Toddington Harper – Gridserve

David Hunt 0:32
Hello, I’m David Hunt, CEO and founder of Hyperion executive search and your host for the reason the clean tech podcast. Unbelievably, for me, at least this is our 80th episode. And we’re now ranked according to listen notice calm as in the top 2.5% of podcast globally, which is amazing. So thank you to all of those who subscribe or listen regularly. On this episode for the first time, I’ve invited back one of my early guests, just because of the outstanding work he and his team were doing in changing the whole concept of well to pump to the far cleaner cycle of sun to wheel. Something I’m sure he’ll elaborate on through his company grid serve. My guest this week is tottington Harper, the CEO of good surf sustainable energy, as mentioned grid server are at the forefront of delivering both net zero carbon power and transport in the earliest possible timeframes. Tomlinson’s background from childhood to solar pioneer is a really fascinating story though. So I’d strongly recommend listening to that first podcast if you haven’t already. We’ll have a link to it on the website on the episode page for this podcast. I hope you enjoyed that one. And indeed enjoyed this one. Hello, and welcome to the lives and content podcast Tomlinson. Or should I say welcome back again. It’s good to have you with us.

Toddington Harper 1:46
Yeah, Thanks, David. It’s great to be back. seems not not so long ago. Although when I kind of recount everything that’s happened to then it since then. It really does seem seem seem quite a while.

David Hunt 1:58
Yeah, yeah. It’s a bit strange. There’s a whole clearly, there’s so much happened and be with the backdrop of the pandemic, I think I find it hard to keep a track on the data time with the best of it. But it certainly hasn’t helped recently, but really keen to dig into what has happened. So the first time you guessed you just announced the UK is first subsidy for utility scale storage and battery project for Warrington council that so we can elaborate and see if that’s actually now up and running, which I believe that it is. And we just briefly touched on electric forecourts some peaking to pick up the story from there because so much has happened as you say. But again, we won’t go through your backstory because people can hear that on the first podcast. But really just again, I think it’s useful just to see what’s driving you and driving the business. So perhaps you can share a little bit of what does continue to drive you to these achievements and to to sort of the work that you and your team put in so what what’s what is driving you and what’s driving the team?

Toddington Harper 2:55
Yeah, so I guess the overall goal remains the same. In fact, it’s more more pertinent than ever. Now, that time is running out to face, face really the biggest challenges that I’m potentially that mankind has ever faced. You know, we even a few years ago, people were still arguing that with the weather, the climate is changing, and and i don’t you know, I think because people can feel it and see it and see it happening. And then I really don’t see people arguing about that anymore. Not the circles that we’re in what seems to be evident is that there is a very limited window of time to avert the worst effects of climate change. And, and, you know, that window of time seems to have fallen upon our collective shoulders, you know, what I mean by that is, you know, those people who are, you know, alive today in the, you know, in the passport to do something about it in it everybody living today. But But you know, people who are kind of, I guess, have a working age. So, you know, it’s such a tight gap. It’s something which our parents either really weren’t aware about. And, you know, and certainly if they’re not not working anymore, haven’t got the opportunity to do something about it. And I’ve got four little girls. And the oldest is only six. She certainly doesn’t have that it you know, I think I think the mind is really focused on a decade of around about about 10 years to really make a difference. I think the other thing that’s that’s really come into the forefront since I did this last discussion was you know, not just not just climate change but biodiversity. Wildlife Fund for Nature has you know, published publishes increasingly scarce you know, scarce statistics every year. I mean, the overall picture is that in the last one less than 50 years, humans have wiped out over 60% of the world’s wildlife, and over 60% of the world’s wildlife in the last 50 years. So when you think He put it back, put them in perspective on I’ve just turned 43. So I’ve I presided My life has presided over his mass extinction event since the dinosaurs. It I’m not sure if that’s accurate or not, but certainly it feels like it. And so I guess the rest of rest of my life, and I do preside over what happens to the remaining 40%. And if we carry on the way that we’re going, it’s going to be the way of the dodo. Yeah, it measures, you know, and that at the same time, we’ve got to address climate change. So, you know, overall, and answer your question, what is driving that driving? That? Is this realisation? That, that this is, this is happening, it’s real, there isn’t any more time to for hesitation. And, and it’s for us to fix it or not. And certainly we intend to fix it, you know, not not just to have a go, not just the tape part, you know, and, you know, I used to have a conversation a few years ago to myself, and what would you? What would your kids, you know, what, we’ll the conversation with the kids in a few years, you know, time What did you do, Dad, you know, when the world was falling apart, and all these things were, were happening, and I used to kind of it was quite a defeatist conversation in my head was, you know, will we try, we did our best, but you know, that the task was too big. And, and we just, we couldn’t, you know, we could sorry, we couldn’t do it not enough about it. And we’ve left you the planet in the way that it is, however, quite, quite strangely, you know, since the pandemic, I’m actually filled with a lot more hope, than I that I was because, you know, it felt really to a point that the world couldn’t change, we couldn’t address, you know, bring deliver the change that’s needed in the timeframes that we have. And then, of course, you know, global pandemic strikes, and, you know, kind of March last year, in around seven days, the whole world just kind of came to a halt, although it didn’t come to, you know, everything stops and things change, and you work from home, but actually things actually remarkably carried on. And it just kind of proved to me and I’m sure, show everybody really, that if people care about something enough, then it can be done. And it can be done very quickly. So it’s really a long answer to your question. But in that, in that, you know, from that perspective, 10 years is a very long time compared to you address the pandemic. And certainly, we intend to make the best use of it. So, you know, that’s what I think of when I, you know, when I wake up in the morning, or, you know, or go to bed at night, really the driving force behind every decision?

