The Future of Energy: Virtual Power Plants, AI & Battery Storage

In this episode of Climate Confident, I sit down with Chris Doherty, CEO of Joulen, to discuss how data, AI, and battery storage are changing the way homes and businesses interact with renewable energy. With energy costs fluctuating and grid constraints becoming more of a challenge, the role of smart energy management has never been more important.

Chris explains how virtual power plants (VPPs) allow households and small businesses to collectively act as a large-scale power provider, reducing costs and generating income. We explore how AI-driven algorithms optimise energy use, ensuring that people buy low and sell high—maximising savings and revenue.

We also break down the regulatory barriers that prevent wider adoption of decentralised energy and discuss what governments can do to speed up the transition. From Germany’s success in residential battery storage to the UK’s evolving energy market, we look at how different countries are tackling these challenges.

Other key topics:

• Why EVs with vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology could replace home batteries
• How energy storage can help stabilise the grid and reduce investment in new infrastructure
• The financial incentives needed to scale solar and battery adoption in homes and businesses
• The growing role of demand-side management in balancing electricity supply

If you’re wondering how to make the most of your renewable energy system—or how policy can unlock wider adoption—this episode has you covered.

📩 Get in touch: tomraftery@outlook.com
💡 Follow for more insights on the clean energy transition.

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Transcript

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We got AI driven algorithms now, they look after it all, they make sure you get what you need, and they make sure you maximise that return. When you invest in something, you want to get the best return on it, and renewables is an investment like anything else, so you want to get the best return on that. Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you are in the world. Welcome to episode 212 of the Climate Confident Podcast, the go-to show for the best practices in climate emissions reductions and removals. I'm your host, Tom Raftery, and if you haven't already, be sure to follow this podcast in your podcast app of choice so you never miss an episode. Before we dive in, a huge thank you to this podcast's, incredible supporters. Your backing keeps this podcast going and I truly appreciate each and every one of you. If you'd like to join our community, you can support the show for as little as three euros or dollars a month, which is less than the cost of a cup of coffee. You just need to click the support link in the show notes of this or any episode or visit tinyurl.com/climate pod. Now in today's show, I'm delighted to be talking to Chris Doherty, CEO of Joulen. And in the coming weeks I'll be talking to Sandia Sabapathy, who's Head of Environment and Net Zero for Entain, Faustine Delasalle, who's the CEO of the Mission Possible Partnership where we, we'll be talking about industrial decarbonisation. Ryan Schermerhorn, a lawyer who specializes in ip, and we'll be talking about climate patents. And Alexei Beltyukov, co-founder of United Fuel Technologies, where we'll be talking about renewable fuels. But back to today's show, and as I mentioned today, I'm talking to Chris. Chris, welcome to the podcast. Would you like to introduce yourself? Thanks Tom, thanks for the introduction thanks for having me on your podcast. My name is Chris Docherty and I'm the Managing Director here at Joulen. Okay. And for people who are unaware, Chris, what is Joulen? So Joulen, we are a data energy services, software SaaS business who optimize renewable energy the purpose of maximising savings, maximising income to make it easier for people to invest in renewables, whether it's businesses or homes, because we're very conscious that the renewables journey can be very challenging, financially, and we want to ensure that they can get the most out of those assets financially. Okay, great. Where are you based, Chris? We're based in Belfast, sunny Belfast. I'm based in sunny Spain and it's overcast and cold today. Now, I say cold. It's very relative. It's about 14 degrees here today, but we think that's freezing. You don't wanna know what temperature it is here. Fair enough. Fair enough. So, Chris, give me a little bit of background about Joulen and about yourself. How did you get into the space and where did Joulen come from? Joulen, we were founded in 2017, with the purpose of harnessing the benefit of data, and the predictability you can have with data, and the flexibility of battery storage and other demand assets so that we can build a software platform, and our software platform is called Paris, to enable more people to participate in the energy transition. My background I've been in the utility industry for, must be over 15 years, involved in anything from energy trading retail markets even in utilities in terms of water. So I've been involved in quite a broad spectrum of the energy industry and utility industry. And we're heading now into the clean power era particularly, you know, you're in Belfast, the UK closed its last coal plant in the last number of weeks. What does that milestone mean do you think for the