The world of power is altering.
Only for a second, let’s simply skip previous the subsequent fifteen years, and cease in on 2031 to check out what power provide appears like.
Unsurprisingly, no-one is ready on maintain to speak to their power provider. As a result of no-one needs to speak to their power provider. They’ve higher issues to do. As an alternative, they ship a message through Fb Messenger and get on with their day. In fact, you possibly can already try this as we speak.
Utilizing fossil fuels to energy our each day lives has grow to be a kind of issues that’s arduous to imagine we ever thought was okay, like drink driving or smoking whereas pregnant.
And, fortunately, no-one finds themselves within the freezing chilly, or on tip-toes within the hallway, struggling to learn the numbers on a meter, as a result of sensible meters have grow to be way more than simply the kilowatt equal of bean counters.
They’re now hubs extra akin to site visitors controllers, making certain essentially the most environment friendly use of power all through house and workplace by liaising with sensible gadgets, native renewable era – akin to rooftop photo voltaic or neighborhood wind – and storage akin to wall mounted batteries or electrical automobiles.
They each draw and push energy into the distribution networks as wanted, and their networked, API pushed nature means peaks are smoothed and managed, each on the provision and demand sides.
So. What sort of companies survived the upheaval, and really helped ship these adjustments to the power business?
Was it the Huge 6 dinosaurs, with their fossil gas energy vegetation, legions of meter readers, and massive name centres?
We don’t assume so both.
We imagine the way forward for power requires a brand new breed of provider, one constructed from the bottom up for the challenges of tomorrow.
What does it take to create the power firm of the long run?
Alongside the imaginative and prescient for the place power is heading, the power firm of tomorrow will want three key elements: the best dedication, the best crew, and the best expertise.
The correct dedication
Power just isn’t a easy market to compete in. Wholesale power costs fluctuate on a half-hourly foundation, and sharply rising power prices have already taken out one poorly uncovered power provider this yr. That’s why sound backing is important for any provider trying to make a dent within the UK market.
In contrast to many new firms within the power market, Octopus Power is backed by a significant expertise investor – Octopus Investments, the UK primarily based funding agency with over £6 billion in funds beneath administration, and market main positions in tax-efficient funding, smaller firm financing, and healthcare.
Octopus has a powerful historical past of backing profitable UK companies pushed by the brightest entrepreneurs and most formidable enterprise homeowners, together with Graze.com, Secret Escapes, SwiftKey, and Zoopla Property Group.
However success all through the tumultuous years forward would require extra than simply sound backing – it’ll require dedication and fervour for producing power appropriately generated: sustainably.
Octopus is the UK’s largest investor in photo voltaic era, with over £2 billion invested in renewable power era normally. There are solely two firms who can declare extra funding in renewable era in Britain – each of that are Huge 6 power suppliers whose renewable investments are dwarfed by their funding in and dedication to fossil fuels.
The correct crew
The correct crew will probably be one that may take new concepts, new methods of pondering, and efficiently deliver them to bear on a sector that could be very technical, and really caught in it’s methods. That’s a troublesome factor to do, and requires a crew with a strong, collaborative combine of out of doors expertise and inside data – and a practical method to getting issues carried out.
Our senior crew
Greg Jackson, founder & Chief Government
Greg is an skilled entrepreneur and passionate advocate of technology-driven innovation, notably in legacy industries. He’s based a string of profitable companies, together with most lately HomeServe Alliance which launched new companies in linked house expertise and residential providers supply. Greg has additionally served as Director of various progressive companies, together with Zopa, the world’s first peer to see lender, which has now lent virtually £2bn pretty and responsibly while producing glorious rates of interest for lenders.
Jon Paull, Director of Operations
Jon has unmatched expertise at scaling power companies from startup into established market gamers. Jon beforehand managed buyer providers for Merely Power, a brand new power provider in Australia that now boasts a 12% market share. Subsequently, Jon has overseen operations for Alinta Power and Horizon Energy. Most lately, Jon was Head of Operations at hipster renewable provider Bulb.
Pete Miller, Head of Buyer Expertise
Pete brings a wealth of digital design expertise to the crew. Beforehand Artistic Director of a prime London digital company, Peter has used expertise and user-centred design to make complicated programs easy for an in depth record of organisations together with the Labour Get together, Sky, and the German software program large, SAP.
Stuart Jackson, Chief Monetary Officer
Stuart has in depth expertise of business and monetary technique in regulated markets, most lately as Founder and Director of OBI Technique, a monetary providers consultancy, and previous to that as Head of Buyer Acquisition at Barclaycard. Stuart additionally labored on the main monetary providers and technique consultancy, Marakon.
James Eddison, Chief Know-how Officer
James is an skilled expertise chief, having spent 10 years as CTO of unbiased digital company Tangent Labs delivering enterprise scale expertise platforms for the likes of Tata, SAP, and Deutsche Financial institution. Beforehand, he was CEO of web-conferencing enterprise Claripoint, and helped Unilever put together for Y2K.
The correct expertise
Underpinning the imaginative and prescient, the dedication, and the crew of tomorrow’s power firm is the muse upon which all of it will probably be constructed: its expertise.
A lot of the expertise within the power business as we speak is model 1.0. It’s cumbersome, proprietary software program that’s constructed to handle the system because it has labored up till now. It doesn’t play nicely with others. It’s utterly unprepared for the disruption and the info that tomorrow will deliver.
That’s why we’re constructing our personal. It’s designed at a elementary stage to work with the precision and immediacy of real-time information in a wise meter world. So whereas legacy programs would possibly wrestle with one meter studying roughly each 6 months, ours will really begin to shine as soon as we begin receiving half hourly – or ideally extra frequent – utilization from sensible meters.
At present it might appear that the thought of your power account interacting with sensible gadgets in your house, or utilizing locational information out of your smartphone, or working collectively along with your neighbours’ accounts to preserve power is a good distance off. However that’s just because the normal method to expertise in power has been to construct nice walled gardens that stored “opponents” out, and stored clients locked in.
In distinction, the tech startups which can be creating as we speak’s hottest trendy providers realise the way in which to create sustainable innovation is to open your platform up with an API. We imagine that by permitting clients, builders, and different companies to entry and use real-time power information will result in far higher transparency and innovation than we’ve seen within the business for a really very long time.
This API pushed innovation is important to reworking the grid from the one-way fossil gas firehose of yesterday into the sensible, demand-managing, push-and-pull community of tomorrow.
Already intelligent improvements akin to Reactive Applied sciences (an Octopus backed startup) are utilizing networked expertise to raised handle the power calls for of huge companies in smarter, extra environment friendly methods.
The way forward for power is already arriving. To our minds, 2031 can’t come quickly sufficient.
