Name: Episode 2 – Enabling the system: storage, V2G, and smart energy management
Uploaded: 2026-09-10T13:18:08.728Z
Duration: 1 h 32 s
Description: Episode 2 – Enabling the system: storage, V2G, and smart energy management

Transcript for "Episode 2 – Enabling the system: storage, V2G, and smart energy management": Welcome, everyone, to episode two of the last mile solutions smart energy management webinar series. My name is On van Gogh. I'm chairman of the Renewable Energy Association of the Netherlands, the Formula E team, and working group on smart charging. And I'm in a very good company that I will introduce to you later. The last episodes of the same webinar series, we looked at, how policy and regulation are shaping Europe's energy transition and mobility transition at the same time. Today, we go one lay layer deeper. The technologies that are already making a decentralized energy system work, For instance, about vehicle to grid, smart charging, load management, and flexibility services. They exist. They are running, and they are doing their job, but they were built in separate tracks. The question today is, how do they become one connected and renewable energy system? We've got a couple of practicalities, the house rooms. We are streaming on Goldcast. On the right hand side of your screen, you will see the engagement panel. Use the q and a tab to submit your questions at any time. Other attendees can upvote them, and we will tackle the most popular ones. The chat tab is there for comments and reactions. You will see a few polls during the session. Please participate because your answers and opinions are shaping the conversation. And it's good to know this session is being recorded and a replay where we share it with all register registered participants. As mentioned, today's theme is enabling the system. A decentralized energy system needs orchestration. Smart energy man management handles thousands of charging sessions every day. We have vehicle to grids here in Utrecht but also in other areas. In South Holland, 22,000 charging stations are integrated in a big virtual power plant. These are operational systems, not pilots. But the assets, they were built separately. Today, we ask, what does it does what does it take to connect them, and what what does that mean for your daily business, for instance, as a CPO or EMSP? It's very good to have such a bright panelists, beside me. Some of them are here in the same room as I. Some others are joining remote, and I will introduce them, one after the other shortly. First of all, very welcome to Robin Berg. He is CEO of WeDrive Solar, and he is remote. I think there's no one better equipped, so Robin, to introduce you than you yourself. So please take the floor and tell a little bit more about yourself and your company. Bidi directional charging. And with that, we, have finally now accomplished the first fleet of bidirectional shared vehicles, together with our strong partner, Mavos. And recently, also, together with Renault, started to roll out, for private users. So I'm very happy to be here. Vehicle to get to finally getting from the pilot stage to the scale up phase. So, happy to share, my experience, with that, today. Thank you. Next on stage is Tommaso Di Fonzo. He is working at the big, virtual power plant, and he is working for ENGIE. Maybe you can share some introduction or notes on yourself as well, Tommaso. Yeah. Sure. Thank you. So, nice to meet you all. I am Thomas Alfonso. I've been starting to work on, electric vehicles fifteen years ago. Like I like to say, I hope to see the full revolution happening before my retirement. So I hope you can all help me on this journey. And, nowadays, I I, I lead the commercial activities at Laborec, which is one of the subsidy of the ENGIE Group. And we focus on, flexibility, and that's the topic of today, but we also have activities related to, charging station testing. So, very eager to start the conversation today. You're here and as I can see it correctly, retirement is a long way ahead of you. So no shortage of time, but the ambition is clear. Matthijs, glad to have you here. You are working for the beautiful city of Utrecht. Can you describe a little bit more about yourself and your job? Yeah. Sure. Thanks for the invite. I work for the city of Utrecht and I'm responsible as a strategic consultant for grid congestion and future energy systems in our city. And I've been working on the last ten years on different pilots and project on smart charging and smart grid development in Utrecht. And in recent years, grid congestion has become a really big problem in our city. It's price is number one here because, we are lacking approximately 20% of the grid capacity we need to develop our city further, in a city development, building houses, in, moving towards electric mobility, and also in renewable energy projects and sustainability development of our city. And, that is why it's really important to think about smart grid solutions, which you are talking about, as a as a as a solution to forward the development of our city in this, teams. Yeah. Great to have you here with this broad perspective. And last but definitely not least is Luke van Kuijk. You're working at Last Mile Solutions. Can you tell us a little bit more about yourself? Thank you very much, Olof. Yeah, Last Mile Solutions, we are one of Europe's largest energy transaction platform providers, where we help our CPOs and MSPs to operate an EV charging business. And, today's topic is, I think, of real interest to them because in the end, it's an inevitable, technology, but also ecosystem that becomes part of their business model. Yeah, and we're really happy here to, to shine a light on that today. Yeah. Well, great company to have here. Before we go into, our discussion, Robin, maybe you can tell us a little bit about the current state of affairs at WeDrive Solar because I have seen that you had quite some turbulent weeks. How are you doing, Robin? Yes. Yeah. Thanks for this. Yes. As as as some of you, know or have reps in the media, a