David Hunt 7:29
Yeah, yeah. No, thanks for sharing that. I think it’s interesting. When you talk of tipping points, I think, obviously, we do see now, hopefully, we’re at the stage where a few dinosaurs aside, there’s no more denial, we know, what’s happening is, you know, self evident for pretty much everybody that we have, and do continue to impact both the climate and as you say, biodiversity to to our detriment. But I do believe also like yourself, there’s a tipping point, I think of us having the opportunity to do something. And I guess there’s light at the end of the tunnel. For me, I see that as well. Most guests I talked to, like yourself are committed to this cause and by definition, as an entrepreneur, you’re an optimist. And you wouldn’t start something if you weren’t, you didn’t think you had a fighting chance of winning. But a January thing, in the last I should say, during the pandemic, or just in the last year or so there’s been for me also, and a lot of our clients is the fact that we do see the light of the tunnel, maybe because we’re now fighting the issue, and not fighting the the denialists, if you like, and maybe it just feels much nicer to be actually solving problems, rather than having to bang your head on the wall trying to convince people that this stuff is happening, maybe. But thanks for

Toddington Harper 8:37
sharing, this changed the really big thing. And I guess it comes back to the point about where we left off last time, is that the economics are now one side. You know, I talked in the previous previous podcast, about the climate change conference that I attended, in in 2009, in Copenhagen, where there was that kind of agreement before the Paris the meeting before the Paris Agreement, and it all basically fell apart. And in my opinion, it fell apart because it was just too expensive. Clean Energy was a very expensive thing at that point in time. fossil fuel energy was less expensive. And, and, and therefore, you know, it was quite a big commitment for politicians to you know, sign a sign on the line, something that would, you know, put their economies into, into a position of, you know, being less competitive. And really since 2009, to where we are today. That’s just completely changed. In turn on its head. You know, it’s now possible to build renewable energy projects. Without subsidy. You know, we can outcompete fossil fuels out compete other solutions, which take a long time like nuclear energy as well. We can out compete them on pure economics alone, we don’t need subsidies. You know, it’s now you know, it’s in our benefit for GDP to transition to clean energy and also now electric vehicles if you consider the whole lifecycle costs of using electric vehicle, then petrol and diesel. And that gives me huge amounts of hope. Because, you know, with the economics on the side and the political world are absolutely evident, you know, and the belief that we can make a difference. You know, we have a fighting chance, and it’s, you know, and it’s something that we must we must succeed at.

David Hunt 10:20
Yeah, yeah, no, sir always reminds me of a quote. I think ironically, it came from a Saudi OPEC, individual or company with the name of which from some years ago, which was that you know, the stone age and because we run out of stones, we just have no obviously created better technologies. And I think the same applies now the fossil fuel age, you know, is is ending, we’re going to make it in primarily because the technologies are a cheaper, increasingly cheaper, and certainly when you look at electric vehicles, I know I speak as a former petrol head, and a good lover of cars, electric cars are just better. And we have that to our advantage, I

Toddington Harper 10:55
think they certainly are. And in terms of just completing the jigsaw, so when I spoke to you previously, and we were about to build a factory, I think we just started building the UK is first really large scale, non subsidised solar farm. And, you know, had a number of new technologies new at the time by facial panels, trackers, the largest battery in any in any solar farm as well. Anyway, we delivered it absolutely fantastic, performs brilliantly, in many respects, were above expectations, which is, which is fantastic. Subsequently built another one, as well for Warrington Borough Council, another hybrid sarf solar farm a little bit smaller. At the time, I mentioned saying we’re going to add batteries to that one, too. And we are in the process of just completing the battery project as well on that, we’re building a third as well, now a next generation. So a DC coupled. So that’s, again, a new innovation that we are delivering, you know, certainly at this scale, for the first time in the UK, that’s well into construction as well. And all of those projects are built entirely without subsidy. Because rather than just kind of, you know, I described previously, rather than just, you know, kind of yearning for this, this kind of magical, you know, piece of the income stack that we lost from a subsidy, we’ve turned on its head and said, How can make this produce a lot more useful? And they certainly are, and then and then, you know, generating great revenue. You know, and actually, particularly this year, since, you know, I think there’s a combination of reasons, but the power price has been very high. And that’s really boosted revenues as well. So yeah, that’s, that’s, that’s those bridges have done extremely well, which is great. What we’ve now seen is other people starting to replicate what we’ve done, which is also great, because we, you know, we all need to get on with this. And we had a lot of hard graft, and we had to do convince a lot of people that these projects would do what we thought they were going to do. Having now done that, and actually, in many respects, the projects performed better, then, you know, that’s, that’s just a really helpful signpost, you know, for us and others to deliver more at that scale.

