The business of flexibility and aggregation

[00:00:04.520] - Jon Slowe 

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

[00:00:09.230] - 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. 

[00:00:19.290] - Sandra Trittin 

Let's welcome our two guests today. So, first of all, it's Daniele Andreoli, the head of flexibility solution of Enel X and it's Jan Willem Roombouts, the CEO of Beebop. And it would be great if you both could just give us a short elevator pitch on what you're currently doing in the flexibility space and what has been the most exciting, difficult, crazy asset that you ever connected into a virtual power plant. And let us start with Daniele. 

[00:00:50.730] - Daniele Andreoli 

Okay, thanks Sandra and everybody. Thanks for the invitation. It's a pleasure to share these thoughts with you. Yeah, actually leading the flexibility business global level for Enel X, where we started the journey a lot of times ago through our colleagues of enerNOC that started this business probably decades ago, where demand response was moving the different steps. First baby steps, but then started from there. Also, thanks to the integration with Enel and the Enel X increase our portfolio, our global presence. We are now in North America, South America, Europe, and Asia Pacific, managing a portfolio that is roughly ten gigawatts of curtailable load. So, it's an interesting perspective where we have the possibility to discuss with different perspective with different shareholders, different TSOs, where we do see lots of different problems in each different country. Probably from the, let's say, initial portfolio where we manage the mostly commercial industrial customers, we are now switching on to smaller assets. So, grocery stores, supermarkets, loads that can definitely provide flexibility, but it's a bit harder to, to convince the customer to participate in such programmes, etcetera. So, we face different challenges. And definitely Cincinnati also has an interesting presence in the retail space. 

[00:02:49.630] - Daniele Andreoli 

So, in the B2C, definitely we're also trying to expand our activity into the residential space, electric cars and everything that also can be offered to the market as a source of flexibility. We do see that in most countries where renewables are taking over on the conventional power generation, definitely there is something that is necessary to support the energy transition. And about the craziest asset, I don't know if it's craziest, but I do remember some while ago where to enter into a new capacity market or flexibility scheme. We had to write tonnes of papers set in box sent to the TSO in order to provide all the contracts, all the information in paper, not digitally. So, it was really tonnes of work, but since then we definitely moved a lot of steps ahead today with a much more digital approach, also to a lot of TSO. So, things have been definitely evolving and changing dramatically over time. 

[00:04:14.240] - Sandra Trittin 

Really interesting. And how about you, Jan Willem? 

[00:04:18.190] - Jan-Willem Rombouts 

Yeah, interesting to hear Daniele speak about this and quite a few similarities there that I'll highlight as well. But first of all, also thank you for the invitation. Jon and Sandra and Daniele, good to see you again after a few years. Yeah, so REstore, the first company I founded, 2010, seems more than a decade ago at this point, was a real pioneer in demand side flexibility. We grew VPP virtual power plant. That was in the end about five gigawatts, and that was pure demand-side flexibility across Japan, Europe, UK and in the end, North America as well. I think what's relevant for me at least looking back at the history, is that in 2010 there was no regulatory framework in most countries to put virtual power plants in the market, not in grid services, not in wholesale trading markets. So, it was a bit of a masochistic first started to do in that we had to really work side-by-side with regulators, with transmission system operators, next to the platform development and the sourcing of flexible power to shape these markets, to develop these markets together. And so, in the end to come to market design that opened up these markets to virtual power plants, we coupled gigawatts of flexible power, mostly from industry. 

[00:05:44.840] - Jan-Willem Rombouts 

And so as you were saying, Daniele, I think that's where a lot of demand response started with commercial and industrial. We had big factories under management where we steered the power of these industrial processes in a fully automated, made its way from the paper industry, from the petrochemical sector, from the cement industry. We did a lot of strange assets in that sense. And it was always intriguing to me to visit these factories. So, let's say to come out of the software world of optimisation and then to enter this factory with huge machines, really beyond human scale engineering, especially in these paper and metal sectors where our load was being controlled. I think one example that I do remember quite well was in the metal sector. So, we contracted players like ArcelorMittal and the larger metal producers, and they had these ovens, ladle furnaces and arc furnaces, and they could consume up to 100 mw on the given site. So, huge demand of power. And so, we took those and bid those even into markets like frequency response, which was quite a feat to accomplish. But I just remember visiting these factories to meet with the energy manager or the plant manager, and then there would be these slabs of metal that came out of this oven, and they went over this. 

