Battery Storage & EV Charging: Opportunities and Solutions

flooded. compromised. power between such as grid energy storage, which are well-known and well-functioning. And as the price keeps on decreasing, and we also see factors like the pressure on the grid and the rising number of EVs across Europe rising, then new applications for BSS are clearly emerging for EV charging infrastructure. So the topic is getting hotter. So as a specialist within the area, we thought that it was a high time to organize a panel discussion to get some experts' input and opinions. In today's panel, we have the pleasure to welcome Manuel, a leading expert and consultant within e-mobility with a solid track record from companies like Trutium and EVA. Welcome to also Matt, who will join us in a minute, the CEO of Vigo Energy, an innovative CPO from DK, Denmark, which deploys urban fast charging hubs. We also have the pleasure to have Sven-Erik, who's going to join also soon, account executive from Hotel, well-known charger manufacturer with a solid DC portfolio. And we have Stefan, thank you, Stefan, for joining, who's driving the activities within EV charging at Pixi. And finally, Robert, our co-founder and CEO at FlexiCharge. So without further ado, let's dive into today's discussion. And you all as participants, you can post your questions in the chat, and we will pick them up later. So first questions to you, Manuel. So why, as I was even explaining, why has this topic lately become such a relevant and hot topic compared to, say, 12, 15 months ago? Tell us. Yes, thank you. First of all, thank you, Chris, for the organization, for the participation and for the invitation. But straight to the topic, that's what the panel is looking. Indeed, you mentioned the clear thing. You know, the infrastructure has been developed over the last years. And the price of batteries a few years back was prohibitive, almost. You know, the consideration of having a return of investment on that was quite hard. In the last 18 months, we have seen a substantial evolution in terms of what is the offer capacity, the price capacity. And also, we saw the transition from the first three years of the 2020, right, up to 2023, that was this rush to install sites and find those sites based on, of course, where is the grid, right? The easiest I can find a grid, the easiest I can find to install. Now, those locations of easy grid access are becoming less because they are gone. They are installed. So difficulties of finding grid, the grid costs for that, the price of batteries decreasing and becoming more consistent on the full calculation. So, of course, the return of the return of investment have been helped, you know, the starting up of seeing more and more projects. There's a second area that I also think it's very important to mention, that is, and we see it almost monthly through the Ionity, right? Large and reference across the industry that besides of new sites, there's upgrading of sites, right? Almost every month, they say we increase this site with more charges. And that upgrade was not foreseen on the initial grid connection. Now, we have made one, they invested on one, right? CPOs are investing in grid connections, but in some cases, they are too successful, you know, more than what they expected. So how to get that extra success capable on replying to the customers? And then the battery storage and the energy route, how to solve the energy problem, the limiting energy problem, it's bringing also a further level of opportunity for this storage, systems to come to the systems to come to the upgrade, to the upgrade, instead of, okay, now we go from starts and another even new grid connection. So I think those two factors have definitely helped see the growth that we are having now in 2024. You were in mute. Of course, yeah. So, yeah. So, thank you, Manuel. Well, and how do you see the acceleration of this phenomenon? Or do you see that it's on the kind of Molina curve? Or do you see really it's going to just keep on being more prominent as a challenge and therefore an opportunity? I see that it will increase significantly. Like we said, the price of batteries is decreasing. So making, you know, some business cases that in the past were not being able to be validated by the total cost versus return of investment. So that is a huge step forward. to support it. The fact of the expansions also, right? There's the experience now. Five years ago, the experience was very little, right? Was attempts. Let's put these high power charges because of course we can utilize batteries in smaller, but they are mainly focused to a little bit to the higher level of power of charging, right? 150, 300 and so on. Sites that you have more than one charger per location. So this is just expanding. The success in some locations was unexpected, right? People thought, okay, I'm making this with a five, 10 year long time and I'm installing enough. No, you know, the behaviors, the trends of the drivers are hard to predict, right? We tend to, there's tools, there's studies, there are companies dedicated to doing that, but we are humans and humans by factor, you know, tend to change and something else surrounding might help them to make that now the path through a different place that was not first seen in the beginning, you know, whatever, a new coffee shop, a new shopping mall, a new highway, highway, and all that can change behaviors of things that were predicted two, three, four years ago, and were not there, were not known or were unexpected. So those, I do believe that there's a massive opportunity on site upgrades that is starting now. I don't think it's not at all at the boom, because those sites are profitable sites, right? If they are successful, they are profitable. If they are profitable, they can help on what is possibly or what was in the past. You know, you know, a hard time to justify the investment, you know, you know, a battery storage can come here as a heavy weight on my total cost, right? And so if the site is successful and you have enough usage or uses enough that allows you this total cost of ownership calculation, then in a much more easier and less risk, that is what CPOs try to avoid. These solutions will come certainly to expand the sites that we missed, the sites that we see queuing. in a faster way, because you don't need new permits or barely no, no further really hard and time taking bureaucracies to just add, you know, an extra, you know, the support of storage into an existing site. And that is also the beauty of it. Yeah, absolutely. But we come back to also to the aspects around profitability. Anybody wants to comment on this for the next question? No, but maybe then to you, Stefan, can you explain a little bit? So why did Pixie start to deploy battery storage for charging infrastructure? Why did it start and what were the challenges? Yes, of course. But first of all, thank you very much for having the chance to participate in