Energy trading and PPAs

[00:00:04.240] - Jon Slowe

Welcome to Talking New Energy, a podcast from LCP Delta. I'm Jon Slowe.

[00:00:09.280] - Sandra Trittin

And I'm Sandra Trittin. And together, we are exploring how the energy transition is unfolding across Europe through conversations with guests from the leading edge of the transition.

[00:00:21.730] - Jon Slowe

Hello, and welcome to the episode. Hi, Sandra.

[00:00:25.010] - Sandra Trittin

Hi, Jon.

[00:00:27.650] - Jon Slowe

Sandra, your background is with virtual power plants (VPP). Today, I'm excited to have a guest on the podcast who is also in virtual power plants, but maybe a different part of virtual power plants to your background. But all around the topic, the hot topic at the moment of flexibility, which I guess is just getting hotter and hotter.

[00:00:48.880] - Sandra Trittin

Exactly. I… I fully share that with you. So, inflexibility can have many different appearances, right? So, I'm really looking forward to hear today from our guests, about his perspective and his view on flexibility.

[00:01:03.590] - Jon Slowe

Great. Well, let's say hello. Hello, Duncan.

[00:01:07.990] - Duncan Dale

Hello, Jon. Hi, Sandra. Nice to see you.

[00:01:10.470] - Sandra Trittin

Hey, Duncan.

[00:01:12.340] - Jon Slowe

Duncan, I'd like to start by maybe demystifying your job title a bit. Vice president of customer facing businesses with Statkraft UK and Ireland. Now many of our listeners will know of Statkraft, but can you tell us maybe in a a nutshell how you describe your job, to our audience who are working in the transition in some form or other? And then maybe let's get into some of the key aspects of, Statkraft's business in the UK that that you lead.

[00:01:45.180] - Duncan Dale

Yeah. Sure. Thanks. So, origination really means finding stuff, right?

[00:01:50.060] - Duncan Dale

So, it means finding business opportunities, finding looking as to where the energy transition is going to move to, and developing products, that work for customers. So, you have to spend a lot of time understanding where the market's going, what customers are looking for, designing things for them, and then implementing them. And then, once it becomes standard, it becomes more of a sales process rather than an origination process.

[00:02:15.460] - Jon Slowe

And the type of customers that you are focused on?

[00:02:19.390] - Duncan Dale

Well, ours are largely around, renewable power, generation around, solar and wind and biomass and hydro and providing them with a route to market so that they can sell the intermittent power that they generate. But then we realised that in order to get a high level of renewable penetration on the system, that you need an equally or similarly large amount of flexibility to be able to keep the system stable when there's no wind or sun on the system. So, we developed our software to be able to optimise the output from gas engines and batteries and even large steam kettles as well to take those into the marketplace and create as much value, for our customers as well.

[00:03:08.760] - Jon Slowe

So, typically, you're not owning any of these… these assets. You're sitting in the middle of...

[00:03:14.120] - Duncan Dale

No, we sit in the middle. So, we… we I mean, the overall size of the book that books the businesses that we've developed is around 7,000 megawatts of renewables and flex, and more than 97% of that is with third parties. And we have, hundreds and hundreds of different customers, and they're all treated based on the quality of their assets. So, they're all treated equally, and they're marked in such a way against the market.

[00:03:48.490] - Duncan Dale

So, they get the full benefit of what they, what they produce.

[00:03:57.500] - Sandra Trittin

And is there any majority of, of energy source that your customers are preferring? Is it solar or wind or is it equally?

[00:04:09.990] - Duncan Dale

It's a... It's a... It's a… the kind of the mix that you see on the system. So, it there there's actually in terms of terawatt hours, there's… there's more wind, offshore wind, onshore wind than solar, but quite a similar similarish capacity in megawatts of the 2. Yeah, but it's largely it's… it's almost predominantly around the wholesale market. 99.9% is wholesale market larger assets, not, smaller behind the metre type assets.

