, but brings a lot of complexity. And I think a lot of challenge for the industry as well. There's a lot of people innovating in this space to say, what does this mean for my PPA? Or what does this mean if my off-taker or my optimizer for my storage is different to my solar? And does that interact with maybe my supply arrangement on sites or my logistics warehouse? So it's opening a lot of questions for the industry. But, you know, it's a lot of questions. So it's forcing, I think, forcing a lot of people to innovate and do some cool stuff in this space.
Speaker 2For sure. And I mean, when we are talking about questions, right, I guess there is also a second part to that and some answers that you can get from a software like yours. But what I'm hearing from everybody is that if you are thinking about the whole system from a more high-level point of view, it makes more sense in terms of the cost efficiency side of things as well. And the key topic that keeps being mentioned is right sizing. Right sizing. We need to right size the projects. Instead of previously building, I don't know, 100 megawatts of solar here, we might be able to achieve our goals and our targets with 50 megawatts of solar and maybe 5 megawatts of storage. And the two combines kind of help each other out, right? So how do you guys approach this? Like, what is the kind of rule of thumb of how much do I need from one or the other and how the two actually tie together?
Speaker 1Yeah, really good question. And I'd say a challenge of you that there is, is a rule of thumb when it comes to, like, right sizing two assets together. And the reason why I really don't think there is one is you've got different locational price signals. So even if, let's say, we're in the UK, I could be part of different DNOs. I've also got different transmission or to new loss charges and different frequency that I'm going to be activated in the balancing markets. And same applies, again, if I'm sort of behind the meter scale. I have different price signals. And that means, you know, ultimately every site is to a large extent unique. And I have as well, historically. You know, there's been a lot of discussion about rules of thumbs when it comes to, you know, what percentage sell them, what percentage storage on the utilities like Gail's site. You know, I really don't think that applies. And I think now that we do have the technology to properly model these things and model them quickly, that actually enabling people to understand that their portfolio is unique and that there are, you know, what's optimal for your site in Scotland is possibly, you know, deeply suboptimal for your site in the south of Ingrid. And that's something we actually see quite a few clients use in Greenwich. And I think that's something we need to be very careful for as well. It's, you know, running a portfolio of sites, whether that's a portfolio of hundreds of supermarkets or different utility scale projects across Europe. You know, the job to be done in that case is, hey, help me decide where to prioritise, right? Let's not just prioritise a site that I'm interested in or that's a convenient location maybe for me. But let's prioritise a site that has the highest NPV or the best IRR, best returns when I'm looking at adding renewable or storage or flex to the sites more broadly. So, yeah, sorry, I don't have a rule of thumb.
Speaker 2That's good. That's good. But that's a good enough answer, you know, and I guess it also comes down to which market you're operating in, right? Because every single country has different feed-in tariffs, different sort of rules and regulations. Hopefully one day we will get closer to something that's a bit more unified, at least on the European level, that people can stick to and people can plan based on. I think that's a little bit further down the line, right?
Speaker 1Yeah, I think it is. But I'd also say we are seeing, you know, really positive steps in that direction. You know, things like Picasso. This, you know, ancillary service is being procured more consistently across the continent. You know, I think that that really helps. And it's something interesting, right? Well, right, with energy markets, I think every country or every energy market likes to think that they're very special and very unique. But actually when you break it down, you know, what the job of the energy market, both the wholesale and the ancillary services, is to give price signals for assets that ultimately it's physics, right? To do certain things. That's something I find quite fascinating. Obviously, you can tell I'm not British, given the accents. You know, the start of my career in power markets in New Zealand and obviously, you know, formed a view that they were special and very unique. And then power trading in GB. And again, the GB market is especially unique. And something that, you know, I've really come to realize, I think, courtesy of a lot of our clients at GridCock who are modeling globally, is actually there is much more commonality in markets. And I think that's something that I've really come to realize, I think, courtesy of a lot of our clients at GridCock who are modeling globally, is actually there is much more commonality in markets. Certainly, clients that are looking at those on sort of a multi-market perspective, there are tools and ways of comparing and contrasting, even though we might call it, call every ancillary service or something, something entirely different from dynamic containment to FCR. But at the end of the day, this is an ancillary service trying to keep the grid in balance. And it means this, that, or the next thing for your assets. So I do think sometimes there's more consistency than we realize. But I'd say as an industry, we like to speak. And certainly like to, you know, we know our markets really well, right? And so, so people like to get pretty deep on that topic too.
