Genna Boyle of Gridcog.com on Flexibility, Grid Chaos, and the Future of Energy Modeling

In this episode of the Soliverse Podcast, Peter sits down with Genna Boyle, CCO at Gridcog, to unpack one of the most important—and misunderstood—forces shaping energy today: flexibility.

As the grid gets more complex and congested, batteries, flexible loads, and smarter software are becoming essential to how we plan, build, and operate energy systems. Genna explains why traditional “solar vs storage” thinking is outdated, and how modeling entire energy ecosystems—across markets, technologies, and commercial models—is the new gold standard.

They discuss:

⚡ Why co-location and right-sizing are now non-negotiable

🔋 The role of batteries, EVs, and hybrid assets in flex

📉 Negative prices and what they really signal

📈 Why each site needs custom modeling (no more rule-of-thumb!)

🌍 Lessons from Australia, Germany, and the UK

📊 The future of energy software: deterministic, not guesswork

🧠 How Gridcog helps developers simulate 1,000+ site scenarios at once

📡 Why data visibility, not just data itself, is the next challenge

Connect with Genna & Gridcog:

🌐 Website: https://www.gridcog.com

🔗 LinkedIn – Genna: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gennaboyle/

Connect with Soliverse:

🎧 Spotify: Soliverse on Spotify

🌐 Website: https://soliverse.energy

🔗 LinkedIn – Peter: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peterpongraczsaas/

🔗 LinkedIn – Soliverse: https://www.linkedin.com/company/106534214/

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Transcript

The pace at which the industry is moving is, I think, super exciting. It's one of the industries undergoing some fundamental change. We thought about all of the roles that existed in the energy system 20 years ago and what people were doing versus what's happening today. The change has been radical and I don't think that's stopping.

Hello, my welcome to the show. Thank you. Lovely to be here, Peter. Nice to have you here. So Genna I have a big opening question for you out of the gate. So you guys are helping energy companies make smarter decisions, in the times of the grid being reimagined. what is the biggest shift happening right now in the industry? Yeah, great question. I'd say the biggest shift is flex. So historically, when we spoke about renewable energy projects or energy projects more broadly,

that was typically tied to solar or wind assets predominantly. And the biggest shift we're seeing is the critical need for flexibility, both from a grid perspective. So we're seeing this across the world this year with things like blackouts in Iberia to really scare grid connections and massive queues to connect assets to the grid, coupled with huge renewable deployment targets globally. And what that's really driving is a need

for flex, both from the TSO and the grid perspective, but also from the site to protect the site or protect those assets against some of the price volatility coming from renewables. So yeah, think flex is critical. Flex is making modeling energy projects really much more difficult, but also much more interesting. And I think it's a new frontier ready for the energy industry to...

properly embrace flex into things like battery storage to no longer be a novel or niche technology and very commonplace and part of the fabric of the images. For sure. one thing that I keep hearing on almost every single recording is that, batteries, batteries, batteries, the year of 2025 is the year of batteries. most people are actually realizing right now that

We cannot just build solar or wind or storage separately, but we need to do a little bit of more of a holistic system level thinking. So I appreciate you guys, software is actually tackling all of those elements and all the full picture as well when those things come together. Can you speak to that? Yeah, absolutely. And I'd say, of course, batteries are one of the biggest drivers of flex, but we're also seeing flex come from things like electric vehicle flex.

They're obviously electrifying and do have inherent flex and how they charge or also flex on the demand side too. So yeah, it's a broad topic that batteries certainly grab the headlines. And so what we're doing at GridCog is we've built is modeling software for energy projects. And so if I have a site and let's just start with a utility site, scale site as an example, there are thousands of different options when it comes to how much solar can...

do I deploy, how much storage, maybe how much wind. But there's also tens of different commercial options, right? How am I procuring energy to my side? Speaking to your point, right? Maybe I've already got existing solar that's on a long-term PPA and if I'm looking to co-locate storage, what does that mean to my PPA or how's that battery actually operating in energy markets? And so, Gridcog allows clients to stimulate all potential thousand variations in one hit because, you know, one of those options that's objectively...

the best one. And we're seeing a similar pattern, you know, also more at the distribution or behind the meter scale, where maybe, you know, I've got a live logistics warehouse, and I want to electrify my fleet and I don't have the grid connection to do that. And so again, the question becomes how do I co-locate storage and or other energy assets onto my site to allow me to electrify my fleet? And then also what's the best way to operate that fleet as well?