David Hunt 13:00
Yeah, I think well, it touched on something you brought there is I think what’s really good is now we’re addressing problems rather than chasing subsidy when clearly subsidy really helps. And, you know, my background is in soda was back to sort of 2007 when panels were was were, you know, to 80 to 90 of what I know, your background goes much further back than that. So that’s you need to pump priming, marking subsidies had their place. But what they did do, as you say, is that drove drove behaviours, which weren’t necessarily always sensible. And now without the need for subsidy, we can create solutions, which are fit for purpose, rather than fit for just creating a revenue stream.

Toddington Harper 13:41
Every action has an equal opposite reaction in some way. And, you know, and there’s certainly, you know, is an unintended consequences of the subsidy regime. And that is that we and others built renewable energy projects that that, you know, didn’t stack up financially. And the unintended consequences that the configuration of the of the solutions that we build, actually is really difficult for the grid to manage. You know, people were paid a certain amount of money for generating energy, whenever that energy was generated, it was guaranteed for a certain amount of years. And if you build enough of those projects, then you have a real distortion. And, you know, rather than, you know, a system, which we’ve been kind of used to where there’s a small number of big power stations, they’re all very regular, and you’ve got a regulator in the middle who kind of manages and balances everything, you end up with a very large number of, you know, smaller, intermittent solutions, which produce energy, you know, variable times, you know, the ones that were built just on purely on the subsidy, subsidy regime. We, you know, we’re built, you know, with no real, no real thought or in my opinion about about the impact on the grid, because at the time about getting renewable energy into the mix, powering the grid and And so you end up in these really strange situations that we’re at at the moment where if you have too much wind on the on the wind power on the grid, you have to turn off wind, wind farms, you have too much solar power, sometimes the price drops significantly, or if there’s, you know, greatly too much if the turn off solar farms and so yeah, that’s exactly the opposite that you need. You know, if we’re going to get to net zero, which we are going to get to net zero because the government, you know, Eureka, well done, I believe it was Theresa, May that finally committed to net zero? You know, I remember before it was it was quite wishy washy, it was, yeah, emissions by certain amount based on 1990 levels, excluding this including that. Well, now, it’s, you know, now it’s absolutely clear, we’ve got 28 and a half years, but just under 28 and a half years to get to net zero. And that’s across power and transport. And we’re certainly not going to get there if our grid doesn’t work properly. And so, you know, we had to really rethink how we were going to deliver, you know, the next generation of power projects, not just to make the economics work, but to think well, how is the power Knights going to stay on in 2050? Or 2040? Or 2030? You know, and of course, you know, that’s an end date, we’d obviously like to get this all done as quickly as possible. Yeah, you have to really, you have to really think it through and again, we put that in our name grid serve, you know, it’s about finding the solution. It’s about helping the grid, it’s about supporting, you know, by delivering all of the solutions that are necessary to get there, rather than than just kind of helping, you know, hoping that the grid will serve you, if you like that it’ll be fine. You know, just chuck in, you know, renewable, renewable electrons whenever they produce somebody all sorted out, and you’re going to get paid a fixed amount of money, that that’s just not really real life. Yeah, yeah. The news is, is that we’re quite far ahead. Now. we’ve demonstrated these projects others other people have as well. They work really well.

David Hunt 16:51
Yeah. Now, that’s a really nice segue, actually, because we could talk forever about hybrid solar and wind power plants, because they’re phenomenally important and touching on the point of going back to serving the grid or better in a better balance in the grid. Again, we’ve come a long way with batteries in particular, but in demand side response and other areas where we’re much better at balancing and facilitating the grid still, obviously, challenges ahead. But one way that we can do that is through the move to transition to electric vehicles. And that’s something I want to sort of, again, perhaps on the subject focus a little bit more so rather than on the surgery side, although clearly the two are very much linked. And yeah, I guess, talking about how your batteries and mobile batteries, I car batteries can potentially play a part in that sort of balancing and will, certainly in terms of how we can manage the grid. And we’ve all seen octopus and others doing very neat tariffs, where when there is a high surplus of wind, you can charge your car for next to nothing, or often actually get paid for it. So these this transition is going on, but I wanted to open up really because something that struck me when we spoke before toddington was this sort of from from well to pump been replaced by from sun to wheel, so perhaps you can tell us a little bit about that concept from your perspective.