Speaker 2From my perspective, I always see this as almost like shooting at a moving target, right? That we have so many, so many different components. But what you're actually saying is that those components are almost identical in terms of their usage. It's just basically differ in terms of like how they are utilized and how they are interconnected, right?
Speaker 1Exactly. And the different roles, you know. Like rules or so on that we put alongside those, right? Are they procured in four-hour blocks? Are they procured in 15-minute intervals? You know, what's baselining methodology? How do I qualify to participate in my asset in that service? There's obviously a ton of detail there, which, you know, you can't ignore. But at the end of the day, right, control rooms trying to keep the grid in balance while procuring frequency services from assets that can deliver them.
Speaker 2And you mentioned a couple of keywords before. And one thing that keeps coming back is price signals, right? Can we define this for the audience? in the use case that you guys are serving.
Speaker 1Yeah, sure. So let's just take it, take a simple example, right? I've got a battery. If I didn't have any price signals for that asset, that battery would just sit there in its container and do nothing, right? And so what you need for that battery to then have a reason to charge or discharge is a price signal. And that price signal can actually come from a ton of different places. That could be, if I'm on the distribution level, for instance, that could be my network tower. I could be trying to avoid red band charges and discharging into my load. That could be my time of use supply tariff. That could be a PPA signal in that my battery is interacting with solar and other assets on my site. But if we've got an asset that's exposed to energy markets, those price signals become even more complex, right? I've got different wholesale markets. And in many cases, it's not just one wholesale market. It's your day here, your day at subsequent auctions, your intraday continuous markets. Could be your balancing markets and could be your ancillary service markets. And that's where the optimization problem becomes super complex. If I'm saying, hey, I need to manage all of these different price signals and work out what's the best thing to do with my asset right now. How is that asset going to work best for me as the customer or my site? And those price signals obviously should be representative of the utility value of that asset for the network or for the grid or for the wireless network. And that's where the price signals become super complex. And that's where the price signals become super complex as well. And so, yeah, when I chat about price signals, it sort of encompasses all of those things, but signals for assets to respond, right? And to do something.
Speaker 2Maybe let's talk about the elephant in the room, right? So if you talk about curtailment and all the connection cues, how do you guys tackle that?
Speaker 1Yeah, I mean, I think curtailment is interesting. Negative prices, for me, they're a feature of the energy transition. You know, they're not a bug. Again, it's a price signal, right? Got an oversupply of energy. And so power prices have gone negative to the same extent that if we have an undersupply and power prices go very high, that also serves as a price signal. And I think one of the challenges that we're seeing come into Europe, particularly very rapidly, it is negative prices. I think Spain had its first negative prices last year and has crossed, I think, over 500 hours so far in 2025. So the rate of change is huge. And we're seeing that, you know, across the board as well. You take somewhere like Germany, who has, you know, quite a high volume of negative pricing as well, but massive solar PV deployment targets, which is also awesome and absolutely what we need. But what that is doing is altering the sort of the fundamentals quite significantly. And particularly if I own a whole lot of large scale solar PV farms, that's creating a real risk for me because I'm now either curtailing my generation or paying to generate more. And so I think that's a really big risk for me. And I think that's a really big risk for me because I'm now either curtailing my generation or paying to generate more. And so that's rapidly coming into Europe. It's not a new thing globally. Actually, Australia is quite an interesting spot for that. Markets almost a quarter of the year are spent in negative prices just because they had a ton of PV, particularly actually more on the sort of the resi scale as well. So really what we're seeing is, okay, hey, we've got an oversupply of generation to keep the grid in balance, to keep frequency stable. We need to curtail this generation. And again, that serves as a price signal for FLEX to say, hey, great, if I own a whole lot of solar PV, I'm going to pay for it. And so that's a really big risk for me. And if I own a battery potentially in this, I could get paid to charge. And if I'm a renewable asset owner, I'm now potentially looking at co-location as a genuine hedging strategy as well. But really what that's doing is pushing the problem also to the asset owner. Like it shouldn't just be the issue for the controller and that there's a ton of extra solar or ton of extra generation. So we've got to deal with it. Actually having that those price signals come through to asset owners and driving people to build the right assets in the right places. And I think that's a really big risk for me. And get more potentially push the barriers when it comes to how they innovate around contracting those or locating those assets together. So yes, curtailment, I think will continue to happen. And it becomes a question of then how do we actually best absorb that energy either into the FLEX assets or create a signal for load to, you know, again, increase their generation at times when it creates oversupply.