part of our company went bankrupt. It's part that's produced and developed our charging station, both the public one as the, private one. That was, of course, quite a setback because we have invested a lot of time and effort to make this product happen. But then again, it's a it's a tough market, for charging station, producers in Europe. So, yeah, unfortunately, we did not make it. The good news is that, we are not stopping. We have shown our services will continue. All the contracts we have with, for example, our private customers will, continue, unchanged. And, that's also the reason why I'm unfortunately not in use of today, but I'm here. I'm in Paris at Renault offices, because we are fully committed to make feature g, the feature g launch we currently have in The Netherlands. Proceed. We will need to put a lot of effort in that, but, we are with our partners. Also, we've stayed in, last mile solutions and the other partners fully focused on making this scale up, happen. So, yeah, there's some bad news, some hiccups, but, we will continue. Very glad that you're saying that you will continue, and we will need you. So lots of luck with your, challenges at the moment. Before you go into the panel discussion, I want to hear a little bit more from the opinions of of you, of the audience. That's why we will present the first poll of today on your screen now. And when it's being prepared, I will read it as well. What best describes the current state of technologies enabling a decentralized energy system in Europe, in your opinion? Is it technology is ready and already scalable? Is your opinion that the technology is ready, but we need to work on interoperability? Is your opinion that regulation is holding back solutions that are already there to use? Is your opinion that commercial models are not yet viable at scale? Or is the technology is it so that the technology still needs significant developments, or is it none of the above? I'm looking forward to your votes. And when the votes are being collected, we will have a look together at the results. I see first votes coming in. Feels a little bit like the Eurovision song festival counting the votes. I think the most popular one so far is that the technology is ready, but we need to work on interoperability. Well, I think that's very close to the key topic, of today. So we will keep having a look at the results of your votes, but we now start, our further conversation. And, Luc, maybe I can start with a question to you because when we had our conversation, to prepare this meeting, you said that you have some thoughts how to order and make a proper order in this discussion, and make a clear structure for everyone. So in confusing times, a little bit of structure may be helpful. Can you share us your, your vision on that? Yes. Of course. Yeah. I think it really helps because, when when people are talking about smart energy management, we often see that, a lot of people mean something different with that terminology, and then you have smart energy management or smart energy orchestration. You have flexibility, etcetera. So just in short, I think you can really make it simple in in four layers. So layer one is are the assets. So connected and metered assets like, in in our business charge points, mostly the case. But what we also see today is PV solar cells and batteries, stationary battery, and, and other on-site, flexible assets. So that's one. Without those, yeah, there is that's basically the foundation. Otherwise, yeah, you can't control. Second layer on top of that is load management, basically, to stay within the the grid connection and the grid limits, and it's all about cost avoidance. Then layer three on top of layer two, scheduling. So determining, when power and how much power is being, is being, spread around the ecosystem, back and forth, while taking into account driver needs, net congestion constraints, or sustainability goals, for example. And then layer four, which is on top of that. Now before layer four on level three is more about cost optimization and sometimes, already some revenue, some some new revenue models that exist. And then you have layer four which is about flexibility services. So using all of that control controllable energy, using that on the energy markets and balancing markets. And they really start seeing new revenue models that that help partners in our ecosystem as well. Now you might say, where's V2G then? Now V2G is not a separate layer, but basically, it runs across layers two and four back and forth, delivering power and and, and and drawing power. So, yeah, I think during our conversation today, you will hear those terms more and more, but then I hope at least there is some structure in how you can, place it in the in the right context. Okay. Thank you. Did you already publish this, structure on LinkedIn? Or I think there's there's many and there's also industry definitions, but the the the same applies also to connectors and charge points, etcetera. So I try to like to keep the simple as possible because we're already in a complex industry. So, but maybe it's a good idea. Yeah. Maybe, thank you. And I hope it helps. So, Robin, coming back to you, you did some amazing things already. Maybe you can, share us a little bit more about, the learnings you had, to get there with your v two g projects. What's your experience? What did you learn, and how does it work? Yes. Yes. So, last year, 2025, we had the first launch of v two g, in Unbelly with the first fleet of 50 cars together with my wheels. And this was really, yeah, a great stepping stone, of a lot of years of hard work to make this technology from a lab demo PowerPoint technology into the real world with cars that were actually used on the streets of Utrecht with, v two g really happening at all of those 50 cars with public chargers being available to support that, with the city, enabling this possibility, with the grid operator, supporting it, but also welcoming it as a possible solution for grid congestion. So a lot of partners involved and all lined