← Everything Electric Podcast
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- [00:00]
Joe from Vanta
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- [00:30]
Kara from the Kara Golden Show
Golden show if you're not using Ironclad for contracts, you could be leaving millions on the table. Ironclad's AI instantly surfaces. What matters renewal dates, pricing terms and obligations so you can act quickly before opportunities slip away. That's why they're trusted by great brands like OpenAI, L', Oreal, Salesforce and so many others. Find the savings hiding in your contracts at Ironclad app. Don't that's ironcladapp.com podcast.
- [01:09]
Podcast Host (Everything Electric)
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Everything Electric podcast. Now coming today from Australia. Although I am in the uk so I'm slightly jealous because it's very cold in the UK and it's extraordinarily warm in Australia at the moment. But today's guest is works for Osgrid, which is the large grid network that delivers electricity and also kind of takes in supplies from rooftop solar, from big solar farms, from wind farms, from energy storage systems, from pumped hydro and coal and gas. Yes, still, but much, much less. And it's a fascinating the reason I've just, I think it's worth if you don't live in Australia and you have nothing to do with Australia is worth watching simply because what is going taking place there is kind of giving us a clue as to how we will adapt our grids to cope with enormous increases in electricity demand, particularly from data centers. Interestingly, that's the main challenge for the global grid at the moment. It's not electric cars, electric cars that make very little impact, but data centers literally beat the living daylights out of our electricity grid and the way we generate and use power. So we should be very aware that anyone who waffles on about how amazing.
- [02:34]
Interviewer / Host
Data centers are needs to be pummeled as well.
- [02:37]
Podcast Host (Everything Electric)
Anyway, that's just my own beef, but it is fascinating to see what is happening there and how quickly it's changing. It's so rapid, it's so incredibly the shift is happening so quickly. Just before we start, I just want to say do please subscribe to the Everything Electric podcast. It's not like it costs you any money, it doesn't cost you anything and it makes a huge difference to us. That would be really good. And also if you tell your friends, family, and particularly if you have an annoying uncle or cousin or neighbour or that person at work who goes on about, you know, you know, you know, I don't want to be boring about it, but any effort that you can spread the word really helps us. And we are. This is a really rapidly growing channel and we're doing some amazing things and we're going to see some incredible new technology and new systems around the world and it's really exciting time and it does affect all of us. Even if you're not interested in where the electricity comes from that makes your light work or your fridge operate, it is actually going to affect all of us in both positive and negative ways, as all change does. Enough philosophy. Let's get on with the show. Please welcome to the Everything Electric podcast. Tim Jarrett from OscarID.
- [03:58]
Kara from the Kara Golden Show
Our three free YouTube channels on EVs and clean energy tech are funded by our fun packed test drivetastic events in the north west and Greater London and our events down Under. Next up, Everything Electric Sydney 2026. Plus check out EverythingElectric store for merch and much more.
- [04:17]
Interviewer / Host
Tim, thank you so much for taking time to do this. This is an area that I think is going to become a hot topic around the world, you know, in the next few years and it's really interesting what you're doing in Australia. Can you just do the basics? Because I know you worked in the UK for the National Grid before that. Can you do sort of brief potted history and then explain what Osgrid is? Osgrid, how do you say. I suppose you say Osgrid, don't you?
- [04:43]
Tim Jarrett from Osgrid
Yes, it's Osgrid. No. Robert, it's great to join you. Thank you for having me on the show. So my background is I've been in Australia for the last couple of years with Osgrid, as the group executive for market development and Strategy, now external affairs and strategy. And before that I was at National Grid, split between the UK and the US for about eight years before that. And as many of your listeners will know, National Grid does the transmission and electricity distribution in a good chunk of the UK and also owns lots of distribution and transmission assets, both gas and electric in New England and New York State.
- [05:23]
Interviewer / Host
But then Osgrid, you've just so that. Can you explain what OSGRID is? Because it isn't really exactly the same as the National Grid in the UK or is it?
- [05:34]
Tim Jarrett from Osgrid
Absolutely. Osgood is a distribution network that is, that covers the area from Sydney all the way through what's called the central coast up to Newcastle which is further in New South Wales up the coast and then goes into the Hunter Valley which is a large kind of agricultural area. Also lots of coal mining, lots of wineries as well.
- [05:54]
Interviewer / Host
Yeah. So it's, I mean it's actually it's a lot of people. I mean in terms of population density in Australia, that's about the densest bit, isn't it? I mean that's, it's.
- [06:06]
Tim Jarrett from Osgrid
Yeah. We are the largest network by assets and by population in, in Australia.
- [06:12]
Interviewer / Host
Right. But then that what's changing so noticeably? And I mean that isn't, I mean I, I've briefly mentioned rooftop solar. I can remember at least 15 years ago being aware of the, the high level of, of penetration of rooftop solar in Australia. I mean it was a thing a long time ago now. It's incredible. And the, with the advent of batteries as well. But that, that I was slow on the uptake. This is something you will have been thinking about for years. I had solar panels and I, you know, 10, 15 plus years ago and then I went, oh wait a minute, this, this is different to a big coal burning power plant or a big gas plant or a nuclear plant that you generate next to the coast or on a river and then you send that electricity sometimes hundreds of miles to where it's being used. That's how we built the grid in a sense, wasn't it? And now it's changing and that's what's so fascinating is how we cope with that change.
- [07:10]
Podcast Host (Everything Electric)
Because I don't know what the capacity.
- [07:11]
Interviewer / Host
Of rooftop solar is in Australia when it's a sunny day in the middle of the day. But it's a lot, isn't it now?
