Fair rules for flexible demand

Flexible demand is poised to play a crucial role in the energy transition, yet market access, regulatory frameworks, and industry rules are not evolving quickly enough to support its growth. In this episode, we delve into this dynamic segment with insights from Michael Villa, the Executive Director of SmartEn, the European industry association for flexible demand, and Lucy Murley, an expert from LCP Delta. 

Episode transcript

[00:00:04.640] - 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.

[00:00:21.510] - Jon Slowe

Hello and welcome to the episode. Before we get started, a brief encouragement to rate or review the podcast. We'd really appreciate that. And tell your friends and colleagues about the podcast if you think they'd enjoy it. Now, onto today's episode. Sandra, demand-side flexibility, a topic that was the beginning of your step into the energy sector.

[00:00:45.050] - Sandra Trittin

Yes. Back in 2012, right. And it's still around and it's still more present than ever.

[00:00:52.050] - Jon Slowe

So, great to come back to that topic today. We know Europe's energy transition is going to need huge amounts of flexibility, and we know we're going to need every bit of flexibility we can get. And the demand-side can play a big, big contribution in that. So, to explore the sector, we're delighted to have two guests. Michael Villa, who's running smartEn, the European trade association for demand-side flexibility. Hello, Michael.

[00:01:23.280] - Michael Villa

Hello, Jon. Hi, Sandra.

[00:01:26.440] - Jon Slowe

And Lucy Murley, colleague and expert at LCP Delta. Hello, Lucy.

[00:01:32.020] - Lucinda Murley

Hello, everyone.

[00:01:33.580] - Sandra Trittin

Hi, Lucy.

[00:01:35.860] - Jon Slowe

So, we're going to start the discussion by asking you, the listener, to do a bit of work, because I'm going to describe a cartoon, and I want everyone to try and visualise this cartoon. So, let's go for it. You've got a line up of different animals. I'm looking at a dog, a seal, an elephant, a penguin, a chimpanzee, a bird. You get the picture. And you've got someone talking to them from behind a desk saying, for a fair selection, everyone has to take the same exam. Please climb that tree. So, all of that different animals that I described have to climb the tree to make it a fair test. Sandra, why is this a nice analogy for demand-side flexibility?

[00:02:25.250] - Sandra Trittin

Well, I think it fits perfectly and I would love to see the elephant actually climbing the tree. But in the end, the market regulation always or is quite generally, and everyone has to fit into that regulation or into the regulatory requirements with all the different types of flexibility and all the different types of assets that can provide flexibility.

[00:02:56.510] - Jon Slowe

So, you mean from like a big open cycle gas turbine, a big battery, down to a residential heat pump or electric vehicle.

[00:03:05.250] - Sandra Trittin

Exactly. And the requirements are all the same, right. So, to give you an example, if you want to provide FCR services in Switzerland, no matter if you're a hydropower station or if you have like thousands of heat pumps, they all have to fulfil the same certifications, the same rulings. And just to give you an example, in Germany for that matter, people were building into residential batteries, frequency metres at every single home, right? Because the requirement that was given for gas power station as well as for residential battery, that each individual asset has to consist of and has to bring like a frequency metre as well. And this is a bit difficult and complex, let's say for the industry, especially since the demand-side and the possibility to harness demand-side flexibility is continuously growing.

[00:04:02.320] - Jon Slowe

Michael, is this your life then? Is this your life trying to get the rules right? Or how much of your life is this like cartoon that I described? Describe your day-to-day work?

[00:04:12.600] - Michael Villa

Actually, I would love to see the fish climbing that tree. So, that's a challenge. But it means that indeed maybe players that are new start-up innovators, different from incumbents, can and have the capability, proven capability to offer and activate flexibility. And that's a challenge. But we need to have the rule of the game to allow all players to activate the flexibility of all consumers. If this flexibility is a benefit for both the system and for consumers. And with consumers, indeed I intend both the individual home, so individual households to the very large energy intensive industry. So, there are market players out there that can deploy both flexible capacity and also can activate that flexibility. So, we just need to have the rule of the game that are not discriminatory, that are allowing an open access of all flexible resources to be activated and indeed climb that tree.

[00:05:33.890] - Jon Slowe

And is that the nub of your job, Michael? Is that the core focus of smartEn at the moment, in trying to open up the rules, reduce the barriers?