up to really make this work. And this was a very important step because that was what we needed to go to the next step, and that is the really market rollout of vehicle to get starting in The Netherlands. As you probably heard, a lot of car companies have done announcements or have done press releases on three to three projects being launched in different countries with different players, but none of them have actually got into numbers. And, apparently, this technology is not an easily rollable, easily scalable technology. So, when we started the rollout with my wheels to 500 cars, which is now almost finished, and it has also entered multiple cities, not just Utrecht, but also Eindhoven. Rotterdam and also other cities are now joining VGT on their streets. This was a really important step going from 50 to to 500, to see if this technology can be scaled up and, work. And now also the rollout to, private customers, that's the next level because there's no one more critical on the technology and the solutions than a private customer at at at its own driveway. And so we started with the first 150 customers beginning of this year. Currently, we are already around three, four hundred customers operational with VGT on their driveway all over The Netherlands. And this has been a really interesting process because now we can actually see what scaling up to thousands of v two gs, clients really means. And, now we have to set back with our charger, which is, of course, a challenge, but we'll hopefully find a solution for the charger really soon. We can now start to demonstrate that that with this technology, we can provide great congestion, relief, and other service at a larger scale. So I'm very happy that we have come so far. As always, with this technology, I mean, we've been active with this now for ten years. There's always a hurdle, and this one we're dealing with right now is is quite a big one, I have to say. But, again, I think we will, manage, due to the strong partnership we have with Renault and the other partners. But, yeah, I think we are almost there to really go to the thousands. Thank you. Can you also say something, Ruben, about the financial flows? Is is anyone earning money already? Yeah. Yeah. So so the great news is is that our customers, especially the private customers, they are owning a lot of money right now because, as you have maybe seen, the price differences on the Apex sort of day that they had, Apex, prices, which are accessible for anyone with a dynamic energy contract, are actually quite high this year. So an average price difference of, like, 20¢ between the low and the high price is not a strange thing anymore. It's it's become normal. If you look at tonight's prices, it's even more crazy, but it's quite kind of extreme. It's like more than 80¢ per kilowatt hour tonight. So if you charge on this or charge your car today, tonight, with 20 kilowatt hours, you earn, like, $16.16 euros, on one day. So, yes, people that are have joined our system, they are making money with 60 to €100 per month, with their car just sitting on their driveway. So this is very interesting. And soon, we will also start with providing grid congestion services to Stadin as the first grid operator, but soon after that, hopefully, also the other grid operators. And then there will be, on top of this, Apex pricing, another business case, which will also provide income to the other partners involved. So, yes, this is making money. And the good news is while making money, we're solving grid congestion. We are bringing solar and wind energy to the evenings when coal and gas is being burnt. So we are really in a win win win situation. Hopefully, we can manage to scale it up now to thousands. Thank you. We'll go to another panelist and come back to you later. Tommaso, can you briefly explain what a virtual power plant in South Holland is? How does this work? Where's the flexibility? And maybe also you had a question, how are the financial flows? Is anyone earning money here? Tommaso? Yeah. So, maybe please allow me to, explain, what we are doing there for those that are less familiar with this case. So in the South of, Netherlands, mostly in the the area of Rotterdam, we are now managing 22,000 charging points in the public area. So the unique and the uniqueness of, this experience is that the sides, the domain, so the public charging, area, and also that is on a unique big site. And those charging points are managed by SMART, which is the NGINDA bottleneck smart charging solution. So that's a little bit the context, but what's what are we doing exactly? Like, to go back to your question. So what we do, is that we aggregate all the charging points of the city together, like if it was a virtual power plant. Now, again, I try to explain things and maybe I add the concepts that are even more complicated. I guess in the ecosystem, everybody's, aware of what a virtual power plant is, but the concept, in a nutshell, is that today, electricity is provided by conventional power plants, right, like gas power plants. But if you aggregate several small assets, for instance, the battery of electric vehicles, then you can achieve a size where you can also provide, in a way, electricity to the grid. And so imagine that you are in the city of Rotterdam and you connect, your, your car. Actually, your car then from that moment starts to be part of a larger ecosystem, so a virtual power plant, a big battery made up of 22,000 small, charging points that then can deliver services to the grid. So that's a little bit what, what we are doing. It's, it's also, I mean, how we achieve this scale and as you mentioned also what's the, then return. So we achieved the scale. We started, from a real need. So as, we have already mentioned in The Netherlands, there is a problem from for congestion. So I think at the basis of every discussion, of course, there is a problem. Right? There is a need or there is, the possibility to create value. And so then, in this case, it was the congestion problem. So we, we needed, Velian. So the