- [07:18]
Tim Jarrett from Osgrid
Yes. I think the rooftop solar revolution and the way Australia's leading the way is what really attracted me to come over here from the UK because Australia is world leading when it comes to residential rooftop solar. If you look at the national electricity market in Australia, it's somewhere between a third and about 40% of households have solar on their roof, which is phenomenal and that's really accelerated. Started about 10, 15 years ago, but it's been accelerating over the last few years and it's really changed the dynamics of the network and how we as a network operator have to think. Previously it was very much one way traffic as you said, from very Large power generation units, largely coal in this country. And it pushed the power down, stepped down through the voltages till it arrived in people's homes. And it was very much a one directional flow. Now with this huge abundance of rooftop solar, we're seeing both sort of people generating a lot of what they need themselves, but also exporting back into the grid and converting one way flows into two way flows. And I think I'll end up doing a lot of kind of road analogies through this conversation. But it's very much like having one way traffic, street, one way street, suddenly having to become two way. And you have to really think as a network operator, how do you let flows reverse, how do you manage that at different times of the day?
- [08:46]
Interviewer / Host
And also, I mean the other thing that I visited when I was in Australia recently was the New England solar farm near Eurala. I'm saying the words, I'm saying all the names wrong, but a very big solar farm that they built on right, literally under one of the connections between Queensland and New South Wales. I mean a huge load of pylons and wires and that's how they're locking into it, which is, but I mean that the fact that you're suddenly getting big power inputs from places that would.
- [09:17]
Podcast Host (Everything Electric)
Never have, they would never have been.
- [09:18]
Interviewer / Host
A coal burning power plant and it's a sheep farm, you know, it's completely different sort of area. So I mean, I'm assuming there's lots and lots of challenges which I know as an engineer, you know, you're excited about. But I mean it's got to be complicated to deal with these changes.
- [09:35]
Tim Jarrett from Osgrid
Absolutely. And the kind of shape of the grid is changing because until not that long ago, New South Wales could rely on 7, 8 coal fired power stations dotted around the state. Generally speaking, they were at or very near the coast. So they could also access water from lakes and things like that. And that was it, that's all you really needed. And now the number of places where power is being put into the network is increasing massively. And of course we are just the distribution network going up to 132,000 volts. You have transgrid, which spans the state at the transmission level. And a lot of these sites are also connecting to their network too. So it's incredibly complicated setup now going from, I say a number of power jet stations, you could count with pretty much two hands, maybe some feet every now and then. But you're now weaving to a world that are hundreds if not thousands of different generation sites.
- [10:27]
Interviewer / Host
But I mean, so the, the, the, the, the, the thing I love is the missing middle. So that, that, that argument about the missing midland. So the, the, you've got the big power connections which is in a sense that bit I understand in relation to the UK is that all the people I've spoken to and yet they, these will be your former colleagues in the national grid have said there's not a problem with the national Grid. The actual infrastructure that carries large amounts of power up and down and across the country is, you know, it can cope with these changes. It's the bits, it's the edge bits as I call them, you know, from the big pylon and the big substation down to the local substation down to your house. That stuff. Is that where most of the complication is rather than the very big wires going into state or around this, this country?
- [11:13]
Tim Jarrett from Osgrid
I think it's slightly different because Osgrade is very fortunate. We have quite a lot of spare capacity in our, in our distribution network. I think some of the issues in Australia is due to this changing shape of the network. Whereas the replacement of the large scale coal units is being driven by what they call renewable energy zones over here which are large areas of the country which have been designated as areas for wind and solar. These have required large amounts of transmission infrastructure to be built in order to get the power that will be generated in these regions and out of them and then to the big load centers. So in New South Wales that's very much Sydney, up the coast of Newcastle and down to Wollongong. That's where the vast, vast majority of the population lives. It's where the vast majority of industrial and economic activity is.
- [11:59]
Interviewer / Host
Yeah.
- [11:59]
Tim Jarrett from Osgrid
And so actually there's quite a big issue in terms of changing the shape of the grid there by building belongings transmission. And actually it's quite similar to the way the UK is having to wire up the North Sea because of the large amounts of offshore wind that's required. The UK has gone from being a sort of a north south transmission network to have to bring in the east west element that way. And also the way the UK is also having to bring in these HVDC links from Scotland down into the south of England in order to bring that power that's generated in Scotland. So I think grids all around the world are having to change shape at that transmission level and that sort of the higher voltage levels to bring these new sources of supply on and at the lower voltage level then it really depends on kind of the history of how much capacity was built in previous generations where population growth happened, so on and so forth. That really dictates what happens at the local level on the ground.
- [12:49]
Interviewer / Host
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I mean, I suppose the problem there is the cost and the time it takes to do that. I mean, because what it feels like when, when you look at it is the, you know, individuals said, oh, I want solar on my roof, and they all put solar on their own. And then more and more and more and more did. And in a sense, the, the network, the grid network that has to deal with that was, was behind the curve. Is that it. Would that be an unfair thing to say? You know, that it's kind of. Hang on, we've got really a lot of power coming off these roofs at midday.