future of decentralised energy systems and grid stability? And just for people listening, decentralised energy, when we, when we talk about decentralised energy systems, we're really talking about renewables, right? Yeah, I think it's a great milestone. But it's the first step. There's more to come, I think. I think at the moment, there is a lot of focus on decentralising, but still grid scale, and that whole legacy of big better. But there's challenges there. Talking to people who are having issues with getting onto the grid or getting planning, which means they can't get those big grid scale assets until well into 2023, 24, sorry, 33, 34. Okay. And, that doesn't really make sense or tie into Labour's objectives of a clean electricity system for 2030, which is a fantastic objective. And I think we should all push towards that. So moving on from that, we need to think of it differently and really diversify our focus. Grid scale is really important. What about really decentralising and really dispersing that renewable generation to homes and businesses. Homes and businesses are putting in solar, they are putting in batteries, but how can we encourage it in a vast scale? Because it's a small start, and I think if you do that there's going to be significant benefits. It could take, as I said before, 10 years we're hearing of people getting planning and connection agreements, But if you put a lot of solar and batteries in homes and small businesses that can be done in months. And if you start to aggregate all of that up over time, you're going to have a significant impact. So I think the government and the policy makers need to think about that as well. Okay, I've talked on the podcast a couple of times before about the idea of virtual power plants. And I think that's what you're referring to when you, when you say that. So, for people who might not have heard this before, what a virtual power plant is, is kind of analogous to cloud computing, you know, with cloud computing, you've got a whole load of servers and they're all tied together into one essentially big computer and it's actually made up of hundreds or thousands of smaller ones. Similarly, a virtual power plant is a seemingly large power plant, but it's made up of typically lots of smaller generators, often homes, as to your point, or smaller renewable, generation facilities, often with backed up with batteries, right? Yeah, I think that's a, that's a great comparison. Actually, I've never thought of it that way. When you look at cloud computing I've worked in the technology industry since I graduated, unfortunately, over 20 years ago. Many businesses would not have even considered or been keen on the whole idea of cloud computing. They wanted to own their own big server rooms. But now nobody's looking back towards that. That seems like alien to businesses now. Like, why would you not do cloud computing? It's a lot easier. It's a lot more flexible. We can spin things up quicker. Right. And it goes back to my previous point earlier. So we need to bring that to the electricity system. You know, the digitalisation in the electricity system. We're a bit of a laggard there compared to even banking who are quite traditional. The electricity system is still lagging behind a wee bit. If we bring that mindset into the electricity system, we can hit those goals. We can move faster. But also I think what's also really important is by democratising the electricity system, getting more people involved. The man on the street, the small local manufacturing business, get those guys involved, then what you're going to see is greater engagement, feeling part of the journey, feeling proud, part of the journey. And it's getting that sort of cafe factor or the pub factor where you go, look, look what I'm doing. I'm not just saving money. I'm earning money and I'm part of this journey. And what happens is you get that cascading effect of that's really interesting. And the friend goes and checks it out themselves and then that cascading impact is really, really positive. So I think we shouldn't underestimate what that can bring, not just in terms of buy in, but also in terms of accelerating our journey. Okay. So keeping up with the Joneses factor, how do we kick that off? I mean, I have a 5 kilowatt solar array on the roof but, do any of my neighbors? I don't think they do. I think, I think David across the street is starting to put in some now, but I'm kind of a little Island here in, in where I live. There's a few more around the place, but to have them on every street, or on every house and every street, how do we go from where we are today to that? Yeah, it's a big, challenge, Tom, and not straightforward. I think some of the things really what you need to do is encourage it financially, right? That's the first thing you went over the pocket and you went over the heart quite quickly. Followed afterwards, right? People have to worry about their pocket, especially these days and get it to mass market. You have to do that because not everybody can afford a £7000 solar and battery installation. So how do we make that easier? How do we incentivise it? And one of the things that I'm very conscious of is in reflecting back to grid scale. The energy markets and the finances are very focused on encouraging more grid scale for investors, which is right to do because we do need that. And the structures need to be there to ensure that