asset owner had to provide a solution for, for this problem. But then it also we arrived to this scale because we worked in partnership. So both on our side as virtual power plant aggregator, which is another way to say smart charging solution. Like, Luke said, there are different layers. So in his diagram, we are clearly in the last, in the last block. So there was then the the asset owner, the which is Balian that has the the the charging station that there was Haas, and then there was a the energy supplier. So we all worked together in partnership to say, okay. We have a problem that we have to solve, but, actually, this can become an opportunity. Because if we aggregate all of these charges together, then maybe we can, we can create value. And so here, to come back of your question, the advantage of, of what we are doing is that indeed we achieve a significant scale, that makes so that the system, is, in a way profitable. Because I think one of the challenges that we have today is, is clearly scale. So I I will also, maybe the opportunity to address this later, but we are clearly competing, in the flexibility market, with the batteries or, or even, gas power plant, and the size of a charging point is very small, like 11 kilowatt. Whereas, for batteries and, renewables, we are in the order of magnitude of several megawatt or 100 of megawatts. So the scale is 1,000 more. Imagine. So to just reply to your question and not to go too too long, yeah. Yes. We are creating value, and I think the reason why is also because we achieved significant volumes. So that's a little bit the key takeaways that I will take from our experience. So needs, partnership, and then, of course, capabilities, to to be able to deliver, such a big virtual power plant and, flexibility services to the energy markets. Yeah, thanks for describing that. Can you say who is paying and who is earning or is that too blunt of a question? No. No. Of course. I mean, so, the the process, I mean, in, in general, when you have to valorize flexibility, I mentioned them already before, but you you have three actors. Right? So you have the asset owner, in our case, it's Valean. Then you have the technology layer, so the virtual power plant, aggregator, which is, in this case, is much. And then you need the market access, so somebody that is, ready to valorize this flexibility. It can be, for instance, the energy supplier. So in the city of Rotterdam, so in the the in the, in, in this case that we have together, there are different value pockets. So one is, the energy supplier that recognize to the charging point operator a premium to have, its flexibility available. And then, under a certain period of the time, there was also the need to reply directly to the grid operators. So that service is sometimes remunerated, sometimes not, but what I mean to be clear is that, the DSO asked directly to intervene, and that service is sometimes is remunerated, sometimes is simply a must have. So I hope I reply to this to your question, but, in short, either is, the energy supplier or, the entity of the market access that recognize a value to the flexibility or in some cases directly with the with grid operators. Thank you. And we'll come back to you later on. But, guys, switching back to you, you already described some of the challenges in Utrecht. Can you explain a little bit more about the activities that Utrecht is, undertaking now to promote, smart energy management and well, solve the challenges ahead. Yeah. Sure. As I already explained, the grid congestion is a big problem in New Tread. And some of the solutions mentioned by the previous speakers also can help us to solve this problem. So currently, we in 2030, we have a short shortage of 20% of grid grid capacity on the high voltage level. Meaning, we have a shortage of approximately two three hundred twenty three hundred fifty megawatts of grid capacity, in in in Utrecht. And currently, the grid operator is solving that by putting a lot of gas powered electricity generators into the grid in locations to to to to solve this problem during peak hours. That solves about half of this problem. But it's gas powered, so it's not renewable. And you need to find locations and it's polluting and it's making noise so it's not really a good solution. Now if we are looking at smart charging or or vehicle to grid solutions those cars are already there. So in 2030, we have 175,000 electric cars in Utrecht, in Utrecht region. If all of those cars would be bidirectional and each of those cars would deliver two kilowatts of electricity back into the grid during peak hours, the whole problem would be solved and, we would not need to put these power generators into the grid. And also these power energy generators, these gas generators cost a lot of money. So talking value, we could better pay this the grid operator could better pay for smart charging service or bidirectional services instead of for gas powered electricity generators. So that is what we are hoping for. On the other hand scaling up from currently 300, 400 feature g cars to, all cars being bidirectional is still a long way to go. But it's it's the way forward because you can only pay the money once and better pay it in for the for the cleaner, better, healthier solution. Attractive perspective. Can you also say something about the learning so far? Because it's it's more than a vision. Right? It's already happening in Utrecht. Do you see that it's already helping out in constructing new neighborhoods? Or Yeah. Sure. Sure. So, it's it's it's a must have for us. We can only build a neighborhood if we implement a smart grid, because the the the grid operator says, yeah, there's no capacity. So solve it behind the in in a in a in a grid budget if you want to develop an area. And then you need the smart grid to stay below the grid capacity that's made available for developing this area. So for instance, close to here is Merwe De Canal Zone. It's a city development area. We develop 10,000 new houses over the next ten years approximately. And the only way