- [13:22]
Tim Jarrett from Osgrid
Yes. No, that's the real issue at the middle of the day when, if you're in a residential area with lots of solar on the roofs, if people at work, people at school, so on and so forth, you haven't got much load soaking it up during the day, so people are exporting. And what that means is you get kind of over voltages and other challenges on the network in terms of the management because there's basically too much spare power sloshing around with nowhere to go. And so various things are being trialed across the country in different networks to try and. Try and manage this. And we've got some trials at the moment where we're looking at dynamic network pricing. So the prices change during the day for the actual cost of the network in order to encourage people to use more of their own solar. So, as I said, a lot of road analogies, but it's a bit like dynamic road pricing. As congestion goes up, as traffic goes up, charge more to encourage people to make alternative choices. And there is a lot you can do. I think Australia, as you know, is a very suburban society that actually, if people are able to shift load into the middle of the day, whether it's the dishwasher, the washing machine, if you're fortunate enough to have a pool, a pool pump, things like that, actually you can soak up a lot more of this excess power. It's just trying to encourage that consumer behavior to switch, to switch to the middle of the day rather than put the dishwasher on at night when you go to bed.
- [14:48]
Interviewer / Host
Yes, yes. I mean, it's a change of habit, isn't it? I mean, it is so different to hear because, I mean, I was in Sydney when it was 40 degrees not long ago and I was in an apartment that we, you know, that we were Using. And I had the air conditioning on all day because I couldn't cope, you know, and it was so boiling hot, so that, you know. But that's where it's very different to here in the sense that that would also have been the peak solar generation time was when the air conditioning was on. It's those peaks and troughs sort of follow each other in a way, don't they?
- [15:20]
Tim Jarrett from Osgrid
They do. The tricky thing is when you get into a very hot evening and overnight the air conditioning's still going, the sun's gone down and that's where you have some. We see some real, really big peaks in terms of what people are pulling through the network order to keep their air conditioning going. And obviously that's where things like storage will start to play a bigger role. Soaking up excess power during the day and then being able to release it through the night to support air conditioning. Another load.
- [15:45]
Interviewer / Host
Yeah, well, it's the two things. I mean, the one thing that has happened that is just staggering is the amount of uptake of the current government battery subsidy scheme, because I think it's gone past 200,000 domestic batteries.
- [16:01]
Tim Jarrett from Osgrid
I think it's there or thereabouts. Certainly the figures I saw for the first six months was 155,000 installs. But again, they were happening so quickly. We're talking about 1000 to 1300 installs a day. So trying to keep track of it. And the government has reloaded the scheme, so it's Now, I think, $7.2 billion.
- [16:21]
Interviewer / Host
Wow.
- [16:22]
Tim Jarrett from Osgrid
About 2030. So huge support for that from the government and a huge uptake from the population.
- [16:29]
Interviewer / Host
I mean, are you seeing any. Is it possible to see a reduction in the amount of solar going into the grid because it's going into people's batteries? Is that. Is that. Can you register that on a dial somewhere?
- [16:43]
Tim Jarrett from Osgrid
Again, this is when you start getting. Have to get very granular and almost look at it as a zone by zone basis, because our network is split up into several hundred zones and each one zone substation and all the power fans out that way. And. And so different areas have very different responses. So if you're in the middle of Sydney, where most people are apartment dwelling, generally speaking, they don't have space to put a battery in. So we don't see much right in the centre of Sydney. But obviously if you go further out into the more suburban areas where the battery uptake has been higher, then we will start to see more impact. But it's quite early days. I would suspect by the back end of 2026 we'll have a much clearer picture of the impact of the batteries on the network and how we manage it.
- [17:34]
Podcast Host (Everything Electric)
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- [18:08]
Interviewer / Host
Thing is as well that, that the, the, our original, you know, infrastructure was built around huge power being generated, as we were saying, in one of, you know, a half a dozen places and what you're now seeing. And so because I think I've been thinking along the lines of, oh, we've got to add more massive strings of pylons with very, very high voltage connections. But actually it's more like, is it, well, I'm asking is it more like hundreds of slightly smaller connections is what we need and lower voltage and lower power connections?
- [18:40]
Tim Jarrett from Osgrid
Yes, I think, I think fundamentally a lot of it comes down to what is your view of what actually happens long term for, for demand. Because if you're a techno optimist and data centers absolutely go gangbusters, then you're going to need everything. And what we've been doing in New South Wales is Osgood, we've been working with the other networks in the States to say actually can we take a slightly different view to planning and thinking about what's possible in the past most countries, certainly the ones I've experienced, UK usually planning is very much a top down approach and by that I mean it starts at very big generation assets, coal in the past, gas, nuclear and designs a system then pushes the power down to the local level. And that very much follows that one directional grid design from the past where it's very big units generating hundreds of megawatts, if not gigawatts of power and then pushing it down the voltages. And that is still the predominant sort of mentality when you talk about planning today. If you speak to grid planners in lots of countries, they still sort of thinking in these very big units and they have to very much so as they think about the transition because suddenly they're saying, well, I'm going to lose several hundred megawatts here because this coal fired power station is coming off soon. How can I replace hundreds of megawatts? What can I do? So therefore that's what leads you down the path of thinking about renewable energy. Zones where you're looking for hundreds of megawatts of renewables to replace the large amount of coal coming off the system. What we want to do as a group of three distribution networks in New South Wales is take a different approach and say actually if you step back and start at the grid edge and plan from the zones of distribution network back to the middle, are you back to the transmission? What sort of system? What sort of could the system look like? And actually if you can combine top down and bottom up planning, surely that's got to be better for a lower cost system and one that's kind of quicker and better for consumers if we take that view. So we wanted to try and add that dimension to the debate in New South Wales. And so we set up what we called a distribution system plan for New South Wales, which we launched at the end of November last year in 2025. And the idea of that was to say, well, if you really maximize the potential of the distribution network and the distribution infrastructure, what could you do? What benefits could that bring? And it's had some really interesting insights and things that we're feeding into the conversation now.
