Episode Transcript
[00:00:10] Speaker A: Welcome to the EU Energy Projects podcast, a podcast series from Enlighten France focusing on the clean energy transition for the European Union and the EU Commission funded energy projects that will help us achieve it. My name is Areti Daradimo. I am the editor of the EU energy projects podcast and your host.
The european transportation sector is facing a massive transformation and electric vehicles are set to play a crucial role in Europes race to meet emissions targets. In this episode we are exploring the learnings of the EU funded EV four EU project diving deep into the challenges and opportunities surrounding EV adoption across the continent.
Well hear about the projects findings on consumer behavior, infrastructure needs, technology, and an EU policy and regulatory landscape in desperate need of attention.
This episode also features a new host, my colleague Ross Hastie, who spoke to some of the leading minds in the project in Lisbon. He is joined in conversation by Rui Martins, the head of R and D structural funds at Smart Energy Lab, one of the projects 16 consortium members.
We also hear from Sonia Sampaio, Smart energy Labs head of experience design, and Diogo Britto, who leads their engineering department. Smart Energy Lab is leading a crucial work package focused on understanding the key factors influencing vehicle to x integration in smart cities and societal adoption across Europe.
The projects participants are based in Denmark, Greece, Portugal and Slovenia, thus covering a broad spectrum of the european environment at very different levels of electric mobility maturity. So buckle up as we explore the challenges and opportunities for making electric vehicles a mainstream reality across the continent.
[00:02:27] Speaker B: Guys, welcome to the EU energy projects podcast. Thanks for joining us. Before we get into the details of the project, Roy, why don't you give us a little bit about the context of EV's in Europe and why the European Commission thinks it's a good idea to put some money behind research into this field.
[00:02:45] Speaker C: Europe has a goal to have carbon neutrality by 2050, and to achieve this, there are a lot of actions to put in place over the next years. And at the same time, the transport sector on its own, it's accounting for more than 20% of these emissions nowadays. One of the ways that European Commission has established to reduce the emissions on the transport sector is to massify the number of electric vehicles inside cities. So there are numbers, challenges within this to implement all the infrastructure needed and every other thing that you need to have many electric vehicles inside european cities.
[00:03:29] Speaker B: So it's all about adoption, right? You need to get people to actually buy into buying an ev?
[00:03:35] Speaker D: Definitely. And I think that's a huge leap if you compare it to previous projects from the European Union, because before there was not so much focus on adoption, but much more on the technology side. I think we've been learning, at least within our work package. So this is a whole work package that focus on user needs, and not just needs, but also the problems that we're trying to resolve for them. So they are able to join this energy transition to electrical vehicles. So things that go from ranging anxiety, of course, but if we focus even more on vehicle to everything, and with the starting point was, okay, maybe this is all about incentives. So if people receive, let's say, monetary incentives for them to sell us their energy, then they will definitely join. And what we learn is that actually that's not really the case. So that's much more about if they see that there's a system which is trustworthy. So there's a lot of suspicion also regarding governments if there's infrastructure. So we learn also in Greece that even before having an infrastructure, meaning electrical infrastructure problem in the city, it's much more about following rules. You know, people also respecting the fact that, you know, this specific parking spot is for electrical vehicles only. Also people respecting cars in general. So people are not even open to leave their cars out there in a public street because they are afraid, you know, someone is going to bump their door into their car. So there's so much more fine details in the experience that we really need to understand before going into the technology.
[00:05:11] Speaker B: Speaking of the technology, Diogo, we met a while ago and we're talking about residential buildings and how half of Europe lives in residential buildings, but they don't have EV charges in their buildings. And those buildings are not actually ready to accommodate EV charging.
[00:05:26] Speaker E: Exactly. But as Sonin mentioned, so the technology exists and exists for, I don't know, 1015 years ago. So we have EV's, we have chargers, but there's still not enough adoption. The blocker is ok, the seamless user experience, the infrastructure itself. So there's no enough capacity, not even on residential buildings, public streets. Well, the electric grid was not prepared for this massive EV charging that we have nowadays. So when things get even more complex, when we built in renewables into the site. So these require, well, the EV's will have not only play in the grid for serving the user, but also to stabilize the grid itself. And this is one of the points that the project EV for you is also touching.