this webinar. I really appreciate it. And it's a very nice panel. Coming back to your question, why did we decide to go into EV charging business? First of all, first of all, first of all, because we think that we have a very good product that fits the needs of CPOs and ChargePoint, the ChargePoint industry, the ChargePoint infrastructure. But based on the customer feedback or why we actually decided to move into this business is we see that there are a lot of grid constraints when it comes to time needed to get in grid upgrade or to get at least a grid upgrade anyways. You also asked Julia to build up to impact our capacity. Also, there are a lot of things that do to move intoームs in our vatar the chargers. Based on this, we started discussion with many companies and we saw that there are also many CPOs that are quite confident and mature in operating the chargers and running their business on the chargers, as Manuel already mentioned. And right now they want to investigate into additional revenue streams, increasing their business case by using a battery storage system and use this battery storage system not only for boosting the grid capacity by having more power, which can be used to build up the number of chargers, but also to use the capacity in the battery storage system to participate in the energy market. Like for instance, using the capacity during nighttime and do some intraday trading or store your PV production for your own consumption, which lower your cost for buying energy, which you actually sell to the cars or to the car drivers. We also see a very high demand for battery storage system in combination with EV infrastructure, especially in the Nordics. Scandinavia, where there's a very good market for frequency control. So what is happening right now, what we recognize from the market is that there are many ambitious companies trying to improve their business case by using a battery storage system. And of course, we saw a lot of RFQs coming up in the last year for stationary battery storage systems. That's another reason why we decided to move into this business. So thank you for that. So if you look at the geography, since you have a global perspective, I know even beyond Europe. So yeah. So how do you see, where do you see the, you said Nordics. So if you had to rank a bit where things are cooking and happening, where is it first and where is it trickling down? What's the next kind of markets you see picking up? Yeah. Actually, it's a great market. Actually, it's a great market. Actually, it very much depends on the country and also the regulation and the needs of the companies in these countries. So for instance, in Netherlands, there are many companies building up charging infrastructure with HPCs and they are facing the issue that they do not get a grid upgrade at all because the whole infrastructure is totally overbooked. And you do not always get a grid upgrade. And you do not always get the grid upgrade you need. Maybe during nighttime, you have the permission to withdraw some power from the grid. But during daytime, it's prohibited because there are other consumers that need the power. In another market around the world, in Australia, for instance, where we also have an office and our colleagues are keen to deploy the start of the grid. So we have a battery storage system together with PV for an off-grid application as an off-grid charger down under where you have no grid at all. It's also very interesting market for battery storage system combined with chargers. And of course, in Scandinavia, it's already there that there's a lot of demand for battery storage systems. It also depends on the use case. The customer want to operate. And so for instance, heavy vehicle charging, truck charging, and bus charging is a very interesting market for CPOs because you have a lot of traction, especially on the highways. But it's also kind of necessary to have a large grid connection or to have at least a battery storage system because you have to provide a lot of power and also a lot of energy during daytime. And remembering the conference last year here in Germany from NOW, it was stated that grid upgrade to the high voltage grid may take up to 10 years for the permission procedure, not including the civil work and building up the site. So there's a high ramp up in electrification of transportation. And for this, battery storage systems are the key component to make it a success story. Yeah, I understand. Thank you. So thanks, Stefan. So welcome, Mass. Thanks for joining. So great to have a CPO on the panel. So could you maybe tell us briefly, so why is this topic relevant and interesting for your business? And maybe, you know, without revealing any secrets, but a bit like, what's a bit your plans and roadmap? What do you see? How do you see Vigo Energy leveraging batteries? Yeah, sure. And thank you for having me on board and apologies for my technical challenges to begin with. So I think the first thing to say is that when we started looking into this world, so to speak, which was fairly new to us in the beginning, and I'm probably also the one here on the panel that knows the least about best services and so on. And then we wanted to see if there was a smarter way for us to utilize already sort of deployed grid, which we had on some of our locations. And we thought, okay, well, if we could somehow integrate that into, you know, a battery setup, we will we would get a number of sort of advantages, if that makes sense. So naturally, it's the peak shaving. That makes good sense, right? That was the first thing that sort of came to mind. I don't think I have to explain that to any of you guys. So I quickly move on, right? And also the balancing services, which we saw in a Danish context, could actually be quite a good sort of business case, additionally to just having the chargers there. And then as that was sort of that was sort of for us where it started, right? That was why we started to look into this to this kind of setup. And then we learned that if we took that a step further and started looking into actual chargers, which came with a battery solution as well, we could we could get a few more sort of advantages of the of this kind of solution, right? So so right now we are spending quite a lot of time on finding the right sort of hardware that combines both the battery and the charging option. And it gives us the opportunity to find locations where there is much less grid available, which gives us a much faster time to market. So when we do the numbers, we can see that it's better for us to deploy this kind of hardware, then having to wait for, you know, for six or 12 months, until we get the grid. And then we can also use these solutions to sort of test out new locations to see if they're actually good charging locations. And and this is this is our, how should I say this is this is this is our plan when it comes to this kind of best setup for us in the near future, where we will simply use hardware with already integrated batteries to test locations, and also to get into the ground faster, until we get the actual grid or the full grid capacity. And then we will simply move these, you know, these solutions and then we will also on to the next side to keep testing if that makes sense. And then I think eventually we would also like to do more sort of balancing services as well with the already deployed batteries that also makes good sense. I'm not sure we are quite there yet in our end from a technical perspective, but I'm sure that that someone is working to get this thing fixed, right? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it's definitely going to be a topic for webinar after summer. So, I think, you know, the frequency regulation and the frequency regulation and the battery come in again here very nicely. Absolutely. Yeah. Thanks, Max, for this introduction. And maybe to over to you, Sven-Erik. Thanks for joining. Sorry for the technical hiccups. So as a charger manufacturer, which hotel is, so what is your perspective on this, right? So how are you preparing to the opportunity of battery deployment? You're working on a very mature market. The Norwegian one in particular in Denmark also now. So what are the needs and requirements you get from customers? Tell us a bit. What's your perspective? So I think you're muted. You're muted, Eric. Sven-Erik, you're muted. Go ahead. Click on the bottom of the... Maybe I can unmute you. Here you go. Should be good. Okay. You muted yourself. You have to unmute yourself. Otherwise, we'll go to the next question and come back to you when you found the button. I know it's the first time for many of us to use this tool. So yeah, no, you're still muted. I'll let you keep on looking. So then over to you, Robert. So what do you see, you know, the benefits? Are for CPU and installing batteries in the charging up? And maybe you could touch a bit upon the very complex topic of the business case, so to speak, which was alluded also. Manuel, tell us a bit of your thoughts. Yeah. Well, first of all, thanks for organizing the seminar webinar, Chris. That's quite nice. It's a really, really hot topic. I have to say, I have to say, I was yesterday. I was in the Netherlands participating in what's called Arnheim Energy Week. And in the Netherlands, it's actually, I mean, they reach the limit of the grid. People tell me, CPOs, they say, well, if you have grid connection, you're lucky. Yeah. If you want more, well, we are sorry, you can't get more. Often, it is even the case that you cannot get grid connection, additional power or any grid connection at all. So in the Netherlands, I mean, it's a, it's a, it's not a showstopper, but the battery is really overcome bridge the time until a grid reinforcement is in place. And with reinforcement. I mean, building, putting more lines, putting bigger cables. It's a, it's a timeline of 10 to 15 years, they tell me. So the government has some initiatives to reinforce the grid, but the timeline is 20, 40. So 15 to 16 years until the grid is powerful enough to, to, to accommodate the, the transition to, to electrical energy. And so in the Netherlands, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, the batteries are hot, hot topic and it's, it's, there's no way around it. And in terms of a business case in general, I mean, for a CPO or for a charging side, if you look at the utilization, it, it, it really depends. So if you have a high utilization throughout the day, if you have some peak times throughout the day, then if you increase the grid capacity, so your grid connection, power, then of course you're just increasing, you get more out at the specific, at these peak times. But what it doesn't help you is to, what I always say is to fill the pipe. I mean, if you have peaks and you, you, you apply peak shaving, then you will also utilize the grid connection in times when there is no charging happening. So you actually get the maximum out of your grid connection. So in the best case, you can reach, you can reach, you can reach, you can reach, you can reach, you can reach, you can reach, you can reach 80, 90% utilization of an existing grid connection point. And what, what more you want than that, then you get maximum out. So you have maximum economic benefits because you can, in the high peak times, you use the batteries to feed the EVs. When there's no EVs charging, you refill the battery to again, get the maximum out. So that's, in terms of business cases, it really depends. It depends on the, on the utilization, on the site. But then as all the others said already, I mean, it's about overcome the problem of not getting a proper power. I mean, additional grid connection. I mean, additional grid connection. And, and second layer for CPOs, the secondary layer is then of course also earn money. I mean, use, if you have the batteries and of course use it for intraday trading, use it for frequency response, FCR and, and things like that. And just making your, your, your infrastructure more profitable or profitable at all. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Thank you, Robert for, for this point. Yeah. Yeah. One, one, one other thing when, when I said the Netherlands, we are, we are seem to be seeing something, which I, I also didn't expect to see that that quick, but it seems to be in Norway, it's a similar case. So because of the high sort of penetration of, of EVs, there's also more and more grid connection limits where now batteries are coming in. to, to, to overcome that problem. So batteries will, in the future, play, uh, essential critical role in the next 10, 15 years, a hundred percent for CPOs. No way around it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Please, please comment, uh, before. Yeah. Go ahead. If allowed. Sorry. Yeah. Maybe comment on this. I totally agree with you, Robert. And, uh, just to mention, um, to mention another thing here in Germany, usually most of the companies say we have the chance to get, the grid upgrade we need, um, to get, um, to get, the grid upgrade we need, um, and they're not facing the issue that, uh, the permission or the, uh, grid is, uh, there or isn't there. But, um, in reality, they are already the first DSOs, um, which are not permitting to install any more heat pumps, um, especially in Eastern part of, uh, Germany. There are some regions where the DSOs, um, do not have to, uh, do not have the chance to allow installing some heat pumps and how do they want to install, um, EV chargers or AC chargers for, um, home charging in this, uh, in this case. So it's coming everywhere. Um, I think the market is still rising. Um, and in some countries we are already there. So it's a good grid constraints are, um, bringing up problem, which, um, are a really tough, um, thing that we're doing. From CPOs. Absolutely. Yeah. It's, uh, yeah. So if we go back to, uh, again, uh, so Eric, you are a specialist of Norway, also