[00:07:21.050] - Jan-Willem Rombouts 

These cold rolls, and you could feel that heat coming by of these of these slabs of metal, as they were still warm. And it was extreme heat, really. So, from the abstract world of optimisation software, suddenly into the very real world of factories and production and manufacturing, I guess we're going to cover a little bit more about Beebop, a little bit further on. But as with Daniele, our focus now is much more on the smaller distributed energy resources, like batteries and heat pumps, electric vehicle chargers. And there are good reasons for us that we do that. But that's my background, my memories, and the weirdest assets that I've seen in the market. 

[00:08:07.490] - Jon Slowe 

Sandra, I want to ask you what the craziest load is that you connected when you were working with tiko? 

[00:08:12.530] - Sandra Trittin 

So, there are two I would have in mind. So, one is a church. It's an electrical heating of a church, which was integrated into the management system of the full church, also taking care of the clock and of the temperature and everything. So, that was one, because it has to go into specific boundaries of temperatures to not damage the paintings, the fresco, or the wooden interior, etcetera. And the second one is the mountain railways. That was my, my personal hobby, let's say. But also there, it was mainly on electrical heating, because most of the huts in the mountains are getting heated electrical, just because they are so far off. So, these were the two most exciting ones and to be honest, I loved to do the sails on the mountain railways, right. It's just a nice trip in the Swiss mountains. But coming back to what Daniele was saying, and Jan Willem, also, with regards to shaping the market and shaping also the regulation, etcetera, I think both of our guests have done a great work on that one. And I think we can still be happy that the TSOs are picking up the phone when they see our number, because we have been all sitting on their laps, I think, for quite some time. So, that's great. 

[00:09:36.520] - Sandra Trittin 

But probably let's go over to what has changed. How does the world looks like today in comparison to ten years ago? And for Daniele, what do you think? Like many people are now talking about flexibility, I'm currently in the US, and the hottest topic is flexibility on every kind of system level, every kind of asset focus, industrial, commercial, residential. But what do you think has changed that this level of interest has increased so much, and what has happened over the years to bring this topic so much into focus? 

[00:10:19.330] - Daniele Andreoli 

Yeah, Sandra, I think that the interested on flexibility is raising, and probably will raise again in the future, with the electrification, with the energy transition, with renewables, energy that are becoming prominent in the energy mix, the way in which we generate energy today, it's totally, totally different from what it used to be ten years ago and will continue to change, being more decentralised, being much more based on renewables, etcetera, etcetera. So, these clearly impacted will impact the way in which the TSOs will manage the energy grid. Therefore, the attention on flexibility and having demand response. But then batteries and all other assets, electric vehicles, heat pumps that can continue to provide grid services will be essential to manage the grid in a safe way and assuring that there is always match between consumption and demand. So, I think this is really the point. Then clearly there is also discussion that needs to happen on regulation, since although we do see that this is needed, still is not easy to put together a portfolio of demand response or flexible assets bring it to the market because of several difficulties, both in broader regulation, but also in a lot of different details that the TSO are still demanding. 

[00:12:28.640] - Daniele Andreoli 

So, it seems like there is a great need of flexibility. But at the same time, TSOs are still a bit, let's say, more used to extract flexibility from the former way in which a conventional power plant would be for granted delivering flexibility to the grid. So, they are really requesting two different assets, like demand response, etcetera, to act as a conventional power plant. That is not really the essence of this new contribution. So, probably if we move forward into the energy transition sector, if flexibility will be definitely the topic also tomorrow, then probably there should be also a way to allow these assets to really perform for what they can do, instead of forcing them to act as something that they are not. There is a point of regulation and then there is always the point on prices remuneration, because clearly, we need to stimulate the participation of these assets to the market. We are talking about assets that were not designed and built to provide flexibility to the system. We were talking about a furnace. Clearly, they can adapt their shifts, their way of working to provide also flexibility, but it's a secondary delivery of activities, not their primary focus. 

[00:14:21.480] - Daniele Andreoli 

So, we need to stimulate clearly the participation. Otherwise, nobody, let's say, would be really happy to change their activities, etcetera, in order to sustain the grid. So, the role of the aggregator is essential. But then clearly, probably we need better rules and also the possibility to offer the right incentives, the right remuneration, or to convince several types of customers into providing also good services. 