And with all of that comes questions on the physical side, you what assets am I building, but also how am I procuring energy? How am I selling my excess? And so yeah, I'd say certainly the story is shifting towards co-location and you know, that's obviously utilizes the grid connections and cables and wires that we do have, much more than if they were purely serving, a load or a generation assets.

But brings a lot of complexity and I think a lot of challenge for the industry as well. There's a lot of people innovating in this space to say, what does this mean for my PPA? Or what does this mean if my off-taker or my optimizer for my storage is different to my solar? How does that interact with maybe my supply arrangement on site for my logistics warehouse? So it's opening a lot of questions for the industry, but you know, it's forcing, I think forcing a lot of people to innovate and do some cool stuff in this space.

For sure. And I mean, when we were talking about questions, I guess there are, there is also a second part to that and some answers that you can get from a software like yours. But what I'm hearing from everybody is that if you are thinking about the whole system from more high level point of view, it makes more sense in terms of the cost efficiency side of things as well. And the key topic that keeps being mentioned is right sizing.

So we need to right size the projects. Instead of previously building, I don't know, 100 megawatts of solar here, we might be able to achieve our goals and our targets with 50 megawatts of solar and maybe five megawatts of storage and the two combines kind of help each other out. Right. So how do you guys approach this? Like what is the kind of rule of thumb of, how much do I need from one or the other and how the two actually tie together?

Yeah, really good question. And I'd say a challenge of you that there is, is a rule of thumb when it comes to right sizing two assets together. And the reason why I really don't think there is one is you've got different locational price signals. So even if let's say we're in the UK, I could be part of different DNOs. also got different transmission or to new host charges and different frequency that I'm going to be activated in the balancing markets. And same applies again, if I'm at

sort of behind the meter scale, I have different price signals. And that means, you know, ultimately every site is to a large extent unique. And I have as well historically thought about rules of thumbs when it comes to, you know, what percentage of storage on the utility scale site. You know, I really don't think that applies. And I think now that we do have the technology to properly

model these things and model them quickly, that actually enabling people to understand that their portfolio is unique and that there are, you what's optimal for your site in Scotland is possibly, you know, deeply suboptimal for your site in the south of England.

And that's something we actually see quite a few clients using GreedCog for as well. It's running a portfolio of sites, whether that's a portfolio of hundreds of supermarkets or different utility scale projects across Europe. And the job to be done in that case is, hey, help me decide where to prioritize, right? Let's not just prioritize a site that I'm interested in or that's convenient location you made for me, but let's prioritize a site that has the highest NPV or the best IRR, best returns when I'm looking at adding.

renewable storage or flex to the sites more broadly. So yeah, sorry. I don't have a rule of thumb for you Peter. That's good. That's good. But that's a good enough answer, you know, and I guess it also comes down to which markets you're operating in, right? Because every single country has, different feed-in tariffs, different sort of rules and regulations. Hopefully one day we will get closer to something that's a bit more unified, at least on the European level that people can stick to and people can plan based on.

I think that's a little bit further down the line, right? Yeah, I think it is. But I'd also say we are seeing really positive steps in that direction. Things like Picasso with ancillary services being procured more consistently across the continent. I think that really helps and it's an interesting world with energy markets. think every country or every energy market likes to think that they're very special and very unique.

