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Powering ahead: Could Europe's EVs use 100 TWh by 2030?

• Montel News • Season 7 • Episode 43

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Anyone who has visited Norway in recent years will be struck at the advance the country has made with electric vehicles and its charging infrastructure.

Should this be rolled out across Europe, EVs could consume just over 100 TWh by 2030. What will be the impact on  grids, heavy goods transport and supply chains?

Listen to a discussion on the challenges faced in the electrification of transport, especially the impact that the electrification of heavy goods vehicles will have on grids. What solutions does Europe need to deploy in order to cope with the rollout of high-speed EV charging stations?

Host: Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News
Contributor: Gert Ove Mollestad - Norway Editor, Montel News

Guests:

Wenche Teigland - CEO, Fount
Shan Tomouk - BESS and Energy Research Lead, Benchmark Minerals Intelligence

Editor: Bled Maliqi
Producer: Sarah Knowles

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News:

Hello listeners, and welcome to Plugged In - The Energy News podcast from Montel, where we bring you the latest news issues and changes happening in the energy sector. For the energy transition to succeed, the electrification of transport is absolutely crucial. Anyone who has visited Norway in recent years will be struck at the advance the country has made with electric vehicles, not just in terms of cars on the streets, but also in terms of infrastructure such as charging. What can the rest of Europe learn from the Nordic country and what is the outlook for the heavy good sector? In this episode, I'm gonna be speaking to the CEO of EV charging company Fount and the Energy research lead at Benchmark Minerals Intelligence. But first, I'm joined by our Norway editor, Gert Ove Mollestad. Welcome back to the Plugged In Gert.

Gert Ove Mollestad - Norway Editor, Montel News:

Thank you.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News:

Now, we've seen a huge growth in EVs in Norway. Both you and me drive them as well and the wider Nordic region in the last five years. Can you give us an idea of what this growth looks like in terms of numbers? And what's propelled this growth in Norway in particular?

Gert Ove Mollestad - Norway Editor, Montel News:

Sure. Yeah. We had some news today actually, that Denmark had passed 500,000 electrical vehicles. But it's still a way to go to Norway, which we have passed 900,000 electrical vehicles or car, personal cars this summer, and it's expected to hit a million early next year. And especially in Norway, there's been strong incentives for many years who has boosted this surge in electrical cars and the sales figures for September is quite staggering with 98% electrical cars sold in Norway. You so there was sold 14,000 electric cars, 115 hybrid cars, 105 diesel cars and then 25 petrol cars in way in September. So the transition is done.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News:

Yeah. They're staggering numbers. Absolutely. And some of these incentives are being, are being reduced, aren't they? Slowly. And what problems does this increase in charging demand both at home and in public have on issues like the grid and power supply and demand in general?

Gert Ove Mollestad - Norway Editor, Montel News:

Luckily, electric cars are very energy efficient. The power consumption for road transport in Norway last year was. 2.8 TWh, which is not very much when you compare it to the annual consumption of 130 TWh. So they are very efficient and that's a good thing. There are some cost range when you build, like charging points to the grid and it put pressure on the grid when everybody's charging at the same time. But then you have you, you have to expound grids and maybe you can build batteries close to the charging stations. So alleviate the, and alleviate the pressure on the grid. So there, there are ways to work around this.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News:

But now with the retail cap for us that's coming and been introduced by the government now there's no incentive to charge at times of low demand. Is there any more? Gert?

Gert Ove Mollestad - Norway Editor, Montel News:

That's a problem in Norway And start that they had a response to the, in the hearing, in public consultation and then say, they said that Norway can miss 1.5 gigawatts of flexibility for charging cars when people have no incentives to, to charge at night, and that's quite a lot when you consider that the max load in always 25 gigawatts, that's quite a figure

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News:

and quite an unintended consequence of that. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks very much, Gert. Let's hear now from Norway's ev charging company Fount. I'm pleased to be joined by Wenche Teigland, who has vast experience in the energy market spanning several decades. A warm welcome Wenche.

Wenche Teigland - CEO, Fount:

Thank you so much.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News:

You are the CEO of a leading ev charging firm based in the country that is spearheading electric transport. How would you describe the charging infrastructure in Norway? Is this the key to success in rolling out EVs?