[00:05:45.730] - Michael Villa

Yeah, I would say that in the past seven years we have been able to dialogue with new policymakers in Brussels to create a legislative enabling framework underpinned by clear rules, so not vague initiatives or plans, but real laws, European laws that are applicable throughout Europe to enable market players to have a business to be remunerated and to allow consumers indeed to activate their flexibility. So, that's really the positive aspect of this work that we have been done throughout the seven years is that at the moment there are 64 legislative provisions from the European Market Design on two specific legislation addressing charging point of elect vehicles, buildings and all addressing this flexible capability. The problem is that this framework is still a European exercise that in very few cases is implemented across Europe. So, it means that the barriers that these market players from the flexibility, demand management industry, how we call our sector, are still present very much on the ground. So, we need to indeed transpose these policy frameworks to enable these players to be rewarded for the activation of this flexibility in all markets.

[00:07:46.010] - Sandra Trittin

But I think it's great that something at least is moving, right? And Lucy, based on what Michael is saying, how do you see the involvement of the industry and the industry players?

[00:08:04.610] - Lucinda Murley

I think there's a lot of movement at the moment in demand-side flexibility. Michael and his colleagues will know very well from the work we do with smartEn on mapping accessibility to flexibility. That's a tongue twister to say - that there is definitely movement in the right direction. The industry players both literally is in C&I, the slightly larger asset owners and also more broadly the definition of the word, as Michael was saying, the chargepoint OEMs, the heat pump manufacturers and operators, there's definitely a movement in the right direction for these assets to become more accessible. But I really like Michael's point on the European wide element of this. Yes, there's the EU laws, yes there's the laws as opposed to suggestions, but are they being implemented uniformly across member states and across markets to actually enable this flexibility? There's one thing to say, the EU's declared this. Is it being implemented in Hungary and Germany and Belgium slightly differently.

[00:09:10.470] - Jon Slowe

The way you've phrased that, Lucy? I guess the answer is no, it's not.

[00:09:13.720] - Lucinda Murley

No, no, no, it's not. This is my really polite way of going… It's not. Sometimes that's not necessarily a bad thing. Different geographies have different needs for flexibility. So, like a one size fits all approach won't necessarily work. Like the GB market versus the Nordic markets versus Italy all have very different needs for flexibility. So, not hounding the metaphor too much, but that tree will be different in the different markets. So, its unfortunately, flexibility is a very physical thing. We need it for system stability. So, it can't be 100% uniformed. And I don't think anyone would suggest so much. But there is still loads that we can do to make it more uniformed and to make it at least, at the very least clearer for those wanting to participate. There's one thing about making it easier. There's still a massive barrier of how do I even do it. Even if I can't, I'd like to know I can't. And I think that's still quite a big barrier on this.

[00:10:15.840] - Michael Villa

Maybe if I can jump in the shape of this tree, as Lucy is saying, really needs to be national or geographically specific. And we have indeed from last year, a specific requirement for all member states to assess their system flexibility needs only having an accurate understanding of how much flexibility this system needs, then you would then need to activate specific resources that can provide solutions to identify the system flexibility needs, which are also very much dependent on the duration. We know that daily, so very short-term flexibility needs will be more required compared to the seasonal ones. That's why market players that can activate the flexibility from the centralised energy resources from demand response should be empowered and enabled to activate the potential, because it is a urgent priority to support an increasing variable energy system. So, the shape of the tree is the starting point to then identify which sector needs to be prioritised in order to support the system and avoid stranded assets and avoid unnecessary investment in resources that might not be cost optimal.

[00:11:57.720] - Jon Slowe

I'm going to push the tree analogy one bit more so I can play devil's advocate here. A TSO, for example, might say, well, it is a very tall thin tree and if you're an elephant, sorry, we need a very tall thin tree because we need everything to provide within a second response. We need it to be able to do a handstand, a backflip, all sorts of different things. But I think what's missing there is the fact that there's no one type of flexibility, or no asset needs to provide all types of flexibilities, that maybe the tree has got lots of branches on the way to the top and some assets will just provide response within a minute, some assets can provide a response within a second. And actually, if we just say all assets have to do everything, then we're going to miss a huge number of existing and new assets coming into the system that can provide aspects of flexibility. So, tree might be the wrong analogy. Maybe its steps going up to something, but each of those animals probably has a role to play in providing that flexibility.

