Takeaways from the LCP Delta New Energy Summit
Energy transition Energy research Residential researchEpisode transcript
[00:00:04.680] - Jon Slowe
Welcome to Talking New Energy, a podcast from LCP Delta. I'm Jon Slowe.
[00:00:09.340] - 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.
[00:00:20.950] - Jon Slowe
Hello and welcome to the episode. Today, Sandra and I are talking about the LCP Delta’s New Energy Summit. 180 people in Berlin last week. You enjoy it, Sandra?
[00:00:33.220] - Sandra Trittin
It was amazing. It was really a great event to be there, to have so many people. Yeah, it was really special. How about you?
[00:00:42.470] - Jon Slowe
Yeah, I found the energy in the room amazing, actually. And, yeah, loved it. The chance to talk to people in person, face to face, not on a screen,
[00:00:55.670] - Sandra Trittin
Yeah!
[00:00:56.000] - Jon Slowe
I really enjoyed as well. So, let's talk a bit about key takeaways and what's changed. And then listeners will be able to enjoy some conversations with a few of the guests at the Summit, including the two sponsors, Eliq and Legrand. So, Sandra, my takeaways, I think it's clear to me we've entered a new era of flexibility. And while big batteries are scaled, intelligent demand or flexible demand is about to take off or is taking off.
[00:01:33.670] - Sandra Trittin
Mm-hmm.
[00:01:34.050] - Jon Slowe
Second one, I think when we look at building business models and propositions around customers and even around different customer segments, I think we're just still at the very beginning of this, but already some front runners are emerging there. And my last takeaway is risk. That we're shining a torch into a dark room and seeing more and more parts of it. And the thing with risk is you can sit on your hands and do nothing because it's hard, but actually the winners in the next years will are moving forward quickly and the risk probably lies more now on the side of do nothing rather than do something. So, they're my three. But what's your... What's your thoughts? Particularly what's changed from last year or what you see changing? What you've put stood out for you at the Summit.
[00:02:30.530] - Sandra Trittin
Yes, I mean, your points are already quite interesting, right. And especially the last point about the risk, I think is something that we see now more and more obvious also in the industry. And what has changed over there in general in the industry, I think, over the last one and two years is that you have these frontrunners you were talking about who are, let's say, open to take the risk, right. Currently, it's the ones who are willing to take the risk, who make the market, to make it just really straightforward. Now, what has changed in terms of the industry and the Summit? I mean, for sure, it's growing tremendously it's the place where you have everyone coming together. Right. In the flexibility space. Besides the event of FLEXCON that was just two or three weeks beforehand.
[00:03:26.370] - Jon Slowe
It's definitely event season at the moment.
[00:03:28.600] - Sandra Trittin
Yes, exactly, exactly. But it's a different group of people, right. I think you have many solution providers who are going from hardware offerings into energy offerings and then into flexibility services. What has also changed, you have newcomers, right. There was, for example, a telco company being there, quite present, I would say you have people from other geographies coming in, like from the US for example. So, I think the crowd and the community is growing a lot. It's growing quickly. And this also shows that the market for flexibility and especially for demand-side flexibility is maturing now over the time.
[00:04:18.560] - Jon Slowe
They scale-up markets now, aren't they?
[00:04:22.240] - Sandra Trittin
Exactly, exactly. And this is also why we see more and more specialised companies. We had that discussion just in our last podcast as well, right. That there was an end-to-end integration at the beginning and now you have the companies focusing on specific parts along the value chain, which I think is also one sign of the growing maturing phase of that, of that industry. Still a long way to go, I think, in terms of execution, implementation. And what I really liked about the Summit was that you had a great overview of all the different topics and the different perspective on that topic, right. From industry, from the different stakeholders, from consumers, the consumer centricity playing a really important role down to the regulation, right. Which is also needed.
[00:05:20.820] - Jon Slowe
And even when we look at the upstream part on the first day, big batteries scaled in the UK incredibly fast, from virtually nothing in 2017 to gigawatts, the number of gigawatts today, that's starting in Germany, that was quite a hot topic. And hydrogen, probably a step back in terms of investability and scale up. But so many parts of the transition are now moving so quickly. And comes back to the point, I think that if you do nothing, that's the biggest risk now, or if you don't move quickly, that's probably the biggest risk.