- [21:15]
Interviewer / Host
Right. I mean, presumably there's got to be a big economic argument in that. I mean, in that to build a massive sort of interstate electricity connection is very expensive, but building hundreds of little ones, are there savings to be made? Not from a purely economic standpoint, certainly.
- [21:33]
Tim Jarrett from Osgrid
We think that if you take a distribution led approach or add a distribution led approach to the current planning, there is definitely benefits in terms of billions of dollars of benefit that can come through to consumers. But I think there's also other aspects to it that help maybe some of the slightly less quantitative benefits. One is definitely around de risking the transition. Because what we're seeing with a lot of these very large transmission projects in Australia, and we're seeing this the same around the world. Australia is far from unique here, is that costs are going up and also delays are coming in. And so if you're looking to retire coal and replace it with large scale renewables, you need to be certain that those renewables will come online and the power will be able to be moved to the load centers. But at the moment we are seeing delays and the government here has just extended the life of the arraying coal fired power station in 2029 because of some of this uncertainty. And so again, one of our arguments is if you take a distribution led approach to do more at the local level, you can help de risk some of these larger transmission projects. And these are projects you're probably still going to need. And as I said earlier, you've got that view of kind of techno optimism. How much power are you going to need with data centers, EVs and everything? But if you can de risk it by getting more power into the system quicker, then you've got time to allow for cost overruns and delays. I think there's another key point as well, is around sort of fairness and equity between urban areas and suburban and rural areas. That a big part of debate here is people living out in the bush, well away from the cities, feel that most of the impact is on them and that they are hosting these renewable energy zones, they're hosting the transmission infrastructure and all the hassle that goes with building them, all the construction and so on and so forth, they're having all that not seeing much of the benefit. And all the power is going to Sydney and going to the other big cities. And again, I think if the distribution networks and the urban suburban areas can do more and generate more themselves, that does help show that the cities are kind of trying to pull their own weight and support this transition. Because I think a lot of the issue you get is a bit like with high speed rail, people can have high speed rail whizzing through past their back door, but actually the next station is tens, hundreds of kilometres away from these. Trains don't stop. And I think a lot of this transmission infrastructure can feel a bit like that out in the outback. They're hosting it but they're not getting the benefit. So again, if more can be done locally, that's a great way of trying to even up some of that perceived discrepancies.
- [24:18]
Interviewer / Host
Yeah, but then the other thing is, I mean, like I started talking about, you know, I didn't even consider it, but the amount of rooftop top solar is essentially on the homes of not necessarily wealthy or millionaire people. But you know, the people who've got.
- [24:35]
Podcast Host (Everything Electric)
A house and they've got somewhere off.
- [24:37]
Interviewer / Host
The street to park a car which they can charge and they've got solar panels, they've probably now got batteries as well. And if you're renting an apartment in the middle of Sydney, you can't do any of that. You can't benefit from any of that. And that's, that's again a universal problem. I mean it's, that's, that's not specific to Australia. Same here.
- [24:54]
Tim Jarrett from Osgrid
No, absolutely. And I think this is, again, there's a lot of interesting issues around equity and fairness around the transition that need to be addressed. And again, I think because Australia is really leading the way on rooftop solar and starting to push through with batteries, as we just mentioned, we're starting to see some of that happen potentially a little bit earlier than other countries. But I think all countries need to be aware of these issues. And maybe I'll just give you a few facts to try and help explain this. But in our territory, we serve about 1.8 million customer connections, so about 4 million people, 75% of those live in and around Sydney. So really kind of dense urban area. Just under half of the people we have in Sydney are in apartments and about a third to 40% are renting. So again, if you don't have access to a roof, you're in an apartment. So you don't have much spare space with a battery in. Actually it's very hard to put solar, you know, get access to solar, access to a battery, you often don't have a driveway to park. An evidence. It's also worth noting Sydney is one of the most affluent, has some of the most affluent areas of Australia in it, but also has some of the most impoverished areas. Two of our local government authority areas are within the bottom 20% across the whole of Australia in terms of incomes and income and inequality, those sort of factors. And again, if you're living paycheck to paycheck, it's very hard to raise the money for several thousand dollars worth of solar PV or batteries, even if you've got, even if you've got the house and got access to the roof. And again, it's also worth remembering that not all roofs are suitable. Lots are shaded, some of them don't have the structural integrity. So even if you are relatively well off and have the spare money, you may not be able to get up on your roof. So actually, what I'm trying to say is that we're in a danger of getting into a sort of haves and have nots situation where somewhere between 40, 50% of the population can access all the interesting kit for the transition for doing it themselves. Whether it's an ev, it's a battery, whether it's solar on the roof, they can potentially electrify their whole life because we've had numerous studies in Australia showing that you will save thousands of dollars if you get off gas at home, electrify your car, electrify cooking, electrify your house, put solar roof. But often those reports miss the fact that you have to spend quite a lot of capital upfront in order to invest in the kit. So we do have this risk of bifurcating into say the haves and have nots. Where you're going to have people who can afford it, got the space, got the cash, they can live a very nice lifestyle, very attractive economically, very low emissions. Actually it's very good. Whereas those who can't are now bearing a lot more of the burden of the transition. They can't access the stuff. And therefore I think this sort of sense of injustice and inequity will rise.
- [27:48]
Interviewer / Host
Yeah, I mean one of the things I, I remember reading about when I was in Australia and it's in, it's in our notes here was about community batteries. Because that is one way that you can sort of, you could possibly allow a small area of a city with a dense pop, you know, dense housing to benefit from, you know, being able to charge that battery from cheap solar in the middle of the day and then sell it for less in the evening. I mean, is that something that's happening? I mean I've definitely seen a couple of community batteries but they actually were in suburban areas. Now think about it. But is any of that happening in the sort of more densely populated areas?