Wenche Teigland - CEO, Fount:

Yeah, it's definitely been that. Over the past five, six years, we see that the infrastructure has expanded tremendously from a high number of fast charging stations everywhere. And also that you find charging system in every parking house, in every workplace, and in every public places there are charging systems. So the availability to the charging system is is huge, vast, and it has to be. Since we are in such a end of the scale up as we are now,

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News:

how does the rest of Europe compare to Norway?

Wenche Teigland - CEO, Fount:

They are they are still behind, but they are, some of the countries are speeding up a lot. You see it in Denmark? Partly in Sweden. And in average, I would say that the the penetration new ev new sales are between 15 and 30%. At that approximately.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News:

And why has it been a bit slower than say, Norway or

Wenche Teigland - CEO, Fount:

I would say that the most important reason has been the the incentives that the Norwegian government, the policies that the Norwegian government had for buying your first ev with don't having the purchase tax included. You are given a lot of advantages for tall roads, for parking and so forth. I think that has been the first mo wave or movement that spinned off the Norwegian new sail of electric vehicles in Norway. We could argue that moving into electric vehicles. You had to reduce of emissions instantly because we are have a renewable power system. That was not case all over Europe. It's a lot of coal in the mixture, oil, gas power and so forth. So it's not that natural bridge from the renewables to cutting emission in transportation. It's also a question of surplus. Do you have enough energy? And when we started our journey on electrifying the transport sector in Norway, we had a surplus of renewable energy. That is changing over the next couple of years. I

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News:

That's something the demand forecast yeah. To be believe anyway. Absolutely. We'll come onto the sort of market impact in a minute or two to, but do you think, still think, are EVs still too expensive?

Wenche Teigland - CEO, Fount:

We have seen prices are going down and for the smaller EVs, I think they are fully compatible with the combust de combustion engine. As we see it now they are getting better and there are so many more models into the market now than only five, six years ago. So something has happened and that will also do something with the pricing of the vehicle side. I believe

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News:

there's also been concerns about the same for solar panels and some forms of technologies, from China. And is this what's the case with electric vehicles? Is this, is there are the concerns of competition valid? I know this is not your technical expert area of expertise, there's concerns of security, for example, or using the software made by Chinese firms. Is that a valid argument, do you think?

Wenche Teigland - CEO, Fount:

We are seeing a lot of Chinese brands entering the market and it's quite normally Norway that many of the new sold cars are Chinese brands. I think we shouldn't be naive. I think we need to think this through. And I actually read a report a couple of weeks ago that said that you shouldn't speak business in your car.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News:

Okay.

Wenche Teigland - CEO, Fount:

I don't know if that's true, but it certainly make us reflect upon the security of data and the security of the interface with the car.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News:

That's almost slightly concerning actually, that you shouldn't talk business or any private matters or, it may be speaking codes or something, but yeah. But no, that, that's very interesting Wenche. What about obviously for transport, the transport sector. Comprises a huge amount of the emissions of of Europe as a whole. And one big part of that is heavy goods, vehicles, trucks, and lorries. Are they hard to electrify?

Wenche Teigland - CEO, Fount:

I think that is the next chasm to cross. We see in the Nordics that many of the transportation logistic companies has bought their first EVs. For la in particular last mile delivery cars. The heavy trucks are coming, but it, I think we will, it'll take three, four more years before we see data is scaling up, but it is introducing some new issues with the interface with the grid because along with the heavy duty vehicles, you are getting stronger charging stations. And then suddenly the connection to the grid become quite crucial to have an efficient end. A good solution. And even in Norway where we see the grid is quite resilient, it's a strong grid. We are seeing issues introducing heavy duty vehicles.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News:

Really? Yeah. Yeah. To what extent though, it just poses too much pressure on the grid. Grid constraints potential.

Wenche Teigland - CEO, Fount:

The charging state nation has to follow the roads. And sometimes you have to have charging stations. In areas where this grid is not that strong.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News:

Because the roads don't follow the grids.

Wenche Teigland - CEO, Fount:

No. It doesn't do that.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News:

No.

Wenche Teigland - CEO, Fount:

But then yeah,

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News:

in other countries, that's the case. So that, so how are you gonna overcome those challenges? How do you meet those obstacles head on and deal with them?

Wenche Teigland - CEO, Fount:

I think we have to really look carefully where to build the charging station. That's one, one area we need to evaluate carefully. We see that battery solutions are emerging. That's also a way of kind of compensating for that. De grid can't deliver what you need at all times.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News:

Okay, so then you have a battery in the vehicle that

Wenche Teigland - CEO, Fount:

No, a battery at this charging station and combine and fill up the battery so they are full when the truck come for charging.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News:

Can you say anything about the changes happening so far? You, in Norway it's almost 99% of new cars are electric being sold in the market. What's the case for heavy goods vehicles? What changes are you seeing at the moment? For the, for trucks and lorries?