But actually when you break it down, know, the job of the energy market, both the wholesale and the ancillary services is to give price signals for assets that ultimately it's physics, right? To do certain things. so that's something I find quite fascinating. obviously you can tell I'm not British, given the accents, you know, spent the start of my career in power markets in New Zealand. And obviously, you

formed a view that they're special and very unique and then retail trading and GB. And again, the GB market is especially unique and something that I've really come to realize, I think courtesy to a lot of our clients at Gridcog who are modeling globally is actually there is much more commonality in markets than we think. certainly clients that are looking at those on sort of a...

multi-market perspectives. There are tools and ways of comparing and contrasting, even though we might call it call every ancillary service or something entirely different from dynamic containment to FCR. But at the end of the day, this is an ancillary service trying to keep the grid in balance and it means the stat or the next thing for your assets. So I do think sometimes there's more consistency than we realize, but I'd say as an industry, we like to speak in riddles and certainly like to, you know.

We know our markets really well, right? And so, people actually get pretty deep on that topic too. From my perspective, I always see this as almost like shooting at a moving target, right? That we have so many different components, but what you're actually saying is that those components are almost identical in terms of their usage. It's just basically deferring in terms of like how they are utilized and how they are interconnected, right?

Exactly. And the different rules, know, my rules or so on that we put alongside those, right? Are they procured in four hour blocks? Are they procured in 15 minute intervals? You know, what's base learning methodology? How do I qualify to participate in my asset in that service? And obviously a ton of detail there, which you you can't ignore, but at the end of the day, right, Control Room's trying to keep the grid in balance by procuring frequency services from assets that can deliver them. And you mentioned a couple of keywords before, and one thing that keeps coming back is...

price signals, right? Can we define this for the audience in the use case that you guys are serving? Yeah, sure. So let's just take a simple example, right? I've got a battery. If I didn't have any price signals for that asset, that battery would just sit there in its container and do nothing, right? And so what you need for that battery to then have a reason to charge or discharge is a price signal. And that price signal can actually come from a ton of different places. That could be...

If I'm on the distribution level, for instance, that could be my network tariff. I could be trying to avoid red band charges and discharging into my load. That could be my time of use supply tariffs. That could be a TPA signal in that my battery is interacting with solar and other assets on my site. But if we've got an asset that's exposed to energy markets, those price signals become even more complex, right? I've got different wholesale markets. And in many cases, it's not just one wholesale market. It's your day here.

You're diving up subsequent auctions, your intranet continuous markets could be your balancing markets and it could be your ancillary service markets. And that's where the optimization problem becomes super complex. If I'm saying, Hey, I need to manage all of these different price signals and work out what's the best thing to do with my asset right now? ⁓ How is that asset going to work best for me as the customer or my site? And those price signals obviously should be.

representative of the utility value of that asset for the network or for the grid or for the wider market as well. And so yeah, when I chat about press signals, it sort of encompasses all of those things, but that signals for assets to respond, right? And to do something. Maybe let's talk about the elephant in the room, right? So if you talk about curtailment and all the connection cues, how do you guys tackle that? Yeah, I mean...

I think curtailment is interesting. I say negative prices, for me, they're a feature of the energy transition. They're not a bug. And again, it's a price signal, right? We've got an oversupply of energy, and so power prices have gone negative to the same extent that if we have an undersupply and power prices go very high, that also serves as a price signal. And I think one of the challenges that we're seeing come into Europe, particularly very rapidly,

It is negative prices. I think Spain had its first negative prices last year and has crossed, I think, over 500 hours so far in 2025. So the rate of change is huge. And we're seeing that across the board as well. take somewhere like Germany, who has quite a high value of negative pricing as well. But massive solar PV deployment targets, which is also awesome and absolutely what we need.

But what that is doing is altering the fundamentals quite significantly. And particularly, if I own a whole lot of large scale solar PV farms, that's creating a real risk for me because I'm now either curtailing my generation or paying to generate. And so that's rapidly coming into Europe. It's not a new thing globally. Actually, Australia is quite an interesting spot for that. The market's almost a quarter of the year.

are spent at negative prices just because they had a ton of PB. Technically, actually more on the of the RIS-E scale as well. So really what we're seeing is, okay, hey, we've got an oversupply of generation to keep the grid in balance, to keep frequency stable. We need to curtail this generation. And again, that serves as a price signal for flex to say, hey, great, if I a battery.