[00:14:56.790] - Jan-Willem Rombouts 

And maybe to build on that, Danielle, because I think fundamentally what you said it's the energy transition that is just accelerating. More renewables, more decentralised, that's creating that pain point. And that pain point ultimately should drive market design that is open for flexibility because it is just a more economic solution. It's either we're going to install new generation capacity, dedicated batteries, or we're going to use idle capacity through aggregation, smart software, etcetera. And so, we've seen it as well. And to your point, we have seen a lot of market design change for the positive. And you have things like FERC 2222 in the US, a milestone regulation. But as you point out, the actual execution of this order by the isos is a whole different story. And you see timelines up to ten years, et cetera, for execution. And that is not the speed that we need for this ecosystem of start-ups to really flourish and of these new business models that we can still call them new, to really flourish. We do see that it's much easier to participate across grid services trading. There's a huge way to go. But I would say that the darkest ages are behind us. 

[00:16:23.230] - Jan-Willem Rombouts 

I don't know whether you would share that optimism. And then two things that I would add, Danielle and I would be curious whether you've observed it as well, are changes across the value chain and then changes in value where the value is. And so, in the value chain you refer to enerNOC. That was to us one of the examples that we looked at. The first us demand response aggregated to do this at scale. They were fully integrated aggregators, right? They connected, contracted their customers in an upstream. They traded in the markets. They did into these grid service markets, capacity markets, etcetera. REstore was like that as well. Fully integrated across the value chain, upstream, all the way downstream. Kiwi next, all of these players. But now what you see is that on the trading side, a lot of specialty players occur. And so, there's been a maturing of the monetisation layer and I think in Europe about players like ESFORIN and Entrix and Enspired and also downstream, especially in the residential segment on the connectivity, the maturity of OEM clouds has really rapidly increased. You even have these sort of universal connectivity layers like Enode and others now. 

[00:17:46.490] - Jan-Willem Rombouts 

And so, there's been a maturing of the value chain and then on the value, what we would say is, as we were saying earlier, the value is shifting from that CNI commercial and industrial segment to more residential, more smaller doctor segments. That's where the biggest compounded growth rates are today. If you look at the CAGRs in the residential segment, on solar and storage, on EV charging, on heat pumps, et cetera. So that's where the flexibility is growing, but that's also where it's located, at the point where the grid needs it and then upstream. I would say that we've certainly seen a shift from grid services where initially we started in these markets, like frequency response, small, shallow markets, and that more and more of that value is going from those grid service markets and sellers to wholesale trading markets. Certainly, that's the case in Europe. There's a lot of difference between the continents still on this, but that's where we've seen a shift as well, I would say, over the past few years. 

[00:18:53.850] - Jon Slowe 

If you look forward Jan-Willem and Daniela, what would you say the big trends would be over the next five years? Would you say it's just more of the same? So, more of that shift from more of the growth of residential, more of that shift in value to the wholesale markets? Or do you think we'll see other new trends appearing in the next five or maybe five to ten years? 

[00:19:19.520] - Jan-Willem Rombouts 

I think the structural shift that Daniele pointed out at the beginning of this energy transition, that is continuing. So, increased renewables increase decentralisation. It makes that pain point on the power system, so that there are a lot of trade-offs that are happening between capital expenditures and OpEx. So am I going to build a new generator, or am I going to use idle capacity of residential or CNI flexibility? Am I going to install a new transformer or am I going to use grid services locally? And if all goes well, so, if we do this efficiently, then I think what you're going to see is a lot of new markets opening up as well, especially at the distribution system. And that to us is a very exciting evolution that we expect in the future, where things like voltage control, power quality are issues that occur locally next to the sort of typical peak shaving aspects that you want to manage, and where we hope, expect that markets will be developed so that those trade-offs of new transmission and distribution grid upgrades versus using services of idle capacity that is available will take place. So that's just one element. 

[00:20:45.710] - Jan-Willem Rombouts 

I don't know, Daniela, whether you see other trends. 

[00:20:49.210] - Daniele Andreoli 

No, I agree. I agree with you. Probably today there is a bit of a tension between. We would like to continue to invest in wires, power plants, substations and everything. We would like also to use these new services, but probably still a bit sceptical on the effectiveness of virtual power plants against a power plant, a wire, an interconnector, etcetera. So, I think that still we need to see some further steps ahead in the confidence with which TSOs we would embrace, let's say, this service provided by aggregators, etcetera. 

[00:21:36.380] - Sandra Trittin 

Welcome to the energy world, right? 

[00:21:37.950] - Jon Slowe 

Daniele, what will build that confidence? Because I see that as well. But I also see how long, Jan-Willem, you were saying since 2010 you founded REstore. So, it's been 14 years to build that confidence. Will it be another 14 years, or are we close to that now, or what will it take? 