[00:04:38.580] - Duncan Dale

We've got a a few that we've aggregated, but it's really the big the bigger players out there. Yeah. Don't have to go much below 5 megawatts also.

[00:04:50.040] - Jon Slowe

How's that 7 gigawatts breakdown? You mentioned renewable generation and flexibility for flexible generation.

[00:04:56.160] - Duncan Dale

So, it's we've got 4,300 megawatts of, renewable generation, in about 240 long-term, power purchase agreements. So, a lot of that business runs out till… till for another 12 or 15 years or so. And then, we have 2,700 megawatts of gas engines and batteries and the like in the… the flex business. I mean, we also have, a downstream business where we sell the output from these projects to, effectively, either directly to large end customers as what are called corporate PPAs (Power Purchase Agreements) or indeed to resellers. So, these are other suppliers who then supply to end customers.

[00:05:45.860] - Duncan Dale

And 1 of those is, is a company called Bryt, which is now fully owned by Statkraft, and a total only sells renewable energy, but we sell to other resellers too.

[00:05:58.460] - Jon Slowe

Okay. So, you've got the full value chain yourself, but then you will partner with others or sell to sell your power to others who are selling on to customers.

[00:06:07.380] - Duncan Dale

Yes.

[00:06:09.140] - Sandra Trittin

Mm-hmm.

[00:06:09.700] - Jon Slowe

Now PPAs is another hot topic in the market at the moment. Can you tell us a bit about how you get how you give customers the best price you can for their power? Because I imagine that well, that's quite a competitive business. There's lots of people offering to do that. What's your..., What's your edge or what's your… your USP around that?

[00:06:32.310] - Duncan Dale

Well, it depends what type of PPA you're talking about first, Jon. So, can… we could you kind of narrow it down a little bit as to whether it's a renewable PPA, whether it's a, a flex PPA or a corporate PPA, or do you want all three?

[00:06:47.680] - Sandra Trittin

Could you please give a short, yeah, a short explanation of the 3?

[00:06:52.400] - Duncan Dale

Yeah. Okay. Sure. Sure. So, with a renewable PPA, generally speaking now, because there are auctions, they've… they've kind of got a fixed price for their power, but what they need to do is get the physical power when they generate it to the marketplace.

[00:07:12.380] - Duncan Dale

And what you then need to do is almost all markets, the UK and across the whole of Europe, you'll have a day-ahead market. So, you forecast what's gonna happen in the day-ahead market. You sell it in the day-ahead market, and, of course, forecast are always wrong to varying degrees, and then you you have to buy or sell your error in your forecast all the way up to gate closure where the system operator takes over. So, and you have to keep you… you keep forecasting and reforecasting and try and get your imbalance cost down to as low as value as possible. In other markets that might be merchant, then you would want a guarantee. You would want a fixed price or indeed a floor that guarantees the income stream, and we also do that. So, that's a big part of the business, providing long-term guarantees that risk manage on behalf of the customers. So, that's… that's your renewable PPAs. On flexibility on gas engines and batteries, that's all about monetising the flexibility. So, you're doing a forecast, you're looking at your short run cost in the case of a gas engine and what we call the get out of bed number and then selling that into the day-ahead market, but you would delta hedge it based on how in or out of the money the option is.

[00:08:35.290] - Duncan Dale

And then again keep re-trading within the day to monetize that that flexibility and into the balancing market where you're actually trading with the… the system operator. And then a corporate PPA, generally, there are lots of flavours of those virtual, physical payers produced or baseload. But with those, you're, providing an end customer with a long-term fixed price. And those customers into varying degrees are trying to demonstrate, how green they are, whether it's a pure additional payers produced, they're taking the entire output from a new project to something where it's baseload power for 7 to 10 years with some certificates. So, I think that's the gamut of… of PPAs.

[00:09:30.180] - Sandra Trittin

Thanks a lot for that clarification.