[00:05:58.530] - Sandra Trittin
Exactly, exactly. And what would you think, Jon, then, is holding most of them up from moving quicker? Because we had that discussion quickly at the Summit as well. Right. If there is now a market, if there is technology, if there is money, what might be a missing piece or element, why it's not even going faster? Or are we just too impatient?
[00:06:27.140] - Jon Slowe
We're probably too impatient, Sandra. But I think there's one element we talked about. Are you tactical or are you strategic? That was a discussion at the Summit and the more strategic you're thinking, the clearer the direction is and the more obvious the moves are. But I think there's lots of still tactical decisions rather than strategic decisions. And secondly, it's new and it's different and it's hard even when the direction is clear. And that's not easy, particularly for incumbents. I think for new entrants it's probably easier, but incumbents, they've got that the legacy is a strength and a weakness and I think it probably inhibits speed.
[00:07:20.450] - Sandra Trittin
No, fully agree on that. So, let's, let's keep the patience, let's say, and let's work through it, right.
[00:07:29.050] - Jon Slowe
Mix of patience and pace. Yeah.
[00:07:31.730] - Sandra Trittin
Yeah.
[00:07:34.130] - Jon Slowe
Okay, now we've got next a number of short interviews, discussions that we held with some of the guests at the Summit. So, hope you and enjoyed our take outs and hope you enjoy listening to the conversations coming up.
[00:07:49.630] - Sandra Trittin
Looking forward.
[00:07:51.150] - Charmaine Coutinho
Hello, it's Charmaine Coutinho here from LCP Delta. We're having a bit of a roundup of the podcast over the last couple of days. I'm here with Guillaume Conard from Legrand.
[00:08:00.770] - Guillaume Conard
Hi, Charmaine.
[00:08:01.590] - Charmaine Coutinho
Hi, Guillaume. Thank you for taking some time out. It's going to be a quick one in the roundup. We're really interested in hearing your thoughts about the Summit and what you've kind of taken away as your key points for the last day or two.
[00:08:13.070] - Guillaume Conard
First, big success. Congratulations. Great audience diversity in the participants from vendors like us up to utilities. I've been pretty much interested in the battery sessions. Sessions around batteries. Yeah, great part of the matter. It's pretty new to us, but it gives lots of contextual information for us. What's the economics behind etc. For the rest, I've been interested also into hearing our German colleagues from both, several of them, let's say the Hems player. I will put it this way, like this morning we had Enpal, and the other days we had others. I can see that Europe is still a very fragmented market. Variety of conditions. As Legrand, we are trying to have some generic approach to the markets because we have, we have products to make and design. We are a bit, let's say being French natively, we are a bit in between the very modern offerings that you can see, the northern countries and the promising offerings that are in the making in Southern Europe. France to start with, where flexibility is available. But the tariffs are not here. Very attractive, I would say. You know that DMA, etc.
[00:09:37.170] - Charmaine Coutinho
Yeah, it's really, it's really tricky. So, we had a session around customers and different type of customers and that kind of fragmentation across countries, but also within countries, across all the different types of customers at different stages with different levels of finance available to them. Yes, that was super interesting. I could tote down something very difficult as a manufacturer when you need to have the scale, right.
[00:09:58.340] - Guillaume Conard
Some of the participants said it's not one size fits at all. And that's definitely it. It's not one size fits at all. And that's very interesting for us, actually, because we have opportunities that are yet to be discovered. I think in the geographies we are strong in like Italy, France and Spain, and there is a motivation for us to grow faster, to reach the existing strong markets or markets in the making, like Germany. Yeah, well, that's a very good session again.
[00:10:24.980] - Charmaine Coutinho
Yeah, well, great. Thank you very much for your time. Appreciate it and hopefully see you again next year.
[00:10:30.260] - Guillaume Conard
Hopefully yes.
[00:10:30.980] - Charmaine Coutinho
Bye.
