11. EV Charging for Multifamily Dwellers

In this insightful episode of the EV mini-series on "Insiders Guide to Energy," hosts Chris Sass and Niall Riddell welcome Shayne Rees from Char.gy to delve into the evolving landscape of electric vehicle (EV) charging. Focused on the unique challenges faced by EV owners without access to private driveways, the episode provides a comprehensive look at innovative solutions for street parking EV charging. This discussion is particularly relevant to urban environments, like many in the UK, where the adaptation of existing infrastructure is key to supporting the transition to electric vehicles. The episode not only addresses UK-specific issues but also offers valuable insights for global listeners interested in the integration of EV technology in densely populated cities.

The conversation with Shayne Rees is particularly enlightening, exploring how Char.gy is revolutionizing the use of existing urban structures, like street lamps, for EV charging. This solution represents a significant step forward in making EV charging more accessible and convenient for city dwellers. The episode also delves into the broader implications of such technologies on the energy grid, discussing how smart grid technology can be leveraged to optimize charging processes and integrate renewable energy sources. This aspect of the dialogue aligns with current global trends in renewable energy and smart technology, showcasing the potential of EVs to contribute to a more sustainable and efficient urban energy ecosystem.

Moreover, the podcast sheds light on the future of EV charging infrastructure, discussing potential advancements like wireless charging and the integration of EVs into the electricity grid as energy assets. These forward-thinking topics not only captivate EV enthusiasts but also appeal to a broader audience interested in the intersection of technology, sustainability, and urban planning. By focusing on real-world applications and the challenges of adopting EV technology in urban settings, this episode of "Insiders Guide to Energy" provides a compelling and informative listen for anyone interested in the future of transportation and renewable energy.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/shayne-rees-17052219/ 

Transcript

Transcript 

00:00:04 Speaker 1 

Broadcasting from the commodity capital of the world, Zurich, Switzerland, this is insiders guide to energy. 

00:00:20 

Addition to insiders guide to energy is brought to you by fidectus. 

00:00:24 

Go to www.fidectus.com For more information. 

00:00:59 Speaker 2 

This episode of Insiders Guide to Energy EV Miniseries is powered by Paua. Paua helps your business transition to electric vehicles by simplifying charging, managing payments, and optimizing your charging data. 

00:01:12 Speaker 2 

Welcome to insiders guide to Energy EV miniseries with me again is Neil Riddell. Neil, what are we gonna be talking about in this episode? 

00:01:20 Speaker 3 

So today we are going to talk about charging, which let's be quite frank, is one of my favorite topics, but it's also really crucial because it's the big thing that changes when you switch to electric, you know, no longer using a liquid fuel, you're using electricity. But we're going to talk about a very specific segment of the charging ecosystem. So I'd like to introduce Shayne Rees from Chargee, who's going to talk to us a bit more about how people. 

00:01:42 Speaker 3 

Charge at home overnight, particularly when they don't have a driveway. Hey, Shayne. Welcome to the show. 

00:01:49 Speaker 4 

Hi, Neil. Hi Chris. Great to be here. 

00:01:52 Speaker 3 

So I've got a a general question. I almost always ask everyone which is, you know, who are you? How did you get here? What's your background and what can you tell us about your career path today? 

00:02:02 Speaker 4 

Cool. OK, so so I'm Shayne. I'm a marketer who's landed up in the energy sector. I've been in the energy sector for a long time. So, you know, despite these youthful good looks, I've got quite a lot of experience behind me. Started my career in tourism in Cape Town after studying marketing and then moved to London. See the world. 

00:02:22 Speaker 4 

All that kind of stuff and I was looking for a job in marketing and it happened to be around the time that the UKC. 

00:02:28 Speaker 4 

Energy Market was was opening up to competition, so it was like 1998 and it was lucky enough to fall into a marketing job in. 

00:02:39 Speaker 4 

What was London electricity at the time? 

00:02:42 Speaker 4 

That was a fantastic experience. You know, like breaking rules that were that were had been established for for years, that was that was really good and there was an exciting time in the industry. So it felt like every year on the year for about 5-6 years. 

00:02:59 Speaker 4 

We had a a major acquisition or a change of management team and yeah, just loads of things were going on and. 

00:03:06 Speaker 4 

Yeah. Coming from South Africa, Energy wasn't really the thing that I thought I'd end up being in. Uh, But it's it's been a fantastic career so far and it's the topic that I find really interesting. So I yeah, I think energy market is sort of how I describe myself these days as it ended up being an EDF for near around 20 years. 

00:03:26 Speaker 4 

And before getting into the charging game. 

00:03:30 Speaker 3 

So. So what? What took you out of EDF? Because, let's be honest, we were both at DF. What took you from EDF into the world? 

00:03:36 Speaker 3 

Of EV charging. 

00:03:38 Speaker 4 

Yeah. So obviously, EV charging is really an energy story. It's I think it's less about cars, less about transport, it's it's really an interesting angle on on energy and and how that's used and the role it plays in our low push for a low carbon economy. 

00:03:59 Speaker 4 

I was one of the guys I was working with, so Dan, Dan Bentham, he ran EDF R&D facilities in the UK. 

00:04:08 Speaker 4 

And he moved over to a company called Uber. Kristy. So Eddie had a stake in in Uber. Kristi he he moved over to run the the UK division, which was. 

00:04:18 Speaker 4 

Really growing really fast because the UK market was probably at the time the fastest growing EV charging market in Europe. 

00:04:26 Speaker 4 

Certainly for for on street charging and it was he was trying to trying to make that market grow. So he sort of recruited me as as his head of sales and marketing and I was there for about two years left about a year after he was brought by Shell and joined, joined Chargee who do kind of the. 

00:04:46 Speaker 4 

Same thing. 

00:04:47 Speaker 3 

And I guess for our listeners who you know, you and I know exactly what Uber Christy does, but for our listeners who and what is Uber Kristi and how is chargee different or similar to Uber? Christy. 