- [28:25]
Tim Jarrett from Osgrid
Yes, Community batteries is a kind of program we're looking at and other networks are too in order to be able to soak up excess power during the day and then redistribute it during the evening. So allowing people to knock a chunk off their bills from that. Again, I think it's a key point to know that networks are actually the part of the whole system which actually has to deal with every single customer. Because part of being a regulated monopoly is we don't pick and choose everyone who your customers are towards grid. So whether they are the richest people or people in low income housing, everyone connects. And therefore we really appreciate and understand our responsibility to serve the whole community. And trying to come up with schemes and ideas like community batteries and other things we're testing are ways to try and improve fairness, increase the kind of the equity element of the transition, make sure more people have access to it.
- [29:24]
Interviewer / Host
Yeah, because I mean curbside charging as well, that's one thing that London I think is probably ahead of Australia in. Just in London there are now, it's tens of thousands of effectively curbside on old, old Victorian lamp posts mostly. But they're really, I mean I, I've used a couple of them in London. They're very commonly used. They, you know, they're, and they're really simple to use. That's the, that's the thing that I like. You know, you plug your car in you, there is a QR code, you blip that you pay for it. The, the cost is much lower than a rapid charger. You charge a car overnight on the street. So it's not, it's not a perfect solution, but it is a solution and I know quite a few people. Two of our presenters have electric cars and they can't park them off the street. You know, they're parked on the street and they cope in one way or another. But is that something that's, that's growing in Australia?
- [30:17]
Tim Jarrett from Osgrid
Yes, it's starting to come through and we obviously, as you can imagine, there's a poles and wires company, have an awful lot of poles and we do the street lighting as well. So that's definitely an area we're looking at a great deal. And it's an interesting area where it's less attractive to commercial charging operators because they probably only get one or two people connected during the day. So it's very hard to get the throughput, it's generally speaking low voltage, so it's not large amounts of electricity going into the cars. So again, it's an area where the distribution networks can help fill a gap in the market and fill a need that customers have. Those who don't have access to off street parking, how can they find somewhere to charge their carts? And again, it's another example of trying to come up with ideas that can help serve as much of the population as possible in order to support them. I think it's interesting, one of those kind of comparisons with moving to Australia is the fact that when I got here I thought the cars would be driven an awful lot further. But actually the average Australian car doesn't go much further than the average UK car because it's such urban suburban dwelling. And so most people only really need to charge once a week if they've got an evidence. And again, that's where curbside charging can help. They just need to find that space for one evening, one night and then they're good.
- [31:34]
Interviewer / Host
But the other thing is, I mean, the cost of batteries. So when I visited the solar farm a few weeks ago, they're putting In, I think 400 or 1200 megawatt hours of storage, which they said five years ago would have been a ridiculous proposition economically. It would have been just too expensive to do. They would do it, but because the price of batteries has come down so much. And is that something you're seeing reflected in sort of longer term planning that you couldn't, you wouldn't have like 10 years ago? You wouldn't have considered putting huge battery packs in because it was just stupidly expensive, but now it's becoming more feasible. Is that the case?
- [32:13]
Tim Jarrett from Osgrid
Well, I think batteries are going to be the biggest change to the network that we see and that's all the way through. So whether that's at large scale, grid scale batteries, which are replacing sort of certainly challenging kind of coal and gas peakers at that high tens of megawatts, if not hundreds of megawatt level at transmission or sub transmission level, all the way down to what's going on in the home. As we've seen with the cheaper home battery program here, people because of the subsidy are really looking at batteries and the economics and actually often overspecing what they actually need for their home in order to get it in. And again, I think maybe just give you some figures to help explain the power of batteries. And these are from last year and I think as we go through this year will start to get even cheaper. But if you're able to access solar on your roof in Australia, amortizing the cost of what, you know, the kit you put on the roof and the inverter and things, you're looking at about 6 cents a kilowatt hour into your home for the life of that solar by paying off the costs. So that's sort of 3p in the UK for US cents. It's that sort of order and that's basically directly consuming what's coming up your roof. If you're able to put a battery in there now and you've got home storage to pay off the cost of the battery and the solar, you're looking at the high teens. So 18, 19 Aussie cents per kilowatt hour, so about 910p. And again, that is very, very cheap when you consider that the fully loaded cost of kind of the average consumer who just pulls their power from the grid works at about 40 cents a kilowatt hour during the year. So again, back to that point, if you can afford to buy the, to make the catalytic, buy the kit initially, you're actually really going to see major, major savings. And again, so again, if you start sharing power between people in the street and in the neighborhood, there's some significant savings to come if it can be organized and managed properly.
- [34:09]
Interviewer / Host
Yes, yes. And I mean that presumably all those, that at that level you're not having to put in massive new wires in that community. I mean what you've got there already can cope with the twos and froze. I mean, obviously the more that the House itself can consume the electricity coming off the roof, the better from your point of view, in the sense that you're not having to deal with big surges in the local grid. Would that be accurate?