potentially in this, I could get paid to charge. And if I'm a renewable asset owner, I'm now potentially looking at co-location as a genuine hedging strategy as well. But really what that is doing is pushing the problem also to the asset owner. It shouldn't just be the issue for the controller and there's a time of extra solo or time of extra generation to go deal with it. Actually having that those prior signals come through to asset owners, driving people to...

build the right assets in the right places and get more potentially push the barriers when it comes to how they innovate around contracting those or locating those assets together. So yes, co-tailments I think will continue to happen and it becomes a question of then how do we actually best absorb that energy either into the flex assets or create a signal for load to, you

again, increase their generation at times when it creates lower supply. again, it comes back to the flexibility side of things, right? We need to figure out how to kind of balance this, know, massively fluctuating load and the batteries really play a key role in this. But also when it comes to on the regulatory sides, we see more negative tariffs like this, especially in Germany, we started to see more trackers being installed, which was not typically the case before.

flexible your system is in responding to those graphs of spike and trough. think that the more efficient your system can be, it also drives us back to the most fundamental block of all of this is data, right? So if you have good data, you are able to make actionable decisions based on that data and not just, you know, trying to like guess in the dark, okay, I should be able to, you know, store the store the energy that I produced.

I should be able to push it back to the grid and get paid handsomely for it. it's quite important to juggle all those. Yeah, massively important. And important for the site owner or the asset owner to work out how am I optimizing my vehicle charging potentially around lower prices. But also important for the TSO to have visibility of what's going on again so that they can keep the system in balance. So yeah, I think data is...

is critical to all of this and all directions. And do you also see and feel that the grid or the grid operators are little bit lagging behind and are being left in the dark to a certain extent when it comes to, know, they cannot really see into your production proactively or into the future production, right? Okay, you can see the difference between summer and winter, but you know, it's quite difficult for them to also, you know, adjust to these loads.

And then maybe what would be the right or ideal solution for this? Yeah. I mean, a hard question, right? And I think sometimes, you know, as an industry, sometimes we can be critical of grid operators for not moving fast enough, but also worth cutting them some slack to say, know, their whole systems are designed for massive centralized power systems, right? If I'm in the control room.

All of my systems are designed to turn on and off effectively CCGTs or coal fire power stations. And that's something we've seen a lot of in GB, particularly, obviously, batteries and flex assets have been sort of smaller scale flex assets, at least have been part of the, what we call a balancing mechanism since 2018 now. And as part of that, we've seen a massive evolution from those assets being manually dispatched by the control room.

A couple of times a day, that to a world where now these assets are getting 30, 40, 50 dispatches a day, there's a high degree of automation coming in into that space. Obviously there's further to go. I think it would be a bit scarier as well, potentially at times to be on the control room desk, like, oh, want visibility of what people are going to do. It's, as Peter about to start charging his 10 megawatts of

of rubbish traps that I didn't know about. so again, yeah, that's the way I went back to the data, I think needs to flow both ways. And I think you're still further to go in that. like, there's not skater systems on all of these assets. They're not all going to the control rooms. Often you're relying on people submitting physical notifications and actually telling the control room what they're going to do. Which again, with your hybrid theoretical 10 megawatts of rubbish traps, you might not do because you're not thinking about that.

from it, trading because Gridcog may not find a click in the balancing market. You're just seeing a longer price and saying, hey, it's a good time to charge now. So yeah, I think data is massive as part of it. And certainly think the control room have a lot to manage, but also, you know, it's exciting. They've got so many more tools in the toolbox as well with all of these flexible assets to actually, you know, manage system frequency, manage supply and demand in a much more dynamic way.

done previously, so obviously personally I'm not in the control room, but I imagine that that's part daunting and part exciting for those guys. So yeah, I'd say lots to do there in that space that I have worked there in mind the journey. For sure, and not being in the control room is actually the right place to be. Of course, it's the most difficult job there is. Yeah, and that's certainly a challenging one. And when it comes to kind of comparing markets such as Australia, Europe,

or the US, when it comes to the digital energy adoption, how do you see the differences or maybe the commonalities between different markets? Yeah, it's super interesting and it's something I love with GridCog that we actually get to see so many projects globally, right? ⁓ And again, it's super cool when you see that different markets go on different journeys. So if we talk about, let's say Australia, obviously they're world leading in terms of residential PV deployment.