00:04:58 Speaker 4 

That's right. Yeah. Good point. So. So Uber trustee and and chargee we both convert St. lights into on street charge points. So think of it as app cycling or upgrading a significant power supply which is which is sort of going going unused to to help people. 

00:05:18 Speaker 4 

Charge their their cars where they where they park so you know in the in the UK a lot of people don't have driveways. 

00:05:25 Speaker 4 

Because we have lots of old cities and which were designed before cars were around. So we all, you know, lots of US park in the street, I'm a street Parker. I don't have a driveway. I I live in a 1930s house and. 

00:05:39 Speaker 4 

They happen to be lampposts in those streets. So yeah, why not? Why not convert them to to charge points so everyone can charge where they park and enjoy the the benefits of of home charging just without a driveway. 

00:05:52 Speaker 2 

So, are lamp posts sufficient to do this as we're moving to like LED lighting and things like that? I would think lamp posts are trying to reduce the draw on the grid and so now we're bringing chargers out to the lamp post. Is that a kind of counter or Contra indication to what's happening? 

00:06:11 Speaker 4 

Not really. So so it's it's a very good thing that we're using much more energy efficient St. lighting. 

00:06:18 Speaker 4 

And but that's not really where we get our the extra capacity for charging our for charging card. 

00:06:24 Speaker 4 

So I don't know if this is a quirk of the UK electricity system or it is it is. It exists more widely, but for some reason. 

00:06:34 Speaker 4 

Lampposts in the UK have been given a far higher supply capacity than they ever needed for for running St. lights. So most St. lights in the UK have wiring capable of of running at 25 AM. 

00:06:48 Speaker 4 

Which is about 5 1/2 kilowatts of power, which is more than enough for for overnight charging, or Longwell charging. And considering that most people park their cars outside their homes for long periods of time, you know at least as long as you're sleeping, that's that's more than that capacity for lots of people to charge their car on a lamppost. 

00:07:08 Speaker 2 

And is there network connectivity then along these lines, are you putting fiber optic in or using radio connectivity to get back to the billing infrastructure and the rest of the charging infrastructure? 

00:07:20 Speaker 4 

Yeah. So they're all IoT devices and we use a 4G connection. 

00:07:27 Speaker 3 

So so the the genius at the beginning of Uber, Trista. It was kind of weird, wasn't. 

00:07:31 Speaker 3 

It because it started off with this simple socket and simple socket was a plug. Nothing much more than that. And then the genius sat in the cable, but that that transition has now moved, so everything is slid inside the lamp post and you don't really see anything and. 

00:07:41 Speaker 4 

That's right. 

00:07:46 Speaker 3 

You know that that's gone away. How? What? What happened on that journey? Why? Why did they do that? 

00:07:52 Speaker 4 

Yeah. So that was it was very, very clever. So the the idea behind it with Christy was you take your, you take your electricity tariff with you. So your cable was the the route that you. 

00:08:06 Speaker 4 

Your electricity tariff and and the charge point was done. 

00:08:10 Speaker 4 

Unfortunately, what that created was a closed system, so you had to have a cable to use the charge point. It wouldn't work otherwise, and that sort of we had to open up the system in. I think it was 2018 or 2019, so that anyone with a standard Type 2 cable could use it. So the smarts that were in the in the cable. So it's like literally a box. 

00:08:30 Speaker 4 

In the cable, halfway in the cable, which had a meter in it, those those went into the charge point and and the charge point ran like a like a normal smart smart charger. 

00:08:42 Speaker 4 

So that anyone could use it without requiring a contract to be a member of a service which. 

00:08:50 Speaker 4 

Doesn't work with the charging regulations in the UK. 

00:08:54 Speaker 2 

What kind of density do you get with these these light poles? So is it? Is it entire neighborhoods you're trying to cover? Are you trying to cover a few spaces on a given block? What's what's? What's the objective? 

00:08:54 

Now we're. 

00:09:06 Speaker 4 

Yeah. So ultimately we would like to have every lamppost with a charge point in it. 

00:09:11 Speaker 4 

So wherever you park next to a next to a lamppost, that should be a charge point. In some places, Uber trustee and Chargee have. 

00:09:20 Speaker 4 

Charge pointed every lamp post in the in the street so you know almost wherever you park you can. You can reach a reach a charge point. When you think about how far apart charge lampposts are in urban areas, it's normally about 35 metres between between the lampposts. That creates a a great great coverage. 

00:09:41 Speaker 4 

And very easy access to to those charge points. So right now as the number of Eva's on the road is is pretty low, you know, so we're sort of two percent, 3% maybe if you if you count all the plug in hybrid so cars with plugs we you know being a bit more cautious about how many charge points we put in. 

00:10:01 Speaker 4 

Each street, but we've got quite a lot of intelligence about where to install them today and we have strategies to help councils make those decisions about where do you need them today, how many will you need in future and what are the stepping stones along the way? 

00:10:16 Speaker 3 

And and there was this fabulous apocryphal story back in the beginning about the one, you know, test lamp post that had a charger on it. So someone on the street saw it and bought an electric car, and someone else saw that the electric car was plugging into lamp post. The second car was purchased on the street. And then a third. And now you need more St. Chargers. Do you see? 

00:10:35 Speaker 3 

That sort of cultural effect. 

00:10:37 Speaker 3 

That uptake of ohh I can charge now. I'll get a car. 

00:10:40 Speaker 4 

Yeah, massively. So you know, this is about normalizing change and and that's sort of is it keeping up with the Joneses or is it seeing that someone else can do it? Or I can do it too. It's all of that kind of stuff I worked in, worked in energy for a long time. And remember, one of the guys that I spoke to years ago. 

00:11:01 Speaker 4 

When during the solar boom. 