Wenche Teigland - CEO, Fount:

Yeah. We see that service cars, last mile delivery cars. That is you can get those vehicles easily. And many companies are, when they are renewing their fleet, they are moving into electric. But for the larger trucks, it still will it's still an issue. It's still the fleet manager want to know that they have safe charging solutions that they can charge at an acceptable energy price and so forth. And, there are some, still some problems which needs to be solved there before we are ready for full scale.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News:

I would've thought as well with , we touched upon the sort of demand forecasts. The full scale electrification of transport would be a, an excellent way to, to meet in times or to deal with times of oversupply and when there's a glut, for example, when there's a lot of, when it's very windy very sunny, if you could then charge or use the batteries, as you mentioned at charging stations, that seemed to be a very sensible use of supply that other was otherwise would have to be curtailed.

Wenche Teigland - CEO, Fount:

Yeah. I believe that the battery solution will be a equally important addition to the charging systems and the charger itself. So that could allow for those kind of solution where the surplus actually can be used for later purposes.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News:

That makes a lot of sense. We're not, I mean we're long way off obviously seasonal storage, but that kind of storage could work and 'cause it, when you are curtailing huge amounts of wind and solar capacity doesn't seem to work with the market.

Wenche Teigland - CEO, Fount:

But I think this is a new laboratory test we have to do. We don't know exactly for heavy duty vehicles how this will work. How you are connecting this to the energy system and markets and how you are connecting it to the grid itself. And also. Making sure that the fleets are fully charged when they need to go on the road. So it's, this is, the complexity here is quite high.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News:

It's very high, isn't it? Yeah. No. There are tools to meet, to, to deal with that kind of complexity, I'm sure. But it is a new world we are entering into with which is much gonna be much more volatile and certainly unpredictable. But, thank you. We've also seen in, I know, you, your experience with the Nordic power market more generally held senior positions with, regard to grid and production, trading, et cetera. We've seen recently the introduction of 15 minute timeframe in the day ahead power market. Yet at the same time, the Norway government has introduced a cap. For retail prices, certain power suppliers and retailers would provide users with information when the power is, was cheapest. And then they could charge their cars or have a sauna or sit in the jacuzzi, but now they could just charge when they want.

Wenche Teigland - CEO, Fount:

Yeah. And that's the downside of this solution is that it doesn't stimulate for energy efficiency. So that, I think we need to experience this particular through this first winter.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News:

Yeah.

Wenche Teigland - CEO, Fount:

And then I think that will be very interesting.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News:

And then we'll,

Wenche Teigland - CEO, Fount:

and see what happens in the market and see what happens in, in the system itself, fiscal in the system.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News:

But are you concerned that could even overload the grid and certain place even more constraints?

Wenche Teigland - CEO, Fount:

No I still believe that the rest of the consumption is still big enough to handle any variations. At least I don't think Statnet is worried about exactly that.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News:

Okay. That's very reassuring. Anyway. But Wenche, like I said, you've been in the market power market firm for a long time. Do you feel things are moving in the right direction? It's on the right path.

Wenche Teigland - CEO, Fount:

We are definitely in a period of time where things are changing. We are changing the mix into the power system. A lot of renewables on a were fluctuates in production. At the same time we are moving the operation of the grid from. It's not that many years ago we were very analog on how we were adjusting the production and the consumption in the grid. It was done manually, almost. And now we are moving into a fully digitized solutions. And that is also it's demanding doing all of these at the same time. And also the market mechanisms need to be changed. In that context.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News:

So need to fit the market. The policy and the regulatory framework needs to fit the market where in rather the market we are coming from. Is that what you're saying?

Wenche Teigland - CEO, Fount:

Yeah. It has to do that and at the same time we are digitizing everything. So that also has to be fit to the market solutions. I think we are in a time right now where we are moving over to a different a different stage or a different era of how we operate the system.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News:

As you said, it's much more decentralized and Yeah. Much more complex, but then much more decentralized at the same time, isn't it?