people put money in to build those assets. But, why not open those same types of structures and enable the man on the street, a small business to also get the same access to the same markets with the same ease so they can get the same return as an investor. That's what I think would be step one. I want people to earn as much money as somebody who's invested an asset. Step two is how do we overcome that initial investment? How do we make it easier? And I think the government could do a lot in terms of green loans or I always reflect back to I see the increasing number of EVs that we have on, the street today. It's fantastic to see. You know, going out running these days, I'm looking forward to in 10, 20 years, you're not choking on fumes as much, you know, I think I can see a real benefit in the future of that. But I digress. The big driver behind that is for people to be able to take those on as company cars, as a tax incentive, you know, getting a whole benefit in kind piece out, taking it before tax. So we have to think like that. It's even things like cycle the work scheme. The type of things we've done that are student loans. So all those things we think of, okay, I'm saving money because it's been deducted before tax, and I only have to do it as a monthly payment. And they'll see the benefit of that because their electricity is going to be at least 65 percent cheaper. They will also be able to then, if we open up the markets, they could be earning over 300 pounds a year on top of that, in terms of trading their energy and optimising in energy markets. And participating in that virtual power plant. So I think that's how I see a great benefit in regards of how we could tackle that and push it forward. And then you will have more of a domino effect. Yeah, yeah, I mean, you, you raise the point of EVs and I think that's interesting because, I've ordered a new EV for myself, which I'll be taking delivery of next week, and it's a Kia EV3. And the interesting thing about the EV3 is it does vehicle to home or vehicle to grid or whatever, but it does vehicle to X. So in other words, I can share the power from my EV either to my home or to another car if someone, if I come across someone who needs a top up on their EV or you know, I can boil a kettle or whatever, I can take energy back out so the battery in the car can serve the same purpose as if I had a battery system installed with the solar, I didn't because I installed it a long time ago and batteries were ridiculously expensive at the time, but there's a potential now, I think, for me to use the car as that kind of a battery. Those EVs are, as you said, subsidised. heavily subsidised in in most places still. So are you looking at using EVs as well as part of your system or are you encouraging people to do that? Absolutely. That will be in, in terms of our roadmap and how we want to develop our product to bring on EVs and as you say, the VDX technology, cause that, that's a key tool. How I look at our objectives in terms of cleaning the electricity system is there's lots of tools that we need to use. There's not one tool that does it all. We need to think about solar, we need to think about wind, we need to think about hydrogen, we need to think about vehicle to grid. All of it will play a part because it's a big challenge. But we have to ensure that we're looking at all the tools rather than just the one spanner. And at times it'd be that the one spanner is big grid scale assets. So, I'm very excited about what as vehicle to grid technology comes to market in a more mass scale and what it can bring. I think it's really, really exciting. Yeah. And I mean, yeah. if you have a subsidised EV, then that can bring down the cost because you don't need to buy a separate battery for your home. So it, helps people get into the space even more, quickly and cheaply. Yeah, it absolutely does. And, the batteries are not insignificant in terms of their size. So you'll be able to participate on a bigger scale and that bigger battery means potentially bigger savings and well it doesn't potentially, it means bigger savings and large earnings, you know, being able to participate in markets because you have more energy that you can, you can deliver over a period of time. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, just for context for people. The Tesla Powerwall 2 has a battery size of 14 kilowatt hours, the battery in my current car, a Niro, is 64 kilowatt hours. And the battery in the EV three that I'm buying is 81 kilowatt hours. So if you think Powerwall two can power a home for a couple of days at 14 kilowatt hours, then a car, the Niro was bought in 2021, so that's a, now coming on 4-year-old car. That's 64 kilowatt hours. The EV3 brand new 81. You can see, those can easily power a home for several days and still have loads of battery left to drive. Yeah, Yeah, absolutely, and that's the scaling difference I think will, which will be transformative as well. It's still in its infancy. Tom, you're probably like myself. We're we all live in the energy geek world, right? So we don't mind. I'm going to say you probably are a wee bit renewal and we talk about all these things, but does the general public know about it? Is there enough push for it? And I think that's where we need to really get it out of that, sphere of this is all we talk about in their big conferences, three times a year. How do we get where people are talking about back to in the cafe and the pub? You know, No fair point. Fair point. What about government's role in this? I mean, you you referred to Labour earlier. What, policy changes or incentives would most effectively support, do you think, the adoption of a better battery strategy for the UK? There's a number of key ones. I think first and foremost, they need to encourage renewables and batteries in homes. So when they've got their, their ambition for 1. 