[00:06:14] Speaker A: Did you know that enlit has another podcast? The Energy Transitions podcast is a broad ranging bi weekly podcast about the people accelerating the energy transition in Europe and beyond. You can find it on Spotify, Apple or wherever you enjoy your podcasts.
[00:06:35] Speaker B: So, Rui, let's go back to you and let's talk about the start of the project. And Sonia mentioned the work packages. Give us some background into the different work packages and what are the aims.
[00:06:45] Speaker C: Of each one of them. Yes. So ev four U has been, like Sonia mentioned, focused on having solutions for this vehicle to everything concept. So where we have the vehicle inside the city, but it's connected at the same time to the electricity grid. But it can be pushing some opportunity. It is for the buildings or for the parking lot, or also it's being managed by city managers to understand and to manage the parking in Holde City. And within this scope, the learning has been that there are different types of tools and platforms that need to be developed and operationalized in order for us to have EV's inside cities being in an easier way for the interactions to occur, and in order to massify the number of EV's inside cities. So there are ten work packages in EV four U, and we on smart energy Lab are leading work package number three, where we are focusing on understanding the concerns and the needs of EV users, and not only EV users, but also other stakeholders that are involved on implementation and management of EV's inside cities. And then with the learning that we got from these concerns, from these experiences that we had, then this narrows down to the development of specific tools. These specific tools will help on the project's demos to demonstrate innovative ways to manage either the charging way, how do you manage parking, or how do you manage the interaction from the EV with the building or with the electricity grid. So these learnings from work package three are very important for the implementation and the development of the technologies that we are putting here in the project.
[00:08:36] Speaker B: Ten work packages. That's quite a big project that's going to cover the whole scope of EV's and EV adoption in the EU. Quickly, tell us about some of the other participants and some of the other countries that are participating.
[00:08:49] Speaker C: Yes, so this project has a total of 16 entities participating and also other six associated entities. We are having demonstrations in four different countries. So we have demos in Slovenia, Greece, Denmark and Portugal. And in all these locations, we are testing different things, so different ways of the electric vehicle to be integrated into the environment that is being used. Either it is with a grid or with the city or with a building.
[00:09:22] Speaker B: So, anya, we're talking about adoption here, and you mentioned earlier that trust is a big factor in convincing people to go with EV vehicles. What have been some of the findings that have been interesting for you so.
[00:09:35] Speaker D: Far, for me, one of the biggest findings has to do with incentives. So earlier on, on the creation of the proposal for this project, I noted that there was really already assumption that financial incentives, if we had enough money now put into and incentivizing people to not only buy an electrical vehicle, but also later on, to also make their battery available to charge the grid, that will do. But actually it's much more than that. So you see then. So as Rui mentioned, we have four countries, and you can imagine that these four countries have totally different maturity levels in terms of electrical vehicles penetration. So if you think, for example, in already Ljubljana, Slovenia, but also in Denmark, for them, it's not so much about the incentives, but more the belief that if they join this national project or even pan european project, that this is for the greater good. And when I say the greater good, is that at the end of the day, if someone's gonna make money out of this, it's not just the government or specific companies, but really everyone. And I thought that was very interesting, because when we were on the ground, we tested different models. So we asked the user, so how would you. So let's imagine the future and that you are actually able to participate in this kind of service. How would that go? How would you design it in your head? And we had. We tested things like opt in. So imagine the situation where people, they have to go very quickly to get to a specific point, and then they need to have a minimum battery in their car, and they will say, okay, so that's important for me. So I would always want to guarantee a minimum level of battery, and I'm okay to, you know, leave everything else for the grid if this is actually for the common good for my neighbors, for my community, for my city. So that's definitely one of the. For me, the biggest insights. The other big insight is that before we even start about charging and electrical vehicles, you need to talk about parking. For example, in Greece, we did service Safari. So this is a methodology that you use quite a lot in service design. And literally, we just rented a car. We went around the Athens, and it's really extraordinary to see that there's multiple signs saying this is specific for your car to charge. And imagine you are in a hurry and you really need to find a public parking station, and they're all occupied because people don't care. So there's motorbikes park there and so on from the other side. I think a pitfall to this project would be just to think about users of electrical wheels and not think about everyone else that has a car. Right. If you go from this perspective, you're already going wrong because you cannot force feed anything to anyone. So you really need to think about also the other drivers. And then if you think about parking places in the city as an infrastructure, you need to see, okay, if I take these two for electrical vehicles, what about, you know, my neighbors? And if there's a lot of troubles in terms of traffic and there's a lot of chaos, you know, going to the cities, especially in Athens, then what do you do? So understanding that and really building an infrastructure and creating some rules that helps society as a whole, it's really important to implement this at the national, not only also european level.