Toddington Harper 18:05
Yeah, so you know, electric vehicles is something that I’m, you know, very big place in my heart, I’ve been driving an electric car since 2014. The the vehicles are fantastic charging in 2014, was not brilliant, it’s so much better than it was then. But, you know, it needs to be, again, so much better than it is today in order to cater for the mass market. But you know, what, again, I always worry about these unintended consequences. And if we just add, you know, a lot more electric vehicles without really thinking through, where does the energy come from, you know, and all the other elements around it, you know, how you’re going to charge what’s the experience, then again, there could be you know, there could be negative consequences, which are going to, you know, hold up this whole transition. So what we’ve done is we’ve had a really good look about how the oil industry works, which, you know, which is effectively on a well to wheel basis, you have oil wells, the energy and oil wells is stored sunlight from hundreds of millions of years ago, but when you think about that, that’s actually that’s actually where the energy comes from. You don’t have to refine that energy with refineries, you transport it in pipelines and tankers, you know, you then he then transported again in further tankers to, to petrol forecourts, you put it into combustion engine vehicles and you burn the energy and that’s how it works. So what we were thinking is well, okay, in fact, clearly works very well. You know, consumers are pretty happy with that solution. But it just isn’t sustainable. And really, to get electric vehicles into the mainstream, we need to deliver an equivalent of that, but in a way that doesn’t damage the environment, and ideally provides a better experience to customers and even better still is less expensive than the previous versions and more people make the switch the switch quicker. And that’s what we call sun to wheel. So we’re using the hybrid zone. piece which we’ve just been talking about as the equivalent of your of your oil well and your refineries of the battery refinery the solar farm the oil well, we are using the cables from both in the grid or directly connected projects as an equivalent of your of your pipelines and your tankers. Were building new electric forecourts. And, and we are we’re also building electric hubs in other locations, where it’s already suitable for people to charge electric vehicles. And then to complete the jigsaw, we have an electric vehicle leasing business to where again, to make this as simple as possible, people can just pay a single monthly fee, and that monthly costs can include your energy in the first place that account for generating from the solar farm in the first place. And you know, somebody can say right, I’m gonna pay whatever it is three 400 quid a month for a vehicle that can include charging at any of these you know any of these locations. And the important thing you can then you know, a consumer can then say, right, well, what does a petrol or diesel cost diesel vehicle cost at least per month. And you know, what, then the the cost of diesel or petrol be and how they compare with leasing an electric one with electricity included. And you can see the two. And actually, these days, we’re able to offer the sun two wheel solution with energy included less expensive than petrol and diesel. Now, it’s quite, it’s quite a big thing to connect it connect all of those dots. But it’s something that we’ve done. And we’re really scaling it now. We opened up in December, it was a very tricky period, we opened up the I think it’s the world’s first certainly no one’s called me on this before. Certainly the it’s definitely the UK is first, but I believe it’s the world’s first electric forecourt designed specifically from you know, from the you know, from the ground up to be to just for servicing electric vehicles, we have, were able to charge 36 vehicles at the same time. 24 of them are very high power charges. We’ve got six AC charges for kind of older vehicles that can’t use DC charging, yeah, got a great relationship with Tesla who have six of the Tesla charges there as well.

And you know, and so that means if you if you can turn up somewhere, it’s well maintained and as you know, high power charges. And you know, you’re going to be able to charge without any anxiety. We’ve also got a five megawatt grid connection, and a six megawatt hour battery. So put that in perspective, every megawatt hour allows you to drive an electric vehicle around 4000 miles, like an average one. That’s about 24,000 miles of charge. And that’s in addition to if you like you mentioned, using electric vehicles to kind of balance the grid, we also have additional big balance the big batteries, sorry to balance the grid as well. The energy to electric vehicle. So for example, in the daytime, we might be storing 24,000 miles of, of solar energy and putting that into vehicles at night, we might be storing 24,000 miles of wind energy, right. And then when we’re not doing any of that, that we can use that grid connection to balance the grid as well. So that’s kind of part of it. In addition to that we thought a lot about what do people do, you know, what do people want to do when their vehicles are charging so we built a new building specifically for this. So the downstairs is a bit like a high end kind of petrol forecourt we got some great partners, wh Smith, the travel kind of you know, the travel arm of wh Smith, you operate, you know, travel hubs in, and so on. We’ve got a fantastic partner in Costa Coffee. We’ve got a post office, we’ve got booths, a supermarket, we’ve got some great food like gore made so you know, really just nice things that you’d expect to the high end petrol forgot something that’s completely different. We’ve also got an upstairs, which is a bit like an airport lounge type environment where people can, you know, sit down in a comfortable environment, they can, they can really get internet, they can use use that time, you know, well as opposed to it being a waste of time. Now almost, it’s about 20 to 30 minutes for someone to charge a vehicle. And, and so we’re thinking that, you know, can give someone a really comfortable place where you can get a coffee or vehicles charging at the same time you’re catching up and your internet, you know, that’s actually not, you know, a waste of your time at all. It’s actually a really productive use of your time and that’s what we’re trying to get at. We’ve got some other things we’ve got some exercise bikes in there as well that make energy. We’ve got meeting room possibly we can book meetings in there, we’ve got a kids area, and above all of that the whole thing doubles up as a platform for people to learn about electric cars. So we have a very kind of James Bond style car left that brings people from the outside of the building, you know brings vehicles up the whole walls of the building open we can try electric vehicles in Italy. Go. And we’ve actually started using it to prevent most of them online events recently because the pandemic, that it also acts as a platform for people to showcase and learn about eBay’s