[00:09:33.940] - Jon Slowe

And then, the… the magic sauce behind Statkraft, business, what how would you describe, what makes use I mean, there are lots of people in this market, but where's your edge or where's your focus? Where's your differentiation?

[00:09:51.600] - Duncan Dale

Well, that's a good question. I I, I think one of the things that makes us special is I'm terribly proud of my team, right? We have some really great people. They're really good at what they do. I find them awesome, and we work together really well because a lot of a lot of this is around innovation, the edge. But there are other things, of course. One of the things is having in order to produce a long provide a long-term guarantee, you need to have a strong credit rating. So, we've got an... a rated credit. We've been around for a 130 years or so.

[00:10:31.500] - Duncan Dale

So, that's… that's important because if you've got a guarantee from Statkraft, the banks are happy, the infrastructure companies are happy, they know that we will pay out even if it's extremely painful. We're not gonna go bust. So, that helps. And one of the some of the other areas are we have invested an awful lot of intellectual property into developing our trading systems. We have our in-house proprietary system that we call Unity that optimises the flex and manages the renewable route to market.

[00:11:08.550] - Duncan Dale

I would also say that our strengths around portfolio management, in two areas. One, developing the products around things like quality factor and spark spreads and looking at the interaction between these different types of products and, the different type exposures from renewables and flex and hedging that into the marketplace and providing hedges for our our customers. That would be a key area. And then also, wider still as a team around pricing risk. So, traders, you know, people always think of traders as being bold, courageous types.

[00:11:52.880] - Duncan Dale

They tend to go bust quite quickly. Traders have to be traders need to be very, very cogent of the risks and look at the downside. So, what the way that we go about doing this, we're very fundamentals based. So, we what we do is that we look at the energy transition going out 15, 20 years with lots of different scenarios of how much wind is going to be built, how much solar is gonna be built, how much flexibility is gonna be on the system, different, you know, the the expected fuel price, a high price, a very high price, a low price, and a very low price for the different fuels, different weather years as well. So, we have several 100 scenarios, and we will look fundamentally at how much, money the deal is expected to make on a p50 basis and then how much we might lose on a p1 basis.

[00:12:50.580] - Duncan Dale

And then we price that risk. And so, that's how we so I think we have a good skill set around pricing risk as well. So, I think if you add all those things together, that that's what makes, creates a competitive advantage.

[00:13:09.690] - Jon Slowe

That that risk element the just a bit on the… the risk element. So, what you're essentially doing is taking risk away from your customers, aren't you?

[00:13:20.330] - Duncan Dale

Yes. Yes.

[00:13:21.370] - Jon Slowe

And working out how much risk to take away and how to price that.

[00:13:26.180] - Duncan Dale

Yes.

[00:13:28.500] - Jon Slowe

So, that's no different from a number of other people. But it's one thing predicting risk. It's another thing taking the risk. In terms of managing the risk, does your flexible portfolio give you extra tools? You've got quite a chunk of flexibility in your portfolio; those figures you described earlier. Does that help you manage some of that short term market risk?

[00:13:58.350] - Duncan Dale

That's quite a difficult question, a complex question to... To answer. When we price things, we tend to price them on a standalone basis rather than on a portfolio basis. When we run the portfolios and hedge the portfolios, we hedge them separately from one another. But sometimes there are risks that you can't hedge, you know, the over-the-counter market, for power only goes out 2 spreads, 3 years. You might get 5 year product, but you're gonna pay a massive bid off a spread.

[00:14:30.880] - Duncan Dale

So, there are some positions that you can't close out without paying an enormous price for it. So, you have to warehouse those positions. And we are cognisant of the kind of synergies between the different, different types of books and how they how they relate to one another. So, there… there is an advantage there, but it's quite difficult to quantify.

[00:14:57.250] - Jon Slowe

Yeah...

[00:14:57.570] - Duncan Dale

Does that make sense?

[00:14:58.690] - Jon Slowe

It does. If you...

[00:14:59.570] - Duncan Dale

Did I answer your question?

