Thanks to everyone who came to our stand to see our low-cost Demand Response demonstration last week.
This was our first time exhibiting, and we were suitably nervous, with a high-powered audience from business, finance and the public sector coming along.
It ended up being a great event, with interesting speeches and pitches, and a lot of interest in our demonstration.
It started with a keynote speech by Sir Ed Davey, former Energy Secretary and now Chairman of Mongoose Energy. He reminded the audience that although we may perceive the energy industry as a slow moving sector, things like the emergence of shale gas, the drop in the oil price, the growth in solar PV and the contribution of renewables in lowering the wholesale price of electricity could not have been predicted five years ago.
“There is a huge thirst in countries like India and China for innovation from the UK” — Sir Ed Davey, former UK Energy Secretary
We may not agree with all of Sir Ed’s opinions on fracking and Hinckley, but it was good to get a bird’s eye view of energy in the UK. Whilst he bemoaned the loss of global influence due to Brexit, and the lack of Government investment in energy supply and demand, he rounded up his speech with an optimistic assessment of his recent round trip through Asia, saying “There is a huge thirst in countries like India and China for innovation from the UK.”
The Carbon Trust’s head of incubation, David Aitken, then chaired a pitch session of a variety of cleantech companies, including Moixa (domestic battery), OpenUtility (peer to peer energy trading) and from Ooorja, who are developing decentralised mini-grids for villages in India, combining solar panels with biomass, as well as from our friends at Upside Energy.