working at the Danish market. So as a representative of a hotel, so DC charger manufacturer, tell us a bit about your perspective, how you see batteries being part of the solution and what do you hear, uh, from as requirements from, from the people you're talking to in, uh, on the customer side. Yeah. So I work all over in the Nordics, but of course in Norway, we already saw this, uh, several years ago with the, uh, mobile charging solutions where the back need for battery was, uh, um, uh, came very quickly. Like if you needed to charge EVs at the ski resort, but you didn't have the tie. You didn't have the, uh, the, uh, the, the economy in having the permanent charger there. So if we made these container solutions with batteries and EV chargers, that could be actually moved from a, like a ski resort in winter and then like a camping, uh, space in the summer, uh, campus place in the summer. So, uh, I've seen this for several years, the need, but what I've seen the last year is, uh, is not only in Norway, but also in the Nordic countries, uh, is the, uh, sort of, uh, exponential rise in this demand, uh, the combination of batteries and EV charging. And mainly that is two, two, it's three phones, sort of. It's one of the, one of the main thing is of course that the grid is not, does not have the capacity. So in order to do a, uh, a high power site, you need extra batteries to, to, uh, to help out the grid. However, in especially Sweden and also, uh, Denmark, it's, it's, uh, very lucrative, but especially Sweden, lucrative to sell back to the grid, to do the peak shaving and to balance and to use the batteries to balance the grid. So, uh, uh, uh, uh, in, uh, in, uh, these cases, uh, we, when we, uh, sort of, uh, do the EV charging for a site, they, they want, we do it combined with batteries because they want, they basically very quickly earn back the investment of battery and start making money on it from the, from, uh, assisting the grid with balancing and of course doing the peak shaving. Uh, the second, the third thing, which is, uh, where it's, it's sort of, um, uh, going exponentially now is within, uh, the, uh, the, uh, commercial side where you have, for instance, of course, we, it was mentioned heavy trucks, uh, so logistics centers, and they don't really have enough, uh, capacity on the grid. So you need it. You also have, uh, like Oslo, Copenhagen, Stockholm. Now that you're not allowed to do construction without, um, uh, it has to be fully, green. So you need the, uh, mobile container solutions with, which is, which is sort of, uh, it's not permanent. So of course they need the battery inside, uh, to, to cover the, the, to be able to, to, uh, to, uh, to have any chance of, of charging the excavators and, and, and, uh, heavy trucks. And then we have, uh, now what I work a lot with is, is mega, mega watt charging sites. And there, uh, we, you need the mega watt charging sites. We need the mega watt charging sites for logistics and, but you rarely have enough power in the grid. So I, I have seen, uh, batteries in, with EVs for a long time. So let's say at least last three years. Uh, but I've just seen a curve going like this. It's exponential over the next five years. It would be crazy. Okay. Yeah. That's a great way. Very exciting. Yeah. I think the, yeah, the construction sites, uh, in temporary, solution are also part of, uh, you could say a CPO business. So it's quite interesting to see those, uh, those, uh, popping up. So, um, we're starting to have a few questions that are popping up. I'll start with a simple one, maybe for you, uh, Stefan, and that will feed us the discussion. Um, so, uh, Piotr is asking, what is a typical battery size for a charging site? Example for a site with four times 300 kilowatt chargers. What would you recommend there? Hmm. That's actually a tough question, not an easy question. So, um, when it comes to sizing the batteries, um, and, um, that's something I also want to elaborate on, uh, later today, when it comes to the challenges we are, um, having a discussion with our customers. It, um, it's very, it very much depends on, um, it very much depends on your size of the grid connection. So how much power do you have available from the grid all the time? Um, what is, the penetration of the EV chargers? So what's the so-called simultaneously factor, uh, you want to calculate, or you want to take into consideration when it comes to sizing the batteries? And, um, if, and do you want to be able to scale up the number of batteries or the, uh, the power from the batteries and the energy stored in the batteries in a later stage? So the next three, five or eight years, um, but typically, um, to answer your question, um, when it comes to four DC chargers with 300 kilowatt each, um, considering grid connection of 100, uh, kilowatt, we usually recommend to, um, start with, um, probably 600 kilowatt power and, um, make a calculation based on the load profile, which you recognized, um, on site to see what's the actual peak demand, peak power demand you want to serve in, uh, for the charging events. So it's a kind of tricky question, but, uh, there are ways to find out, uh, which size of the batteries might fits best. Good. Thank you. Yeah. Nicholas, you, you want to moderate the questions, uh, next question maybe? Sure. Um, yeah. So hi guys. Um, we've got another question here from Paolo, uh, and he's asking what the benefits are in countries where there's no dynamic tariffs. So, uh, specifically, uh, for the application of batteries. Uh, maybe, maybe pick the topic as, as I, uh, at the beginning and Paolo, I don't know if you joined at the very beginning. So the batteries are there to support this in multiple ways, right? It's not just, of course, the, the grid exchange, the dynamic tariffs that brings another full opportunity of depreciation and emphasize. So the first thing that is costly is getting grid connection. And as far as you are from the right point, it becomes even more. Now, if you have that grid connection, the grid connection works by, you know, in, in, in a bi-directional way, let's say like that. And that's where also there's a massive opportunity for, for these sites, right? There are sites being built with one megawatt, two, five, 10 megawatts of, of grid connection. So if you do have the opportunity and we were just discussing on not having that opportunity, if you have that opportunity of having that grid connection, both you are allowed to get in as you are typically allowed to, to, to bring energy back. And, and that energy back is an opportunity. Now, if you can't work within dynamic tariffs, but we are looking to, you know, a bit of what we were discussing at the beginning of the charging side. So the batteries bring you an opportunity for a site that, that will take 12 months to start, to start earlier. You know, if you make like a solution like Eliware at Circle K with a 44 kilowatt connection, they managed to put, you know, two