00:11:03 Speaker 4 

And he said his priority is sell solar to one household in the street. 

00:11:09 Speaker 4 

And then the rest will. The rest will follow. And it's the same thing with electric cars. You know, the more you see them, the more normal they become. And then the more likely you are to to choose an electric car for yourself. The charging we're we're charging plays a role in that is in making living with that electric car easy. So I think electric cars are easier to live with. 

00:11:30 Speaker 4 

When you can do all your everyday charging where you live. 

00:11:34 Speaker 4 

And and that's that's the sort of the the barrier that we're solving or or knocking down or the benefit around. 

00:11:41 Speaker 2 

So having lived in cities, having tried to park in cities without having to worry about parking near a pole, just happy to find a space or on a snow day being on the right side of the street or the wrong side of the street. 

00:11:55 Speaker 2 

It The this sounds really cool conceptually. 

00:11:59 Speaker 2 

But if you're in a tight neighborhood with tight parking and then maybe you have snow emergency times where you can't park or trash day or whatever, you can't park. How does this really work? How do it keep me from parking my car there because it's the only space available? Or I plug in and charge and leave my car there? How? How is this managed so? 

00:12:15 Speaker 2 

I could actually use my transport reliably and make sure that I have a charge every day so that that would be my. 

00:12:21 Speaker 2 

My flying the ointment, from what I've heard so far. 

00:12:24 Speaker 4 

Yeah. Yeah. So, so you're right. If you don't have a driveway and you park in the street, you are not guaranteed to be able to park right outside your home or in the same place every single time. You know, that's just, that's urban living our street parkers. Yeah, we're we're cool people who deal with that. And So what? This is, This is why we need. 

00:12:45 Speaker 4 

We have different strategies for different types of locations and and parking. 

00:12:49 Speaker 4 

What I've learned is parking is a massively emotive issue, so when you look at some of the responses that people post back to their council when when the Council undertakes A consultation, you know people get really angry and and emotive about their ability to park right outside their home and and so we help councils with with different strategies to to manage. 

00:13:10 Speaker 4 

Those kind of reactions and deployments in different types of places, so give you a couple of examples. 

00:13:17 Speaker 4 

It Portsmouth is a is a city on the South Coast in England. It's actually an island and and it's heavily congested it's it's quite old. It's a naval town, loads and loads of terrace streets, you know. So for for the Americans, that's where the houses are all joined up. There's no, there's no gardens in between, no spaces in between. 

00:13:36 Speaker 4 

A very British way of living and and parking is a massive issue. It's a heavily congested area and you know parking spaces outside your house. It's like finding. 

00:13:47 Speaker 4 

So, so that City Council has a policy of always making the parking Bay next to the charge point, a dedicated space for charging. You have to be plugged in when you park there. 

00:13:58 Speaker 4 

Other places where where parking is, you know, less congested, the streets are wider, the houses are slightly more spaced out, but they're all terraces or or lack of street parking. You don't have to dedicate the parking bays. 

00:14:11 Speaker 4 

Putting in more charge points is a way of providing that certainty of access to the charge point, and then there's a mix in between. You know, some in some areas of the city you might have very congested parking. In other areas it's it's a bit more open. You don't necessarily need to do all open or all dedicated. There can be a mix. So you might say you have. 

00:14:30 Speaker 4 

Half a dozen charge points in the street. You could say that two of those have dedicated parking. The rest are open. 

00:14:36 Speaker 4 

And not everyone has to charge every day, so, you know, even a three kilowatt or A5 kilowatt charge point can support seven or eight people with their their everyday charging by because most people will only need to charge once a week, once a fortnight. 

00:14:52 Speaker 4 

To cover their their their regular mileage. 

00:14:54 Speaker 2 

And do you? Do you have a formula that that folks use to figure out? Hey, you know, one charge point handles 10 cars, handles 3 cars. Is there some back of the napkin calculation you can share? 

00:15:07 Speaker 4 

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So so when you look at so the number of miles that most people drive in the UK, we we consider different driver profiles. So, so you get very light users. So, so, so a lot of disabled people. 

00:15:23 Speaker 4 

Who use their car for quality of life? You know, getting around in public transport is difficult. They they've very low miners drivers and there's a an organisation in the UK called Motability which has a fleet of about 600,000 cars on the road. I'm not sure exactly how many of those park on the street versus park on the on their private. 

00:15:45 Speaker 4 

But in the UK, Councils give them, but we'll we'll dedicate a parking space in the street outside your home if you're a disabled driver and apply for one sort of it's like a it's a right that you have and where we see lampposts next to those next to those parking bays where and working with the Council, we're prioritizing those because we know that Motability is pushing their. 

00:16:05 Speaker 4 

Customers to go electric. 

00:16:07 Speaker 4 

And this is where things start to start to join up. So when we're thinking about a driver like that, they might do 345000 miles a year, that kind of that kind of driver we can probably support 10/12 of those, those drivers on a single. 

00:16:25 Speaker 4 

Three to five kilowatt lamppost charger. 

00:16:27 Speaker 4 

Whereas a taxi driver at the other end of the scale, they're probably the most high motors drivers. On average, they'll do 3030 to 40,000 miles a year. They'll need to charge every day. So 11 charge point is enough to fully recharge their car overnight. But. 

00:16:45 Speaker 4 

But they need that. Yeah, that's a one to one ratio. And then there's a mix in between. 

00:16:50 Speaker 3 

So you've just said the incredible number of three to five kilowatts and there's gonna be a bunch of people. 

00:16:56 Speaker 3 

Out there going. 

00:16:57 Speaker 3 

What I can't do anything with three to five kilowatts is 3 to 5 kilowatts, enough to charge an electric car. You know. What does that look like from a user perspective? 

00:17:05 Speaker 4 

OK so so I have a I have a. 