5 million homes, they need to mandate that they should have batteries, solar, in the the office. So the, Labour government's objective for 1. 5 million homes, I think they need to use targets like that and bolster on requirements around solar, battery and ability to then optimise those to participate in markets. So the second then would be about how do we open up those energy markets so that everybody can be rewarded in the same way as grid scale. Make it easier. Let's remove those big barriers where you need to have one megawatt of capability to get into an energy market and high levels of metering requirements. It costs money. Now, virtual power plants can be aggregated and can get into the loose markets, but we need to make it easier, make it quicker, reduce those metering requirements because we've got smart meters now. We're in a digital age. Let's harness digitalisation. Then we need to think about how do we ensure that there is easy access to funding. That goes back to my point earlier regarding, someone who has standard home, works hard, £7,000 is not necessarily an easy something they have sitting around. How do we get access to that more readily through government supported loans, low interest, pre tax? They've done it before with, as I said before, the EVs, cycle to home, student loans. Think of all, there's been smart thinking before. Let's harness that and make it easier. Just looking at it from the flip side, the consumer side, how can, battery optimisation and participation in energy markets directly reduce costs for households and small businesses? Well, first of all, there's, there's the straightforward basic part is you're generating yourself. You're not buying it yourself. You're self sufficient. Right, so how do we make you, first and foremost, as self sufficient as possible, generating your own energy? And when you're not using it, store it, and use it when you do need it, right? That's the basic principles. Then also start adding on smart technology. So, we have our, Paris platform. And what it does is it ensures that when you are taking energy from the grid, you take it at the cheapest points, right? So that that's straightforward. And then the next level is okay. Well, when can I also start earning? How can I support the grid when the grid is under pressure? There's multiple energy markets there that I can say actually, there's a big demand for a product that I have sitting in my home, which is electricity. How can I sell that whenever there's a big demand for it? Because the basic economics are supply and demand. I have some supply. Demand's high. Demand means it's more expensive. I can deliver that and earn money when that demand is high. Plus then there's the helping to stabilise the network. At times the grid can be under pressure. Unexpectedly so. And it rewards ability to provide stability. What you need is that optimisation platform, that smart technology with digital tools and smart metering to enable all that to happen automatically and autonomously. So you allow customers to sit back enjoy electricity when they need it, not worry about it, but be proud that they're participating in the energy transition, minimising their costs, and earning some money as well. So it's basically economics 101. It's buy low, sell high. That's it, that's it, exactly. And making it easy, making it easy for them to do that. It all happens automatically in the background. Yeah, yeah, we got AI driven algorithms now, they look after it all, they make sure you get what you need, and they make sure you maximise that return. When you invest in something, you want to get the best return on it, and renewables is an investment like anything else, so you want to get the best return on that. Okay. And are there lessons that the UK can learn from other countries, learning about democratising energy participation? I would say the UK is one of the market leaders. I think we're doing very well. We are, we have multiple different energy markets that can be rewarded, but going back to my previous points, we can do more. Germany is doing fantastic in regards to its role out of residential and solar battery storage, huge market. In 2023 alone, half a million batteries were sold. So they're the biggest market in Europe, if not nearly globally in terms of battery storage. And obviously that comes with solar. So that's fantastic. So we need to take the lessons of how, how they're approaching it, encouraging it and bring it into, into the UK. For example, we, we operate in Germany at the moment and we're enabling customers easy access to the wholesale markets so they can sell energy whenever the prices are high. And it's been really straightforward for us to be able to enable that in Germany for residential customers. Very good. And I saw a fascinating article a few months ago now about the German energy market, where they're saying that there is a product that German apartment owners can buy. It's a solar panel