Octopus Vitality is made up of 1000+ implausible individuals engaged on stuff you’d by no means count on, all pushing onerous in the direction of a shared objective: driving the worldwide inexperienced power revolution. In our Highlight collection, we’ll introduce you to a number of the good individuals behind the scenes.
Immediately, we’re speaking to Lucy Yu, CEO of our Centre for Web Zero; an revolutionary analysis unit devoted to advancing the worldwide power transition to fight local weather change. With unprecedented international perception into how properties use power, we consider the Centre as one of many world’s largest dwelling labs.
Lucy, one of many Monetary Occasions’ 100 most influential BAME leaders in tech, offers an inside take a look at the Centre’s fascinating work, and the significance of knowledge and people-centred analysis in our quest for internet zero.
Samsam: Inform me in regards to the Centre for Web Zero?
We’re an affect pushed analysis unit, pioneering analysis to ship a sooner, fairer and extra inexpensive power transition.
Lucy: These three core ideas information all of our work. Our imaginative and prescient of the longer term power system is one the place information, digitalisation and widespread possession of low carbon applied sciences will play a important position.
For instance, we anticipate that the majority households may have an electrical automobile, warmth pump, sensible thermostat, house battery or photo voltaic panels throughout the subsequent decade. Our analysis will assist to grasp how we are able to combine these distributed power sources alongside renewable era to make a brand new system which is each greener and cheaper for shoppers. All of these items might be a part of our future power system, so it should look radically totally different from the previous.
The reply to a inexperienced power future may contain utilizing synthetic intelligence and automation, elevating new questions and alternatives that haven’t beforehand been addressed.
On a sensible stage, we conduct unbiased evaluation, construct merchandise, collaborate with lecturers and kind broader partnerships. We share our analysis publicly and wherever doable, we additionally share the info that it’s primarily based on in order that each our findings and our information can be utilized by others in service of a inexperienced future.
Samsam: What are you presently engaged on?
Lucy: We’ve not too long ago completed an enormous piece of analysis to simulate warmth pump adoption throughout the UK. We wished to analyze whether or not authorities set up targets might be met and if that’s the case, what actions can be wanted to fulfill them. Fortunately we predict that the reply is ‘sure’! Our analysis used an method referred to as agent-based modelling which enabled us to recognise essential variations in family decision-making in our simulation.
We even have quite a few tutorial collaborations underway. We’re working with the Turing Institute and the College of Newcastle to grasp the affect extra low carbon applied sciences may have on native electrical energy networks. And we’re working with the Universities of Cologne and Maryland to take a look at the position of home flexibility in supporting resilient power methods.
A shot of the podcast artistic crew onerous at work
Our ‘Undertaking Faraday’ goals to develop an API that generates electrical energy utilization profiles primarily based on totally different units of knowledge. You’ll have the ability to configure a set of households and low carbon applied sciences, and generate totally different load profiles taking account of various climate and tariff info.
We’re additionally engaged on some ‘Future Vitality Profiles’ – producing detailed profiles of a number of international cities and accumulating essential information regarding their native power transitions.
Lastly, we’ve simply launched our podcast ‘Contained in the Vitality Transition’, to inform the broader story of our power future alongside our analysis and with the assistance of our skilled visitors.
As all of us work in the direction of a inexperienced power future, we have to perceive the wants of individuals, and learn how to meet them most effectively. This analysis will assist us decide what components are essential for a future power system.
Samsam: What units you other than different analysis centres?
Lucy: We’re distinctive as a result of now we have entry to billions of knowledge factors by our relationship with Octopus Vitality, who now have places of work in 14 nations and 25 million clients on the Kraken platform. This implies now we have entry to an unprecedented quantity of close to real-time, anonymised information overlaying households that personal low carbon applied sciences. Whereas many of those households might be described as early adopters, we should recognise that we’re quickly transferring out of that section and into the bulk – so what we be taught from at this time’s information may help us perceive the following wave of power tendencies.
We now have entry to an unprecedented quantity of close to real-time information overlaying households that personal low carbon tech comparable to electrical autos or these utilizing revolutionary sensible tariffs. I generally name it the world’s largest dwelling lab.
Samsam: What drew your curiosity in power analysis?
Lucy: I initially skilled as a scientist and studied chemistry, the place I liked researching rising fields comparable to computational and quantum chemistry. I used to be significantly within the methods revolutionary analysis might be utilized to create optimistic modifications in the actual world.
So, I began my working life in Authorities and labored an entire host of roles centered on tech, innovation and digitalisation. After just a few years, I had the chance to affix a start-up known as SwiftKey, growing AI-powered software program for smartphones simply as they have been starting to enter the market. It was an enormous success; we ended up growing among the finest promoting apps globally, and after that I labored for a number of extra research-led start-ups, in addition to an additional stint again in authorities.