00:17:07 Speaker 4 

Little saying if you have lots of time you don't need lots of power if you don't have lots of time you need lots of power, right? So that's the that's the kind of the the mix of the mix of charging. 

00:17:19 Speaker 4 

UM. 

00:17:22 Speaker 4 

Yeah, it's it's there's a there's a balance to strike between the resilience of the local electricity networks. So a lot, sometimes a lot of these wires have been in the ground. 

00:17:30 Speaker 4 

For decades, and the distribution network companies who look after those and are concerned about network resilience, that things not going pop, they they sort of. 

00:17:41 Speaker 4 

Ask us to dial down the power to those charge points to about 3 kilowatts. They're very happy. That's a safe level. Nothing can go wrong even if lots of lots of those charge points are are plugged in, all at the same time. 

00:17:55 Speaker 4 

In other places the wires are in better condition and we run those as as sort of high capacity as we can for the supplier that's to that lamppost. And that's where we get sort of 55.35.5 kilowatts out of that of that lamppost. So it's like a a from a network perspective. 

00:18:16 Speaker 4 

Running the charge point providing as much power as we can for the conditions in that location. 

00:18:21 Speaker 4 

For drivers. 

00:18:23 Speaker 4 

3 kilowatts is fine for most of us, right? So think about you arrive home from work, probably 6-7 in the evening. You're going to if you're driving to work the next morning, you probably gonna leave somewhere between 6:00 or 7:00 or 8:00 in the in the morning. That gives you 10 to 12 hours easily to recharge your car. 3 kilowatts over 12 hours. 

00:18:43 Speaker 4 

That's what 3636. Yeah, that's right, marketing guy. Not. Not not the big brains that you've had on the on the show today. 

00:18:53 Speaker 4 

You know, at 36 kilowatt hours at sort of 3 1/2, two to four miles per kWh, that's, you know, easily 120 miles a day. Most of us don't do that every day. So. So for most people, that's more than enough. 

00:19:09 Speaker 4 

And yeah, we're we're kind of very happy if we're getting one charge a day out of out of each. 

00:19:15 Speaker 4 

Each of our charge points. 

00:19:18 Speaker 3 

And you've now got hundreds, thousands. 

00:19:21 Speaker 4 

Yeah, 1000. So, so we're we're by the time this goes out, we'll be well over 3000 installed today we're about 2800. 

00:19:30 Speaker 3 

Nice. So that would be what high density deployments and specific towns and local authorities. So you have to what's the journey like with the local authority, the partner to get this stuff install. 

00:19:40 Speaker 4 

Yeah. So a lot of a lot of it, I think you know, like like you just said, Chris, you know, three to five kilowatts that's that's low power, is it really going to work for us? There is a lot of skepticism. So you know, in the UK there is well over 10,000 lamppost charges installed and working well. You know, providing a really good service, not just. 

00:20:00 Speaker 4 

Not discharge you, but Ubiquity has a whole lot, and there are a couple of other smaller networks. 

00:20:07 Speaker 4 

But still, people are skeptical about this, you know, so it's something new. We're used to years of running petrol and diesel cars. And the way that they really feel, lots of us thinks that, well, that's the way that electric cars need to be refueled as well. And if you've lived with an electric car for more than a day, you'll realize, no, that's not the case. So we kind of have to prove the use case. 

00:20:28 Speaker 4 

To to some councils and we do tests and trials with with some Councils. So we'll go and install a few. They get cancelled with the technology, how we install all of that kind of stuff and then they start to see how how people use the charge. 

00:20:41 Speaker 4 

Things we, you know, I do a hell of a lot of talks to to council saying look, this is how people use them and we try and share as much data as we can without giving away our secret source to our competitors and and eventually confidence build, right. 

00:21:00 Speaker 4 

So I'll give an example if. 

00:21:03 Speaker 4 

In a network that we don't that we don't run. 

00:21:06 Speaker 4 

But the the guys in Brighton and Hove, another coastal city on the South Coast of England. 

00:21:12 Speaker 4 

Lots of terrace houses. It's a it's quite an old city and they have a mix of a mix of charge points provided by the, by the Council, all of their lamppost charges run at 3 kilowatts because that is. 

00:21:24 Speaker 4 

The condition that the distribution network company has put on the cables in that city and. 

00:21:33 Speaker 4 

I think there's about 300 or so child points are those child points installed today? They publish all their data, so you can have a look at you know how much people are using the different types of charges in the in the. 

00:21:43 Speaker 4 

City, but yeah, you speak to the guys who run the transport team there and the lamppost charges are the most popular amongst residents because. 

00:21:52 Speaker 4 

It's effortless the the charge points are where they live. You know this is the the mountain coming to Mohammed stuff. It's location and convenience is kind of everything. 

00:22:04 Speaker 3 

So I've used all of these solutions from all the different providers on the street charging solution. Can you just talk us through what it's like as a driver? You know, how do you turn it on? How do you know what's the plug in process? Is the cable connected to someone chip over it? 

00:22:19 Speaker 4 

OK. 

00:22:20 Speaker 4 

So it would be nice if we were all considerate and left the parking bays next to a next to a street light with a charge point on it open for for someone to use that you know my my wish for public etiquette on EV charging is, you know, leave those spaces open if you're not, if you're not. 

00:22:41 Speaker 4 

That's not always the reality of living in a in a city. Right? When you when you plug in, there is some cable etiquette, you know, don't leave it lying all over the pavement, just tuck it under your car or in the gutter so it doesn't become a trip hazard. The the charge points are right next to the curbside. 

00:23:00 Speaker 4 

So you know that. 

00:23:02 Speaker 4 

We we're always careful to make sure that the where we position the charge point doesn't doesn't do that. It doesn't create a trip hazard so that you know, trailing cables is what everyone's concerned about. 

00:23:13 Speaker 4 

And the liabilities for that? 

00:23:16 Speaker 4 

But the yeah, the the experience of using a charge point is is really simple. So we actually kind of grew out of a, a a digital. 