Wenche Teigland - CEO, Fount:

Yeah. And the I also think that the interface between the TSO and the DSOs need to. They have to work much more closer together, and they are more, much more dependent on each other than we've seen before. So the system operator role is also is also relying on different levels on the grid.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News:

That's absolutely crucial, isn't it? Yeah. Going forward. And I, where do you see demand? Do you see transport being a big demand growth for electricity going forward? Or do you see that demand growth coming from other areas? For example, data centers or batteries?

Wenche Teigland - CEO, Fount:

Definitely data centers is becoming a more and more critical infrastructure, which is a topic in all markets, all countries, I would assume. And they are growing much faster than we maybe thought a couple of years ago when we thought that hydrogen or battery factories should take much of the power, available power. At the same time, transportation will also be a consumer into the power system and with more electric coastal transport. More, we were seeing electric planes planning to be in the area in not that far ahead of us.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News:

That's exciting.

Wenche Teigland - CEO, Fount:

And also the heavy duty vehicles, which you were touching upon, all these will also require more power. And that's interesting because many of these charging station, it is at sea or at on, on the road. They are at the lower level of the grid. And that grid is not, it's not completely perfect for that kind of usage, if you understand on off high loads on off all the time.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News:

Okay. Yeah, it's very choppy. Yeah, absolutely. What about supply? Why isn't supply in the Nordics or especially Norway, keeping up with for forecast among growth?

Wenche Teigland - CEO, Fount:

In Norway it's has been, and I think it's the same in other countries, it's the discussion between using nature and solving climate issues at the same time. And that is not always completely fit together. And that's why wind farms in Norway has been highly debated over the past 5, 6, 7 years. And it's a very few new wind farms has been built. We are waiting for the offshore wind, but that takes time as well. And for the past couple of years, the kind of nuclear discussion has emerged also in the Norwegian public. I think it's sad that we still can't find the best solutions. But at the same time, there's no perfect solution. Every production plant we build will have an impact on nature somehow. And, we will see what happens. But I don't think putting it all into the offshore zone will solve everything. I think we need to also find good spots In Norway to bin build wind farms, for instance, and also upgrade the hydro power, which is always.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News:

That's always another option. I think there are no simple, easy solutions. These are all very complex questions and very, complex areas. I think,

Wenche Teigland - CEO, Fount:

And in Sweden they've been really building a lot of wind farms over the past 5, 6, 7 years. Also here that the debate in Sweden now is increasing about how to use nature for wind farms.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News:

And one way is then involving the local communities more. It's very easy to say no. And quite rightly, they're living next to it. They can decide on what's being placed in their backyard. But it does obviously create create issues further down the line. I think is that it's supply is not coming online. But if you say, supply's not coming online and demand is increasing, that's obviously gonna drive prices in a certain direction, isn't it? And that's gonna mean for all those people charging cars, prices are gonna go up.

Wenche Teigland - CEO, Fount:

Yeah. That is supply and demand will always control the prices.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News:

Exactly. Yeah.

Wenche Teigland - CEO, Fount:

But in energy, we have historically seen that this is a periodic when the prices go up new supply does come in after a while, and then things turning around as long as again,. so it's cyclical. Yeah. I do believe that we will find solution and for the off take if the prices go that much up. Some of the reinvestment or new investment on the offtake side wouldn't happen. Because it's not economic viable. So it's a lot of issues that merges when the power prices get too high.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News:

Exactly. And then the politicians get nervy as well and they want to jump in. I think, but there's also a massive case for, batteries when you build take the supply, glu the oversupply when you have that, and then feed it back in when the prices go that high. But, so that's maybe an area which we'll see more of.

Wenche Teigland - CEO, Fount:

Batteries would play one role, not the full role, but they will have some role to play. Definitely. And I think that if you move down to Europe, I think batteries already are being introduced into the system for the charging station at the much larger pace than we see in Norway. Because the grid in central Europe is in a completely different state than we have had so far in the Norwegian market.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News:

Absolutely. So Wenche, are you an optimist in terms of the future for EVs?

Wenche Teigland - CEO, Fount:

Yeah, definitely. I think that we are not going back. I think that if you ask someone who's been driving an EV for a while, they will say they never want to change again, though the EVs are here to stay. Definitely.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News:

So that was the situation in Norway. What impact is the increase in EV charging demand having on the rest of Europe? I'm pleased to be joined by Shan Tomouk. Bess, an energy research lead at Benchmark Minerals Intelligence. Welcome to the Plugged In podcast Shan.