[00:12:50] Speaker B: That speaks to the core of the problem with EV's is that chicken and the egg. You need the infrastructure to get people to adopt, but without adoption, there's no need for the infrastructure. Right? That's a pan european problem. Correct. Diogo, I'm going to bring you in here about the technology again because it's a nice bridge, because Sonia was saying, you know, incentives are nice, people like money, but they like convenience more.
[00:13:09] Speaker E: Exactly. So, and there are a lot of ideas around EV's, around EV batteries, a lot of mystery around degradation of batteries. So when we think that, okay, can you give me a little bit of your battery for me to use to stabilize the grid when you ask it, we user, of course not, because that will degrade my battery. So not a long time ago we all had cell phones that our battery died. So when people tend to link these two things, although it's totally different technology, but they tend to link it and manufacturers are not being open about how degradation all these sort of services affect the batteries, which gives people, well, these doubts and blocks this part of, okay, we need to charge our EV's, even if there's the technology there that allows to do these sort of services and that, okay, we will be helping to support the grid. In moments where there can be a blackout, they will say no because my car, it was expensive and I want to use the battery just for myself. And it's natural because there's a mystery in there. So there's a lot of secrets from battery manufacturers that are not disclosed. I think Europe is also trying to bring some light on that topic. There are some projects around battery passports and those sort of mechanisms that will allow to at least keep track on what was the uses of this battery and what's the state of it, what is the service doing to the battery and it will be or less open. So it will be easy to track what's happening to my battery when I do this or I do that, which nowadays it's impossible.
[00:14:41] Speaker B: Okay, that's interesting. Sonia made a point about people are willing to participate if they feel that it's for the greater good. They're not so willing to participate if it's for the greater good. But it touches my battery. It sounds a lot like the conversation with, oh, I'm ready for wind turbines, but just don't put it in my backyard. Am I on the right track here?
[00:14:59] Speaker E: Exactly.
[00:14:59] Speaker D: So, yes, definitely. So that was a transversal worry, I guess, from. And this is for the four countries. It has to do, of course, with battery degradation. And I think the opportunity for energy transition here really lies with the manufacturers, but it also lies with the governments and also with business models. Because if we think of, for example, renting a battery, having a lease, or having this idea that, okay, I'll use it for this purpose, but if they are already designed for this purpose, you can already create a cost model that doesn't destroy the business of manufacturers and has this into account, which actually, if you see nowadays, there's a few manufacturers already taking that leap and actually saying, it's okay, we allow you to actually use the battery for this purpose. It's been quite slow. I think if we think about 2030, that's around the corner.
And what we think is that there should be more of a collaboration between governments and manufacturers to do that. When I was in the field in Slovenia, we had workshops with people from public administration. So the people actually take decisions, but also manufacturers. And it's so interesting because at the end of the day, we all have the same will, but we do expect each other to take the front line. So, you know, the same with utilities, they expect someone else to take, you know, okay, you go first, you show us the way, you put your neck on the line, and then we follow. So it's more like, how do you mobilize the structures to kind of go together? That's also very difficult.
[00:16:30] Speaker C: I think what EV four U is doing is also very important, because the business models that Sonia mentioned, we are testing different types of business models to understand the way that vehicle to grid can be exploited much more in the sense that people are not only offering services to the grid, but also they are consuming when the grid needs them to consume, or then they are offering their capacity, like Diogo was mentioning, they're offering their storage capacity to the grid. When the grid needs that. We have several cases in EV four U where that is being exploited and the business models are being developed. One interesting is the portuguese demo where it's in one of the Zores Islands, and so they have problems of curtailment of renewables in the grid. So they have to shut down some windmill parks when they have too much renewal in the grid.
One of the business models that they're trying to do is if they have having this technology of vehicle to grid, so they use the batteries of the cars that are in any given moment connected to the grid to absorb the electricity, the renewable electricity, and so they have to shut down less this renewable part. And I think this is very important to use this project to study as much as possible these business models, then they will be able to be successful in the market.