Speaker 2And again, it comes back to the flexibility side of things, right? We need to figure out how to to kind of balance this, you know, massively fluctuating load and the batteries really play a key role in this. But also when it comes to on the regulatory sides, we see more negative tariffs like this, especially in Germany, you started to see more trackers being installed, which was not typically the case before. Flexible your system is in responding to those graphs of spike and trough. I think that the more efficient your system can be, it also drives us back to the most fundamental goal. Yeah, I think the biggest block of all of this is data, right? So if you have good data, you are able to make actionable decisions based on that data and not just, you know, trying to like guess in the dark, okay, I should be able to, you know, store the energy that I produced here, I should be able to push it back to the grid and get paid handsomely for it. So it's quite, quite important to juggle all those.
Speaker 1Yeah, massively important and important for the site owner or the asset owner, right, to work out, you know, how am I optimizing my vehicle charging potentially? Around lower prices, but also important for the TSO to have visibility of what's going on, again, so that they can keep the system in balance. Yeah, I think data is critical to all of this in all directions.
Speaker 2And do you also see and feel that the grid or the grid operators are a little bit lagging behind and are being left in the dark to a certain extent when it comes to, you know, they cannot really see into your production proactively or into the future production, right? Okay, you can see the difference between summer and winter, but, you know, it's quite difficult for them to also, you know, adjust to these loads. And maybe what would be the right or ideal solution for this?
Speaker 1Yeah, I mean, a hard question, right? And I think sometimes, you know, as an industry, sometimes we can be critical of grid operators for not moving fast enough, but also worth cutting them some slack to say, you know, their whole systems are designed for massive centralized power systems, right? If I'm in the control room, all of my systems are designed for massive centralized power systems, right? If I'm in the control room, all of my systems are designed to, you know, turn on and off effectively CCGTs or coal-fired power stations. And that's something we've seen a lot of in GB, particularly, obviously, batteries and flex assets have been sort of smaller scale flex assets, at least have been part of the, what we call a balancing mechanism since 2018 now. And as part of that, we've seen a massive evolution from those assets being manually dispatched by the control room a couple of times a day to a world where now these assets are getting 30, 40, 50 dispatches a day, that there's a high degree of automation coming in into that space. Obviously, there's further to go. You know, I think it would be, you know, a bit scarier as well, potentially at times to be on the control room desk, being like, oh, you know, want visibility of what people are going to do. And has Peter about to start charging his 10 megawatts of rubbish trucks that I didn't know about? And so again, yeah, that's sort of where we're back to the data, I think. needs to flow both ways. And I think there's still further to go in that. Like there's not SCADA systems on all of these assets. They're not all going to the control rooms. Often you're relying on people submitting physical notifications and actually telling the control room what they're going to do, which again, with your hypothetical 10 megawatts of rubbish trucks, you might not do because you're not thinking about that from a trading perspective or not, maybe not trying to put them in the balancing market. You're just seeing a lot of price and saying, hey, it's a good time to charge. So yeah, I think data is massive as part of it. And certainly think the control room have a lot to manage, but also, you know, it's exciting. They've got so many more tools in the toolbox as well with all of these flexible assets to actually, you know, manage system frequency, manage supply and demand in a much more dynamic way than previously. So obviously, personally, I'm not in the control room, but I imagine that that's part daunting and part exciting for those guys. So yeah, I'd say lots to do in that space that I think some people are going to want to do. For sure. And not being in the
Speaker 2control room is actually the right place to be. Of course, it's the most difficult job there is.
Speaker 1Yeah, certainly, certainly a challenging one.
Speaker 2And when it comes to kind of comparing markets such as Australia, Europe or the US, when it comes to the digital energy adoption, like how do you see the differences or maybe the commonalities between different markets?