[00:21:57.670] - Daniele Andreoli 

No, I don't have the definitive answer to this. I believe that the confidence needs to be built step-by-step. It's impossible to imagine that TSOs would completely shift and change their mind in a few months. So, probably the examples that we can provide can really be helpful in, let's say, trying to let them see that an alternative is always possible. The effectiveness of a portfolio of demand response can really be even better than sometimes a single power plant, a single interconnector, that if it fails, you have no alternatives. While a portfolio is composed by so many resources that in reality can compensate each other, then can deliver the right service. So, it's not easy. It's not something that I believe would happen very quickly. But again, the examples that companies like us, Beebop, the other players in the market can bring on the table. I believe that would be really helpful in moving forwards to a solution in which I don't think that there's one solution that will address completely all the problems, but we need just to, let's say, develop several solutions. A combination of investments, batteries, connectors, but definitely also virtual power plants and digital solutions that can really together address the challenge that yes, we need to solve in the years to come. 

[00:23:56.100] - Jan-Willem Rombouts 

And if I can build on that, because you highlight, highlighted this piece there, Daniele. Jon, I think in the past, in the market design, in the regulatory affairs drive of this market, we were really fighting for level playing field with generation, right so, that at least if we would bid in a virtual power plant, that we would be able to achieve the same prices under the same rules as generation. That was the minimum. But I think what we need to demonstrate at bigger scale is what a FERC 2222, for instance, really makes as a point, and that you just made as well, Daniele, which is that you can do so much more than typical large generation integrates with distributed energy resources. And so, if you think about 100,000 batteries and heat pumps and chargers being distributed over a certain region, that can be one big virtual battery supporting the grid frequency, it can be ten local power plants that are managing congestion issues, it can be turned into small power plants that match local DSO challenges. And so, I think really driving those proof of concepts at scale to just demonstrate and then with an extreme focus on reliability and cost efficiency, is what will drive this market forward. 

[00:25:29.210] - Jan-Willem Rombouts 

And there is still a bit of old thinking around that, not only on the TSO front, I think in the energy market more broadly, that the most reliable investing that you will ever get is a gas turbine. And that is not the case, period. 

[00:25:47.260] - Sandra Trittin 

But also, probably to build on what you both have said. I think what we see also as a trend is that flexibility, or the monetisation of flexibility, gets more and more built into consumer offerings. So, there are now the first offerings out on the market where it's about adding additional value for the consumer based on the distributed energy asset. So, you buy, for example, a storage, you have an energy contract, and then you get an add on, either by a discount on the hardware or you get some financial cashbacks or a discount on your energy tariff. And I think that makes it also more attractive. And adding to the point of Jan-Willem and Daniele on that side, I think this is really the beauty of the distributed energy asset on the residential side, because first of all, it has a main purpose, which is like, I want to drive a car, I want to transport myself from A to B, or I want to store energy with my storage system. And then the flexibility is an add on to make the business case even more attractive. 

[00:26:55.430] - Jon Slowe 

If we did a little thought experiment and let's say a switch is flicked and TSOs DSOs, the energy system realises, aha, we've got to embrace this, and the rules are fixed. We have that level playing field, that full appreciation of this Swiss army nice approach that demand-side flexibility brings. Is the industry ready to deliver that? So, I know this is not how it will develop, because things happen slowly over time and things build up, but fundamentally, are you ready to scale? Are you ready to deliver the full potential that demand site flexibility can bring? Or are there more steps in that development of the ecosystem? Jan-Willem, that you were describing earlier, more that needs to be done to deliver that full suite of offerings at full potential. 

[00:27:50.530] - Jan-Willem Rombouts 

It's a bit of a chicken and egg question, right? We first need a market and accessibility to demonstrate technology, to demonstrate business models, to then let's say, let the flywheel going. What I would say is, in terms of connectivity, such progress has been made over the past few years that that is no longer a bottleneck in terms of trading capabilities upstream. That is no longer an issue where we are seeing, let's say, a whole potential now that is the space that Beebop specifically has stepped into is the virtualisation software layer. And really, the way we think about it conceptually is in the cloud revolution. You've seen a huge acceleration of cloud compute cloud services. So, right now in this call. We don't know which server is powering this application where anymore what memory is being cached where, et cetera. That's taken away by abstraction layers, virtualisation layers. That makes this experience seamless. And so, that's where a lot of software potential still lies. And we're just in the early days. I think that's an area where we really need to expand capabilities to come at par with what you see in the cloud space to really drive this forward. 