- [34:35]
Tim Jarrett from Osgrid
Absolutely, yeah. So, you know, as a network operator, you don't want big surges either way. You don't want loads suddenly spiking up and pulling power off the grid into the home or into the premises, and on the vice versa, you don't want them suddenly pushing a whole lot of power into the local network, which has got nowhere to go where you can't see what can soak it up. So, again, anything that can smooth out that is ideal. And that's where batteries at the local level are great. So we talked about the community batteries earlier being a great way to soak up excess power and give cost savings to customers. But those sort of batteries which are now being located next to zone substations are really helpful to sort of manage out some of the peaks and help just smooth out the operation of the grid. And I think as more and more of those get rolled out, that will really help grid management and as you said, use more of the infrastructure we've got already rather than have to build new stuff because again, it's very much like trying to manage the road networks better. You put traffic lights up to kind of manage flows. The motorways, they do variable speed limits to manage how much capacity can go down. It's, it's the same sort of thinking, but just in, in a poles and wire setup.
- [35:49]
Interviewer / Host
Right. It's electrons, not cars. I suppose that's the thing. Yeah. But actually that, that's one thing we haven't mentioned and I think we're going to see that. I think it's, it's, it's been delayed for so long, but I do believe it's now starting to actually, you know, become, become a reality. Is vehicle to grid and vehicle to home and that stuff, you know, I first heard about, I remember going to see a vehicle to grid demonstration, I think in 2012, so a long time ago. So, you know, and I've been waiting ever since. But it feels there are some demonstration projects, aren't there? Or some early projects in Australia, I think in Victoria, actually. But is that something that you're thinking about and planning around?
- [36:29]
Tim Jarrett from Osgrid
Yes, it's definitely something we are considering quite actively. We've actually put our first VTG charger in one of our depots just so we can learn more about it and see how it works with some of our own of our own electric vehicles. I think certainly people are testing it out in Australia and thinking about it, as you say down in Victoria. It'll start becoming a lot more important, I think, as the number of EVs rise. I think it's important for listeners to realize that Australia, although it's really leading in rooftop solar, is actually behind quite a few other countries in terms of EV uptake. It's starting to change now, but it's certainly not where uk, Western Europe, California is. But I think now that people are seeing how much power they're generating from the roofs and thinking, well, what can I do with it? Putting it in your own car, lowering the cost of your transport will make a huge difference. And then once the EVs start to become more ubiquitous, then I think V2G will be one of those follow up considerations. The only thing I would say is I think it'd be very interesting to see how much it's actually V2G versus vehicle to home in terms of just running their own lives and taking themselves off the network as opposed to pushing power back in. Because I think people, there's still a great sense of wariness about someone else controlling your battery and you might want to leap in the car and drive along. Well, yeah, yeah, the battery doesn't have, have that capacity. So I think there's still some of those consumer hurdles to cross. But it's certainly a topic we're considering.
- [38:00]
Interviewer / Host
Yeah, yeah. I'm just looking at my notes now because I mean, it's such a, it's such a, you know, you're, you're so used to this and I'm, I'm like scratching at the very edge trying to understand it because it's such a complicated, it's such a big complicated thing that. But it is, it is that it is a transition. It does feel like quite a big change. Would I be wrong in saying that, you know, that in terms of, you know, the, the history of the human consumption of electricity, what we're going through at the moment is a kind of paradigm shift. It's not just a bit of additional technology, it's really quite a. It requires a new way of thinking about it, I think.
- [38:44]
Tim Jarrett from Osgrid
Yeah, it's an interesting question. I think, yes, in the sense that in the past people didn't have to actively think about electricity much beyond can they pay the bill and if they flick the switch, do the lights come on at home? I think now, with this preponderance of what they call consumer energy resources out here, CER der as the rest of the world calls it. People have to get a lot more active in their thoughts about. And they're thinking about what they do. Do they put solar on the roof? Do they take up the kind of government scheme to put a battery in the home? If they do, how big is it going to be? I think lots of people are actively thinking, do I stay on gas for cooking and hot water? Whereas if I'm generating all this power from the roof, wouldn't it be cheaper long term to have electric, hot water heating, cook on an electric hob, those sort of things? So people are having to make a lot more decisions they didn't have to make in the past. So I think from that point of view, yes, it definitely is a. It's a big change. Also, I think a lot of business models are going to start changing in terms of who actually owns the assets and how they're used. Because I was out back in London last year for Climate Week when Octopus launched their scheme with BYD for that, I think it was £300 and all your, you know, everything was included, everything's free.
- [39:59]
Interviewer / Host
Yes, it always sounds too good to be true.
- [40:01]
Tim Jarrett from Osgrid
And the only provider. Back to our VTG conversation, you have to plug the car In, I think, 20 nights a month and for a certain period of time to allow them to use the battery. But because you don't own the car, you're just renting transport, you know, renting the car. People's opinions and views about ownership and whether they mind that battery being used will change quite dramatically. And I think that will happen with a lot of things, you know, links of home storage and solver. And I think collectively also, we have to think a lot more carefully about how we make the most of what we've got in the local area. I think it's another area that we're very keen to investigate at Osgood is how can we access a lot of the unused roof space. So to give you some figures, Committee for Sydney, which is a kind of think tank that looks at the economic development of Sydney, has done some work that we supported recently looking at if you really pushed all the roof space in Sydney, how much power could you generate? And again, very stretchy. And again, there's a lot of assumptions, but they think that you could get to almost three quarters of Sydney's annual power needs could be generated within Sydney if you took it to that extreme level of really finding all the available roof space, putting solar, putting the batteries to soak it up. And it just shows you what is possible if you really take a different approach and a different mentality to both kind of power generation, power storage and power consumption.
- [41:27]
Interviewer / Host
Yeah, And I mean the other big advantage of that is you're not distributing that electricity over hundreds of miles of wires out in the bush. I mean that whole thing happens within the city.
