Thoughts from Entech 2019

I was one of several Baringa attendees at Day 1 of Entech's 'Accelerating A Decentralised, Intelligent And Sustainable Energy Market' conference on Tuesday.

As an area, it's more downstream than anywhere I've been this year but here are 5 of my takeaways from both scheduled events and informal conversations 

1. Developing local energy markets require collaboration as much as innovation. Several exciting pilots in Cornwall, Oxford, and London pointed very quickly to the need to get multiple stakeholders lined up in order to deliver a local energy market that alleviates constrain on network operators, offers additional value to consumers / pro-sumers and dovetails seamlessly with the national wholesale market
2. Demand side / behind-the-meter opportunities are many but modest in size, with the likely winners among the various startups vying to compete being those who can stack up several of these opportunities rather than one. Think entities that could provide a competitive EV fleet to a business, monetise the vehicle-to-grid value of that fleet across multiple short-term markets, while potentially up-selling other energy management services such as solar provision or back-up generator optimisation
3. New propositions which succeed in the UK have good prospects abroad, as the UK is ahead of most other power markets in terms of decentralising its grid, but others will soon follow suit.
4. Baringa is all over this space. Having only recently joined the team in 2019, I was pleasantly surprised by just how many people I spoke to had either worked with some of my colleagues or had heard of us, and always with positive things to say!
5. Retail customers are the more high-risk, high-reward target for new entrants. Propositions centred around businesses who are more engaged with their energy and understand more of the risks and trade-offs associated with are more likely to succeed. The vast majority of home-dwellers engage very little with energy use and any proposition around batteries, solar panels or smart homes that is targeting widespread adoption will require a proposition that is very simple, clear and attractive

 https://entech.solarenergyevents.com/