[00:29:28.100] - Jan-Willem Rombouts 

But otherwise, really, Jon, I would give the simple answer. The market is ready to deliver if the markets are open. 

[00:29:37.330] - Jon Slowe 

Daniele, how about you? 

[00:29:38.730] - Daniele Andreoli 

If the market is ready, technology is there. I'm a bit more sceptical about B2C final consumers, the level of engagement they would like to have in really providing flexibility if they are not electrified, meaning they don't have batteries, heat pumps, etcetera. So, probably, although technology is there, we need to find probably a good value proposition, a good way to, let's say, also bring customers to be a bit more flexible, even if they don't have a lot of flexibility inside their homes. That's probably something still to be addressed. But otherwise, if you can control heat pumps, electric vehicles, batteries, even at B2C level, is something that technologically wise, it's something definitely we can bring to the market quite easily. 

[00:30:40.660] - Jan-Willem Rombouts 

And there I completely agree with you, Daniele. And what I would say is once you enter residential or even SME. right. But if we focus on residential, the clue is simplicity. Simplicity, simplicity. Make things as seamless as you can. So, we think about it as checkboxes, accepting terms and conditions, as simple as you just get a lower price per month, and that's it. You cannot bring these customers into the complexity of the power system. You will not be able to explain, even though you put 20 lines on your bill, that explain from what kind of markets the value comes from. And so, you need to keep this very background seamless and simple. Now, what we do observe is that where we found it actually more challenging to model some of these industrial systems, let's say a ladle furnace and an arc furnace or a cement industrial process, than it is to model some of these household devices. A battery is essentially a battery, a heat pump, yet, or a real difference is also in control strategies. But a heat pump essentially uses thermal inertia for its flexibility. And so, there's a higher form of standardisation on the modelling aspect that you can leverage there. 

[00:32:14.530] - Jan-Willem Rombouts 

Again, the consumer shouldn't know anything about this complexity. They should just see dollars or euros being deducted from their energy bill and that's it. 

[00:32:23.740] - Jon Slowe 

Keeping our time. There's tonnes more that I think we'd like to explore. But let's bring out the talking new energy crystal ball now and continue the theme of looking forward. I'd like to set the crystal ball this week to 2030. So, that's six years away. And you each to give a view of where we'll be in 2030 when it comes to demand-side flexibility. You could write an essay on that question but if you could each pick out maybe one aspect of what we've talked about, or one particular theme or one observation that we'll see in 2030, if you place yourself six years into the future. Daniele, would you like to start? 

[00:33:05.790] - Daniele Andreoli 

Yeah, probably in the next year. So, we need to solve an issue that was addressed before at TSO level. Now we need to address it at DSO level, which, since the flexibility is now becoming very, very dispersed, and so DSOs are start some pilot projects, etcetera. They are trying to procure flexibility from a certain street, from a really very specific place. I don't know if this is something that will work in the future, so probably we need to find also the good rules, something that works even at residential level, at very distributed level. If this would happen, then definitely in 2030, I would imagine, since, as we said before, also with the young villain, the energy transition will go ahead, electrification and new renewals, etcetera. There will be new forms of flexibility that will definitely be unlocked, meaning that all the potential from CNI, small assets, residential electric vehicles, heat pumps, et cetera, et cetera, will be really present in the market. So that would be a future that. But still, we need to build this future because the rules are not really there. 

[00:34:32.460] - Jon Slowe 

And confident that by 2030, or if thinking optimistically, by 2030, that that distribution value will be a significant part of Enel X's business. 

[00:34:43.530] - Daniele Andreoli 

I believe so. 

[00:34:44.430] - Jon Slowe 

Great. Yeah. Willem, how about you? 

[00:34:46.380] - Jan-Willem Rombouts 

Yeah, that's good to hear. I'm motivated by the optimism here. Yeah, so, I would say we need to get to a place where the execution of market design efficiently allows for these capital expenditures, new generation grid upgrades versus OpEx trade-offs, and that at every level of the power system. So transmission distribution as Daniele was just saying, where we also see a lot of efficiency potential, but also at the level of generation and storage. Again, FERC 2222 is just a letter of the law, unless it is actually implemented for residential. What I would hope as a success factor to get there is the settlement and metering processes. They need to be drastically simplified. Think about smart metre penetration still in some countries, in Europe, in Germany, very low things like Article 14 A, there are bottlenecks there that we need to take away and there's good progress, but that just needs to go faster. And otherwise, I would just say we need to move forward as fast as we can with determination in deploying these decentralised renewable generators, not to stop, or not to go into a sort of stop and go subsidy setting, but really with long-term policy. 