Speaker 1Yeah, it's super interesting. And it's something I love. With GridCog that we actually get to see so many projects globally, right? And again, it's super cool when you see that different markets go on different journeys. So if we talk about, let's say, Australia, obviously, they're world leading in terms of residential PV deployment. That also still burn a lot of coal. And then you take places like GB, which is more world leading when it comes to utility scale storage development. But there's actually very little, you know, the world for sort of behind. And the need at that free storage or even at the resi level is really, you know, has only really picked up in the last couple of years. And then you compare that then to somewhere like Germany, which has a ton of residential batteries, not a ton, but at least gigawatts relative to everywhere else and actually is now moving into the utility storage space. So it's kind of interesting that you see, you know, markets might start in different places, but actually converge. You know, we're all actually trying to achieve the same thing. It's very interesting just to understand. Hey, where do places start? Why was resi storage, you know, hot in Germany and not in GB? And, you know, how. How did GB didn't start on the utility side? How has Australia achieved such rapid deployment of PV? And again, you know, what can these markets learn from other markets? Some of the things that we think are massive challenges in some markets, it's like, hey, these guys have been there or at least have given it a shot for a while. And it's like, how can we take those lessons and apply them? You know, certainly even from the software side, it's kind of interesting, like take your point on curtailment earlier, right? It's something that because there's so much solar in Australia, you know, always had a feature, which is, hey, if prices go negative, do you want to curtail your generation? Is that something you're going to do? Whereas obviously in Europe, that wasn't much of a question until last year. And it's like, hey, actually, courtesy of the Aussies, we've already bought that feature. And then, you know, really complex hybrid PPAs are something that are being explored really deeply in Europe. And it's just, yeah, it's super cool when you see something's happening here and now it's, you know, people are taking lessons quickly. So yeah, what's going on in the space? And I think just different journeys that different markets are going on. But interesting that actually the point of convergence is happening quickly because people are looking at the need for flex, both at sort of the transmission or the utility scale, but also at a cycle or behind the meter scale.
Speaker 2And from the perspective of the business or from the perspective of GridCog, how do you guys actually monitor all these markets so you adapt the tool to, you know, so many moving components almost in real time?
Speaker 1Yeah. I mean, obviously there's lots to take on. I'd say there's a few big parts of that, right? One is what we call our industry team. And so those guys wear many hats at GridCog. They're effectively energy experts and GridCog experts too, and spend a lot of time with our clients, you know, supporting them to use the software as best they can and to get the most value out of it. Their software subscription is part of that. Obviously, there's a lot of comms and discussions with the clients then, you know, get feedback to our product roadmap. And so I think the art of that is keeping really close to your customers. It's our customers who are innovating. It's our customers who are looking to dispatch assets or build assets that might participate in new markets. And it's our job to listen to their feedback and make sure that we are across what's going on. And then obviously to do our own research. Well, so yeah, the biggest thing is, I think, speaking to the customers and making sure that, hey, you know, as a business as well, we're part of the energy system fabric and we understand what's going on. And I think fortunately, the GridCog team would all identify as energy nerds. And so we actually find those client questions so genuinely interesting. We'll see that some markets thinking of a new capacity market or a new network tariff mechanism or whatever. And it's something we find interesting. And we leave it to them. We lean into it. And obviously then as a business, it's able to keep up at the edge of what's happening.
Speaker 2I can only echo that. Your customers actually have the most data. The people who are actually building the projects and are on the ground, they are the closest to the problem. So the feedback loop is the shortest. And if you can learn from their experience, examples, projects, of course, that's going to make your job easier as well.
Speaker 1Yeah, absolutely. And
Speaker 2based on that data, you know, how do you guys actually utilize AI in the software or what's your take on the best use cases that you could use it in the real world?