00:23:24 Speaker 4 

Company that makes sort of web services. We have spent a lot of time optimizing our charging process from the consumer experience. We do a lot of demos in trade shows where there are hundreds or thousands of people walking around with mobile phones and I'm always a little bit worried about will the we have a live. 

00:23:44 Speaker 4 

Large point there just connected to the standard 4G local network. 

00:23:49 Speaker 4 

Always concerned is this. Is this going to perform as it should and it's it's it's seamless and instant. You know you've you can start and stop a charge straight through our website. We actually started without an app because we were concerned that people had app phobia. But we we launched an app beginning of the year. 

00:24:09 Speaker 4 

Because apps actually make things that you do often much easier. 

00:24:14 Speaker 4 

So most of our customers are high repeat users, you know, so they'll use it at charge point once a week, once a fortnight, daily if they're a high mileage driver. So yeah, doing things for an app actually makes that kind of stuff easier. And yeah, we can pay by Google Pay or Apple Pay. So very. 

00:24:34 Speaker 4 

Common ways of paying and we do that so that we can offer contactless payment without carrying all the costs of having to have physical card readers mounted on the charge points, which also creates an extra point of vulnerability. 

00:24:49 Speaker 4 

Yeah, I think, yeah, we. 

00:24:50 Speaker 4 

We've done a lot to optimize the charging experience, so it's super simple. You don't have to be a digital Wiz kid to use one of our charge points. 

00:24:59 

So I'm still. 

00:25:01 Speaker 2 

Wondering you, you talked about kind of a Gray field build out, right, you're going to infrastructure that's in place, you're living with cables that have been in the ground or wires have been ground for long periods of time. But as we transform going forward? 

00:25:16 Speaker 2 

What's the ideal that you want to build to? So you you talked about what works. 

00:25:21 Speaker 2 

But what's the future look like? Where, what? What kind of speeds are we going to get for charging? Because, you know, is everybody has an EV or if every, you know, if you stop making internal combustion engines at some point, you know, a a number of charge points. 

00:25:36 Speaker 2 

May not be enough from the light pole. So what's where does this go does? 

00:25:39 Speaker 2 

It just get more. 

00:25:41 Speaker 2 

Faster charging. Are there more connections in a block or how? How does this evolve and does it turn into the same thing like where we? 

00:25:46 Speaker 4 

Yeah. So. 

00:25:47 Speaker 2 

Have scooters in every every every corner right where the you know, there's charges everywhere, so the city becomes untenable for people like they did with those electric scooter things. 

00:25:57 Speaker 4 

Yeah. So, fortunately charge points don't move. You know, they they stuck on the charge point. Then not gonna jump out, jump out at you. 

00:26:06 Speaker 4 

I think. 

00:26:08 Speaker 4 

What we're trying to do is create a a network of low power chargers. 

00:26:14 Speaker 4 

Which makes access to the electricity that you need really easy. And I think there's, you know, this is when we start thinking about the wider system effects of the type of charging infrastructure that we're installing so. 

00:26:28 Speaker 4 

You know, you had you had Graham Cooper on a couple of episodes ago, and he was talking about the role that evies have in the decarbonisation of our electricity system. 

00:26:38 Speaker 4 

And one of the things he spoke about was, you know, when a car is plugged in, is how often has the car plugged in, right. So the engineers think, uh, there's this much charging capacity or storage capacity, and that's how much capacity those EVA's can can lend to the grid for flexible demand and energy storage. But people don't plug in all the time. 

00:26:58 Speaker 4 

You you plug in when you need. 

00:26:59 Speaker 4 

To charge so. 

00:27:01 Speaker 4 

You know, EV's are kind of an asset to a more flexible, more renewable friendly energy grid when they're plugged in. They are not an asset when they're just standing alone. So the more we can encourage people to plug, plug in for long periods. 

00:27:17 Speaker 4 

The more that those those cars become an asset for our low carbon future, and even on you know, very low low power charge points, people aren't plugged in, they're not charging for the full duration of their plug in time. So we've got a bit of flexibility there to provide some flexibility services back to the grid. And I think that. 

00:27:36 Speaker 4 

And that kind of system wide thinking is? 

00:27:39 Speaker 4 

Is really what's going to help amplify the benefits of electric vehicles to not only decarbonizing transport and reducing pollution from transport, but accelerating the the decarbonization at a much cheaper price of our electricity system. 

00:27:58 Speaker 3 

This is a very cool because you're not the first person to talk about integrating cars into the electricity grid. We had a a speaker from STEM, previously speaking Natasha previously, both of whom talked about the role of electric vehicles plugged into the grid as energy assets and the distributed energy. 

00:28:13 Speaker 3 

System. Have you done any trials on how to really get flex? You know, I believe you've got a time of use tariff now. Why did why do you have that? How does that work? You know, what are what are? 

00:28:24 Speaker 4 

Things you're doing in this space. Yeah. So we've got a couple of couple of experiences. So when I was at Uber twisty we undertook. 

00:28:34 Speaker 4 

A took part in an innovation project. 

00:28:38 Speaker 4 

Called vehicle to streets and that was looking at V2G through through low power charge points. So we had a specially modified Honda Civic which had been had a massively expensive inverter in the boot and we were we were doing VG sessions through one of our standard. 

00:29:00 Speaker 4 

Using the smart cable that with that sort of meter in the in the middle of the the box in the middle of the cable to as a controller for starting and stopping the charging. That so that was pretty cool. So it can be done on standard low power charge points you just need the vehicle fee to to be able to do that and some sort of system. 

00:29:22 Speaker 4 

So at the moment that most cars can't do V2G, but that's not where most of the benefit is, just by scheduling the the charging. So managing when the energy flows into the car, you can unlock like 8090% of demand flexibility to benefit both the driver in in cheaper prices and. 