[00:13:15.900] - Michael Villa

But that's very much the consumer centric approach of the decarbonisation of the energy system. So, it's really based on the capabilities of the different consumers that should be allowed to offer their flexibility thanks to different market players to different markets, without being forced to offer that to all markets. That's an extremely important element of a modern interpretation of a business model for demand serviceability, which is also then very much linked to the principle of value stacking. We need to allow also the same resource to bid into different markets because this will be will create a good amount of revenues that will incentivise that flexibility to be activated. But also, we need to avoid that there is an imposition to activate the flexibility from all consumers for a specific product. If this is not the case and these aspects needs to be very much clarified. In particular for energy intensive industries, we need to reassure that when an energy intensive industry can provide flexibility following notably an electrification of their industrial processes, these should not undermine their industrial processes and should be a voluntary service that they can provide to the system and that should be remunerated.

[00:15:02.120] - Jon Slowe

In the same way that if I might want my heat pump to respond flexibly, both implicitly and explicitly, I've got to have the right comfort in my home or set the parameters for the comfort in my home.

[00:15:16.290] - Michael Villa

Exactly.

[00:15:17.770] - Lucinda Murley

Yeah.

[00:15:21.370] - Jon Slowe

Michael, I remember smartEn when it first started. When did smartEn first start? Seven years ago?

[00:15:28.650] - Michael Villa

More actually. It's an evolution of an organisation that was called SCDC.

[00:15:32.940] - Jon Slowe

That's right.

[00:15:33.840] - Michael Villa

Was established in 2011 and from 2011 until 2017, it was an organisation of merely aggregators of demand response. And then it expanded from 2018 into the broader understanding of flexibility from the demand-side. And at the beginning indeed it was only small club of very few aggregators. And now we have more than 110 companies which from this year we are calling them the flexible demand management industry, which is a broad spectrum of companies which are also very different business models, but they are all aiming to one specific objective which is activating flexibility from all consumers. So, you can have indeed still aggregator of demand response, but you can also have suppliers that are offering dynamic price contracts. You have also manufacturers of smart appliances or smart devices, and you are also market players that can help set up local energy initiatives like energy communities, peer-to-peer trading that enable this consumer centric and flexible approach to generation. And also, the last cluster is those market players that can offer independent market platform to help for example DSO to trade and create local flexibility markets.

[00:17:18.720] - Michael Villa

So, they are very different, but they are all having one specific objective enable and activate the flexibility of consumers to be activated it.

[00:17:30.170] - Jon Slowe

And how… It must be an art in running any trade association. But aligning the interests of your members as your membership gets wider and wider, does that get challenging for you or actually is that not too big of a challenge for you?

[00:17:48.810] - Michael Villa

It really depends the challenge. But in general, there is a convergence to have an enabling framework that allow everyone to then compete in the market. So, that's the glue, that's the reason why indeed there is a very also high retention rate in our business organisation. So, members really appreciate in becoming a member of the organisation because they can drive a specific agenda, but they can also have a very good understanding of what's going to happen in the future. And so, because of that define their business models in light of the European developments. I'm always saying that by becoming a member of smartEn, you have a competitive advantage of four years to create an accurate and adequate business model. Why? Because two years normally is the duration of the shaping of a European framework and two years, if everything goes well, is the actual implementation of that framework on the market. So, that's something that is also an advantage for companies to be part and then create indeed a forward-looking business model.

[00:19:23.270] - Sandra Trittin

And Michael, you were just referring to that overarching framework, right, for flexibility which unites all your members. What would you see currently as the biggest challenge in getting that implemented? Or let's say moving that forward, right. On the regulatory side.

[00:19:42.430] - Michael Villa

Yeah, it's difficult to find only to have only one reply.

[00:19:48.500] - Jon Slowe

Lots of challenges.

[00:19:50.630] - Sandra Trittin

Yes.

[00:19:51.790] - Michael Villa

It's really… Well, it's system operators. Well, the first when a big one is really the incentives that are given to system operators to procure and use the flexibility of connect consumers. So, I would not really put the burden on system operators, but a bit more on the NRAs that needs to have to shape adequate remuneration mechanism incentives for them to procure. Then indeed the rule of the game of any markets, whether it is a wholesale markets or a DSO, local flexibility markets or a TSO balancing markets or any other uncertainty services, these are indeed barriers that needs to be allowing demand and aggregators to bid. And yeah, these are some, just to mention a few. What I think instead needs still to be addressed as a major challenge is everything that is related to data access and sharing in interoperable way across Europe. Because yeah, a system integrated approach of consumers require a lot of access to data and there are very many data flows that needs to communicate among each other and data hubs, data platforms that needs to have an interoperable sharing of these data to support indeed the business community that I represent to create and activate the flexibility of consumers.