that also still burn a lot of coal. And then you take places like GB, which is more world leading when it comes to utility-scale storage development. But there's actually very little, know, the world for sort of behind the meat at battery storage or even at the residue level is really, you know, has only really picked up in the last couple of years. And then you compare that then to somewhere like Germany, which has a ton of residential batteries. Not a ton, but at least gigawatts are relative to everywhere else.

and actually is now moving into the utility storage space. So it's kind of interesting that you see, know, markets might start in different places, but actually converge. You know, we're all actually trying to achieve the same thing. It's very interesting just to understand, hey, where did places start? Why was Roozie Storage, you know, hot in Germany and not in GB? you know, how did GB then start on the utility side? How has Australia achieved,

So I've wrapped the deployment of PV. And again, you know, what can these markets learn from other markets? Some of the things that we think are massive challenges in some markets, like, hey, these guys have been there or these have given a shot for a while. it's like, how can we take those lessons and apply them? So, know, certainly even from the software side, it's kind of interesting, like take your point on Kotalman earlier, right?

It's something that because there's so much selling in Australia, we've always had a feature which is, if prices go negative, do you want to curtail regeneration? Is that something you're going to do? Whereas obviously in Europe, that wasn't much of a question until last year. It was like, hey, actually, courtesy of the Aussies, we've already bought that feature. Then really complex hybrid PPAs are something that are being explored really deeply in Europe. It's just super cool.

When you see, ⁓ something's happening here and now people are taking lessons quickly. So yeah, what's going on in the space and I think just different journeys to different markets are going on. But interesting that actually the point of convergence is happening quickly because people are looking at the need for flex, both at the transmission or the utility scale, but also at a cycle or behind the meter scale.

And from the perspective of the business or from the perspective of GridCog, how do you guys actually monitor all these markets? ⁓ So you adapt the tool to so many moving components almost in real time. Yeah. I mean, obviously there's lots to take on. I'd say there's a few great parts of that, right? One is what we call our industry team. And so those guys wear many hats at GridCog. They're effectively energy experts and GridCog experts too.

and spend a lot of time with our clients, supporting them to use the software as best they can and to get the most value out of their software subscription. as part of that, obviously there's a lot of comms and discussions with the clients then get feedback to our product roadmap. And so I think the art of that is keeping really close to your customers.

It's our customers who are innovating. It's our customers who are looking to dispatch assets or build assets that might participate in new markets. And it's our job to listen to their feedback and make sure that we are across what's going on and then obviously to do our own research as well. So yeah, the biggest thing is I think speaking to the customers and making sure that hey, as a business as well, we're part of the energy system fabric and we understand what's going on. And I think fortunately,

The gridcov team would all identify as energy nerds. And so we actually find those client questions so genuinely interesting. We'll see that some markets thinking of a new capacity market or a new network tariff mechanism or whatever. And it's something we find interesting and we lead into it. obviously then as a business, it's able to keep up at the edge of what's happening. can only echo that. Your customers actually have the most data.

the people who are actually building the projects and are on the ground, they are the closest to the problem. So the feedback loop is the shortest. And if you can learn from their experience, examples, projects, of course, that's going to make your job easier as well. Yeah, absolutely. And based on that data, you know, how do you guys actually utilize AI in the software or what's your take on the best use cases that you could use it in the real world? Yeah, really good question. And AI is...

super powerful. I'd say when it comes to modeling an energy site, it's really deterministic modeling. Again, as I was saying, it's press signals and therefore what's the most optimal thing for me to do with my asset. When it comes to the underlying modeling engine, AI isn't that appropriate. It is absolutely appropriate if I was in the world of creating wind or solar forecasts or so on, but that's not our world at GrigCog.