Shan Tomouk - BESS and Energy Research Lead, Benchmark Minerals Intelligence:

Pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News:

Obviously we're talking about electric vehicles or EVs. If we're looking at ev charging demand, what are the forecasts for electricity charge across Europe over the next 12 months? How do you see that?

Shan Tomouk - BESS and Energy Research Lead, Benchmark Minerals Intelligence:

Yeah, sure. So it really depends on how you look at it. If you're talking about electricity consumption, it's actually not as big as some people might think. So for kind of 2025, we expect Europe to consume around 45 TWh of electricity from ev charging. For context, Europe as a whole, across all industries consumes about 2,700 TWh. So it's a fairly small drop. And even out to 2030, we expect that to it's nudge a little bit above a hundred TWh, but nothing necessarily significant, especially when you compare to other areas like data centers and the kind of consumption growth that we're gonna see from there. I think where the problem comes or the worry comes on, EV charging is more on the power or load demand. That we see from the kind of high speed charging side of things.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News:

Are there any kind of regions in particular, that the majority of those 25 TWh come from?

Shan Tomouk - BESS and Energy Research Lead, Benchmark Minerals Intelligence:

The UK is a fairly big one, as is Germany. Typical, just bigger EV markets where they have slightly higher kind of annual managers driven. Norway as well, which has a fairly high kind of fleet penetration. But yeah, it tends to be a little bit less than people might think across most countries.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News:

And what's driving these forecasts? 25 TWh a year.

Shan Tomouk - BESS and Energy Research Lead, Benchmark Minerals Intelligence:

Yeah. The main thing is just rising EV sales penetration. So typically the majority of EV buyers today have access to home charging. And that's just a function of the fact that EVs are still fairly expensive. And so if you can afford one, you're more likely to be in a higher income band. And if you're in a higher income band in Europe, that typically translates into a higher likelihood of having access to private parking and by extension, private charging. And so people can do their charging at home overnight, but just because you can charge at home doesn't mean you don't want the option to charge publicly. So when we look at countries that might necessarily, or might have a large part of their fleet being home charges, they're not necessarily thinking about the 99% of journeys they take. Year or day after day. When they're looking to spend 30 grand on a car, they're thinking about that one journey per year where they might have to go visit grandma across the country, and they want that fast charging infrastructure to really be able to provide those needs. So we're seeing a lot of ChargePoint operators really trying to develop at these large networks, providing these high speed charges, which can put quite a large strain on the grid from a power perspective. Ultimately European grids weren't necessarily built with the electrification of transport in mind. And so when you're building out these fast charging networks where a station can have one to two megawatts of power draw, it means grid connection queues, it means grid upgrades new substations, it means transformers, which often today have a kind of lead time of over a year. So there's a lot of kind of bottlenecks that we're starting to appear or see on the grid. Even though those fast chargers might not be utilized to a great degree today.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News:

What are the challenges here then, Shan? Europe's grid wasn't billed for these kind of fast chargers or the high power charging that we're seeing more and more of. So what does that mean for, you mentioned, what does it mean for rollout of Griz to they need to be modernized. Do we need to build more? You've mentioned the transform, the aspects that need to be need to be added to the grid. Is that gonna be enough or?

Shan Tomouk - BESS and Energy Research Lead, Benchmark Minerals Intelligence:

Yeah, ultimately it's a steady process that is currently happening in most grids in Europe. Ultimately, a lot of these grids and kind of DNOs have not been used to this influx of requests that they've had until the last few years, where suddenly all these charging markets started to really get going. And it's not just charging as well. They're also having to deal with grid connection requests from renewable energy, from stationary storage coming onto the grid. This kind of energy transition has really pushed grid operators and network operators to an area that they're not necessarily used to. And it is gonna take them some time to get, to terms with the new world of these new kind of grid connections coming from all over the place. Now, like I said, it's a bit of a gradual thing that will just. Ease up over time, but there are some ways you could do it. So for example, some companies are buffering their fast charging with stationary storage. That's quite a popular approach in some countries. And given the price of storage falling year after year, that is quite a popular option. But for the majority of kind of regions in Europe, just waiting for your grid connection and going that traditional route where it might take you one to two years to build a site even longer, is just the way forward for most people. But luckily. As I said the majority of the fleet today doesn't necessarily rely on that public charging infrastructure for the majority of their charging needs. Unlike somewhere like China, where you have a massive EV fleet and the majority of those people live in high-rise buildings, and so they don't have that access to private charging. So luckily for them. Their infrastructure was built with electrification in mind.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News:

It's interesting. So you often hear, people talking about like a World Cup finals or FA Cup finals if you follow English football that and at half time people go and turn the kettle on, and that's done, across millions of household, across the country. Can you see the same kind of phenomenon with EVs that maybe at certain points in the evening, people, you know will have dinner and start charging the car, That you see these incredible spikes in demand. Is that a similar kind of issue for electric vehicles? Shan?