[00:15:00.850] - Jon Slowe

If you didn't have that flexible portfolio, would in what ways...

[00:15:06.010] - Duncan Dale

Yes.

[00:15:06.170] - Jon Slowe

Would it make it harder? And as we get more and more renewables on electricity systems across Europe across Europe, will that that big chunk of flexible assets you have become more and more important?

[00:15:27.710] - Duncan Dale

I think when it comes to that, I I don't, I don't want too big this up too much. I think we run them sort of more or less independently from… from one another, but there are some but there are some synergies. It's not... You I mean, what what… what you see, for example, is, batteries tend to be if you look at the battery spreads, they are a function at a very high level of the degree of solar build and the fuel price. So, solar kinda gives you the… the negative prices or the low prices in the summer when you've got not much demand and a lot of solar on the system, and it's all concentrated into midday, which gives you the low prices. And then, the fuel prices drive your system marginal cost when there's nothing on the system, you've got to run a CCGT (Combined Cycle Gas Turbine).

[00:16:22.440] - Duncan Dale

So, they kind of they kind of follow one another that way. So, you you do get some correlations between your solar and your or your flex. But if you are, to gain exposure to solar now, in the UK at least, very few people are building solar without a CfD (Contract for Difference) from the allocation round. So, they've already got the hedge. So, our exposure in Statkraft is largely to the balancing cost.

[00:16:53.040] - Jon Slowe

Yep.

[00:16:53.440] - Duncan Dale

And that is partly a small element is fixed, but quite a lot of it follows, the volatility of the power price system between day-ahead and intraday and the underlying power price. So, you've got a modest exposure to the power price there, but a big exposure to the spark spread from solar being built, but then the income that you get from the solar is small. So, they're… they're kind of independent from… from one another.

[00:17:18.540] - Jon Slowe

Yeah.

[00:17:18.700] - Duncan Dale

So, that's… that's why I was saying I didn't wanna big it up too much because they're not they're not that related. Our role, it really is to provide providing good service to our customer and to get more efficient on the operations and… and then pricing, the guarantees correctly.

[00:17:35.300] - Jon Slowe

Yeah. And you can apply the skill sets. You talked about both to the renewable assets and the flexible assets.

[00:17:41.940] - Duncan Dale

Yes. Yeah. I mean, where it does become, maybe but where it does become more kind of interesting is, one of the things I was saying was around, our portfolio management, which… which, is leading in the area of things like quality factor swaps. So, quality factor is the ratio of a wind farm's income divided by the base load power price, and people call it different things like cannibalisation.

[00:18:14.440] - Jon Slowe

Or capture price. There's another term.

[00:18:16.440] - Duncan Dale

Yep. Capture price.

[00:18:18.650] - Jon Slowe

Yep.

[00:18:18.740] - Duncan Dale

And so, in order to manage it, you so what we've done is work with the market to have a separate swap for… for quality factor. So, we trade quality factor either as a as sort of an outright new index, and sometimes with very large supply suppliers that want, a power contract that looks like a wind PPA. So, we've developed a market for that.

[00:18:46.940] - Duncan Dale

So, we buy we fix prices for our generators, and we fix the quality factor there and then we sell the quality factor into this new market, which is pure which is pure quality factor. And the quality factor is there are correlations, reasonably strong correlations, between quality factor and… and spark spread from the generation from CCGTs. So, you can actually dirty hedge or delta hedge, QF and... And spark spreads. You also then also get weather risk and volume risk as well, which also has to be separately hedged from one another. And it's… it's kind of like understanding holistically how those different risks that you get from weather in renewables and how it can be offset with flexibility that that gets pulled together.

[00:19:42.680] - Jon Slowe

Yeah. I think it's... We might be losing some of our listeners with some of the the… the nitty gritty detail, Duncan, around...

[00:19:50.360] - Duncan Dale

It's a bit techy, isn't it?

[00:19:51.320] - Jon Slowe

 Yeah. It is techy. Lucky. But it's fascinating!