[00:10:31.510] - Guillaume Conard
Thank you.
[00:10:33.730] - Charmaine Coutinho
Okay, it's Charmaine again here at the new Energy Summit, which comes the end of day two. Very pleased to be joined by Will Ephraim from Eliq. Hi, Will. So, yeah, come to the end of day two. Be really good to have your thoughts, kind of perspectives on the kind of key takeaways, I suppose, from the last day and a half, two days.
[00:10:53.340] - Will Ephraim
Yeah, we could point a key takeaways. I think for me the bit that keeps coming back through is how do we keep focus on the customer? So, energy, we're really energy geeks. That was used quite a lot. Want to have loads of data and show people everything. But that's not where most customers are. They just want convenience. They ultimately don't want to have too much like cognitive load. They don't have to move and think, or we do. Things should just happen. And for me, for about all the things we talk about flexibility, the bad response, if you want to use the demand response.
[00:11:24.810] - Charmaine Coutinho
Yeah, yeah. Someone doesn't like demand response, which is..
[00:11:27.720] - Will Ephraim
The concept. However, customer centricity is key, and I think that's going to be the path to scale. And if you don't do that right, then we're just going to be left where we're at now with a little bit of uncertainty on direction.
[00:11:40.130] - Charmaine Coutinho
Yeah, it's really interesting. So, the customer thing, you know, I feel since being at LCP Delta, we've really tried to keep customer at the front, and someone made the point that even we managed to call our day to downstream as opposed to customers, which is terrible. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I mean, it is interesting how like endemic the idea of like customers not being present, or front of mind is. Anyway, but the idea that you need to be custom focused, right. That's great. And its really good kind of product development principles, helping your customers solve problems. I think the challenge is, I think everyone on your panel. So, Will was on a panel broadly agreed with that, right?
[00:12:15.410] - Will Ephraim
Yeah, yeah.
[00:12:16.290] - Charmaine Coutinho
But then the question is. And then what's next on that? So, we all agree customers are important. Then how do we kind of get those customers who aren't those kinds of early adopters? And I really hate using that phrase because I feel like we use it all the time. And actually, are we past that yet? Do we not pass that? What is an early adopter anyway?
[00:12:31.310] - Will Ephraim
How do you define it? Where do you find it? Yeah. The key piece here really comes back to trust. And when we talk in the context of HEMs, it depends maybe where you're coming at it from. Maybe as a company, be that an energy retailer or device manufacturer, you'll have a different inherent trust with the customer. If I think of an energy customer supplier point of view, don't say, I'm going to have your car ready by 7am tomorrow with all the charge you need if you've got my bill wrong three months in a row.
[00:12:59.620] - Charmaine Coutinho
Yeah.
[00:13:01.350] - Will Ephraim
So that. Therefore, that's an inherent barrier for an energy retailer and it's not an unknown problem, it's just something that is going to impact how they implement work within that space. Likewise, if something goes wrong with the device and you're a manufacturer again, that experience is kind of broken down. There's some really good examples of how things can work. I think I mentioned Apple Fanboy, but everything just works, and they really think about that experience and what you're actually having. I didn't mention the power of reading. I think I was reading a book. I should think of the title afterwards. But around Apple was thinking if the iPod was like phones of all the songs you have on you.
[00:13:40.000] - Charmaine Coutinho
Oh, yeah.
[00:13:41.060] - Will Ephraim
Not. This is the. This is the widget, the feature that does X, Y and Z. Yeah. I think everyone else is doing.
[00:13:45.650] - Charmaine Coutinho
It's the principle of like think about helping your customer do a job. Not exactly providing them with the next Walkman, right.
[00:13:51.190] - Will Ephraim
Yeah. There's like a product management framework, jobs to be done. Which means picks up fraction over the years. Again, that's the key thing. Like what is it the customer wants? And if we think about energy, it is. I want to be warm.
[00:14:02.160] - Charmaine Coutinho
Yeah. Yeah.