- [41:37]
Tim Jarrett from Osgrid
Well, yeah, that's exactly where the cost comes. So to give you some more numbers that if you the cost that people pay for their kind of kilowatt hour just for the network cost, so that's the transmission and distribution cost is about 13 cents a kilowatt hour on average through the year.
- [41:52]
Interviewer / Host
Right. So even if that's the transmission that's not generating, that is literally just the wire electrons going along a wire.
- [41:59]
Tim Jarrett from Osgrid
Yeah, that's the cost of the road, if you put it that way. Even if the power is generated for absolutely free in the Hunter Valley, say or over the Blue Mountains, the cost of getting it to the household or the business in Sydney is somewhere around 13 cents a kilowatt hour. So that's just the cost. Whereas I said earlier, if you can generate it and consume it locally, that cost should drop significantly. And that's again, one of the things we're looking at is trying to change how we think about pricing. Because currently when it was just big coal fired power stations generating assets, everyone had to pay the same transport charge because everyone was getting the same electron, basically. Whereas now an electron that's generated on a roof and consumes down the street really shouldn't have to pay this full network charge because it's only using a tiny bit of, of the time going to wire. So again, how we think about network pricing is going to become a really important challenge as we go forward. And making sure that the amount of the kind of charge that people are seeing is commensurate with where the kind of journey the electron's gone on.
- [43:08]
Interviewer / Host
Right. That is really interesting. So I'm really fascinated by this from the point of view of other countries around the world. I mean, do you ever like, do grid operators from other countries ever come and see what you're doing here or do you go and see them? Or is there that sort of global collaboration of, you know, because this is happening everywhere?
- [43:27]
Tim Jarrett from Osgrid
Absolutely. And again, that's one of the nice things about network businesses because we are regulated monopolies and that's the case basically everywhere around the world you're not competing. So you can talk. You know, it's not like Pepsi versus Coke, you can actually have a conversation about what's working well in your area. Are There ideas that you can bring. Can we bring to Australia? Are there things that we are developing here that we can kind of export out to other parts of the world? And, you know, all the networks in Australia and things have very active conversations with peer networks both in the country to see what's going on also in other parts of the world.
- [44:03]
Interviewer / Host
I mean, because I'm just. I have. I'm slightly obsessed at the moment because I went to China for the first time last year and, you know, it's very hard to go there and just sort of shrug and go, yes, nothing much happening here because it was staggering, you know, the level of electric vehicles, if nothing else, and electric scooters. But I mean, I don't know, because they're. Their whole electric infrastructure, I'm assuming, is newer, even newer than Australia because they've expanded so much and they're. They've industrialized so, so rapidly. And I mean, it's very obvious. I caught a bullet train out of Shanghai and all I saw were paddy fields, but covered with huge, you know, network connections. Huge pylons and wires were very, very apparent along the skyline. But I mean, is that. Is there anything we can learn from China or is it. Or vice versa? Because it feels like it's on such a colossal scale there that they must have to be dealing with a lot of weird stuff.
- [45:02]
Tim Jarrett from Osgrid
Yeah, I don't know the Chinese networks very well, so I'll have to sort of. But I think it is an interesting point you raise around building kind of brand new sort of greenfield connections and greenfield assets, whether it's even within an urban area, versus having to work on assets which can be tens, if not almost hundreds of years old, given the kind of legacy networks we've got here. And I think, again, taking some of that learning to where cities like Sydney are expanding. So if you look out to the west of Sydney, where there's a lot of the growth in kind of suburban growth, a lot of that learning is starting to kind of flow through. A lot more of the houses have solar on the roof. A lot more of the network is undergrounded for resiliency benefits and things like that. So again, a lot of that learning is incorporated. But the trouble we have or the interesting problem we wrestle with is a lot of the network in central Sydney and nearby is, you know, tens, if not hundreds of years old.
- [46:08]
Interviewer / Host
Yeah, yeah. Which would be that. That would be the same here. I'm sure that. But that, I suppose then that kind of the build, that build out. I don't want to denigrate the Chinese in any way, but I've got a feeling that if they need to put a load of pylons across your field and you're a rice farmer, they just do it. Whereas I would imagine, well, from what I can gather, you know, to, to get kind of community permission to run a new line, another big line across some part of the country is quite complicated.
- [46:39]
Tim Jarrett from Osgrid
Yes. And I think that's something you see all over the kind of western world. When I was at National Grid we saw that with a lot of the grid transmission, great grid up grade they talk about with circuits going through kind of the east of England and where these various offshore circuits were landing. And again, social license is a hugely important issue wherever you are in the world and needs to be addressed. And again, as I said earlier, often it's trying to make sure that people see the benefits, some of the benefits to land in that local area. It's also to make sure that people feel like everyone's pulling their weight, as I said earlier, making the most of what can be done in the urban suburban areas versus what's being done in the rural areas. So it's very important to make sure that that's been brought along. And also I think taking a lot more creative attitude about what can be done with assets you've already got. And, and one of the programs we're doing in the Hunter is a thing called Hunter Central Coast Renewable Energy Zone or HCC Res as it's called. And that's a kind of reconducturing or rewiring of assets we've already got, but enabling them to make, to move more power. So again, using a motorway analogy, it's like trying to add an extra lane to a motorway that already exists rather than build a whole new motorway. And actually in those situations what you find is that the poles are already there, the, the towers are already up. So therefore if you either replace them with either slightly higher towers or re engineer them so they can take more power, people are used to seeing them on the skyline, they're not just a new addition. So we're seeing far less community pushback with those sort of projects because the infrastructure is already there. And it's also taking a slightly more creative view around infrastructure because rights of way and way lease and access to, to land is an asset in its own right. So if you can make better use of the right to move, to put pylons or poles across someone's land and move more power there, that's a very helpful way of bringing more renewables into the system and maintaining a much better social license. So again, one of the things we've been looking at over the last couple of years is really thinking, how much more can we do by tweaking and adapting the assets and the asset mix we've got, rather than just defaulting to building brand new greenfield assets.
