EcoTitchfield were lucky to get an invitation to the Octopus Energy Tech Summit, which was part of the London Climate Action Week.
An amazing group of speakers from Brian Cox to Sir Stephen Fry, even a video link to Al Gore with topics all related to future energy developments and challenges.
Topics varied from vehicle to grid, use of Ai, how the Octopus Kraken system works, battery storage and new products from Octopus.
My big takeaways were as follows:
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Our energy pricing is still dominated by gas despite the increasing amount of renewables.
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As long as we price ALL electricity based on the cost of the last power source (nearly always gas), then we never see, as consumers, the much lower cost of renewables.
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If we switch to regional pricing, then there should be gains for all with the fossil fuel incumbents trying to disrupt this message, just as they are doing with EV adoption.
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We need reform of the electricity pricing structure.
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We need investment to allow renewables to come online via the grid (grid connections).
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Local energy systems may have a role in this, and as Ukraine constantly rebuilds its energy system, this is the model that they are building.
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Software is making huge changes to grid efficiency and will continue to evolve with Ai
Just looking at two products Octopus have launched made me realise how much they use software to balance the buying and selling of energy as the UK system has a unit price change every 30 minutes depending on supply and demand.
Octopus now offer a car lease where the cost includes all electricity to power the car.
They also offer a house with no bills for ten years, as long as you have key features such as a heat pump, solar, and suitable insulation with a battery. In both cases, Octopus will allow you to always have energy or miles in your car, but when there is an excess of energy in the battery of either the house or the car, then they will sell some to the grid at peak times in order to offset the fact that they can make the zero cost to you of miles or electricity to run the house. Really clever software that will only get better with the improvements to Ai.
What this conference did inspire Eco Titchfield to do is push ahead with its plans to run a tech evening, with our experts coming from the village. Sharing their good and bad experience to date on subjects such as:
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Solar panels
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Battery storage
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EV cars
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Heat pumps
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Electric bikes and transport
If you feel you have experience in the above areas or other areas that will impact our use of energy, then please get in touch.
We expect to run the event one evening in late September or October. Let us know if you think it a good idea, and we will start looking at venues and dates.
Contact info@ecotitchfield.com