David Hunt 25:09
it’s a fantastic site. And we will add to the episode page links, because I know that obviously, after launch, there was an awful lot of really good sort of coverage. And I think it’s, it is game changing. I think, you know, I had this argument quite often with, you know, what you do when you’re waiting 30 4050 minutes to top up your car, and you’d come back with the argument of No, you’re on a long journey, you’d always stop for us for a comfort break and a cup of coffee anyway. But, you know, it just is, I think up a level in terms of having those additional facilities, and I’m sure it helps with the revenue stack as well. But equally, it just makes it for a more pleasant customer experience.

Toddington Harper 25:45
It definitely, it definitely does all of that. I mean, a lot of it was based on personal experience, you know, on, you know, some experiences, you know, because if you’d imagine drive getting an electric car in 2014. And, and, you know, in committing that, that was all you’re gonna do from that point onwards, which is what I did, you ended up with some pretty hairy moments, and some pretty unsavoury locations, and some, you know, pretty bad experiences as well on the back of pickup trucks and just all sorts of things. And, and so, you know, I figured that, that if you’re going to really give people the confidence to make the transition, you need to give people something absolutely robust. Most it’s not just about removing anxiety, but it’s also about creating a really good experience. What electric forecourt does, is it fulfils the need for, you know, for the primarily the for the 40 or 50%, or however many people it is that can’t charge at home. And so, if you haven’t got the ability to charge at home, then if you build an electric forecourt we build electric forecourt next door, then that that fear goes away completely. You know, in fact, we knew that the first person ever to turn up and charge at Braintree and we know that because he turned up before it was open. He he didn’t have the ability to charge at home. That’s why he turned up. He said he just bought an electric car because he knew we were building this and he needed to charge. And he couldn’t charge at home. And so you know that that gives people the real the real confidence that they need. And, you know, in terms of the revenue strike, yeah, absolutely. It helps a few years ago when we were trying to persuade people that it would be a good idea to build electric forecourt You know, it wasn’t it wasn’t where we are today, where you know, where it’s a given that the electric cars are going to be huge. You know, before we had to convince investors of you know, Is it this? Is it going to happen? Are we you know, people you say to us, what if people don’t turn up? What if no one ever turns up in charges? And, and for me, I was like, Well, obviously, they’re going to but people were like, but how do we know? You know which car? So then then it really helped the fact that we’ve got these other revenue streams, you know, I’m like, people are still gonna buy coffee. And then well, yeah, okay. And people are still gonna stop and buy something in the supermarket. Okay, yeah, I’ll go with that. And so it kind of really helped him, we still need to work on that as well. There’s some other things that we’re going to be introducing quite soon in terms of, you know, other kind of convenience, retail, and food items as well into the into the menu. But, um, but yeah, it really helps. But the good news is we don’t have to have those arguments anymore. Because a people do turn up uncharged thank goodness. And actually a lot more than we’re expecting, particularly. Yeah, we’ve been in a pandemic, you know, and then, of course, the government decided to announce that they were going to ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars in eight and a half years from now. And that’s just game changing. And I can guarantee that nobody’s asked me that question since that announcement.

David Hunt 28:41
I’m sure.

Toddington Harper 28:42
Yeah. So yeah, you know, that was a that’s really exciting. And, and this and the Braintree project, might not, you know, this might not be immediately obvious. But that is an example of sun to wheel in one project because actually, we have a solar farm called play Hill, which is actually we didn’t we didn’t buy it. As we saw, we bought it. We didn’t actually build it. Normally we build hybrid zoning laws, but this one was rather unique. It was non subsidised. And we twinned it with we’ve twinned it in the background with Braintree electric forecourt. So every kilowatt hour that we take off the grid at Braintree that we don’t produce on site, because we’ve got some solar panels on site as well. Yeah, we net it off that energy off again, zero carbon kilowatt hours that we put into the grid 44 miles off the road and clay Hill. So that allows us to deliver zero. And the business model for this project is both the solar farm and the and the electric forecourt as Why? And yeah, it’s real. It works really well as an even even in a pandemic, which is, you know, we opened it up between two lockdowns, we had about a week of sort of semi open down again. So, you know, but as I said, even through that period, we’ve been really, really encouraged by how well

David Hunt 29:52
yeah, no, it looks amazing. And honestly, that’s an exemplar rather than a, you know, a one off and that’s something I want to touch on, but more broadly, I must confess that my thoughts of Because when I first started to drive electric and to really see that this trans transition to electric mobility was going to be exponential at some point, I kind of fairly firmly believe that most people would charge at home or at work, but I guess mainly because that’s what I did. And probably felt slightly less that public charging was important. But I’ve certainly changed my mind on that just mainly, practically, because it is a solution when you’re driving when you’re trying to try and drive more than to your local area. But actually, also from that this whole concept of getting rid of people’s range anxiety and all these bits that keep people keep throwing around which don’t really exist anymore, but other than people’s heads to some extent, but having like the Tesla supercharger network having things like what drive America and Ayana t doing, and in particular, obviously, in the UK, at least what you guys are doing, both at Braintree and also with the hubs and, and highway. And perhaps you could talk a little bit about that what you’re doing, but also as to why you think it’s important that we get this public charging thing, right, not just in the UK, clearly, but globally to enable this transition.