Speaker 1And AI is super powerful. I'd say when it comes to modeling an energy site, it's really deterministic modeling. Again, as I was saying, right, it's press signals and therefore what's the most optimal thing for me to do with my asset. So when it comes to the underlying modeling engine, AI isn't that appropriate. It is absolutely appropriate if I was in the world of creating wind or solar forecasts or so on. But that's not our world at GridCog. So for us, AI actually becomes a sort of a productivity tool. And also, how do we use that to improve client success or improve client experience in the product rather than altering, let's say, the underlying modeling? And so, for instance, it's, hey, how do we get a library of network tasks into the software as fast as possible? And courtesy of AI, that's a job that doesn't take as long as it did even last year. So, yeah, for us, that's where we're looking. Rather than on the modeling side itself, because our job to be done is incredibly deterministic that there is genuinely a right way and an optimal way and a suboptimal way. And that's a mathematical problem.
Speaker 2What do you think the next generation of energy software could look like or will look like?
Speaker 1It's a good question. And I'd say something that I'd say the energy industry struggles with is actually familiarity with, you know, there's also a lot of older software, you know, pure software, you know, software systems maybe that you download onto your laptops that look like something out of an engineering course at uni. And a lot of that is still very much in practice in the industry. And so I think there's been a big shift, you know, courtesy of a whole plethora of SaaS businesses and newer energy tech companies, you know, shifting that so that software in this space actually looks and feels like 2025. And I think, you know, really where the future goes is more on that data point, right? Like, how do we leverage data? to make the best decisions, both in the planning area, which is obviously in our world, but also in the day-to-day and how assets are traded and monitored and how that data was then fed back to network operators, to grids, also to suppliers, so that, again, everyone can be making optimal decisions in that space. So I think, yeah, we certainly have the best technology advantages as an industry, we've had, and so it's about harnessing that and using data to make good decisions.
Speaker 2And when we spoke about the AI part, you know, it begs the question of data centres as well. So how do you think data centres are actually changing the landscape of both the energy generation and also the consumption?
Speaker 1Yeah, I'd say one of the biggest things, right, is actually the change in demand. Obviously, in recent years with energy efficiency measures and so on, we've actually been seeing demand trend downwards. That obviously was a need for data centres and so many of them being built, that that trend is changing. And I think we'll change even more when you think about fleets electrifying as well and also heating electrifying. And so I think it's actually starting to change that, you know, fundamental supply and demand equation in energy markets more broadly and often then drive the need for more generation, which, again, fits well with obviously many, many markets building a significant volume of renewables to decarbonise the grid, but is also creating demand for those. I'd say personally, very curious to see if and how data centres may participate in flexibility markets or may respond to those practicals. And obviously, again, it often depends on, hey, what job is that data centre doing, what's its load and so on. But I think that could be a really interesting part of the market that is certainly at the earlier stages that are getting quickly evolving.
Speaker 2For sure. And I mean, you know, we also come back full circle, right? The kind of usage of those data centres, you have a little bit of fluctuation. People will be enquiring stuff from the AI during the day, but at night time, it might be, you know, sitting idle. So it also depends on what sort of energy you have. If you have solar, then you're kind of in the best case scenario because you're also consuming immediately what you produced. But if you have a little bit of excess, then what do you do with it? So it's also going to be like another layer of complexity on an already complex system.
Speaker 1Yeah. Can't you say everyone's lives are interesting?
Speaker 2And do you guys have any. specific solutions that are tailored or targeted towards the data centre side of things, or do you just consider this more of a hybrid project and could be kind of encapsulated in that form?
Speaker 1Yeah, more the latter, right? At the end of the day, a data centre in the group cog world, we think about it as what we'd call a flexible load, right? It's a load, it's a consumption asset. But there is an element of flexibility and obviously to what degree that's flexible, it does depend again on the data centre and what job the data centre's doing and so on. And so again, when modelling those projects, it's working out, hey, how much flex is there and then representing that and co-locating that with maybe if there is PV or in many cases, there's also backup generators and maybe there's storage and so on and saying, hey, what's the most optimal running profile for this data centre and what's the opportunity cost of the flex, both from, hey, what could I earn from the markets, but also maybe what am I looking for? What am I losing from clients or load that I need to support?
Speaker 2Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's a good point. And if we talk, if we segue a little bit into your personal experience in the energy world, you worked for startups and also more established players. What's your biggest leadership lesson that you learned along the way?