[00:21:41.970] - Michael Villa

And still, this is, there is too much disaggregation, there is no common pattern to go in that sense. Hence, we need to very rapidly define a European energy data space which is cybersecure, which is interoperable, and which is consumer centric.

[00:22:07.020] - Jon Slowe

Lucy, so if you were to answer that question, you're working with a lot of industry players, what do you think is the hot topics from your perspective? Or what are people struggling with? Or what's the biggest asks of some of the industry players that you're working with on a day-to-day basis?

[00:22:30.270] - Lucinda Murley

Depends on how flippant I can be. But essentially it all comes down to cost. I was writing a few notes when Michael was speaking data interoperability, incentives. A lot of this comes down to cost or value. And there's this tree to go back to the metaphor, or even, as Michael was saying, the incentives for the TSOs, if you're taking this from a market operator, TSO, DSO, the agencies that run the wholesale markets, they have the single focus to have the lowest system costs. They want to procure flexibility at the lowest system cost. And at times that might conflict with our desire to have more accessibility from the demand-side. We all want the energy transition. I'm sure we do. Most of the listeners will, but the guy in the control room just wants flexibility and ideally cheapest. So, I think a lot of the questions that we're getting in is how can we make the best use of the assets that we've got? As Michael said earlier, again, we have a lot of the residential assets as well. They're coming, they're going to be there, going to be sat. Can we use those to make low-cost forms of flexibility so that there's lots of ways that we can utilise the assets that we already have, but it still comes around, I think a lot of the questions around interoperability do we have, does that cost money?

[00:23:55.190] - Lucinda Murley

Do you have to have a hardware box, as Sandra was saying, do you have to have a frequency metre? If so, who pays for that? What part of this ecosystem that we're creating takes the burden of all of these technical characteristics? I don't want to get too doom and gloom because there's lots and lots of positive examples out there of it happening, but it's, it's sort of, unfortunately, the practical ramifications of. At the end of the day, we're providing especially explicit flexibility. This is… You are providing energy to a frequency system. There is a cost. A very, very long-winded answer to your question, Jon. The question is who gets the value? How is that split between all the different market providers? Be that the BRP, the one that's trading, it could be a software, could be the retailer, could be the OEM. Loads of different people in this sort of aggregated VPP landscape, who pays for all of this and how much money can they get? To use another metaphor, how much of the pie, how much, what piece of the pie do they get? Which I think links very nicely to what Michael was saying with the different actors.

[00:25:05.730] - Lucinda Murley

Who gets it?

[00:25:07.410] - Sandra Trittin

Yeah, and probably Lucy, to add to that, because I fully agree with you. It's also about who takes the risk, right. Because who takes which piece of the pie comes also a bit with like who's willing to take the risk? And also, some upfront risk.

[00:25:25.590] - Lucinda Murley

Yeah.

[00:25:26.020] - Sandra Trittin

Because if you go for some specific tariff offerings for your consumer as being retailer, that comes as a risk because you don't know how the revenues in the flexibility space will develop over the next 48-months, right.

[00:25:41.740] - Lucinda Murley

I mean, you probably don't know the next three months exactly.

[00:25:46.610] - Sandra Trittin

Only if you have the crystal ball then.

[00:25:48.580] - Lucinda Murley

Yeah.

[00:25:53.170] - Sandra Trittin

I think it fits really well together with what you have been pointing out.

[00:25:57.930] - Lucinda Murley

I couldn't agree more. I think risk, especially for flexibility, is a key thing. And I know Michael was talking about sort of the C&I assets, but if we look at a very small lens of the residential ones, your EVs, your heat pumps, your wall boxes, we're seeing increasingly that the entities that are installing those, that are controlling those are not necessarily the ones taking the risk. They're coming to us and going, we've got this really cool software we've got, we can optimise, we can get all the data inputs from the consumer, from a tariff, from the weather, we can do all this, but we can't necessarily do that last step, can't quite trade it into the DSO, the TSO, the wholesale market. And that's because they probably just don't want to.