Toddington Harper 31:11
Yeah, sure. So, I mean, basically, you need all solutions, there isn’t a single solution to this. And you know, and actually, whilst we’re focused on the public charging piece of it, we do offer, you know, the other solutions, too. Because you need to the mean, whom charging if you can do it, it’s fantastic. And it will work for most of your charging needs, probably depending on you know, what, how you drive your vehicle, but it is by no means a panacea in it, but it’s by no means works for everybody. You know, the, the issue is that, again, I don’t know the numbers, nobody seems to know the numbers, but National Grid have said around 43% of homes haven’t got off street parking. So you know, over 40% of people who can’t charge at home physically, because they haven’t got off street parking, that’s obviously a very big number, particularly in the context of getting to net zero. But actually, the other challenge is that is that for those homes that could I mean, that would make the assumptions as they will Okay, well, all of those homes that could we’re going to add charges to, now that wouldn’t work either. Certainly not at the moment. Because that would require the replacement and upgrading of huge numbers of low voltage circuits, Transformers across the country, you know, a huge, enormous cost billions and billions of pounds, digging up streets, again, like broadband again, but, but bigger, you know, putting in new new cables, and so on and so forth. And who’s going to pay for that. And, you know, and so, you know, we’ll be able to get there to an extent with things like smart charging, that helps, and kind of balancing and so on. But you do just get to a point that homes were not built to accommodate the power requirements that that we need. Because the other thing is, it’s not just about electric vehicles, we also need to transition to, to, to to netzero heating as well. Yep. An awful lot of heat pumps as an example. You know, and if you can, if you if you’ve got, if you’re going to use your seven kilowatts for for heating your home, then you haven’t got that for your vehicle, and so on, so forth. So yeah, it’s just not an either or it’s a both. And we’re going to need as much of these solutions as we possibly can. There’s going to be a massive need for home charging, but it won’t work for everybody, there’s a massive need for public charging, and that will be used, you know, less or more by different people. And we just couldn’t need it all. And we need it really, really quickly. And, you know, and actually, fortunately, we’ve got the evidence that demonstrates that as well. I think evidence is probably a bit skewed, because I think most people who have electric vehicles at the moment are, you know, bought them when they could charge at home. But you know, as it becomes more and more mainstream people need to have the confidence that even if you can’t charge at home, then people need to, you know, will have the competence to go and buy electric vehicles and, and that’s what you get when you build the infrastructure like like we’re delivering and announced to the wider question. So electric forecourts are designed to serve primarily a local area. They’re also on the edge of very busy road CEOs to get that pass through traffic to but they serve a local area. But of course, that’s not the whole solution. Because when you leave your local area and you go to your destination, then you need to often charge on route. And this is really very important because, you know, in theory, you could remove that issue by having a very, very large battery. But that very, very large battery is going to make your vehicle very, very expensive. And that’s going to discourage the uptake. So, you know, you need to kind of find a sensible balance. And you could achieve that balance by having really really good infrastructure on recharging. So we recently acquired from eco TriCity, the electric highway and that was the first charging work in Europe, I believe, which they created on a majority of the motorway networks, 85% of the motorway service stations have these charges. They were, you know, groundbreaking in 10 years ago, and these days, they are very much out of date the technology, we recently acquired it. And we’ve been on one heck of a mission to upgrade the network. So we’ve replaced I think now 60 locations in about seven weeks with brand new charges.