- [49:01]
Interviewer / Host
Right.
- [49:03]
Podcast Host (Everything Electric)
But then what? So what?
- [49:04]
Interviewer / Host
Just to kind of round it off. I think the question I get asked sometimes when I do public talks or whatever is, you know, do I think that the, the, you know, a country can run entirely on renewable energy? Won't we always need gas? Won't we always need, you know, pica plants or to cover the, the doldrums and when it's dark and when it's not windy and all those things. And I always say, I don't know because, you know, I, I can only, I only know what people have told me. But I mean, how optimistic are you that we can get very close to that, particularly in Australia? I mean, is that, is that something that's on the horizon? That's realistically on the horizon?
- [49:46]
Tim Jarrett from Osgrid
I think getting for periods of time, you can run on renewables only. And I think quite a few networks around the world have seen that. And especially if you've got a good amount of things like hydro to fill in the gaps. But could you run 365 days a year for multiple years without needing any gas because of various weather events? I find that very hard to see right now. People talk about Dunkelfloute and it's the same here. The winter here can be very gray skies. You can have periods where the wind isn't that high. So again, how do you bridge through those periods? And even I say a sunny country like Australia, the sun doesn't always shine. And just trying to run a grid on, say, solar and batteries is very uneconomic certainly today and certainly even as far as you can project out cost declines in storage. So I think we will need gas to generate to fill those gaps. But it will become fewer and fewer times, there'll be greater distances between those times that you do need to generate with gas. But I certainly currently struggle to see a world of absolutely no gas generation in the mix going forward. But again, I suppose the other question is you think about it from a transition point of view is what's the sort of gas you're using to burn? If you can use renewable natural gas from generation, bio waste, things like that, actually, again, you can make the transition work and it's actually using something like a Biogas for a very valuable usage as opposed to just sticking to the system and burning it in someone's home to cook their dinner or heat the home weight, which you could do via electricity.
- [51:27]
Interviewer / Host
But I mean, the other thing that's painfully obvious is that the amount of electricity the human race will consume is definitely going to go up because I think that, I mean, I do remember hearing this about in the uk where our consumption actually dropped part I think mainly due to LED bulbs. I mean just we were actually running more efficiently, we were using, we were wasting less energy. But I think those days are gone. I think now it's just, well, particularly with data centers, I think data centers primarily then electric vehicles. But you know, it is certainly we're using electricity to do more things than we used to.
- [52:01]
Tim Jarrett from Osgrid
Yeah, no, you're right, LEDs also flat screen TVs had a big impact because having to heat up a cathode ray tube to boil off the electrons to make those work, suddenly replacing those screens had a big impact too. But yes, I think that easy kind of efficiency stuff is largely gone. And data centers will really drive demand and again also electrifying transport because if you can really push kind of light duty vehicles, but also through to kind of trucks and other areas that will also support a lot of electricity needs. So again, I think it's a fool's game trying to predict how much electricity demand will grow. Certainly I think doubling is fairly consistent across different forecasters over the next sort of 30, 40 years of what we'll need. But again, there's quite a few unknowns that we'll need to work through, especially data centers being the obvious one.
- [52:58]
Interviewer / Host
Yeah, yeah, no, it is a big challenge. But what I think you can sum up that your job is very interesting. I don't think you go to work and go, oh, it's really boring today.
- [53:10]
Tim Jarrett from Osgrid
No, not at all.
- [53:11]
Interviewer / Host
I think it's got to be really fascinating.
- [53:13]
Tim Jarrett from Osgrid
Yeah, no, I think, and again, I think for me it's really interesting how do you bring the whole of society along? How do you make sure it's, it's fair and you're thinking about the impacts for all groups because it's very easy to get excited about certain groups of society.
- [53:28]
Interviewer / Host
Sure.
- [53:28]
Tim Jarrett from Osgrid
And again, yeah, again you do need people to lead. You need kind of early adopters to buy the kit and to iron out a lot of the teething problems and things like that. And you've seen that yourself with, with evs. But as soon as things definitely have done that, as soon as things start to become mainstream. We really need to think about the whole of society and make sure we don't have pockets of have nots who are kind of struggling to access it and then suddenly bearing a much greater cost of the transition.
- [53:53]
Interviewer / Host
Yeah, yeah, no, very good point, Very good point. Well, well, thank you so much, Tim. I mean it's been, it's been fascinating wander through your world. I mean it's really, really interesting. I mean, I can't wait to, to see. There's a lot of things that I feel are sort of coming to fruition with like, you know, all the stuff we've been talking about and vehicle to grid and batteries and community batteries and solar and how that is distributed fairly I think is critically, critically important. And that's, you know, a big challenge for everyone in, involved in that sector and the automotive industry as well. But that has been really fascinating. Thank you so much for taking the time and I just want to say I'm very jealous of, of the sunlight that's leaking through your blinds.
- [54:39]
Podcast Host (Everything Electric)
Well, I really hope you enjoyed that. It was really fascinating talking to him. I'm sure we're going to be hearing from him again. But anyway, that's all we've got time for. As always, if you have been. Thank you for watching.
- [54:52]
Kara from the Kara Golden Show
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- [55:19]
Tim Jarrett from Osgrid
Wayfair. Every style, every home.
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