[00:26:41.690] - Jon Slowe

I'm going to come back when I started the cartoon because if our listeners will forgive me, Michael, you described in the early days of SCDC or smartEn, a club of aggregators. And those aggregators typically fulfilled the whole value chain themselves. I think now we've got lots of people from a charge point, a wall box software platform, a trading platform. Lucy, you've got a very famous VPP value chain that you depict. So, no single animal come back to the cartoon is necessarily going to do everything. Maybe some will, but more commonly I think we'll see an ecosystem or different animals working together to push the analogy too far, to provide aspects of that flexibility. And it feels to me in the market now that to begin with, everyone had their eyes on the pie, the prize or that as you described, Lucy, and now people are starting to realise, okay, I'm going to focus on this part, or I'm not going to try and grab the whole part. So, it feels like an industry that's sort of still very much being formed in terms of strategies, tactics against the backdrop of those rules, Michael, that you describe, that are still emerging, being transposed to national legislation.

[00:28:04.780] - Jon Slowe

So quite… I guess a long way of saying it feels quite hard at the moment usually exciting, but quite, quite hard to take steps forward. I don't know how you feel about that description.

[00:28:17.820] - Michael Villa

Yeah, I tend to agree that the pie is defined, but really the opportunity to profit from that are not the same across Europe. However, I think that we need to allow these players to participate and to climb the tree in order to be remunerated, to allow that. So, the starting point is actually to have markets to solve systemic challenges. This is the starting point and if you have that then you will have the creation of business models that can support systemic challenges. So, that's how we also position ourselves. Our industries is there to solve increase and urgent amount of systemic challenges. We are the solution providers. But to do that we need to have the markets, the opportunities, the seniors, wherever is implicit or explicit seniors to allow that to be activated. Because we are helping address these systemic challenges then you need to be remunerated. So, I give you also an example on that. Congestions... Congestions are going to happen across Europe very rapidly. We can help solve that whether it is through local flexibility markets or an energy community that is helping self-balance the assets within a specific community. But all these mechanisms should be market based, should be facilitated by a market players, but needs to be remunerated by the DSO which will save costs from the congestion management if instead it will use the current solutions to address these issues.

[00:30:57.060] - Michael Villa

So, the optimisation would make the remuneration for the market players. And this example could be replicated for all the other systemic challenges that market players could help solve and address.

[00:31:13.780] - Jon Slowe

And that locational point is a really good example because that's something that traditional large, centralised assets that can provide national level flexibility. They can't provide that local level flexibility. We're getting to the time of podcast now where I think we need to bring out the talking new energy crystal ball. Those of you that were at the LCP Delta Summit in Berlin last week will have seen the talking new energy crystal ball, which is very exciting, but you can imagine it if you weren't at the Summit. It's very nice, very colourful. So, the question to Lucy and Michael this week, let's set the dial to 2030 and let's come back to the accessing the value, the market structures, the rules. Imagining that the flexible demand management industry can play a key part in the in the energy transition or plays the key part that it needs to play. So, by 2030, how far, how much progress will we have made to opening up all the markets and all the value streams? Lucy, do you want to go first and then Michael.

[00:32:30.760] - Lucinda Murley

I'm going to go with an almost completely positive answer and go the TSO markets will be open, the DSO markets and more importantly the wholesale markets. So, day ahead and intraday markets will be open to demand-side flexibility. At the moment, especially the wholesale markets are very prohibitive. There's, there's bunches in sort of GB market, Belgium, the Nordics that are trying to open but very, very small scale. The slight caveat is I think we will see a levelling out of the price as in that the marginal cost might go down or the marginal payment that you get but with increased accessibility as Michael was saying, with the value stacking, yeah, your overall opportunity will still be there but the value you would get from an individual value stream might be lower than it is today, but you would have the opportunity to stack across multiple depending on where you are and the system and geographical needs of where you are as well.

[00:33:28.140] - Jon Slowe

But the market's largely open and then it's up to the industry players to work out how they best develop business models and strategies around that.

[00:33:37.440] - Michael Villa

Michael, I can only be positive because if you're looking at six years from now, if, if we are still having all the barriers that we are currently facing, the industry will simply die, and we can't afford because of the challenges that I was mentioning before. So, it's going to be a very dramatic scenario not only for an industrial sector but for the clean energy transition to be cost effective. So yeah, it's really at stake the climate neutral goal in 2050 so and the competitiveness of that transition. So, it's really nothing to really laughing about. I totally agree with what Lucy was saying and actually I think that in 2030 if I put myself in the shoes of a consumer, whether it is a household or an industry at the moment, if they are lucky, they receive one signal where one market player can help that to react to ideally through automation. But in 2030 that consumer should be subject to a multiple multiplicity of seniors. So maybe the challenge that we needed to address post 2030 will be to have.