And we are on track to replace all of the locations over 150 locations by by the end of September. And you know, and that means that people will now have the confidence and it already kind of works because we’ve already got an awful as I said over 60 locations already done today means that people don’t have the confidence they can charge motorway services. What it doesn’t yet do is it doesn’t yet, you know cater for for much larger numbers of TVs, but we’re doing that too. We recently launched the first we call them electric hubs. So electric for courts to serve. You know, it’s a full court serve location, electric hubs, which you employ in other destinations, other people’s locations. And, and we’re putting in six to 12 high power charges and at least 50 motorway sites. In addition to the ones that we’re upgrading to, we’ve got like done in rugby, there’s 12 350 kilowatt charges. Next, the 12 Tesla 302 150 kilowatt charges. And so there’s 24 charges in a bank, you know, in the same way that the you get the confidence in electric forecourt anybody can turn up in, well, most electric vehicles, any anyone that that uses high power charging, and, and charge their vehicles very quickly, you know, without any without an anxiety. And that’s exactly what we’re what we’re focusing on doing. And just on that point as well. We’re also in terms of the replacement of the initial sites, we’re also adding AC chargers as to you know, I’m just ensuring we cater for all different charging types, so that any legacy vehicle can charge, but the majority of the focus in the future is going to be really high power. And it’s gonna be about CCS as well, Andrew, and what we’ve done is we’ve said, okay, to make this simple for people, let’s now you know, let’s kind of embrace that name, we think the electric highway is an awesome name. We’ve now kind of rebranded this as the grid serve electric highway. And that’s the name of our network. And that includes we’re in any charges wherever you are. So whether it’s an electric forecourt or it’s on the motorway network, or it’s an electric hub in another location, it’s all now just the grid serve electric highway. And that’s really what we’re focusing on. So to enable anybody to go anywhere, in any type of electric vehicle, knowing that they’ve got the confidence to charge is a better experience, we’ll put them in good locations. And also if they lease a vehicle through us that they can be able to charge any of those like locations with energy included, which were the most simple way to do it. And hopefully, you know, gives the people the confidence that it’s not too late that that’s also the least expensive way when compared compared to petrol and diesel.

David Hunt 38:10
Yeah, yeah. Now obviously, that sort of concept does work tremendously well for for Tesla, as we know. And one of the other things that I clearly has changed I’d like to share with because again, when I first got was my first was a battery hybrid, but it can look into charge that there was, you know, an STL story of a wallet full of various different RFID ID cards and various things. So interoperability was an issue. In terms of again, for people’s comfort, they turn up at an energy at a electric highway hub or at a grid surf site. Be good to touch on with you with the next sort of sites are likely to be but what’s the sort of payment mechanism I assume you can just roll up You didn’t have to sort of be a member of a dozen different organisations or payment platforms.

Toddington Harper 38:53
Anybody can turn up at any grid serve electric highway location, which is as mentioned includes electric forecourts or electric hubs and not worry about being a member of anything. You turn up, you plug your vehicle in, you pull out your contactless card, and you touch the device and it starts charging. And that’s kind of the base level. And, you know, no anxiety, no stress, just turn up plug in charger. You know, I think these days, I think I think it’s fair to argue that anybody with an electric car probably also has a contactless device in this card or device. And so we think that’s the the most straightforward solution. So all of the charges have been putting in whether they’re DC charges or now the new AC charges are putting in as well. They also they will have contactless cards. That’s the base level. In addition to that, we think there’s a way to affect we know there’s a way to make it even simpler. And we recently announced that we will be launching and we’ve actually just shown the first site where we’ve had auto charge working. So we will be bringing out an app you don’t have To use it, but if people want to use it, they’ll they’re welcome to. And that will allow the allow the the app to remember the the payment details and the specific idea of a vehicle. So that next time you turn up, you don’t have to use those payment details again, just plug your vehicle in, it will just start charging same as the way it works with the Tesla network.

David Hunt 40:25
Right? Right,

Toddington Harper 40:26
it gives you another advantage that you then have an app in your pocket, you know how long the vehicles been charged for, you know, how long it needs to be charged to get to your next destination. Just makes it really, really simple. So everything that we’re focused on is, is trying to make it as seamless, easy, simple as possible. And, actually, surprisingly, it’s actually quite difficult to make it simple. Like a lot more difficult, as expected. So I can’t really buy the charges that were that we’re putting in, you know, in the format that they are we’ve had to put in additional, you know, different contactless readers, we’ve got different software, we’ve got different programmes an awful lot that’s different. Make it really, really simple. And, and that’s the name of the game. And I think, you know, I think you know, we’ve had some really fantastic, fantastic feedback so far that that people have been used to customise to turning up to the charging location, having to get an app having to download something having to do this having to do that. We’ve had people saying to us, Look, guys, It normally takes me half an hour, and I just did it in 20 seconds. And really, we think that’s how it should be done.

David Hunt 41:31
Yeah, yeah, no, no, I’ve spoken to people who’ve used the sites with with that sort of feedback. So we’ve been talking for a while, which is great one before we disappear, or before we conclude a couple of things, where are the next forecasts going to be? And what are if any of the International aspirations or plans