00:29:42 Speaker 4 

And the electricity system through sort of demand shifting. 

00:29:47 Speaker 4 

Yeah. So we mentioned mentioned day night pricing. So we introduced that in December last year. You know electricity prices went absolutely nuts last year and. 

00:29:57 Speaker 4 

This was our response to to managing that for our, for our customers. So most of our customers plug in in the evening. So we looked at the the profile of of you know when our customers start their charge and then they charge and quickly came to realize that day night pricing would work for the vast majority of our customers, not all but the vast. 

00:30:17 Speaker 4 

And because electricity prices were just so nuts, we sort of went for a day night price, which is what most people who get an EV and charge at home do. You'll switch to an EV tariff where you pay a bit more for your day price and a lot less for your night price. 

00:30:33 Speaker 4 

And you can and the electricity system works that way because demand is normally so much lower overnight. You know, it's like a a third off. 

00:30:41 Speaker 4 

That sort of peaked demand during the day and drivers have responded to that. 

00:30:47 Speaker 4 

In their droves, you know? So before we changed our pricing structure, about 30% of the electricity that flowed into the cars. 

00:30:57 Speaker 4 

Occurred between midnight and 7:00 AM, which is our our night saver period. That's now doubled. It's it's nearly 60%. And all of that demand has has sort of shifted out of the out of the early evening. 

00:31:10 Speaker 4 

So you know, so drivers are very price sensitive. 

00:31:14 Speaker 4 

And we we we did some research before we you know with our drivers before we launched it and you know asked do you think it's a good idea do you think it's a bad idea and why and a lot of people who thought it was a good idea said because this is how I charge normally and I'll be able to access cheaper prices. But I was surprised and this was unprompted by how many people said. 

00:31:35 Speaker 4 

Actually this is good for the grid and this is good for for for working with renewables and that kind of stuff, only one person said. This is good for the environment, but people were quite a lot more grid savvy than I thought they would be. 

00:31:49 Speaker 2 

So you bring up a topic that comes to mind when I'm hearing. 

00:31:52 Speaker 2 

This is do you show Providence of the electrons where they come from? How do I know if I go to one year charge points because I'm just plugging into a grid that I'm getting. I I bought a green vehicle, perhaps because I want to do something green. 

00:32:05 Speaker 2 

And plug into the inefficient old grid with those 20 year old wires in the ground. 

00:32:10 Speaker 2 

What do you do to help me control that? I'm getting some green power for my green vehicle. 

00:32:16 Speaker 4 

OK. So we're doing two things. So one, we have a renewable backed electricity supply. So we said to our electricity supplier, please source all our electricity from renewable sources. 

00:32:28 Speaker 4 

The other, but that's. 

00:32:31 Speaker 4 

That's important, but it doesn't really move the needle. How we're really moving the needle is by encouraging people to use more electricity when demand is low and the carbon intensity of the of the electricity system is low. So it varies massively through the day, like massively and. And it varies from day-to-day. 

00:32:50 Speaker 4 

Today we were sort of working on average profiles, so you know, generally speaking the grid is the least least carbon intense in the wee hours of the morning. 

00:33:01 Speaker 4 

In summer, it's also very low, low carbon intensity in the middle of the day. But you know that's a problem. We're gonna have to solve next year maybe and and sort of think about how we restructure our prices to reflect that. But yeah, we're doing a lot to move as much electricity demand as we can outside of the the evening peak, which is when. 

00:33:19 Speaker 4 

You know you have a lot of gas fired power stations on the grid and sort of local backup generation trying to supply as much energy as we can to meet sort of the the the typical evening peak. It's the dirtiest time to to recharge. It also happens to be when lots of people return home from their commute. And the first thing they'll do is plug in. 

00:33:39 Speaker 4 

Do it. Yeah, yeah. 

00:33:41 Speaker 2 

Switching gears a bit, so I I. 

00:33:44 Speaker 2 

I take what you say at face value. You know, I I wish it was a greener answer because I I think that that that would make people happier to go faster. But the reality is we are where we are. So it is what it is. 

00:33:58 Speaker 2 

We talked in our last interview with a guest about wireless coming down the pipe. So because I picture a street with all these wires, even if they're neatly tucked to the curb or put out of their way, you know, have a charging cable, I have to worry about and things like that, or perhaps someone could mess with my cable, it'd be sure cool if I could just pull up and wirelessly charge. So where are we and how far is that? 

00:34:18 Speaker 2 

From today. 

00:34:20 Speaker 4 

So it's it's coming along. We we did a trial last year with wireless charging and how that would work for car clubs. 

00:34:28 Speaker 4 

So car clubs are interesting, I think. 

00:34:31 Speaker 4 

For most people, charging with the cable is fine, right? It's it's very simple. It takes takes 2 ticks and it's a. It's a very simple and cheap technology. 

00:34:41 Speaker 4 

One of the issues with wireless charging is the vehicle. It's just like vehicle to grid. The vehicle needs to be able to support it. So in in our case with the no vehicles come out with that as standard. 

00:34:54 Speaker 4 

In our case we we converted a bunch of renos zoes for which was. Yeah good for good for car clubs, good for short term use. 

00:35:02 Speaker 4 

And we had to do quite a lot to to make those those those those shoes recognized that they were getting electricity from a charging pad that we fitted underneath the car and make it think that it didn't know the difference between whether the energy was coming from there or through the the standard, the standard car port charging port. 

00:35:23 Speaker 4 

It's I think right now it's a very expensive way to to charge your car not because of inefficiencies. So the the efficiencies were not widely dissimilar to charging through cable, but because you have to do so much retrofitting to. 

00:35:40 Speaker 4 

To the car and the the pads themselves are expensive. Fitting those is is quite expensive, but it's I think that's a technology which in in a few years time might be might be more popular, certainly for niche applications like car clubs. So what we were solving there was. 