or two solar panels that if they're in an apartment and the apartment, they're renting it, for example. They can buy these solar panels that they can hang on the terrace of their apartment and just plug it into a wall socket in their home and it generates power and it feeds the power into their apartment. And so they buy less electricity. So it's really democratising solar energy because it's more challenging for apartment owners to have solar power because they don't have access to the roof. The roof isn't owned by them, for example. And, you know, it's the landlord who decides whether or not to put solar power on the roof. And so very often as an apartment owner, you're left out of this market. Whereas with this system, which costs four or 500 euro, if I remember correctly, you know, you can participate straight away. And, to your point about democratising energy, it's a phenomenal system from, what I could see. Do you know Tom, someone was telling me about that back in October. And I had the same reaction as yourself. I thought that's really moving things forward beyond what we're used to seeing in terms of solar panels. How do you buy a solar panel in your local department store or your local hardware store, make it easier for people to get on that journey rather than having to pay thousands of pounds? You know, I think that's a really fantastic innovation and moving things forward. And to be honest, we've done a lot of analysis and tried to come up with solutions where we feel we're very solutions focused business how do we tackle apartments. You have roof space, but then you have a lot of problems below it. How do you disperse that? And we're thinking about smart ways of, kind of the centralised storage unit and having access to solar, maybe that's not in the roof, maybe in the grounds around it. So we've looked at lots of different solutions, but that really moves things on because all of a sudden then everybody can have their own solar panel. You can have solar in there as well that can help centralise it too. And they all can play together as a virtual power plant and start to really participate and feed off each other. Nice. And what about then small and medium enterprises, you know, what are the financial and operational benefits for them investing in renewable energy systems with battery storage today? Yeah, I think that that's really important. I mean, again, we're talking similar sort of savings to 65%, but they'll be putting bigger systems on, you know, their bigger units and they'll have a larger connection to the grid, but a good, a medium sized manufacturing business in UK could potentially putting up to a megawatt on, depending on their connection agreement. That could be earning them tens of thousands of pounds every year, plus saving them £65,000. That is quite significant, and I think that's what we need to encourage as well is, is show the benefits to small businesses. They have to watch their bottom line or they don't survive. So how do we ensure that again, they get in those journeys and they're caught in a wee bit of a dilemma at the moment because I have a lot of people contacting us at the moment and they're saying we need to get in the renewables journey because I'm not going to win my next contract if I am not demonstrating that I am on the green journey. So they have to do that. And then they have to look at the cost of the investment and then they could have a maybe a tight margin business. So how do they? They don't do it. They don't win business. They don't win business. Don't make money. And they have to find a way of making it work. A lot of businesses are doing so. We're, currently working with a manufacturing business in Northern Ireland who's starting that journey and they're going live and in two weeks time with their optimised battery and solar. And they're really proud of that. And we we're seeing that more and more. And I think it's that again, the government thinks about how do they make that journey easy, or business are going to struggle. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, no doubt. And for grids, can optimising distributed energy resources alleviate bottlenecks in an aging centralised grid system, or do they pose more problems than they solve? I'm a strong believer that I can ease the pressure. The network operators have the tools at hand in the market. So, you know, or your local flexibility markets. The grid at the moment has been designed to focus on putting the infrastructure in place for the worst case scenario, in terms of demand and that might happen 10 times a year if you're lucky, right? And the rest of the time, the asset and think of the great as an asset, is only being utilized maybe 60 percent so it's a lot of waste of money. You know, we need to think about efficiency throughout the whole system. I could go on about that a bit Tom, but when we think about efficiency of the grid how do we ensure that that asset is being used in that 80 90 percent range rather than 60 and then a few times jumping to 100%. And the local grid operators are using the flex tool. So they'll have local grid flexibility and what they can do is they'll reward participants who want to have grid flexibility to reduce their demand when they're under pressure. And we do that in Northern Ireland with the local network operator here, and we're going to be participating in GB with it as well. But using battery