[00:19:52.920] - Sandra Trittin

And its part of it.

[00:19:56.190] - Jon Slowe

Yeah. Weather, as you said, becoming a big a big factor in, electricity trading and the need to understand weather and the… the different, I guess, forecasts that, you can make around wind, solar output, and so on. Yep.

[00:20:17.570] - Sandra Trittin

And go ahead, Jon.

[00:20:20.370] - Jon Slowe

Yeah. You go, Sandra.

[00:20:23.520] - Sandra Trittin

Yeah. I... I just had a general question more around the the… the business of… of doing all of that because it sounds so complex, but what would you see currently as your biggest challenge?

[00:20:35.850] - Duncan Dale

Oh, that's interesting. I wouldn't call it a challenge. I think the… the biggest opportunity is hydrogen. You okay with me taking it in that direction? Or is there?

[00:20:47.850] - Jon Slowe

No. Let's go.

[00:20:49.450] - Duncan Dale

Yeah.

[00:20:50.010] - Sandra Trittin

Mm-hmm.

[00:20:50.490] - Duncan Dale

Yeah. I mean yeah. So, let let's talk about, the hydrogen.

[00:20:56.670] - Duncan Dale

I mean, hydrogen, I think is everyone says is gonna be essential to the energy transition. I mean, mainly, it'll be around industrial processes and decarbonisation, you know, for… for green steel, for example, but sometimes also as a... As a heat source as well and then ultimately into transport. But eventually, it could be stored, in salt caverns and, taken back out again, you know, several weeks later and run through a power station and… and then convert it back into power again. A lot of people, you know, comment about the round-trip efficiency being terribly poor if you've converted power into hydrogen and then hydrogen back into power again. The round-trip efficiency is… is appalling, but you do get to zero carbon.

[00:21:49.870] - Jon Slowe

Well, that's absolutely...

[00:21:51.630] - Jon Slowe

That's what I'm trying...

[00:21:52.510] - Duncan Dale

to say. Shifted it too.

[00:21:53.870] - Jon Slowe

And that application is certainly on the plan for countries like Germany to hit their… their decarbonisation targets.

[00:21:59.070] - Sandra Trittin

Mm-hmm

[00:21:59.470] - Jon Slowe

Yeah.

[00:22:00.320] - Duncan Dale

Yes. Yeah. And… and, of course, the the… the issue of, using power when there's surplus on the system because you've got so much wind and solar where you're trying to meet the… the average demand over time, that's not such a problem that the… the efficiency of the conversion to hydrogen, because the power is pretty much free anyway. But what I think is, we think is really interesting around hydrogen is at least for the UK, I think it's the same for Europe too, the governments want to see a temporal correlation between when the electrolyser is running. They want to see that that it's running and tied back to specific zero carbon sources to specific wind farms and specific solar projects, and then adding up the carbon that's taken from those zero carbon sources and then what you might have to buy from spot to get to a, a low carbon content.

[00:22:56.750] - Duncan Dale

And that's really interesting for us, outside of needing it for the transition because we've got a very big renewables portfolio. Yeah. So, one of the things that we're doing is managing the risk for our customers. That's our job. We're traders and our job is to manage merchant risk and to manage these types of risk is what we're doing is guaranteeing the low carbon hydrogen standard carbon content across each month. And if we don't, then we will pay the foregone subsidy to the electrolyser. And that means that they… they know that they will always get their subsidy one way or another, which gives them more surety for when they, when they build their projects.

[00:23:42.520] - Jon Slowe

Yeah. I've been thinking a bit about the hydrogen value chain recently, and a lot of people focus on the electrolyser and then some people call it the offtaker or the buyer of the hydrogen. But an equally intricate part is the part you've described, which is that interface between the electrolyser and the power market. Because… because it's not simply a case of buying power on the market. It's that temporal matching, that additionality of renewable generation.

[00:24:09.080] - Duncan Dale

Yes.