[00:36:17.280] - Jan-Willem Rombouts 

And as we said earlier on, if that acceleration takes place, the pain points in the grid will become more and more apparent, which will drive these efficiency gains. And so that's the world that I would love to be in in 2030. So, I, I share the optimism. 

[00:36:35.660] - Sandra Trittin 

Yeah. So, let's get going. No? 

[00:36:38.120] - Jon Slowe 

Okay, so everyone feel there's a glass half full rather than the glass half I'm feeling in the room at the moment. Yeah. Well, I think of the 14 years that Jan-Willem, you described earlier as it's not a straight line, it's probably an exponential curve. So, it took, it's taken a long time to get things going, but what we'll achieve in the next six years, between now and 2030, that curve's getting ever steeper. And it's a curve, not a straight line, I think. So, that's borne out by what both of you think will have in 2030. So, it's been a huge amount of hard work to build demand-side flexibility to where it is today. And hopefully from all of those foundations, we can continue to accelerate the growth. So, we have the most efficient way to drive the transition forward is as we've talked about. Jan-Willem and Daniele, thanks so much for your time and sharing your experiences and perspectives. Sandra, do you have any observations or thoughts on the discussion today? 

[00:37:46.310] - Sandra Trittin 

Yes. So first of all, also thank you both that you made the time today. I think it's a really rare occasion that we have this kind of experience over these many years, sitting in one place together and having a great discussion. And probably just as a small suggestion, we should meet again latest in 2030, right. To see if our wishes and our came true, even though I don't want to wait as long to see them both, right. 

[00:38:15.020] - Jon Slowe 

Let's halfway through and see if we're on track. 

[00:38:17.790] - Sandra Trittin 

Exactly. Exactly. I think there is. I mean, what is really clear in that industry, right, is that the technology is there, the growth is there in terms of distributed energy resources. Now it's more to get the pieces together, the elements and to get going. And there is one crucial point, Daniele, that you mentioned before that was about the regulation, that the regulation should accept how a certain kind of asset is working with its limitations and that it should not be, let's say, put into a certain kind of framework that doesn't fit with its capabilities, even though the outcome will be exactly the same. And I think this is really something that we need to keep going on, even though I think we should not wait for it. Right. There is enough opportunities today to start tomorrow. How about you, Jon? What's your takeaway or your thought around? 

[00:39:21.110] - Jon Slowe 

My thought is a slightly different angle around the, we didn't explore in a huge amount of detail today, but the ecosystem around flexibility and how at the beginning companies were active along the whole value chain because they had to, because they were creating markets. And now we're seeing more speciality. We're also seeing this becoming a more of a mainstream activity. Enel was a pioneer, I think, in terms of being early into this from a traditional utility perspective. But now it's almost impossible in Europe to find an energy company that's not at least thinking seriously about this or active. I'm really interested in the next years how we integrate the customer proposition with energy retail, make that experience seamless, how that soft, that middleware that Jan-Willem talked about, how that develops and how the whole ecosystem develops to deliver this, because I think we're seeing changes over the last years, and I think we're seeing more developments over the next years. 

[00:40:35.580] - Sandra Trittin 

I think it's a good reason for our next podcast. It's about the ecosystem and flexibility. 

[00:40:41.300] - Jon Slowe 

Yeah, I think it is. Sandra. Well, let's leave it at that tantalising thought and get planning the next podcast on that topic. Sandra, perfect. Thanks to everyone for joining today. 

[00:40:54.310] - Sandra Trittin 

Thank you as well. 

[00:40:55.320] - Jon Slowe 

Yeah, I hope you found it interesting. I think I found it a fascinating perspective. 

[00:41:00.300] - Jan-Willem Rombouts 

Thank you, Jon, and Sandra. And again, good to see you, Danielle. 

[00:41:03.490] - Daniele Andreoli 

Yeah, good to see you. Thank you. Thank you very much. 

[00:41:06.880] - Jon Slowe 

Thanks a lot, and thanks, everyone. Thanks for listening and look forward to welcoming you back next week. Thanks, and goodbye. 

[00:41:14.180] - 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. 

[00:41:26.070] - 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.