Speaker 1Good question. I think the biggest one is for me, what's super important is building a team, trusting in your team to make good decisions. And giving people, I think, opportunity. You know, no one's going to get everything right every time, but it's about being transparent. It's about sharing your thought process, you know, particularly with your team. It's about taking your feedback both from your team, but also your clients and yet backing people to make good decisions. And I think backing yourself as well, right? If you're a leader, you don't actually know everything. And so it's having the confidence to say, hey, I'm going to make this decision. I'm going to own it, even if it might be wrong. You know, it's better to, I think, take a step forward. Than hang around and wait until you have all of that information. So yeah. building a good team who can back themselves when you're backing yourself as well and this is also
Speaker 2a quite tricky thing when it comes to organization right because i've seen you know both models in play in the past say on the kind of top-down approach where the kind of ceo knows everything right and they basically just tell you what to do and versus the kind of more decentralized network of people working together when you really enable people with ownership of the task seeing that that model definitely produces superior results right yeah
Speaker 1it does and i think the biggest job in that space is making sure that everyone knows what what the common goal is and what we're pulling towards as a business so that when people are making decisions they've got as much information as possible in terms of hey what are the objectives of the business or of the team so that they feel empowered to make those
Speaker 2calls and i think it's also impossible to manage a large group of people right so honestly unless you have a really well-defined common goal that everybody is striving towards that that kind of takes care of 90 or 80 percent of the management right because everybody knows where we are going and you don't need to get stuck on like okay and on a daily basis like where am i going to put this button on the software or not you know so it's it's a bit more efficient way of organizing
Speaker 1yeah absolutely yeah you can't be across uh every every little detail that's for sure what advice
Speaker 2would you give young people who are looking to start their own business or who are looking to be professionals or maybe students who are who are looking into building their career in in the
Speaker 1energy world i'd say i'm obviously very biased but i think the energy space is so exciting i think it's one of the areas that as a world the whole world we need to innovate you know climate change is real we need to decarbonize our energy system and there's so much innovation happening in this space that you know whether you're you've come from an engineering background or an environmental science background or an economic background there's so much work to be done and the pace at which the industry is moving is is i think super exciting it's one of the industries going undergoing some fundamental change we thought about all of the roles that existed in the energy system 20 years ago and what people were doing versus uh what's happening today the change has been radical and and i don't think that's stopping so i think it's an awesome industry to be a part of uh oftentimes you'll be chatting with other people in the industry and people talk of a skill shortage or a talent shortage because there's a there are so many you know new roles and uh new jobs to be done in this space i think the energy industry is super exciting yeah i'd i'd definitely get involved obviously there's so much free resources while you know as you're studying or whatever this is youtube videos i think a lot of the industry is leaning into online communications or something i'm pretty passionate about and something we do quite a lot at grid cog as well is actually put out a lot of video content and i think it's an awesome industry to be able to do that and i think that is uh in part educational and in parts of thought leadership as well and also sharing obviously what we do as a business there are other players as well in this space doing similar things because one of the biggest barriers is education and as i was saying areas in the industry sometimes we can be guilty of speaking in acronyms and speaking in riddles and it's really important to to try and normalize what's going on and explain it so i think there's a lot of very cool content out there as well that people are curious about and i think it's a isn't too hard to get a hold of also
Speaker 2the the knowledge or the videos that you guys are sharing as well ties back to you know you don't need to be an engineer to understand these things so so you can explain it in simple terms as well and you don't necessarily need to be a super scientifically focused person but you can you can find your way in the renewable space from any angle pretty much and you can always contribute right absolutely
Speaker 1you know you can come into this space through software you can come in through engineering you could be in sales or account management and speaking to clients and you could be starring in videos or editing those videos to see there's so many avenues into the industry which is is exciting it's absolutely not just high-vis and steel cat boots out on power station
Speaker 2and what personally motivates you when it comes to solving these bigger global challenges in the energy world yeah good question
Speaker 1i think a few things right i personally got into energy very much from a net zero and and decarbonization perspective that was what attracted me to the industry in the first place you know i feel like through through my work and through all of the different jobs i've had i've been able to make an impact that i also like solving hard problems i don't think it's easy um and you know what what worked last year it isn't right this year um and that's something i think i personally find really motivating is that the challenge of you know blending the physics with the commercial you know keeping pace with the rate of change and innovation and the industry i find that mentally very stimulating so yeah nice to feel like that hey i'm making an impact in in an area that i'm passionate about when it comes to net zero through my career but also personally rewarding to do things that i think are hard