[00:24:09.800] - Jon Slowe

But you've gotta put all that together at the same time, which with the hydrogen value chain isn't… isn't easy. You gotta do the power side and the offtake or customer side. And that's two sets of risk, I guess, to consider.

[00:24:25.490] - Duncan Dale

It it… it is. And, I mean, this is the fascinate this is why our job is so interesting really because we're helping create a new industry, create a new market, and having to work with our customers and our customers' customers to… to pull this all together because, you know, for example, you, you know, you're trying to balance supply and demand on the power side reflected with the power price to a end customer that is making widgets, shall we say, and they'll just take the hydrogen when they want it. So, you have to put storage in there to absorb all of those losses in some form or other, the differences between the between the two sides. And it's super interesting because, you know, you can oversize the electrolyser relative to the hydrogen demand of the end customer and then put a lot of storage in to give you flexibility, in order to manage that power price risk. And then, what you can do is interrupt the hydrogen supply providing the end customer as to what methane is a backup.

[00:25:35.640] - Duncan Dale

And, you know, you… you go to this customer you go to the end customer to say, oh, you should buy some hydrogen. I said, what's in it for me? And, they look, obviously, they are saving carbon, which is a great thing, and that's good for their… their value chain further down. But effectively, what they're getting even though there's a 15 year fixed strike in the UK, what they're getting is floating methane price effectively.

[00:25:59.850] - Sandra Trittin

Mm-hmm.

[00:26:00.170] - Duncan Dale

But they're stuck with the same supply for 15 years. So...

[00:26:03.130] - Jon Slowe

Yeah.

[00:26:03.450] - Duncan Dale

It's… it's really only the carbon benefit that's, making them sign these contracts, I would say.

[00:26:12.210] - Jon Slowe

Duncan, we're getting to that time of the podcast where we'll bring up the… the talking new energy crystal ball. Maybe you'll weave hydrogen into your… your answer. So, I'm gonna set the dial to 2030. And let's say you're looking back with pride at what your business, what Standard Chart has achieved in the last 5 years. What would you be proudest about in 2030, do you think, when you look back at the last 5 years?

[00:26:43.440] - Duncan Dale

We actually, you know, we're not very good at celebrating things. We… we kinda get stuff done when we move on to the next thing, which is which is something that we need to learn about a little bit better. I think hydrogen will be a big thing and making that new business area work. But if I could maybe this a generic answer or two generic answers, actually. I think the most important thing is to, I think that we will be proud of is looking back, have we predicted reasonably well where the market's gonna go and what products that our customers need and… and delivered them.

[00:27:23.520] - Duncan Dale

You know, it's… it's one thing having the ideas. It's… it's also difficult to deliver them. Have we delivered the services, the products to now the energy transition to happen, and making a significant contribution to enable that to happen and making a profit? That'll be that'll be the big thing. And on the softer side, you know, like I said earlier, I think one thing is that, I'm really proud of is… is just working with such great people. And, you know, a lot of guys in the team have we've been together for a long time, and I hope that we continue to perform well and stick together and, you know, make all these things happen. I think that'll be the other the other element of this, that having gone through this with the team.

[00:28:11.080] - Sandra Trittin

Wow. That sounds all exciting for the next years, and not...

[00:28:15.820] - Duncan Dale

Well, I think it is. I think it is for all of us, isn't it? This is a huge challenge. It affects each and every one of us, and it's… it's nice to go home at the end of each day and say that you've actually done something positive for the environment as well as, you know, earned an honest crust.

[00:28:32.390] - Sandra Trittin

Mm-hmm.

[00:28:33.420] - Jon Slowe

Duncan, just picking up on what you said about team and thinking about experience in the team, there's a lot of opportunity in battery optimisation at the moment, for example, that a lot of companies are jumping into. But how important is that? Are there years of experience? You know, if you look across your team, you've been doing this quite a long time. Is that valuable, or is it more the, the analytical capabilities of the team and less about the experience? Or where… where would you rate sort of longevity in the market and experience and all? I saw this 3 years ago, or we saw that 5 years ago. How important is that?