Shan Tomouk - BESS and Energy Research Lead, Benchmark Minerals Intelligence:

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. As just as you say, people come home they park up, they plug in for the night. The one sort of caveat to that is we're seeing a lot of tariffs and these smart tariffs and smart charger where you plug it in and it won't necessarily start charging the car at 6.00 PM 7.00 PM where when kind of costs are high, but it once instead hold off until the nighttime, and then most charging happens overnight. If you have a home charger. In that case, you're charging when rates are at their lowest. And if anything, it's actually helping to balance out that kind of load over time. Now. That doesn't necessarily, or that does start to change in the longer term as you have a greater fleet that relies on public charging. Suddenly you are having a lot of people towards the end of the day hit their fast chargers, maybe on the way home to get a bit of juice for the extra week. But that's not necessarily something that is seen to a great degree in Europe as of yet. Right now there's smart tariffs are doing a fantastic job at pushing that, charging out into the night when demand is already quite low in prices at low.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News:

Exactly. So you need that kind of tariff structure that incentivizes that kind of people would distribute their charging at different parts of the day rather than everyone doing it at the same time. That's very very important here, Shan. But I'd just like to, to round off with a couple of discussions around, around security and especially security concerns around Chinese EVs. They're becoming. Incredibly popular in Europe. They're certainly a lot cheaper than some European models. But there are, some issues around the security of Chinese technology. We've seen it in offshore wind and certainly in the nuclear industry. Do you think we should be concerned if we're driving around in in, in Chinese electric cars?

Shan Tomouk - BESS and Energy Research Lead, Benchmark Minerals Intelligence:

Anecdotally you hear people who are slightly worried about the potential security aspect. I don't think in the auto industry it's necessarily something to be particularly afraid of. As you say, Chinese EV companies, particularly BYD, are doing pretty well in Europe actually, since they're entrance. The year to date sales in Europe or the NFTA for BYD is around 95,000 units as of end of August. And that puts BYD about ninth for EV brands in Europe. And they're actually first in Italy and Spain as well. So there's clearly an appetite. There are always gonna be people who are a bit worried. I don't necessarily think there's a massive need to be worried about the security aspect on the EV side. Certainly not to the same degree as perhaps on the grid side. If you are relying or heavily relying on grid infrastructure like transformers, substations, or other kind of technologies on the grid from China, then there's a bit more of an argument. But even then, it's quite difficult for the European perspective to be able to build out these renewable energy systems without relying on China to some degree.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News:

And what about, are there Chinese goods and, not, maybe not the so much to do with the grid, but more, storage systems or solar panels. Is, are there concerns there, do you think? Are they warranted?

Shan Tomouk - BESS and Energy Research Lead, Benchmark Minerals Intelligence:

It depends who you're talking to, really. It's, if you're in the domestic industry for solar, then it's the worst thing in the world. But I don't think it's necessarily a huge concern for European grids. The majority of storage we see coming into, into Europe is Chinese made. We just don't have the domestic kind of manufacturing on a large enough scale. And that's not necessarily the same in somewhere like the US. They're really hammering down on it and trying to reduce that reliance on China. Europe is positioning itself for now, at least in the middle of those two markets. There is an understanding that we can't necessarily rely on China too much, but at the same time we don't necessarily have that carrot or that funding to be able to compete in the domestic side like the US does.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News:

Shan, the fascinating discussion. I'm sure we'll continue at some point in the not too distant future. But thanks very much for being a guest on the Plugged In News podcast from Montel.

Shan Tomouk - BESS and Energy Research Lead, Benchmark Minerals Intelligence:

Anytime. Thank you.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News:

It's been an excellent and insightful discussion. I hope you agree, listeners, and thank you for tuning in to this episode. Our podcast episodes are released every Friday. For the latest news from Montel, please visit montelnews.com and you can follow us on LinkedIn, blueSky, and other social media channels. See you next time.

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Richard Sverrisson, Editor in Chief, Montel News

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Sara Knowles

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Bled Maliqi

Editor