[00:14:02.880] - Will Ephraim
I want to be cool in the summer while you're living. I want to be able to get to work. That might be an electric vehicle. Therefore, when you need to charge by. So, try to think around where the customers are at. If you can get to a state where you have some interaction that doesn't be too much. And one of the interesting points raised on the panel as well was just around that element of friction. So, maybe a bit of friction at the start of the process to get someone to buy into it.
[00:14:26.410] - Charmaine Coutinho
Yeah.
[00:14:26.810] - Will Ephraim
Might actually be quite powerful because if you think about most apps you use a lot of ones where I've done something to make a personal. Obviously, you take that too far, right. With like TikTok and everything. It's Internet streets.
[00:14:38.950] - Charmaine Coutinho
I'm going to be controversial because I... When you said that I turned to someone. I was saying next week. I don't think that's true. I use a news app all the time and it's not personalised at all. There's loads of personalisation options but don't use it. It is a bit annoying because I do always have to tab to the same thing and I can see, I totally see your point about that initial kind of like it's almost like a curve of having to do something before you can actually get the utility out of it. So, I get that. But I do think there is, I think going back to your point of like getting something right the first time, like getting the bill right is quite a big chunk of consumer engagement that we can kind of actually just like as a low hanging fruit to win with by just having something simple and generic.
[00:15:15.140] - Will Ephraim
But getting the bill right. And if you think about utility or energy retailer experience with a customer, that is a touch point they have every month.
[00:15:23.430] - Charmaine Coutinho
Yeah.
[00:15:24.250] - Will Ephraim
How do you make that the best experience possible? Did it quite well. In the UK they made the bill.
[00:15:30.690] - Charmaine Coutinho
I'm not sure about bulb.
[00:15:34.610] - Will Ephraim
The experience is a customer.
[00:15:36.630] - Charmaine Coutinho
Yeah. Yeah.
[00:15:38.250] - Will Ephraim
In a similar way to Oxford. It's the same principle of like you don't need a 10-page PDF at the bottom of the email. All your key information is, right. So, if you think about that could be a touch point from a utility. That's an advantage.
[00:15:50.650] - Charmaine Coutinho
Yeah.
[00:15:51.360] - Will Ephraim
To get people on there because you already have that like with smart meter data in most markets with it you have a wow experience to do more things.
[00:16:00.930] - Charmaine Coutinho
Yeah. And I think that's that touch point and then I think we're at the stage where we're trying to get those touch points to be different, differentiated for different types of customers, right. So, a great touch point is not just necessarily always about being at base or it could be for a lot of things it could be just a really good experience on some other point. Whether it's telephone because I'm old fashioned some people I like telephone. Or whether it's kind of a letter or whatever. Maybe not letter actually anyway. But that kind of differentiating for your customer needs based on that touch point. I like the principle of that.
[00:16:27.700] - Will Ephraim
Yeah. I think that's a bit as well as about how you use like AI machine learning or general AI particularly around even like pre-prompting customers and the things you might be thinking around not asking them to ask the question what they want. You're almost giving them some pre-framed directions of travel.
[00:16:44.630] - Charmaine Coutinho
Yeah.
[00:16:45.430] - Will Ephraim
I think that might be quite an interesting approach for more to explore.
[00:16:48.710] - Charmaine Coutinho
Yeah.
[00:16:49.350] - Will Ephraim
It's personal but it's not. I know there's obviously fear from a utility society. You've got like a kind of a customer, and it says something horrendous.
[00:16:56.540] - Charmaine Coutinho
Yeah.
[00:16:56.880] - Will Ephraim
And you're on the front page of the newspaper. But if you're giving some controls.
[00:17:00.420] - Charmaine Coutinho
Yeah.
[00:17:00.820] - Will Ephraim
And you're regarding people from what they want to do. That's a really strong application. When we think ahead into what maybe needs to come forward to get you know hyper personalisation which I hate using. Definitely use.
[00:17:13.160] - Charmaine Coutinho
Yeah. I mean it's really like I'm not. I'm obviously jury's out for me on journey. I don't think that's a phrase I could say out loud, but I know that. Yeah. I know like it was in my head. But anyway the.... The kind of applicability of giving people prompts, right. Just making their lives easy. I think that's the principle. Okay.