charges of 150 kilowatts. And who could say, you know, I have a 44 kilowatts, but I can offer two times 150 or even four plugs. So it's not exactly needed to, to be part of the dynamic tariffs to, to enable charging, to enable infrastructure. And that has been seen beautifully by, by that case of, of Eliware, where in really the normal grid connection that you might still find around 40 KVA. And, and by that putting, you know, a high charging power side. So, so there's plenty of opportunities, like I was saying in the beginning to upgrade sites, sites that are fully used and are queuing. You know, if you put the battery, you can remove the queuing for another year. So there's a lot of advantages that can come into the business case, even though you cannot make the second part that is, you know, utilize the batteries back or the energy that you start back to the grid. Yeah. Yeah. I think this is a really great, great point there, Manuel. Cause enabling the infrastructure installation in the first place might just be the start of a business case, which you otherwise would not have at all. Correct. Yes. And even to prove, you know, these sites can be proven, you know, we talked about mobile and portable. Yes. You know, some of it's here, concerts are there and a lot of stadiums and concerts and so on that, that happens. It's true. You know, the grid connections are one of the main pain points for the deployment of infrastructure. So with a very little, you know, normal construction grid connection that we would say it's on the 40 KVA. That is something that typically you can get. You can already try to put a larger high power side before you, you take that time and drivers can start utilizing. Yes. Absolutely. Thank you very much, Manuel. I think that was a, a, a, a, a, quite a, collaborative answer to the question. We have another one. That's actually, I think that's an interesting one as well. So if you compare an integrated charger with battery solution with one that has a charger and a separate battery, let's say manually integrated on site, how do you opt for either? So a fixed package or one that you, basically select charger and basically select charger and battery by yourself. Maybe, maybe we can ask, maybe Sven-Erik, I guess in your portfolio, you have chargers without integrated batteries or do you start to have integrated batteries? Can you refresh us and why do you, one or the other? Yeah. So, so we, we don't manufacture batteries ourselves. We have a, we are purely an EV charging manufacturer beside the auto business of hotel, which is car diagnostic. So our, we think that our, we think that the end user should be able to choose different batteries. And also over the, the coming years, I think they will sort of buy one battery. They will add another one. So for, for us, it's really important to be compatible. So that's why we are very appreciative of the, of the, of the, the cooperation we have with, with FlexiCharge, with also Pixi. So we, as a charging, as a charging manufacturer, need to make sure our chargers are compatible with, with the, with the main batteries and inverters. And I think it should be possible to, to combine. I don't think you should need to have the same brand or even if it exists, the same random batteries and EV chargers. If, if, if I can add something, I think it, it, it boils down again to the question, whether you create a vendor lock-in. It's, it's a question about scalability. This, this is what you have to, to, to answer yourself, right? So if you use a charger with integrated battery, of course, it, it might not scale as a, as a stationary battery. At the same time, if you want to extend the site at a, later time, maybe you even get grid connection in five years and you want to extend, which, which, which we will see a hundred percent with higher penetration of EVs, we will see sites will, will expand. Then you are tied to, to, to one vendor. And then you start, you don't know if that vendor still exists in the market. You see, it's, it's a very dynamic market right now. So, um, of course, my advice would be, yeah, stay, stay vendor independent, stay open, have a solid supply. Uh, chain risk management. Uh, chain risk management and, and, and, and use the charger and have a, a separate battery. Um, but at the end, that is an individual. Question. Every, every CPO has to, to ask, um, him, his, herself. Um, yeah. Yeah. So let's ask it. So mass, have you done any thinking on the models out there yet? Uh, you see models coming up with the chargers and battery integrated, uh, uh, char, uh, like, um, yeah, uh, the, uh, x chart on, um, um, any thoughts on your end. Um, have you made some considerations in terms of purchase of solution? Yeah, sure. I think, I think if I could choose myself, I would choose the, uh, the integrated setup, even though, uh, they become quite large. Um, we, we, we, we will prefer that because they're simply easier to move, uh, if, and when, uh, grid sort of arises one day. Um, when that being said, we also have a few locations where there's no, uh, space for, uh, for these large, uh, cabinets. So instead we, we, we, we, we go for a, uh, sort of, um, you know, an, an external battery setup, uh, with, um, with sort of more like a satellite, uh, kind of chargers, uh, instead, right. Due, due to sort of space constraints, if that makes sense. Yeah. Very clear. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely compliment that. It's, it's very much on the location architecture, right? If you are talking about one, two chargers, you know, having the extra cabinet for batteries might not be, uh, the best fitting or possible to fit. So an integrated charger with battery can, if, if you look to have a little bit more expanded, then if you have an integrated battery, even though they are already capable of providing energy outside where they are integrated, that specific charger, they stand to work on a one-on-one, right? My battery discharges and not to distribute so much the power. So it's, it's the opportunity of that storage versus more plugs, more parkings, more vehicles, uh, versus a little bit more one to two, right? Because typically the charges can be, one to two cars. So, so that has been, uh, the normal, uh, study when, when I'm asked within the consultancies to, to understand which locations we replace one versus the other. Clear. Good. Do you want to continue with questions or do you want to go, um, for, uh, let's take the next question that feeds the discussion nicely. Of course. Um, yes. So we've got another one, um, that, uh, basically plays on, um, let's say the decision of a CPO to go for a battery instead of the grid upgrade. Uh, so that's, uh, the scenario, right? So you choose a battery, you install it, um, to make up for a lack of, uh, grid. Now you get a grid upgrade in the future. What do you do with the battery? So, uh, let's have a new site. So when we look to CPOs, we don't look to CPOs that stop at the first