Speaker 2yeah i mean the biggest challenge uh solves are the most rewarding as well yeah exactly and maybe from a gridcocks perspective can you share any sneak peeks anything interesting that you guys are working on currently that's going to be coming out maybe later this year or early next year that you're super excited
Speaker 1about yeah one i'll chat about it i'll try and keep this not too nerdy is supporting really complex commercial arrangements and so what i mean by that is let's just say i've got say i've got a warehouse and i've got some existing solar on my roof and that's being sold to me from a solar owner via a ppa what if i add a battery to the site you know if the battery charges off the solar what price is that versus if the battery charges from the gridcocks so that's a really big challenge for me if the battery goes to the load and so that allowing our clients to reflect an absolute ton of different arrangements in that space is really critical and that's really important when we're thinking about how do we support clients to properly represent different commercials where that's solar battery ppas in that example but also properly represent arrangements like people in the gb market particularly this interaction with with pb assets as well so it's really really important in the data science world but something that we're really trying to expose to clients and a friendly ui so that they can actually play around with different commercial models and test them in a super intuitive way and represents different energy flows between assets and price all of those as well and therefore understand hey what's what's best for my science if i'm the site owner or maybe i'm developing those propositions and again how do i park that properly to incentivize the assets to do the right thing so that that's personally i think something that that is really exciting that the team have put a lot of efforts into representing that which you know i think you say broadly encompasses supporting you know wholesale market enhanced ppas which is cool and then i'd say another thing is europe right for us we've got team in in london and the team in australia and our london team are supporting our clients modeling in europe we're just seeing continual pull from from clients modeling in europe and so that's something you know certainly from a business perspective we're getting more and more deliberate about which yeah personally find very exciting um and really cool to to make sure we've got really full support for our clients um modeling modeling in europe very
Speaker 2cool and and can we share any links to that in the show notes below some something that people can search for later yeah
Speaker 1absolutely i will ping you a couple after this peter and keep you posted if there are any other
Speaker 2ones as well cool if someone is working in renewables either utilities or also corporate energy who should be able to support that i think that's a really good question that's a really good one i think that's a really good question that's a really good question that's a really good question reach out to grid gog right now what kind of people or companies are you looking to speak to
Speaker 1yeah awesome question right and i'd say you know there's sort of two two ways that we think about our clients and one is you know are they building energy assets to participate in markets or to generate revenues and so we're saying that i could be a utility scale developer or an ipp i could also be an energy major you know wearing that sort of developer hat um and potentially a consultant who sits in that sort of area and i think that's a really good question and i think that's a really good area and then the second is am i developing energy assets to support my loaves and if i'm doing that maybe i'm electrifying my fleet and i just cannot get grid connections so now i'm starting to think about renewables or storage for my site and so within that area i could again be behind me to develop a consultant and also a large energy user that i've got an energy team and so people sit in those verticals and want to make sure that they're making the best decisions when it comes to modeling their energy projects and then investing in the right assets and also being enabled to make those decisions faster and more accurately than with historical tool sets then they should absolutely be in touch with us
Speaker 2and a follow-up question to that is what would be the right way to get in touch either with yourself or
Speaker 1gridcog yeah so best way is obviously feel free to reach out to us on linkedin gridcog website www.gridcog.com has many links for you to get in touch with the team and also to learn more about what we do and definitely check out our videos page that i have genuinely interested in a whole lot of topics and how you could model different sites in the energy transition and also get a sneak peek of the gridcog software um through those videos as well
Speaker 2very cool so i'll make sure to link to all of those in the show notes below and uh on that jenna any final thoughts to add um
Speaker 1i think we've covered a lot a lot uh this morning peter so yeah just want to say thanks for the conversation i really enjoyed it if anyone listening does want to get in touch with me or the gridcog team please don't hesitate really keen to have a chat in uh sheer thoughts on the energy transition and potentially support you guys to make the best decisions when it comes to the sites you're looking to invest in or model.
Speaker 2Awesome. Thank you very much for sharing your insight, Jenna. And let's keep in touch.
Speaker 1Bye. Sounds good. See ya.
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