[00:29:17.460] - Duncan Dale

A lot yeah. Very interesting question. I'm not sure how to answer it. We actually ran a process to, hire a couple of people to do batteries and flex, and it took us 2 years to find the people that we wanted, and they're still with us now. So, we're very choosy. But what we look for if it's a new market, right, there aren't people with that experience. But what we look for are people who have general energy industry experience but have a huge curiosity.

[00:29:52.360] - Jon Slowe

Right.

[00:29:52.760] - Duncan Dale

To ask all the difficult questions, but then also have the ability to implement things and make things happen. So, I… I think those are the sorts of things that we look for, and then we look for complementary skills. And we look for people who will sort of be prepared to argue, argue their corner, and… and, and then we end up with a better result because we've looked at it from lots of different angles.

[00:30:18.400] - Jon Slowe

Which comes back to what you said about modelling those hundreds of different possible outcomes for the next years. You need people with the curiosity to do that and the yeah. I think this this outcome is more likely or that outcome is more likely.

[00:30:31.020] - Sandra Trittin

Yeah.

[00:30:31.660] - Duncan Dale

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But it's… it's tremendously stimulating and interesting. So, it it's really nice to be part of this energy transition.

[00:30:40.930] - Jon Slowe

Yeah. Well, Duncan, we better draw the discussion to a close there. Thanks so much for your time and sharing with our listeners your experiences from the… the world of energy trading.

[00:30:53.910] - Duncan Dale

Thank you, Jon. Thank you, Sandra.

[00:30:56.080] - Sandra Trittin

Thank you, Duncan. It was really insightful.

[00:30:59.520] - Jon Slowe

Sandra, what… what stood out to you from that that discussion?

[00:31:06.160] - Sandra Trittin

So, one thing that is clear is trading is complex. So, that's one thing. I have never looked into details of trading or anything, but these insights, as I mentioned today, were really interesting, and then also these the different parts of PPAs and the different appearances. That was quite interesting. And the last one, which is probably more a matter of naming or of phrasing something, was, when Duncan used flexibility and flexibility in a manner of having the capacity behind of different types of assets to provide and to react in a flexible way, right? So, this this I found really interesting because it communicates much more of the value of the asset than less about the type of the asset. So, yeah, these were my three, three takeaways for today, and I have many more questions so we can have another session on that on that for sure. But then, what is your takeaway, Jon? What stood out for you?

[00:32:17.600] - Jon Slowe

I think for me, it's cementing the specialisation of different parts of the value chain in the energy transition. So, for a successful transition, we need people who can take all different types of risk and specialise in all different parts of the value chain all through to innovating around selling solar and battery as a service to residential customers through to developers of renewable assets to the trading functions that that Duncan talked about. So, it's for me, that makes the energy transition so fascinating because it's such interesting value chain, and there are so many specialists required in the value chain.

[00:33:07.280] - Sandra Trittin

Mm-hmm. So, a lot of work for all of us.

[00:33:10.000] - Jon Slowe

Absolutely. Yep. Well, let's draw it to a close there. Thanks everyone for listening. We hope you enjoyed the episode, learned something new, gained some new perspective, from the world of energy trading, and look forward to welcoming you back next week.

[00:33:25.230] - Jon Slowe

Thanks, and goodbye.

[00:33:28.400] - Sandra Trittin

Thank you. Bye.

[00:33:29.600] - Duncan Dale

Thank you. Bye.

[00:33:31.600] - Sandra Trittin

Thanks for tuning in. We are excited to bring you captivating conversations from the leading edge of Europe's energy transitions. If you got suggestions for topics or guests for future episodes, please let us know.

[00:33:43.500] - Jon Slowe

And if you're enjoying the podcast, then please do rate it and share it with colleagues. For show notes, transcripts, and more, please visit lcpdelta.com.