to do that and we only have grid capacity for 5,000 or 3,000 of those houses during peak hours. But if we but there's also a lot of, bidirection or or shared cars coming to this neighborhood, approximately a thousand. So if we are able to unlock the unlock the capacity, the battery capacity as a neighborhood battery in that area, we can solve almost we can charge the the car during the day and when people are not at home and discharge those cars during the night, solving this grid capacity problem within this neighborhood without, stationary battery for instance, which is also solutions. But the batteries and the cars are there. Yep. So in this, we are really looking for this kind of solutions, but it's really more difficult than just applying for grid connection. So there's lots of people in in the office, in the, municipal office working together with partners like you, partner market partners to develop this smart grids. It's taking a lot more time and effort than before, but we are making much faster progress, since we have to this in in smart grids development innovation since this this crisis appeared. So the crisis is also sort of a blessing in disguise, really pushing forward innovation in in in smart grid development, which is great. Yeah. It's a very inspiring example. Thank you. Luke, coming back to you. Last mile solutions processes millions of charging transactions monthly. Where does, smart energy management already change how, these sessions are being handled? And can you also say something about, well, the the effects on on business, from your point of view? Yeah. Definitely. And and I think it's good before I, yeah, answer that question immediately. We're talking about a lot about The Netherlands here, and there's a reason for it. Not that we have founded here, but there's another reason I will come back to that in a minute. Because at last most, you play at the European level. And, of course, you already explained the four layered system where you already heard from from, from Robin and others that, yeah, the maturity level of each layer is different than also the business model. And last week, I was at, but another important point is, like, Europe in that sense that our operators, are across Europe, in several several countries. And last week, I was at the intercharge network conference. ICNC is one of the most known and large industry events in our industry. And where Smart Energy Management is always one of the key topics. And I was there and I, walked down the vendor floor, talked to experts, listened to keynotes. And one thing was clear, and I think it also was set in the pool, right? The technology is available, right? So it's not that's not more barrier to to use smart energy management services. Interoperability is fully agree with that. And we'll come back to that later. But it's also really country specific. And let me explain that because I think there's three things that that make that up. One is how far is the EV maturity and to enroll enroll on the smart energy management services? B, how much grid pressure is there really in the country? And you see it more and more. And and c is, the regulation. So the energy market, especially on the flexibility service and v two g, still each country in in in Europe has its own standards there, which makes it really, really hard to scale if they're opened up or not. And going back to The Netherlands, this is actually the market where all three points come come back to at once. So we have a really high grid pressure. Now you hear the stories of net congestion as a daily daily thing. Our EV maturity high, we are over 50% of new car sales, I think, are now fully electric. And and regulation, since recent years also does see immobility and EVs as a solution instead of a problem to the grid. And those things made to really sure that, The Netherlands become also the proven ground for the smart energy management services. So the country is really dependent. That's first. Second, I think then as which segment you're active now you heard we have the home market, we have the you have depot, we have public etc. So it really depends on where you are, if it's really already changing your behaviour and your business case. And then also what type of company are you? Because if your profit and loss is much exposed to to, to energy, then, then you will certainly faster adopt smart energy management services. Three quick proof points, I think, where I can show that the really helps and is changing changing the the context. So I think, Valium was a great example managed by Tommaso, which is one of our partners. And, I think we are the fourth partner in that ecosystem to provide to make sure that the flexibility is happening because we have the connection to layer one, the assets. So we provide that, that functionality there. And with that, they're able to be really competitive and win public tenders. Then on the depot side, for example, if you take that segment, we have a large logistic partner, which has more than 75 sites to more than 2,000 charge points. And, only with already layer two solution on load management, they were able to avoid, like, yearly cost, yearly, grid upgrades that run into 10,000 of euros, and at the same time, meet the ASG goals and double the amount of vehicles that they can charge. So, yeah, I think the when the pressure is real, it starts to become core business. And I think over time when markets, mature competition hits in more, I think it's it's, it's gonna become energy and and energy services are becoming, an essential inevitable part of their business case. And at LMS, we try to help our partners to see where they are on that curve and then making, and helping them to take the next step in that, in that operation to make it a standard operation for them in the end of Smart Energy. Yeah. Thank you for explaining your view on that. If you could describe, the current state of energy orchestration in Europe, in one sentence, what would you say? How far are we? Yeah. I think what you see is most layers are production