Toddington Harper 41:48
Okay, so we’ve got four new us there’s going to be over 100 Electric forecourts that we’re delivering in the next five years. We are well into that. So we’ve got four sites that we’re now in construction with. We’ve got one in Northridge. We’ve got one in Gatwick Airport. We’ve got one in Uckfield and got one in Gateshead. So those are the next four behind those is about another 25 ish, that are going through the process and, and then about another 70 sites behind that. And we’re constantly looking at new sites as well. So if anyone’s got any, you know, plug from everyone’s got any wants an electric forecourt in their area, and there’s a great location, do please come and ask us, you know, to check it out. So we’re moving forward with those pretty quickly. We are, you know, the first, you know, we’ve got four additional, you know, hubs on the motorway network that are coming soon in Exeter, Cornwall, reading, you know, reading east and west. And, you know, and we are going at one heck of a pace. But you know, we we also think about going back to where we started this, if we solve, you know, fix climate change, we get to net zero in the UK, in the next few years when we’re not going to address climate change, because it’s a global problem. And so, everything that you we do, everything that we do in terms of sun to wheel is we think of it as a template. And actually, we turned it into a service as well, so sun to wheel as a service. And we’re working out how we can use that expertise knowledge that we’ve got, it’s quite unique, you know, what we do individually in solar is quite unique, what we do individually electric, you know, vehicles, electric forecourts electric hubs of the motor network, the software, all of it’s quite unique. And when you put it all together, it’s really quite quite a high bar. But you know, we don’t just want to do this alone, we want to, you know, be part of a real solution that the, you know, delivers the change that’s necessary. So, we’ve designed everything as a template, and we’re looking to expand and replicate that across the world. So we’re really actively now you know, looking and starting to talk with partners around, you know, different jurisdictions around the world, to see, you know, what models, they’re looking for, how they can work with us, and how we can, you know, use the word hashtag deliver, you know, because now is the time. Yeah, and, you know, and we’ve got this, you know, phenomenal set of blueprints, if you like, we know works really well, we’ve got great feedback, we just may want to be to be able to, you know, reach out and make a meaningful difference in the world. And so, if there are people around the world that are interested in understanding and wanting to wanting to partner with us in any capacity, we tried to create a very flexible model, then we you know, equally really keen to have those conversations to

David Hunt 44:39
cool, Well listen, we will make sure that we add to the episode page various links so people can see the forecast what they look like. And of course then with some contact details, because we do you have an international audience, and we’re great to see this kind of solution rolled out elsewhere. So as you say, we can address this on a on a global basis, not on a regional or national basis. But for what they’ve done in the last couple of years, and it’s been great to watch and see, it’s been, yeah, it’s been great to sort of see how quickly things have been able to be delivered back to your point of you’re getting getting stuff done. If we use the polite version of things, that’s, that’s the critical thing is we just got to get this stuff done and all power to you and your team for what you’ve achieved so far. But yeah, be great to see further collaborations and look forward to hopefully, having a full court summer up in the northwest of England, at some point, we can take advantage of,

Toddington Harper 45:34
absolutely love to do that. And you know, in that mantra that that hashtag deliver, I mean, that is something that we just really would love other people to kind of embrace that as a phrase as well, you know, just kind of sums it all up, you know, hashtag get stuff done is is a bit of a mouthful. You know, hashtag deliver, you know, now is the time, we’ve got the solutions that are available, you know, collectively as a planet, we have the motivation, it’s on our shoulders, we just need to get on with it, we need to hashtag deliver and, and certainly, we’re doing everything we can do. But equally, you know, we are an organisation in this space, and we’re keen to partner with partner with others, you know, to really help accelerate this journey.

David Hunt 46:11
Super Well, listen, thanks. Great to have you again, talking to Nandi. On the show, we’ll share all of those details. And hopefully, places like fully charged and others will get an opportunity to meet and see and engage with more of the team. But increasingly, it sounds like people in the UK at least they’re going to be able to sample themselves fairly soon, either a hub or a four chord at some on the highway at some point. So yeah, you just had

Toddington Harper 46:36
to add one more point, if I might, as well might as well that, you know, it, you know, I think a really big, you know, change has now happened is that the you know, there are, you know, we need a lot of investment to make this happen. You know, we’ve been very fortunate that the Hitachi capital had the foresight to kind of back our plans. When Robert Gordon, we first you know, who’s that group CEO, when we first showed him our plans. in virtual reality, he had the belief that that we were going to be able to deliver it, we’ve since been supported by a by the rise Fund, which is the global, it’s the global impact investing arm of TPG. You know, and we’re in, you know, we’re really happy that we’re in a really good position now that we’re able to actually execute on these plans. You know, and, you know, unfortunately, as a result of kind of what we’re doing and what others are doing, we really believe we have we have a chance.

David Hunt 47:34
Yep, I think that’s a great place to end things, there is genuine optimism and then necessity as a father, I know you’ve got young children as well, an eight year old myself, as well as a couple of older kids that for them, if not for ourselves, we just have to deliver.

Toddington Harper 47:47
Well, I look forward to the day where as I said, that vision in my mind in a few years time, is that conversation of saying, you know, when you had the chance, and you have that window of opportunity, and you know, the world was in the perilous state that it was, you know, you know, wasn’t it awesome that you, you did you hashtag delivered and fix it for us? You know, thank you, parents didn’t you nail it? And, and that’s something that, you know, that’s a vision of hope that I think you know, we and certainly others, you know, have the opportunity to make happen.

David Hunt 48:18
We’re driven by that super Listen, tonnes of great to catch up with you again, and look forward to seeing further evolutions of the grid search journey. Wonderful. Thanks having me on.