00:35:58 Speaker 4 

Electric cars are sound great as as car clubs, but they're a nightmare for those car club operators to keep charge. 

00:36:07 Speaker 4 

So unlike petrol and diesel car clubs, car club cars. 

00:36:13 Speaker 4 

You can't just leave a fuel fuel payment card in the in the glove box and and expect your driver to go and refuel it. That that's how most car club cars are refueled. 

00:36:23 Speaker 4 

You know, and some of the car club owners have operators have told us is anything you don't have nailed down gets gets stored in and the charging cable is a fairly expensive piece of kit. So the way that some of those car club operators keep their cars charged so that people find them a useful. 

00:36:43 Speaker 4 

Service is they'll send someone out to go and pick them up when the battery is low. Take it to a charge point, wait for it to charge, and then go put it back and get the next. 

00:36:53 Speaker 4 

And that's massively resource intensive. So there an expensive retrofit to to a car club car so that you can have the, the car hirer just return it to base and park it over the. 

00:37:07 Speaker 4 

Packet over the charging pad. That's another. That's another issue is is a is a good way to solve that problem? 

00:37:14 Speaker 2 

And just to be clear, Car Club is a shared car resource, right? That's what you mean by a car club, not a bunch of people souping up cars for fun. It's it's. 

00:37:21 Speaker 4 

No, no, no. Yeah. 

00:37:23 Speaker 2 

It's a shared economy kind of car where where I don't have a whole car and I just have use of a car. 

00:37:27 Speaker 4 

That's right. Yeah. Yeah. And you'll you'll hire it for a couple of hours or or a full day or. Yeah. Yeah. One quick journey. 

00:37:37 Speaker 3 

Ohh I have a question about internationalization because we are both sat here in the UK at the moment Shane and we've got a bunch of listeners who aren't here in the UK here in the UK we have a relatively unique problem. We've got about 40% of people who can't access a private driveway. You can probably see parallels in places like maybe France and Germany and some of these other compact. 

00:37:57 Speaker 3 

European cities, does this technology translate to the US, to North America, to other countries? 

00:38:04 Speaker 4 

Yeah. Yeah. So we actually have a trial going on at the moment in New York. 

00:38:09 Speaker 4 

So that's our furthest our furthest charge point. We've got a couple installed in in Ireland as well and we're looking to expand there, but yeah it there's, you know, street parking wherever street parking is is normal, then charge points on street are going to be required and and often the. 

00:38:28 Speaker 4 

The most convenient way to to get that that charge point in is is via via lamp. 

00:38:34 Speaker 2 

And do do I pay the same kind of rates or do people use the charge point in the street to kind of balance out too? Let's say I'm a high mileage driver. I might want to go for faster charging just for convenience, but do they use the charge point to kind of cost average down? Is that part of what people try to figure out? 

00:38:53 Speaker 4 

So I think like any service, you get people who are highly price sensitive and people who don't care. They just want it to. They just don't want it, they want it to work. And people who want a mix of value and convenience. 

00:39:05 Speaker 4 

When you look at the range of of charging prices that you could pay, you know compared to if you charge at home on a on an EV tariff with your home electricity pie, that's super cheap. And at the moment in the UK it's like 7 1/2 pence per kWh. They say that cents for the American audience. 

00:39:25 Speaker 4 

On a on a rapid charger, the average price of of charging there is £0.75 or $0.75 per kWh, so that's like a 10 times difference. And then you have AC charge points which tend to be somewhere in the middle. 

00:39:39 Speaker 4 

And as I gave a talk on this quite recently trying to explain this massively wide range of prices that you could pay to put the same electricity into your car and how wildly different that is to our experience of driving petrol and diesel cars. So there is some price difference between brands, you know, so where these? 

00:39:59 Speaker 4 

Fill up at a supermarket, petrol station or a branded petrol station or a motorway petrol station. There are some price differences, but nothing like 10 times and. 

00:40:11 Speaker 4 

Yeah. So when you when you consider that and and then the kind of the the convenience factor. 

00:40:18 Speaker 4 

Yeah, we're, we're, we're weighing up a bunch of different things and I think our our challenge as a as a charge point operator is to try and explain how if you don't have your own driveway and your own charge point. 

00:40:30 Speaker 4 

Then what's the best way that we can give you really good value? 

00:40:34 Speaker 4 

But also earn enough to keep our charge points maintained and keep them upgraded so that we're continuing to continue investing in the service that you rely on. 

00:40:44 Speaker 2 

I I get the business model. I guess the things that come to mind is someone in the professional world is, for example, in the US or there's a IRS gives you a rate when you drive the car per mile, right? So if there's a variable of, you know, 10 times. 

00:41:00 Speaker 2 

And you get paid per mile because you're driving and you expense those mileage in and the company pays you what the government allows them to. 

00:41:05 Speaker 2 

Pay you how do you calculate the difference between what you actually paid? You know the seven cents or the 70s pence or whatever it. 

00:41:14 Speaker 2 

Was because that that seems like a pretty big variable. If you multiply that by a fleet. 

00:41:19 Speaker 2 

Of let's say you have a sales team of a couple 100 people or something like that. That's significant money on the back end. 

00:41:27 Speaker 4 

Yeah, so this is not my special subject, this is. This is where Neil Neil knows a hell of a lot more than I do, so I might have to get him to answer that. But I think you know, the the cheaper we can help people do most of their charging than the fairer that works out for everyone. If you're if you're only relying on. 

00:41:46 Speaker 4 

The most expensive form of charging, because that's all that's. 

00:41:50 Speaker 4 

For you. 

00:41:51 Speaker 4 

Then yeah, it's running electric car is is an expensive proposition. So you know, we need to give. 

00:41:58 Speaker 4 

People, whether they are driving for their own purposes or or as as business drivers, access to lower cost charging because that's that's what's going to get more people into electric cars. 