site, right? So there's a path to keep growing. There's, we'll always be the next, next site that they are growing further than that they can do. Uh, but of course, you know, uh, there will be cases that you might not need it because it's, it's a one-time case and so on. So for sure, there are cases already in the industry where batteries can, can be purchased, can be leased, can be rented. So there are opportunities out there already within this battery space of, of, of, of having things permanently or, or midterm or even shorter. You know, when we see that we, we talked a few times already in this conference about, you know, the, the, you know, during the construction, right. As, as Robert mentioned, or, or doing, you know, a summer festival or, uh, or a stadium or something. I would expect now to the Eurocup in Germany, that some places are, you know, supported by, by renewable energy and storage instead of having big generators. I don't, and, and luckily in a month, we are seeing those cases happening because we also need more charging in the parking lots of the stadiums that we don't have today. Right. So, let's, let's, let's wish for the best that, you know, the organization, uh, it's preparing that kind of structure in a, in a more sustainable way. And then again, I mean, one thing to say, I, I said that earlier already, I think one strong, uh, uh, motivation for the battery is to fully 100% get to, not 100%, but that would be ideal, 100% throughput through your grid connection. I mean, 24 hours get 100% through, and this is what you can do with the battery because you don't get that with EVs. You will always have times where you have higher utilization than other times during night, for example, it depends really on the site. Um, or we talked about fleet charging, uh, logistic centers. I mean, you can use the battery to buffer that out and really get the maximum amounts for your, through your grid connection. So there might not even, even if you get the additional grid connection, you might even decide to keep the battery there or even, you know, put more capacity in. Yeah. I mean, uh, to, to be fair, one of the use cases, uh, of, uh, applying batteries to charging stations is to reduce the reliance on the grid and hence save some of your, uh, performance based, uh, network fees. So, um, that obviously depends on the market in which you're operating, but, uh, Germany is one of the, the, the, the bigger markets where this is a, an enormous price, uh, or cost pressure on CPOs. So even if you had a megawatt, you might still want to utilize, um, uh, to avoid actually, uh, getting a full megawatt from the grid. We, we, we, we are having customers right now, which, which actually do that. So they have the grid connection, but they, they see, uh, three, four, like seven, eight peaks in the year and they don't want to pay for these peaks. They just, you know, want to have, let's say, um, virtual limiting of, of, of, of, of, of, of the, of the peaks. So prevent the peaks, but then also battery can help to get, you know, to, to stay within a certain limit. So, but then it's, again, it's an economic calculation of when the battery makes sense and when, and when not. And it depends strongly, again, on the utilization of the site. Yep. I got another good one. Um, I think for Stefan, um, this goes, uh, about, is about the use cases that you, uh, can basically, um, yeah, activate by having a battery. Um, so I know Pixie is also working on, uh, various grid service, uh, use cases. So maybe Stefan, you can, um, help the audience understand what, uh, what you can do and offer there. Um, you mean, which additional services can be activated by using a battery storage system outside of supporting the charger itself? Yes. Yeah, of course. So, um, we have customers that are using all the battery storage system and connected to aggregators to participate in the frequency market, for instance, on the energy market and do some intraday trading, uh, for the frequency market, um, which is quite, uh, promising, um, also by revenue, which you can, uh, make there, um, you would try to stabilize the frequency at 50 Hertz. So when it deviates from 50 Hertz, um, you want to have some additional power assets in the grid to boost or to provide the power or consume the power from the grid to stabilize the frequency, um, at 50 Hertz. And, uh, based on this, you can, uh, make some additional revenue. And this could be done by, um, having an energy management system, like for instance, uh, flexi charge, which, um, communicates to an aggregator and, uh, schedules battery based on the bidding you made on the energy market or the frequency market for the batteries. Um, another example is to, um, to combine decentralized batteries in a virtual power plant and use this capacity, like the whole battery capacity on different sites to trade energy, um, on the EEX could be also done. How, how often, um, is this, uh, use case stacking, um, applied in your, in your customer, uh, projects? Is it becoming more frequent? Is it something that is more of a rarity still? Um, how do you see that? Um, depending on the market, um, depending on the market, it's, um, more and more frequent. So as already mentioned a few times here in the meeting from, uh, several people, the frequency market in Sweden and Denmark is very promising. And due to this, our customers in these markets or operating in these markets have the, um, ambitious goal to use batteries for this market. And for other customers in other markets or in other countries, the business case, um, uh, becomes more and more crucial. And they want to investigate and understand what can I do with this kind of complex asset, like battery storage system is quite complex in operation. And how can I gain some revenue and increase my business case? So, uh, it's actually merging right now that people are investigating into this. All right. Well, it's, uh, it shows that the market is growing and the technologies that we are providing are actually helping utilize those new business cases. Um, yeah. That's good news. Um, I've got another one for you, Robert, uh, this place, uh, towards the integration challenges, uh, of actually bringing different assets into one, uh, group and, uh, optimizing them. Um, maybe, can you tell us a little bit about how we approach, um, the integration challenges of charge points, batteries, um, payment systems, uh, EMS? Yeah. Um, yeah, basically to start with the chargers. I mean, we are lucky that with, uh, we are having, uh, so I do standard open charge point protocol. And, um, we, I mean, from, from our perspective, uh, from flexi charge, we, we stick to the standard, um, and, and communicate to chargers only via OCPP. But, um, as soon as you want to integrate, uh, batteries into charging infrastructures, and you want to have an overlaying energy load management system, um, which, covers and controls charge, which covers and controls charge currents for both