scale. You hear Robin say, now, V2G is on the way to further commercial rollout. So I think that's that's great, but you already see different different levels. And I think energy orchestration is in the end stitching all these layers together. And not only, in one county by cross borders. And I think that's where still a lot of the challenge sits. But in the end, it should become a reliable operating model for CPOs and MSPs. Thank you. Time to get back to the audience and start a new poll again. The question is, or just stating this, a lack of interoperability between energy and mobility technologies is preventing Europe from fully realizing the potential of a decentralized energy system. Do you agree strongly or somewhat? Do you strongly or somewhat disagree? Please let us hear your votes, and we are gonna have a look at the results as soon as they appear. Results are getting in. Somewhat agree is leading the competition so far with strongly agree with the silver medal. So it looks like people usually at least agree on this. That takes us into stage five while I'm still looking at the incoming votes. And we get back to, our man in Paris, Robin. Robin, you work across home charging, share fleets, and public infrastructure. What are the practical barriers to integration, grid access, data exchange regulation, financial incentives? What's what's your view on the hurdles? I know you're an optimistic man. So probably you also know the solutions. Okay. Yes. So, The hurdles, you are, seeing. basically yeah. So so the most work in the past ten years we've done on v two g has been overcoming techno local technical, barriers. And so making, the car work with the charger, integrating the charger into the grid, being certified, being cyber secure, being ready for scale up. So we have been waiting quite a long time for production cars that have available from the start. And so we we tested with the first Nissan LEAF, which with the first with the first Ioni Hyundai Ioniq five. But but those were all, not production models, at least not models with v two g as a product integrated. Finally, we are at the stage that cars do have this. There are no cars, but also from other brands are now slowly coming to the market, but surely. And the next step is now integrate those production ready feature key cars into a system that provides, a stable, solution for end users, and also a business case. And there, I think we have still a few hurdles to go. The biggest one we currently see is, for example, double taxation in The Netherlands. So if the net metering ends at the end of this year, then you basically pay twice your tax if you charge, discharge, and charge your car again. So you pay twice time the energy tax. So that is, of course, not very stimulating for doing v two g services. So it's it's very good to align with the government, which we are, because there's a huge support to solve this, both from the parliament as from the current government. But it's it's good to really speed up and, have solutions to, yeah, make these kind of, propositions, interesting for everyone, getting ready. So I think we are almost over the the the phase that we have mostly technical barriers. And now when we enter the scale phase, I think we will more and more see, regulationary and maybe financial barriers to to Thanks. Very clear statements. to, solve. making a virtual power plant, you have connections with a lot of companies and other parties. Can you tell a little bit about what you need from each of them and, where, you see maybe lack of coordination of opportunities for better coordination? Yeah. I think it's a very interesting question also because, I ended my previous answer speaking about the importance of partnership. So common goals in making this happen. Well, I think if I analyze the different actors of the ecosystem, starting from the owner of the assets, so the charging point operators, well, to them, I will say it's time to act in a way. So, indeed, the technology is ready. I think we were all in a phase in which we are a solid charging station, and the most important part was that the charging station was working. Of course, our, industry is, always evolving, but now that there are a lot of cell charging station there. So my main message to them will be, let's do it. Then if we go on in the ecosystem, I think, to the grid operators and in general to the energy markets, as I mentioned before, it's not an easy game. So I will take again the example, that I made before. So charging station, let's say, 11 kilowatts. Let's even imagine that you can use all those 11 kilowatts. Then if you see the broader picture in the energy market, you have to compete with battery, so, several megawatt, and, gas power plants or power plants, so 100 of megawatts. So I will not repeat again the full example, but I just want to highlight that it's not an easy game. We are very small, so we need to expand the ecosystem. Actually, if I think about that, I we are not so far from where renewables were years ago where, you know, we were all convinced about the potential, but we needed some trigger to actually overcome the, entry barrier. And And that's why when I think about electric vehicle flexibility, to be honest, sometimes I also think about targeted incentive to participate to energy markets because, you know, at the moment, the volumes are not so high. So the cost will not be so high, but it will help to scale. So that's why maybe one message I will share with the with the grid operators. And then to go, finally to all the, to charging station management system, but, also, I will add into the discussion, the, you know, the cars. So the car manufacturers and API. You asked before about the value. So, as I mentioned before, yeah, we are recovering the cost, let's say, but we are not talking about, a huge pie. So the most important part now is to scale. I wish to come back next year. I'm not talking about, our site of 22,000 charging point, but 200,000 charging point. I think that's the main objective. And so I think this is very