00:42:11 Speaker 3 

We we see exactly this, we get fleet customers approach us and they go I want lots of rapid charges and we go OK, we'll get lots of rapid charges for you and of course the mentality that's going through their head is I want something like a petrol. 

00:42:25 Speaker 3 

So quite quickly they send all their drivers off to petrol station. They hang on this guy spending 45 minutes during the day charging. Surely we can come up with something else and we go. Yeah, we've got these other things called slow charges and they go, where are they? And they go well, couple around the streets, around about you. Well, I'll tell my drivers to go and charge there and quite quickly you go through this technical change into a behavioral change. 

00:42:46 Speaker 3 

And it's that behavioral change pattern that's quite hard to implement in a business environment. So, you know, encouraging fleets and businesses to think slightly differently, encouraging drivers to think differently is really crucial in this. 

00:42:59 Speaker 4 

And yeah, so. 

00:43:00 Speaker 2 

The other thing you mentioned is you have apps and you can pay through Apple Pay or Google Pay or things like that is is that a hindrance for people? Is everybody set up to handle that today. So is is everybody at that point? I mean I know when I go on the trains in the UK and the buses I pay with my phone. 

00:43:18 Speaker 2 

I don't use money, ever. So is. Is that pretty universal across the UK that that you're? 

00:43:24 Speaker 2 

Everyone has a smartphone these days. Be able to get their car places. 

00:43:29 Speaker 4 

I'm not sure it's the exact percentage of, you know, smartphone adoption, but it's really high there is. So there's another issue of like digital exclusion. So there are people who just struggle with digital services and and they're. 

00:43:46 Speaker 4 

Yeah, we're going to have to find a way of find a way of helping them, but they are today unlikely to be early adopters of electric cars. So I think that's a problem we can solve at a later date. And the way you know, technology adoption happens is it eventually arrives for virtually everyone. 

00:44:03 Speaker 4 

So I think it's a problem that will solve itself. You know. So today today we were very used to paying with contactless cards. We are. 

00:44:13 Speaker 4 

But that didn't used to be the norm, so I remember how long ago was that? Not too long ago. 

00:44:21 Speaker 4 

One of the card operators I can't remember which one. Maybe it was MasterCard. Did A did a big campaign about cashless payments. 

00:44:29 Speaker 4 

And and that was trying to shift people away from old, old style money into using contactless payments and and getting over. I don't have to enter my pin number anymore. So and then we moved to to doing it by phone through Apple and Google Pay in a few years time, you know, not not in the not too distant future. We actually already have this technology turn available in our charge. 

00:44:50 Speaker 4 

Hope we haven't turned it on yet. Your car will be able to pay for the charging itself without you getting involved. 

00:44:58 Speaker 4 

So yeah, for plug and charge or auto charge standards, those are that's those are really close to to being deployed and will make charging easy and payment super easy for everyone. 

00:45:09 Speaker 3 

This is wicked to here. You've taken us on quite a journey and I'm conscious that normally what I do at this point in the shows I wrap up and I go through the things you've talked about, but I'm also really conscious that there's plenty of people out there who don't believe in. 

00:45:21 Speaker 3 

Street charging. So do you have like, a one line pithy statement that you provide customers that goes This is why St. Charging is an important part of. 

00:45:29 Speaker 3 

The EV charging. 

00:45:30 Speaker 3 

OK, system. 

00:45:34 Speaker 4 

It's you. You have to make charging super convenient for everyone to to make the switch. So I've I've a a slogan of hyper local, you know. Let's let's put the charge points where the cars are. 

00:45:48 Speaker 4 

And that's what will make charging and the and running electric cars very easy. 

00:45:52 Speaker 4 

For everyone, it's also the way we're going to unlock all those extra carbon benefits and energy system benefits of that that electric vehicles have to offer. And it's gonna make this whole transition to, you know, towards a net zero future, which is so urgent, much, much cheaper for everyone. We'll be using more renewable energy, which is super cheap. 

00:46:13 Speaker 4 

We pay a lot today as a as as a country for turning out wind farms when there's too much wind in the wrong places and you know that that's a problem we can solve by adjusting when we when we charge our cars. But to do that, the cars need to be plugged in for long. 

00:46:33 Speaker 3 

So hyperlocal, that's the answer. Get it everywhere now. We've talked a lot about the the business and your professional perspectives, but you know, personally, what do you drive an electric? 

00:46:42 Speaker 4 

Car. So I've got a Tesla Model 3. It is an amazing car so fast. I do quite a lot of miles so. 

00:46:53 Speaker 4 

Last year I've done. I did about 24,000 miles and you know, that's quite a lot for the UK. 

00:46:59 Speaker 4 

In the UK, you can't. 

00:47:01 Speaker 4 

You can't drive drive too far without hitting a traffic jam, so you probably count your journeys more in hours than you do in miles. 

00:47:10 Speaker 4 

But yeah, it's it's an amazing car. It makes sitting in traffic really comfortable. That's that's an important benefit for an electric car in the England. 

00:47:20 Speaker 2 

Well, I think it's been an amazing conversation. I want to thank you for sharing insight on the the street parking. I think we've talked about that quite a bit, both Neil and I living in Europe. I'm in Switzerland right now. But even when I go back to DC in a couple of weeks, we have tight street parking in DC as well. It's not uniquely European. 

00:47:40 Speaker 2 

Of them. And it was interesting to get your perspective on that. Thank you so much for being a guest on our podcast today. 

00:47:46 Speaker 4 

Yeah. No, thanks so much for having me, Chris. 

00:47:49 Speaker 2 

For our audience, we hope you've enjoyed this episode as much as we have making it. If you have questions, drop them into the chat. Our guests will see them and you'll get responses. Follow us on YouTube, follow us on Facebook and we're going to see you again next time on the insiders guide to Energy EV miniseries. Goodbye for now.