So for us, AI actually becomes a sort of a productivity tool and also how do we use that to improve client success or improve client experience in the product rather than altering, let's say, the underlying modeling. And so for instance, it's, how do we get a library of network tasks into the software as fast as possible? And courtesy of AI, that's a job.

that doesn't take as long as it did even last year. So yeah, for us, that's where we're looking at it, rather than on the modeling side itself, because our job to be done is incredibly deterministic, that there is genuinely a right way and an optimal way and a suboptimal way. And that's a mathematical problem. What do you think the next generation of energy software could look like or will look like? It's a good question. And I'd say something that I'd say the energy industry...

struggles with is actually familiarity with, you know, there's also a lot of older software, know, pure software systems maybe that you download onto your laptops that look like something out of an engineering course at uni. And a lot of that is still very much in practice in the industry. And so I think there's been a big shift, know, courtesy of a whole playthrough of SaaS businesses and newer energy tech companies, you know, shifting that so that

that software in this space actually looks and feels like 2025. And I think, you know, really where the future goes is more on that data point, right? Like how do we leverage data to make the best decisions, both in the planning area, which is obviously in our world, but also in the day-to-day and how assets are traded and monitored and how that data was then fed back to network operators, to grids.

also just suppliers so that again, everyone can be making optimal decisions in that space. And so I think, yeah, we certainly have the best technology advantages as an industry, we live at. And so it's about harnessing that and using data to make good decisions. And when we spoke about the AI part, know, it begs the question of data centers as well. So how do you think data centers are actually changing the landscape of both the energy generation and also the consumption?

Yeah, I'd say one of the biggest things, right, is actually the change in demand. Obviously in recent years with energy efficiency measures and so on, we've actually been seeing demand trend downwards, but obviously with a need for data centers and so many of them being built, that trend is changing. And I think we'll change even more when you think about fleets electrifying as well.

and also heating electrifying. And so I think it's actually started to change that fundamental supply and demand equation in energy markets more broadly and often then drive the need for more generation, which again, fits well with obviously ⁓ many, many markets.

building a significant volume of renewables to decarbonize the grid, but is also creating demand for those. I'd say personally very curious to see if and how data centers may participate in flexibility markets or may respond to those price signals. And obviously it often depends on, what job is that data center doing, what's its load and so on. But I think that could be a really interesting part of the market that is.

certainly at the earliest stages, pretty quickly evolving. sure. I mean, you know, we also come back full circle, right? The kind of usage of those data centers, you have a little bit of fluctuation. Most people will be inquiring stuff from the AI during the day, but at nighttime it might be, you know, sitting idle. So it also depends on what sort of energy you have. If you have solar, then you're kind of in the best-case scenario because you're also consuming immediately what you produced.

But if you have a little bit of access, then what do do with it? So it's also going to be like another layer of complexity on an already complex system. Yeah. Okay. So around the last interesting. And do you guys have any specific solutions that are tailored or targeted towards the data center side of things, or ⁓ you just consider this more of a hybrid project and could be kind of encapsulated in that form?

Yeah, more the latter, right? At the end of the day, data center in what we call the world, we think about it as what we'd call a flexible load, right? It's a load, it's a consumption asset, but there is an element of flexibility and obviously to what degree that's flexible does depend again on the data center and what job the data center's doing and so on. And so again, when modeling those projects, it's working out, hey,

How much flex is there and then representing that and co-locating that with maybe if there is PV or in many cases, there's also backup generators and maybe there's storage and so on and say, hey, what's the most optimal running profile for this data center and what's the opportunity cost of the flex? Both from, what could I earn from the markets, but also maybe what am I losing from clients or load that I need to support? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's good point.