important to share because if each layer starts already today that the, the main need is to expand to add the connection cost, then the system simply will not start. So I think that's, that's very important independently from the interoperability because I agree that's a problem, particularly as Luke mentioned, every European market is different. And so that's another problem to scale. But for me now, the real, target is, yeah, to expand the ecosystem, and then we will see how to better distribute the value. Matthijs, can you say something about the role of government in removing barriers and creating opportunities? Yeah. Sure. We, as a municipality, can play an important role in creating room or bringing forward the market for these kind of smart charging or grid, smart grid services. Maybe as an example I just mentioned this this city development area where there's ten ten thousand houses coming but also a thousand shared cars. The municipality is responsible for the mobility company providing these tendering these shared car services for this future development area. In this tender, we need to also think about the the the energy surface that this future attendee, winner of the tender, should give to the to the smart grid or the the the the the neighborhood energy system. And if we don't already put that in the tender, it will not do that service by itself because because it's a it's a shared car company and not an energy company. So we really need to put regular of of requirements on that already in the tender so that the market is going to to to do this. Same goes for concessions for public chargers. Also, in in those, we ask for plans on smart charging, helping grid, grid operators to to to solve congestion problems. So in this kind of ways, we can really, help or focus the market into developing these kind of services. Yeah. Yeah. Smart energy system requires a smart tendering system. Exactly. And that's maybe the final step because before we need to work together in pilots and in subsidies teams to develop this kind of technologies. And so in every step of or phase of innovation development, you have a different role. But it's really important for for local municipalities or in general public authorities to really think about in what way can I help the market develop because we cannot do it? The market has to do it, but we can help to give space or create room for the market to develop these kind of innovations. Yeah, very clear statement. Luke, can you explore a little bit more on on the role of the markets and the things you're seeing, from the viewpoints of CPOs or EMSPs? What are they asking from you from platforms? Yes. It's a it's a it's a good question. So I think since you play across Europe, you see that it really differs per CPO or MSP what they asked for, right? Some are coming with a question, hey, is it is this possible? Right? Underscore my how can I fit it into my business model? They already understand the technology, have some experience with it. And we see questions range from, okay, I wanna avoid additional grid of grades. What technology can you provide so that we can still increase our business case or roll out more charges, etcetera? We also have questions about, hey. How can I save or optimize my energy, without compromising EV drivers' needs, manage peaks, but also how can I integrate renewables? Because a lot of, we have a lot of b two b customers or the customers of our CPOs or MSPs or b to b, fleets. And they also have solar batteries on their on their park, and, and energy becomes more vital because more cars get electrified, and they wanna utilize that. So that's coming. And then we have a few front runners like, like the Valeon case, for example, who are asking already about flexibility. They have the numbers. We already today also have the numbers with more than over 350,000 charges that we can start trying to aggregate them into virtual pools over multiple operators as well, which starts to become interesting to look at now, especially now the the markets have opened up. But yeah, it's not, We also see it's not there yet for every operator as a standard thing, because it's also our job as as a CPMS. And as a platform and energy platform provider and our service that we provide to to provide our service, but also educate the market to make it simple to understand, simple to deploy, simple to integrate, and simple to understand economically. And that's basically what we try to do today to really help our customers understand that it's reliable, scalable, simple. And that's what we see today. Yeah. Thank you. I'm going to the last round of questions for all of you. And, maybe come back to, Robin again. Robin, can you take us to the year 2030 and describe what's very big and very obvious then, but maybe now not so visible for, the bigger audience than what's being underestimated and what will be very big from your point of view, when we live in 2030. Yeah. So, hopefully, we will have a large fleet of cars providing, good services, all over The Netherlands. And with large, I hope it's in 10 thousands. And with that, we will make an impact on how the grid is balanced and how we can better use renewable energies at the moment that, demand for electricity is high. I think still a lot for that needs to be done, but we are currently in talks with multiple OEMs, that want to start joining the Dutch market. And with that, you can really see that, for example, Renault has opened up, the Dutch market also for other OEMs because when one large OEM starts with a future cheap proposition like we now have, Yep. the other OEMs cannot stay behind. So I think this will really, be market in four years with, multiple actors doing feature g propositions, smart charging propositions in which the battery, of your car will actually, help the grid when it's, sitting on your driveway or at the the parking of your work. So, yeah, I'm, hopeful about that. Thank you. Tommaso, you already said that you want to go from 22,000 to 200,000 in one year. I'm very curious about your view on 2030. Is