storage and solar allows customers and platforms to think ahead, ensure that, okay, we've got a signal, there's going to be pressure, put some energy in the battery, then we'll, we'll use that energy in the battery when the grid is under pressure. And that makes things a lot easier. So we need to harness that on a larger scale and ensure that we get the full benefits of that, because if we can, think about the grid that way, then there's less investment needed in the grid allows the grid to bring more renewables on on a grid scale as well. So it's sort of mutually beneficial, but to be honest, it's a very tough challenge that grid operators have to overcome there. I have a background in data centres. I was a co developer of a data centre back in 2006 to 2008 in Cork in Ireland. And I'm curious because data centres are getting a bit of a rap at the moment in Ireland because they're consuming a lot of the energy demand. But on the other hand, data centers have their own generation and they have their own storage. So from a demand side management perspective, it would seem to me that data centers, particularly if they're rolling out renewables, could be in a very strong position to actually help the grid by participating in demand side management programs. Is that a business you're looking at to talk to them about helping the grid rather than being seen as, you know, just take, take, take. Yeah, it's it's something that we know we need to think about. Data centers at the minute are seen as the bad guys in the network, right? Particularly here in, in Ireland, Northern Ireland. But they're, they're important. And we, we need to think about how we can use them, and what you're saying Tom is how do we use them as an asset on the grid, rather than just as the bad guy? So I think that's definitely something that has the mindset has to be changed is you're not going to be able to walk away from data centers. Data centers are really important. While they'll have some challenges and people think, okay, data centers don't employ a lot of people and they just consume electricity, but what they are is they also enable other businesses to operate, and, and so they're, you have to think about how, how they enable other businesses in the local area as well, in terms of the services they provide. Absolutely. And looking at your vision for the future, let's, let's talk about a more inclusive energy market where smaller players like homes and local businesses can compete. When do you see that becoming a reality? You know, when do you see them being able to be a full participant in the system to your earlier point? That's a good question, Tom. The crystal ball moment. I think I'm an optimist, so I would like to see in 2030, That we will have a very clean electricity system with everybody participating, and that is a lot of renewables from residential, small, medium and large businesses and grid scale assets all working together to give us a green electricity system. Now, will we have 100 percent clean electricity system by 2030? I think not, but it won't be too far away. And that's not a bad thing. Left field question, Chris, if you could have any person any character alive or dead, real or fictional as a spokesperson for democratising energy, who would it be, and why? Thought the last one was tough, Tom.. The truth is you need somebody, you need somebody who, appeased everybody. And unfortunately today's society is there's a lot of chalk and cheese with personalities and even, even fictional. I'm going to put, I'm going to put my, in my wife's shoes, right? I think my wife is very inspired by Michelle Obama. She thinks what she's done in her, in her lifetime and continue, could continue to offer. She is an inspiration to a lot of people, particularly women. And I think that, that's where I'll land on that one. It's a very challenging one. Okay. Good. Nice. I love it. We're coming towards the end of the podcast now, Chris, is there any question I didn't ask that you wish I did or any aspect of this we haven't touched on that you think it's important for people to think about? I think the conversation has been good, Tom. I say maybe conclude. I think the important thing that we need to do is harness all the tools. We need to harness data, to harness storage, I'm a big advocate battery storage and other storage tools. Small dispersed generation, energy and enable everyone to take part equally. I think we put all that together as an equation. The equal sign is a green electricity system. Great. Chris, if people would like to know more about yourself or any of the things we discussed on the podcast today, where would you have me direct them? Come to our website Joulen. com and you can check out our better battery strategy and what we think about that. Chris, that's been great. Thanks for coming in for coming on the podcast today. Thank you very much Tom, it's been great. Okay, we've come to the end of the show. Thanks everyone for listening. If you'd like to know more about the Climate Confident podcast, feel free to drop me an email to tomraftery at outlook. com or message me on LinkedIn or Twitter. If you like the show, please don't forget to click follow on it in your podcast application of choice to get new episodes as soon as they're published. Also, please don't forget to rate and review the podcast. It really does help new people to find the show. Thanks. Catch you all next time.