In consequence I’ve at all times recognized I take pleasure in being on the interface of tech, coverage, and the actual world, with all its complexity. The power transition might be pushed and accelerated by tech and affect all of our lives, so power analysis appeared a logical transfer to make.
Fast Hearth Spherical
What’s your favorite reminiscence from the early days of the Centre?
I like seeing daring ventures go from thought to actuality so it was thrilling to rent the primary crew members and see the imaginative and prescient begin to come to life.
Additionally, listening to Al Gore’s help for our work was fairly unimaginable…I believe we nonetheless have a crew GIF of his speech someplace!
What’s your favorite place on this planet?
El Retiro Park in Madrid. It’s magnificent and a complete feast for the senses – stunning and vibrant all through the seasons, with great birdsong within the background. And only a brief stroll from a number of the greatest artwork museums on the planet.
Any uncommon hobbies?
Haha! I don’t have quite a lot of time for hobbies. I purchased an enormous canvas to make a tondo (a round portray) seven years in the past and nonetheless haven’t completed sketching out the design. I’m hoping to get to the paint stage by the top of the last decade! I additionally observe soccer and persons are at all times shocked after they discover out. I nonetheless bear in mind the times of the outdated First Division!
Any work comforts/rituals?
I drink a LOT of espresso. I’ve usually had no less than three earlier than the primary assembly of the day!
A random reality I like…
You possibly can’t photocopy banknotes (and no, I didn’t be taught this by making an attempt!).
Samsam: It appears you’ve at all times been on the reducing fringe of analysis. How did that lead you to be concerned with Centre for Web Zero?
Lucy: Greg contacted me with a cryptic message about searching for somebody to construct a brand new Octopus analysis centre. I knew of Octopus due to their sturdy status for innovation and sustainability in tech and power – so it instantly appeared prefer it might be match. I knew that quite a lot of industries the place I had prior expertise – comparable to transport and telecoms – would begin converging with the power sector as all of us work to fight local weather change, so I used to be excited to probably be on the forefront of this.
Samsam: What’s it been like working with the whole Centre for Web Zero crew?
Lucy: Constructing the Centre and the crew has been some of the absorbing and difficult challenges I’ve taken on – I constructed the whole organisation remotely from scratch, on the top of the pandemic when even getting a pint of milk wasn’t simple! It was a brand new expertise for us all and we’ve had a number of the regular start-up street bumps alongside the best way however fortunately we’ve settled into some sturdy methods of working collectively. We’re a small and agile crew and work carefully collectively on tasks. We’re working with innovative tech and information so an essential factor to our work is creativity and collaboration.
The superb Centre for Web Zero Group
Past our core crew, we’re additionally aiming to construct a wider neighborhood, by connecting with leaders within the tech, power and local weather area as we’re all working collectively in the direction of a shared objective.
Lucy: We foster this sense of neighborhood by our podcast the place we focus on the realities of a simply and inexperienced power revolution. We now have additionally began a collection of skilled talks known as the ‘En_Tech_Talks’, the place we convey collectively a number of the main innovators within the tech, power and local weather areas.
A picture of the Centre’s very first ‘En_Tech_Talks’.
Samsam: How a lot of your analysis is concentrated on a simply transition and the way do you assume this can play out in the actual world?
Lucy: In all of our analysis we attempt to keep away from utilizing common values, as a result of they’ll unhelpfully obscure all of the variation that exists in the actual world. So one of many improvements in our analysis is figuring out the distributional impacts of various potential insurance policies or selections.
One of many issues I’m personally excited by is whether or not the usage of expertise might assist some locations to hurry up their very own power transition, by skipping a number of the messy intermediate phases related to legacy infrastructure. The web is an efficient analogy: some components of the worldwide south have been in a position to skip the desktop section, and go straight to cell. So, these nations have been forward of extra developed nations when it got here to issues like cell finance – and there might be some equivalences right here in power.
Samsam: The place do you envision the Centre in 5 years time?
Lucy: I believe we’re simply beginning to scratch the floor of the area we function in. In 5 years I’d like to have broadened our exterior collaborations, have a clutch of landmark research underneath our belt, and a few tech merchandise – beginning with our Undertaking Faraday – being utilized in bizarre methods to decarbonise the planet.
If we are able to develop into the primary place that local weather and power ministers and policymakers flip after they have a query they want answering, then we’ve cracked it.
Samsam: What’s the one factor you would like everybody knew in regards to the journey to Web Zero?
Lucy: Once I purchased my (very outdated) house a clever particular person stated to me that you just by no means actually personal a interval property, you simply take care of it for the following era. If all of us understood that we’re custodians of our planet in the identical approach then lots of our conversations about internet zero wouldn’t get mired in arguments about science, duties, and financing…however then possibly we wouldn’t be on this disaster within the first place!
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