[00:17:29.890] - Will Ephraim
Exactly.
[00:17:30.390] - Charmaine Coutinho
Yeah.
[00:17:30.710] - Will Ephraim
The technology undefined is actually leaving back to the customer. It's like just having something that great. Well, what's the purpose? That's the best. Can you solve it in an easier way?
[00:17:39.510] - Charmaine Coutinho
Yeah.
[00:17:40.730] - Will Ephraim
And then you keep coming back to this film was like first principles of why should I solve for a customer. Yeah, and also actually maybe another reflection earlier today is energy is good talking metre points.
[00:17:51.490] - Charmaine Coutinho
Yeah.
[00:17:51.930] - Will Ephraim
There's a lot of talk of assets today.
[00:17:53.780] - Charmaine Coutinho
Yeah.
[00:17:54.340] - Will Ephraim
Do you know what which customer like the customer should be the asset. Everything else comes around it again.
[00:18:01.170] - Charmaine Coutinho
Do you know what I'm going to do next year, right? I'm going to take a foghorn or like a like a bicycle horn and everyone someone uses asset or metre or downstream for the work for a customer. I'm going to sound it.
[00:18:12.060] - Will Ephraim
Yeah.
[00:18:12.340] - Charmaine Coutinho
Which I think would be a good idea. Good. Well, I think That's a great point to finish on. Thank you very much, Will. And thank you very much for joining and also for sponsoring.
[00:18:19.750] - Will Ephraim
Thanks. Thank you. Great.
[00:18:22.780] - Jon Slowe
I'm talking to Emma Hellström from Flower. Hello, Emma.
[00:18:25.460] - Charmaine Coutinho
Hello.
[00:18:25.780] - Jon Slowe
Hello Emma. You've been here for a couple of days. When you look forward as an Flower as an EnTech company, so what do you take forward into the next years? What's most important for Flower to your role in driving the energy transition forward?
[00:18:40.460] - Emma Hellström
I think one of the most important things for us going forward is really to unlock a very deep market which is to create, to transform, pay as produced, renewable power production and to make it into green baseload power and to do that through our flexibility portfolio with assets such as EV chargers and battery systems.
[00:18:59.370] - Jon Slowe
Okay. And I imagine that involves getting thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of EV chargers batteries onto your platform. What role do you see others need to play in helping to facilitate that?
[00:19:14.990] - Emma Hellström
It's a very good question and I think it's been very clear from these days here at the Summit that there are some people are very good at doing the interface with the clients and making them understand what's happening with their heat pumps with EV chargers. And Flower's role is really how to make the most value from that. So there are different types of companies needed to deliver these products and Flower is really the trading party.
[00:19:36.430] - Jon Slowe
Okay. So, make the size of the pie their value as big as you can and then others can work out how that's divided up with customers or other players in the value chain.
[00:19:45.860] - Emma Hellström
Yeah, exactly.
[00:19:46.950] - Jon Slowe
Yeah. Okay. Well, have a safe journey back.
[00:19:49.590] - Emma Hellström
Thank you so much.
[00:19:50.390] - Jon Slowe
Thanks, Emma.
[00:19:53.340] - Jon Slowe
So, I'm talking with Oliver Held from enercity. Oliver, hello. Hi Oliver. What have you enjoyed about the Summit?
[00:20:01.180] - Oliver Held
So I, I like the broad variety of people which are here, like the different aspects of industry which are represented here. I like the emphasis this year also on gel and finance. I saw especially today, the second day there was a stronger, let's say spotlight on financing and enabling basically the solutions we're talking about and also custom electricity. I'm very happy that this came up and this is something which I also.
[00:20:28.240] - Jon Slowe
Personally, very important and I think you're one of the only stadtwerke here today. So, one of the German municipal energy companies. What do you think? Your takeaway or give us an idea of what you take back to your job as you look to offer customers more products and solutions around the energy transition?
[00:20:46.800] - Oliver Held
I'm just happy to see that, let's say the front runners of the industry basically asking themselves the same questions. We're also still, let's say, trying to find the best answer for, let's say, a more locally oriented customer base.