And if we talk, if we segway a little bit into your personal experience in the energy world, you worked for startups and also more established players. What's your biggest leadership lesson that you learned along the way? Good question. I think the biggest one is for me, what's super important is building a team, know, trusting your team to make good decisions and giving people, I think, opportunity. You know, no one's going to get everything right.

every time that it's about being transparent. It's about sharing your thought process, you know, particularly with your team. It's about taking your feedback both from your team, but also your clients and yet backing people to make good decisions. And I think backing yourself as well, right? If you're a leader, you don't actually know everything. And so it's having the confidence to say, hey, I'm going to make this decision. I'm going to own it. Even if it might be wrong, you know, it's better to, I think, take a step forward than,

hang around and wait until you have all of that information. yeah, building a good team who can back themselves and not yet backing yourself as well. And this is also a quite tricky thing when it comes to organization, right? Because I've seen, you know, both models in play in the past, know, the kind of top-down approach where the kind of CEO knows everything, right? And they basically just tell you what to do versus the kind of more decentralized network of people working together.

When you really enable people with ownership of the task, I think that model definitely produces superior results, right? Yeah, it does. And I think the biggest job in that space is making sure that everyone knows what the common goal is and what we're pulling towards as a business. So that when people are making decisions, they've got as much information as possible in terms of, what are the objectives of the business or of the team?

So that they feel empowered to make those calls. And I think it's also impossible to manage a large group of people. So unless you have a really well-defined common goal that everybody's striving towards, that kind of takes care of 90 or 80 % of the management. Right. Because everybody knows where we are going and you don't need to get stuck on like, on a daily basis, like where am going to put this button on the software or not? know, so it's a bit more efficient way of organizing. Yeah.

Absolutely. You can't be across every little detail, that's for sure. What advice would you give young professionals or maybe students who are looking into building their career in the energy build? I'd say, I'm obviously very biased, but I think the energy space is so exciting. I think it was one of the areas that as a whole world, we need to innovate, climate change.

is real, we need to decarbonize our energy system. And there's so much innovation happening in this space that, you know, whether you've come from an engineering background or an environmental science background or an economics background, there's so much work to be done and the pace at which the industry is moving is, I think, super exciting. It's one of the industries undergoing some fundamental change. We thought that all of the roles that existed in

the energy system 20 years ago and what people were doing versus what's happening today. The change has been radical and I don't think that's stopping. So I think it's an awesome industry to be a part of. You oftentimes you'll be chatting with other people in the industry and people talk of a skill shortage or a talent shortage. Because there are so many, you new roles and new jobs to be done in this space. So I think the energy industry is super exciting.

Yeah, I'd definitely get involved. Obviously there's so much free resources while you're studying or whatever. Us, there's YouTube videos. I think a lot of the industry is leaning into online communications or something I'm pretty passionate about and something we do quite a lot at GridCog as well is actually put out a lot of video content that is in part educational and in part leadership as well and also sharing obviously what we do as a business.

There are other players as well in this space doing similar things because one of the biggest barriers is education. And as I was saying, as an English street, sometimes we can be guilty of speaking in acronyms and speaking in riddles. And it's really important to try and normalize what's going on and explain it. So I think there's a lot of very cool content out there as well that people are curious, isn't too hard to get a hold of. also the knowledge or the videos that you guys are sharing as well ties back to

You know, don't need to be an engineer to understand these things. So you can explain it in simple terms as well. And you don't necessarily need to be a super scientifically focused person, but you can find your way in the renewable space from any angle pretty much. And you can always contribute, right? Absolutely. You know, you can come into this side through software, can come in through engineering, you can be...

in sales or account management and speaking to clients. You could be starring in videos or editing those videos too. So yeah, there's so many avenues into the industry, which is exciting. It's absolutely not just high vis and steel cat boots out on power station. And what personally motivates you when it comes to solving these bigger global challenges in the energy world? Yeah, good question. I think it's you saying it's right.

Personally got into energy very much from a net zero and decarbonization perspective. That was what attracted me to the industry in the first place. You know, I feel like through my work and through all of the different jobs I've had, I've been able to make an impact. That I also like solving hard problems. I don't think it's easy. And you know, what worked last year, it isn't right this year. And that's something I think I personally find really motivating.