the chargers, the, um, electric vehicle charging stations, and the batteries, then, uh, it becomes a bit of a challenge because obviously for batteries, there's no such standard. Um, and, um, for us, um, it is that we have to, or we integrate every individual battery based on the specific, um, interface and the specific protocol. And, in, in that case for batteries, it's a Modbus, it's MQTT or via API. And, um, yeah, we are integrating the top, uh, not the top. I mean, the, the, the, the requested batteries from, from our customers and, and, and provide the service to it to maintain the interface. But the challenge really is for batteries that, um, for battery integration that, that, that we are having these, um, different protocols in, in use, um, which also need to be maintained. And, um, if, if, if I, I, I mean, it, it would be really great to have a sort of standard for, for batteries. And I think there's something in the pipeline, even for OCPP 201. I know there's something in the pipeline for, for, uh, power meters to, to easily integrate them via OCPP. And, um, with batteries, I didn't hear something. It could well be that, that there's also something in the pipeline that, that you could, you know, transport all that and have one common protocol to sort of, feed and, and, and communicate with, with, with, with all the systems. Um, but until that is there, um, we, we are, uh, providing the sort of, uh, integrator gateway for, for batteries and chargers. Um, and, and, and the beauty is that, um, like, we are, we are compatible to, to any charging station, which is, uh, OCPP, um, which has an OCPP interface. Um, and at the same time now integrating with the top battery manufacturers, so we can provide customers easy integration of, um, batteries through, through our platform, through our system. Um, maybe, uh, challenge, just, just one, one, one additional thing to that. I mean, yeah, sorry. One additional sentence to that. So what, what has happened so far is that battery manufacturers, they started to talk to charging station manufacturers. For example, Pixie was talking to a hotel to do a direct integration, um, other battery manufacturers, talk to other charging station manufacturers to, to do direct, um, integration. And then you can, you see that sort of a can of worms and, and this sort of problem we, we are trying to solve to provide a layer, load energy management layer for, for easy integration of all the chargers and all the batteries, um, no matter which, which render it is. Um, um, Um, Stefan, I think you wanted to unmute yourself. Maybe you have something to add, uh, especially since the batteries here have a bit of a, um, a particular, uh, integration, um, yeah, standpoint. Yeah, maybe coming back to a question we had a few minutes ago, um, when, when the question was raised, what is the, uh, why shouldn't a CPO have a battery or what are the advantages of having a battery and what's the challenge I, um, need to overcome? installing batteries what we've seen our discussion is that many cprs are concerned that they are kind of the guinea pig for having batteries on site and combined with chargers and they want to understand how exactly it works and is it possible to have a more or less plug and play ready system where place a battery um just activate a chat checkbox somewhere and the system is working and running and it's reliable and this is what i wanted to comment on what you said robert based on this integration which we have with flexi charge it's possible to use every batteries with every charger since you're using the ocpp protocol mqtt communicate with our batteries and can also connect to the smart meter and orchestrate the whole asset on site as one controller all right nice thank you very much stefan all right um chris shall we continue with questions um yes yes um all right um yeah there was a um a follow-up basically on um on you stefan uh regarding the fcr uh revenues that are uh possible um is there a um example with some real numbers which you could share with us um would that be possible yeah i mean the the numbers the numbers how much um money you gain with the frequency control in sweden for instance i think that's what the question is aiming for um they're public and um of course we can elaborate on this so the fcr market um depending on what kind of fcr market you want to activate is fcrn fcrd um anyways um you can gain a lot of revenue um you can gain a lot of revenue like for instance in fcrd up it's uh approximately 300 000 euro per megawatt and here when you want to use the batteries to um participate in this market yeah i think we'll make sure to uh maybe share your emails or at least people can reach out to you i guess on linkedin if they want to follow up on the conversation right and go deeper um i think there's an interesting question from from raul uh which i may share so it's um so she's asking he's asking since flexi charge is able to integrate pixie batteries is flexi charge certified as a power plant controller referring to vde standards so the vde ir in 415 and 410 in germany for inverter powers more than 135 kilowatt that's very specific i don't know if you get that uh robert uh and he can answer or maybe also you nicolas since you're also savvy on the topic yeah um the starting with the vde 41 10.4 d1 10. that's the um sort of middle spinal and medium voltage layer and what we can see right now is a lot of requests from um dnos so operators network operators um to control reactive power for chargers and we are currently working on the solution uh to provide that it's not so much on us we can basically provide that we can also provide that for the battery for for um that's not a problem but it's more the chargers these high power chargers right now um there's no sort of common standard uh first of all to report reactive power but secondly of course also no chance to control or adjust reactive power and um we are working on the solution for that but um i don't see us as a plant controller i mean we are we are that's not what our system is is being made for um to to to to to control for a solar plant uh the the the the reactive power maybe um nicholas can also comment to that we are more providing the interface to the dno to set the specific set point and then we will be forwarding that to the um to the charger or the battery yeah yeah yeah the solution is around bridging the gap between the requirements um of the dno control and the charging stations um that's uh that's again a bit similar to why we are interfacing with uh with batteries um we we help bridge the gap between various assets or in this case the dno provides a gateway typically and again um every uh charger manufacturer would have to integrate with that particular gateway um and instead of the dno and instead we do that once and then it becomes available through our uh technology platform to every cpo um enhance every charger manufacturer that is uh you know utilized by the