[00:35:09.470] - Michael Villa

Signals that are not distortive so that the consumer will activate its flexibility in a way that is supporting once again a mechanism. But the multiply of the signals that is going to receive through different markets and help thanks to material market players should not be distortive. Otherwise, we are having conflicting seniors that might really block the activation of flexibility. So, that's going to be a challenge that needs to be addressed from 2030. Post 2030 scenario I think we're already.

[00:35:58.340] - Jon Slowe

Seeing some examples of that where companies are offering dynamic tariffs and explicit flexibility with an electric vehicle and packaging that up in a way that makes sense for customers. But yeah, we're at the very beginning of that. Yeah, yeah, Michael.

[00:36:14.470] - Michael Villa

Also, the multitude of that consumers receiving that offers that will make also the challenge at scale at systemic level.

[00:36:26.320] - Jon Slowe

Yeah. Michael, Lucy, we could carry off a long time talking about milestone flexibility. Thanks both very much for your time and expertise and contributions.

[00:36:41.020] - Sandra Trittin

Thank you so much as well.

[00:36:42.480] - Michael Villa

Thank you.

[00:36:43.340] - Lucinda Murley

No, thank you. Thank you everyone.

[00:36:45.900] - Jon Slowe

Sandra, you've been in this sector longer than nearly everyone in terms of starting a virtual power plant at tiko back in Switzerland all those years ago. When you step back and look at where we, where we were then, where we are now, what's your sort of overarching feeling about this area?

[00:37:06.640] - Sandra Trittin

I think Lucy described it perfectly beforehand when she was saying it's moving and also what Michael was giving as the underlying reasoning for it, we see really something is moving on. And also, that change in the value chain of the full integrated companies into specialised companies is normally a movement in a tech industry which is, let's say developing further. Right. Which is not anymore on the exploration and shaping stage, but it's more on the execution and implementation. Yeah, and we see that, right. Because now there are many more aggregators and other solution providers stepping into the industry which also makes the smart growing. Right, the community growing overall, which is amazing. And this normally is an overall good sign of an industry that is, let's say a bit more mature and it's growing. And I'm really happy that the two experts today gave that positive picture of the future.

[00:38:12.370] - Jon Slowe

Yeah, listeners were quite entertained when Lucy was describing that positive future. Sandra was fist bumping the air in delight and said, yeah, that's what we want.

[00:38:20.660] - Sandra Trittin

Yeah, exactly. Because otherwise what makes us holding through right until 2030 and beyond? And I think there is no other chance, no other chance on it. But what would you see, Jon, like what is your key takeaway from the conversation today when you look at the status of the industry?

[00:38:41.940] - Jon Slowe

I think now is the time, you know, the, the markets aren't perfect, market access isn't perfect, the structure's not perfect, but the direction is clear and there is value there. And what we've seen for example in the big battery market in the, in GB is when markets open, people can move really fast. So, it's not a technical challenge anymore. There are, yes, of course there are bits and pieces of technology to get right, but the time is now, and demand-side flexibility will be a volume game, it will be a platform. Part of it is a platform business and once it starts moving, it will move fast. So, I really, really think the time is now. And then my last thought is actually it feels a bit like a push market at times. Or it must for Michael and Lucy and their work feel like battling the incumbency and legacy systems that are there. But once we get that distribution congestion that Michael referred to, flexibility will be the best and quickest solution to that congestion. And once customers start to see they can get somewhere this value themselves politically, it will become a really attractive solution because customers will start benefiting instead of only energy system players.

[00:40:06.320] - Jon Slowe

So yeah, I think it's going to be a super exciting next few years.

[00:40:14.410] - Sandra Trittin

So, let's have a quick wrap up then next year again. Or a quick check-in to see what has developed since today.

[00:40:24.170] - Jon Slowe

I think so.

[00:40:25.770] - Lucinda Murley

Sounds good.

[00:40:26.570] - Jon Slowe

Well, I'm sure we'll come back to the theme of flexibility again, Sandra, won't we?

[00:40:32.690] - Sandra Trittin

For sure.

[00:40:33.560] - Jon Slowe

So, thanks everyone for listening. Hope you enjoyed the episode and hope you're enthused about a flexible demand for our future as much as we are and look forward to welcoming you back to the next episode soon. Thanks, and goodbye.

[00:40:46.770] - Sandra Trittin

Thanks. 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.

[00:40:59.670] - 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.