[00:21:02.560] - Jon Slowe
Give us a feel for one of those questions.
[00:21:04.610] - Oliver Held
Well, it is, it is about simplicity to the end user, of course.
[00:21:08.670] - Oliver Held
Yeah. It is about how can we make it also broadly available for mainstream. We touched upon the topic that I'd say that the early adopters and the geeks some are through now we have to see how can we do it mainstream. Mainstream-aimable for that.
[00:21:24.840] - Jon Slowe
The mass market.
[00:21:25.510] - Oliver Held
Yeah. And I think this is, this is also a very good time where the German stuff come into play because we of course have history historically, have a, have a good position locally. We have a brand. That trust was one of the, let's say, major topics we talked about today.
[00:21:43.680] - Jon Slowe
Yeah. And you have that trust with a lot of your customers.
[00:21:46.030] - Oliver Held
I would say so, yes. Let's say the first and kind of natural partner when it comes to any question regarding energy. Yeah, yeah. So frankly speaking, there's a lot to learn from the front runners but we see a lot of opportunities now, let's say in the curve where we are at the moment with the mainstream market.
[00:22:03.570] - Jon Slowe
Well, good luck taking it back to your day-to-day business.
[00:22:05.860] - Oliver Held
Thank you very much.
[00:22:06.710] - Jon Slowe
Thanks, Oliver. So, I'm here with Lindsay Sugden from NIBA, big heating appliance and heat pump manufacturer. Hello, Lindsay.
[00:22:14.680] - Lindsay Sugden
Hi, Jon.
[00:22:15.500] - Jon Slowe
Lindsay, what was on your mind coming to the Summit? What did you most interested to hear about and learn about?
[00:22:22.900] - Lindsay Sugden
I think for me two things. It was important to step a little bit outside of the heat pump bubble, which I tend to live in these days, to see what's going on in the wider energy market. We see our heat pumps is only one part of a wider ecosystem of energy solutions. So, it's important to see what's happening with flexibility with, yeah. The energy suppliers and how it's going to affect our business models and reach market in future. And then the second point is to see what your predictions are for the future where we've been in it fairly, as everyone knows, unstable heap of market could say, but we remain optimistic. So, I was hoping to see some signs that you agree with my optimism.
[00:23:16.350] - Jon Slowe
And did you get that? Did you see?
[00:23:19.500] - Lindsay Sugden
I like the Nigel Timberlake's point that unless there's a major geopolitical crisis, we are only going one direction with the energy threat actually reaches upwards. Of course, the geopolitical crisis is possible, but never know.
[00:23:37.300] - Jon Slowe
Yeah. And I guess on that point is the discussion with Carlota from Holaluz. She mentioned resilience is one of the most important things that she looks for actually, when she's recruiting people. So that resilience is needed now in the heat pump world because it is a bit of a tough time, even if the long-term trend is up.
[00:23:53.980] - Lindsay Sugden
Yeah, yeah. Resilience and adaptability.
[00:23:56.830] - Jon Slowe
Yeah. And flexibility. You mentioned that. What stands out to you or what sort of what you're taking back to your day job about the word of flexibility of a buzzword over the two days.
[00:24:09.420] - Lindsay Sugden
Yeah. What am I taking back? I think, I think it hasn't changed my opinion that it's a critical part of the future. It's just strengthened the result that we need to get the customers on board, the end consumers on board and make it work for them and then flexibility will work for the energy system. But we have to pick the customers first and that's what we're trying to do and we'll continue to work.
[00:24:37.550] - Jon Slowe
And I guess, NIBE, thinking about your role in that flexibility ecosystem, how active do you want to be?
[00:24:45.150] - Lindsay Sugden
Yeah, yeah. And we've been, as you know, we've been involved in this smart heat comes responding to dynamic tariffs and so on for many years. And so, it's only going in one direction.
[00:25:01.640] - Jon Slowe
Great. Thanks, Lindsay.
[00:25:03.560] - Lindsay Sugden
Thanks a lot Jon.
[00:25:04.080] - 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.
[00:25:17.700] - 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.