Is the challenge of, know, blending the physics with the commercial, you know, keeping pace with the rate of change and innovation in the industry. I find that mentally very stimulating. So yeah, nice to feel like that, hey, I'm making an impact in an area that I'm passionate about when it comes to net zero through my career, but also personally rewarding to do things that I think are hard. I mean, the biggest challenge are the souls are the most rewarding as well. Yeah, exactly.

And maybe from a gridcocks perspective, can you share any sneak peeks, anything interesting that you guys are working on currently that's going to be coming out maybe later this year or early next year that you're super excited about? Yeah, one I'll chat about and I'll try and keep this not too nerdy is supporting really complex commercial arrangements. ⁓ And so what I mean by that is let's just say I've got a warehouse and I've got some existing solar on my roof.

And that's being sold to me from a solo owner by our PPA. What if I add a battery to the site? If the battery charges off the solo, what price is that versus if the battery charges on the grid and if the battery goes to the load? And so that allowing our clients to reflect an absolute ton of different arrangements in that space is really critical. And that's really important when we're thinking about how do we support clients to properly represent different commercials where that's.

So about two PPAs in that example, but also properly represents arrangements like P4.5 in the GV market, particularly as this interaction with PV assets as well. So it's really, really deep in the data science world, but something that we're really trying to expose to clients and a friendly UI so that they can actually...

play around with different commercial models and test them in a super intuitive way and represents different energy flows between assets and price all of those as well. And therefore, understand, what's best for my science? If I'm the site owner, well, maybe I'm developing those propositions. And again, how do I practice that properly to incentivize the assets to do the right thing? So that's personally, I think something that is really exciting. The team have put a lot of efforts into representing that, which I think

you'd say broadly encompasses supporting wholesale market enhanced PPAs, which is cool. And then I'd say another thing is Europe, right? For us, we've got team in London and a team in Australia and our London team are supporting our clients modeling in Europe. We're just seeing continual pull from clients modeling in Europe and so that's something, certainly from a business perspective.

we're getting more and more deliberate about which I personally find very exciting and really cool to make sure we've got really full support for our modeling in Europe. Very cool. Can you share any links to that in the show notes below? Something that people can search for later? Yeah, absolutely. I will pin you a couple after this, Peter, and keep you posted if there are any further ones as well. Cool. ⁓

If someone is working in renewables, either utilities or also corporate energy, who should reach out to Gridcoq right now? What kind of people or companies are you looking to speak to? Yeah, awesome question, right? And I'd say, you know, there's sort of two ways that we think about our clients. And one is,

Are they building energy assets to participate in markets or to generate revenues? And so we're saying that I could be a utility scale developer or an IPP. I could also be an energy major, know, wearing that sort of developer hat and potentially a consultant who sits in that sort of area. And then the second is, am I developing energy assets to support my loads? And if I'm doing that, maybe I'm electrifying my fleet and I just cannot get good connections. So now I'm starting to think about renewables or storage for my site.

And so within that area, I could again be behind me to develop a consultant and also a large energy user, that's got an energy team. And so people sit in those verticals and want to make sure that they're making the best decisions when it comes to modeling the energy projects and then investing in the right assets and also being enabled to make those decisions faster and more accurately than with historical tool sets, then they should absolutely be in touch.

And a follow up question to that is what would be the right way to get in touch either with yourself or with COVID? Yeah, so best way is obviously feel free to reach out to us on LinkedIn, but the gregcog website www.gregcog.com has many links for you to get in touch with the team and also to learn more about what we do and definitely check out our videos page that I mentioned as well.

genuinely interested in a whole lot of topics and how you could model different sites in the energy transition and also get a sneak peek of the gridcock software through those videos as well. Very cool. I'll make sure to link to all of those in the show notes below and on that note, Genna, any final thoughts to add? I think we've covered a lot this morning, Peter. So yeah, just want to say thanks for the conversation. I really enjoyed it.

If anyone else does want to get in touch with me or the GridCog team, please don't hesitate. Really keen to have a chat and share thoughts on the energy transition and potentially support you guys to make the best decisions when it comes to the sites you're looking to invest in or model. Awesome. Thank you very much for sharing your insight, Genna. And let's keep in touch. Bye. Sounds good. See ya.