cpo yeah what what we can however do um coming back to that is to to aggregate aggregate sites into into virtual power plants including the batteries yeah and and of course also solar panels as solar panels if they are there um but for for for for for those cpo's we are working with um public sites commercial sites uh solar plants uh i would say right now it's a bit rare and i would say um it's it's more and more coming but it's it's more the batteries we are we are talking right now um for the integration okay thanks um pick one more question here from gabriel he's asking so if looking at the multi-integration use cases uh so what could be done to simplify the customer experience uh pre-studies cost and risk awareness purchasing operations any thoughts on this manuel as a consultant uh you know helping uh cpos in their projects yeah so i think we have touching a lot of the complexities right we have charges we have batteries we have grief we have other consumptions we want we want overall to to to to help i think at the end of the day the intention of all these discussions is we have a problem the grid is we have a problem the grid is not sufficient i think we all agree in the different discussions as we grow further we see more need and and i would say sometimes it's maybe not sufficient at the right place at the right time sometimes the grid is sufficient we talked about the norwegian grid the norwegian grid has quite a extra capacity right they run 100 percent on renewable and mainly on idle so it's not that it might not be it's at the right point at the right time and then it's this this combination of having the right energy at the right time that brings back also these alternatives and the business cases around that is if i get the grid connection and i put the storage okay those two need to work together so where do i get my energy from you know where is more efficient why i'm getting it from two sources it's because when it's not sufficient or because i want to mitigate my own costs so what we talked about load management but a lot more energy management it's definitely a massive important area of business right so the overall energy management in a small scale on a small scale on a site in a large scale in a city or even in a country it's it's it's it's also something to to evolve substantially for us to have this concept of working because you know even the german ministry a few years ago or a few months ago said i expect by 2030 to have a few terawatts of batteries around in cars so we are talking about storage but the cars are the storage right i had the case that i was asked by a fact you know i want to put the battery okay i want to put the storage and i buy a car you know you get the same 50 kilowatt hour battery you know and you get wheels you don't need it on the weekends so you can use it for something else so battery cars have batteries batteries are there of course located storage solutions can do but at the end of the day comes a lot to a few of the questions that we have the energy management system and companies have been evolving you know at the charger side a bit less the cpms side a bit more some like you know green influx has integrated some you guys have integrated some you know and it's that step that is not yet regulated like robert was saying you know charger it's easy it became most cpp people felt into it okay agreed into it became an open standard even though there's a push you know i want this command and that command so there's still a forum to integrate storage inverters and other sides of energy need to come into this ecosystem so it is quite important to create this the ecosystem how to control the ecosystem and these multiple players through their apis to function together as to the part of that cost studies risk awarenesses and so on and the integration asked by gabriel it's very hard so that's why you know on a start to put the battery you need to make your calculations right and might be because you need a site fast enough and and that's the reason for it's because you want to complement it uh comes also to the customer experience what is the customer experience what is the customer experience what is the customer customer experience i can put 50 kilowatt is that a good experience no you know eventually i need to give 150 but i only have a 50 kilowatt read so it's there's no true you know calculator side by side case by case uh the calculation needs to be combined and to understand but for sure there's need some usage right uh and and what we see is that the extra a battery there can push energy for the trading and so on but there are countries also limitating that you can't just buy a battery put it by a negative and sell a positive that's in many countries illegal you know you can't just utilize the advantages of the grid now as you have it integrated in the charging and you have a name to give to charging but you have a lot of you know i would say mads has that you know a lot of time the side is there fully capable and there's no cars so it's also absurd to keep that side with that grid connection and eventually the storage just not doing anything so so so then this combination cases is i'm there nobody's utilizing my preferred point it's to charge cars but i'm not doing it and the grid needs i support so then these payments come together and and start creating a much better ecosystem that will help us all at the end yep sounds good i think we could continue for a long time we'll probably make a half day uh half day summit on uh bss and uh and ev charging and frequency that's where the future is holding thank you very much for joining for those who didn't get answered to a question we're really sorry we want to close uh here you can send your question to hello at the flexi charge.com we'll follow up and we'll be happy also to uh bridge uh to uh the speakers if somehow you don't get in touch with them we're happy to uh make the intro i'm sure they won't mind right and last comment uh closing robert yes yes i wanted just uh to add to you i mean uh hopefully we will see us all at the power to drive in munich and uh it would be really great to to continue some of the discussions i mean even some of the guys of course which are here in the webinar but also those which joined and had questions i mean just come to our booth i mean we are so happy to to discuss uh use cases challenges and and and see if if if we can come up with solutions i mean that's that that would be great so just an invitation to say yeah see you at power to drive in munich and we intend to have more webinars in the future and probably one of the next one will be dedicated to the german market with this uh infamous uh rules and regulation around the we'll talk about that in another situation challenging one right we love them so thank you very much everybody for joining and thank you to the panelists and have a great day thank you thank you thank you thank you bye bye goodbye