it millions then? Well, I mean, that was a provocation. I wish, I'm not sure we will, achieve that, but it's a call to action if I maybe can go back to that. So if I think about the future, I, I see, for us in particular to but for the whole ecosystem to to aspects. So, yeah, it's a call for action for CPU. I really hope to to scale and, you know, we mentioned all the the conferences also, Luke, last week. I think we when speaking about smart charging, and the flexibility of valorization, we are, still in this order of magnitude. So that's a strong encouragement also for CPO. Let's do it. Let's come to talk, and let's see how we can make it happen. And then in terms of valorization, we are already focusing to enlarge the the services we can provide. We didn't enter into that level of detail, but we are unlocking the ancillary services. Ancillary services is somehow the champions league of flexibility services, so this could enrich the value and larger the value that we can obtain. So I would say volume and value because for me, the main, point is to make it happen. It's no longer a matter of technology interoperability. We really have to to speed it up. Yeah. Thank you, Thomas. Matthijs, as a citizen of the city of Utrecht, what's will my life be in 2030? What am I seeing then? Oh, I I really believe in the potential of bidirectional charging, and I hope we are able to scale that. And for a city or a citizen like you, in in interest, most people charge on streets with their private car. And they have Renault, and they have Kias, and they have other companies who have bidirectional cars, but they will not be able to charge their car on street and and discharge it as well. There's a lot to do on that, to make that work. It's about interoperability. It's about developing a a bidirectional charging surface on public, charges. That that also gives value to the to the to the end user, the owner of the car. So there's lots to do that. Also, for that you can charge your car, bidirectional car in different car brands and or different charger brands and still discharge it. So it's a lot about interoperability. And and but the scale is to scale up, especially in an inner city area, we need to develop that part. And it's really an invitation from from maybe the city to start doing that. Because if we don't start that now, it will be not be there in 2030. It takes it took ten years to get us here to make one car with a shared car and one charger bidirectional ready. It will take us another three, four years to make it interoperable and publicly available. And, I hope we will start now and I don't see it happening, unfortunately, yet. So maybe it's an invite to start doing that. Speeding up. Yeah. Because we need it. Yeah. We need it. Yeah. Very hard. Luke, what's your view on 2030? What will be big then that is still already growing now? Yeah. I think what we I think it's it's two two two things, and it pull a bit in opposite directions because I think, like Robin explained and and Matthias here, it it takes it really takes you a leap to get there. We need everybody and especially interoperable parts to make it happen. Because now it's still a one off case, mostly with one CPO, one MSP in a closed environment. And to make this interoperable, we need this whole industry and this whole ecosystem and value chain to work together. There's there's a lot of efforts on that, and that's being speeding up, I see. But at the same time, I also think that we should not estimate underestimate the value that there is already today that's being underutilized in the other layers. Right? So we have flexibility markets. There's a lot of revenue to be made, a lot of potential. You have fee to g that runs across everything was maybe the most complex thing to scale as a whole. But already with with with the other layers, you can already if you see how that is deployed nowadays in the public area, but also in all the other segments, if that's being utilized by far more today, that already can do so much. I think and that's something that we, we underestimate. And then at the same time, the technology is not the hard part. It's really how to make it disappear into daily operations. Right? And that's, I think, underestimated a lot how to make that really happen. But we are on a good track. Yeah. I think we do have time for the last poll. We have heard a lot of ambition and opportunities and urgency. So the last question for you is who needs to act first? Who needs to take lead in accelerating the development of decentralized energy systems? In Europe, several answers. I'm very curious about your votes. Is it EU national policy makers, the grid operators, vehicle manufacturers, the CPOs, EMSPs, technology and platform providers, energy suppliers or all parties involved? Just an easy question. I think the votes here are clear. Let's see what your votes are. Results are getting in. I see policy makers, vehicle manufacturers are one number one and two, I think. Grid operators are having the third place. It's not all parties involved. Yeah. Evolved, of course. It's now accelerating. Yeah. That that one won. You agree with that? Yeah. I fully agree. You look? I agree. But I think the rules of the game should be written by the ones who operate it, and that's if we need all of them. Yeah. Yeah. It's also a very Dutch answer. I think our famous Boulder model is that we should organize revolutions together, and get everyone involved. We're out of time. Thanks a lot for your, being here. Thanks a lot for all of the four of you for participating. I think it was very insightful, at least it was for me. I hope, the audience enjoyed as well. Feel free to reach out to the last mile solutions team if you have any comments or questions. As I said at the start, a recording of this session where we share it with all the participants. And we are already looking forward to episode number three of the smart energy management webinar series. It's coming up soon. Keep an eye on your inbox. Thank for you all and enjoy the rest of your day. Thank you.