[00:17:53] Speaker B: Rui, you used a word there that's very interesting, you said, which can be a really positive thing, but many people, when it comes to data, feel that they could be exploited and connecting all these technologies to the grid and personal vehicles to the grid. There's a data question and it's about regulations. Are the regulations ready for personal data? Are people ready to share their data?
[00:18:17] Speaker C: That's also a very interesting question, Ross, because at the moment the European Commission is pushing the implementation of these european data spaces where they should act in the end, if possible, as much as a marketplace where you have technologies where you have data and where you have exchange of data, and then you have these models that run the data and everything, all in a secured, regulated way, that provides benefits to everyone that is operating in this marketplace. But up until now, we don't have any of these data spaces operating properly, as they will be. But there are many european projects at the moment that are testing these data spaces in many given sectors. Energy is one of them. The automotive industry, you have in almost every sector have these data spaces going on and everyone is testing the regulation that should be in place. Also the governing models that should govern all these data spaces and the data so that everyone that enters in the end will feel secure and protected. So this is something that the European Commission is pushing more and more so that we know that this is a need that is urging in almost all the sectors, but we need to get prepared. There are countries outside EU that are more prepared than usual, but we need to push it far so that we can get there. And energy is one of them that will benefit a lot from having it like this.
[00:19:49] Speaker B: Let's assume we can get the regulations and the frameworks in place. Sonia, based on your experience, of the societal adoption. Are people going to trust those regulations?
[00:19:58] Speaker D: When we painted the scenario of the future, the first statement would be, okay, you show us evidence that this is actually beneficial for us. You do. We call it demonstration from a technical side, but try to implement it in a place where you can see and actually see people having the benefit of having the system in place, and then we'll believe it. So, you know, it's really, really neat to see it, to believe it. So I think people are willing, but it needs to go out of theory, because now, you know, we study a lot of frameworks and methodology and we really need to go to the ground very quick so people actually can feel. And this leads maybe to your first questions, like people are willing to share their data. Yes, if there's convenience. And we go back again to convenience, because if they really see that, they are missing out, meaning, wow, look at my neighbor that he actually submitted this information. He has this, and he can do things so much quicker in an easier way, then they wouldn't think twice. Data is important until the point that you see this is going to save me time. I know there's different types of people, so some people are much more sensitive about data than others. But I would say, and this is kind of rule of thumb, that people are, they really see convenient, as you know, because we all have busy lives. So this is like very valid.
[00:21:15] Speaker C: And I think this is where european projects get really important, because normally in demos or in test fields, what we do in cases like this, we work with frontrunners, with early adopters, and these are the ones that engage, then afterwards, the rest of the community that take the community with them, and for new technologies, for new schemes, new business models, they are very, very important. So we have to demonstrate, like Sonia said, and then prove it. These people, these early adopters, are the ones that will then spread the message very rapidly. So this is a game changer if you have it or you don't in a project like this.
[00:21:55] Speaker B: Diogo, allow me to bring this back to the technology, because the benefits for the common good that we've discussed, the benefits of V two x V 2G, are clear. They're obvious, and they could be game changing for the entire energy system. Is all the technology there, is it ready?
[00:22:12] Speaker E: Well, technology is ready. It's still expensive for some reason. So discharging cars is still expensive at.
[00:22:19] Speaker B: The hardware part, before you go on, is the expensive part because of scale? Will that price point come down when.
[00:22:26] Speaker E: More people adopt it can come down. There are challenges. Technology wise even. Well, the mechanism to charge and discharge it will always be a little bit more expensive than having a regular ac charger, so we can do the comparison. As for pv installations, so a long time ago, it's usually expensive to have inverters, batteries and so on at our own house. Nowadays, it's changing, so it's evolving, but picking up on regulation. So, for instance, even discharging a car, in some countries, there isn't regulation for that. In Portugal, there's no regulation to discharge a car to the grid yet. So although for pv installations, we have that settled already. Well, always changing according to the problems that the grid may appear. But for discharging a car, it's not yet possible. So there's not regulation in that sense, which is also a challenge. European projects allow us to do demonstrations, so we can do these testings, proof with real data in real environments.
[00:23:22] Speaker D: It's like a sandbox.
[00:23:23] Speaker E: It's a sandbox. So then we can do the regulation according to what we found in terms of mean problems or improvements in that sense. But yeah, it's an evolving thing. So technology may be there in the future, so at the correct price point, but there are a lot of services that we can do already just by load managing, so just by telling when it's possible or not to charge. So, as Cartelman, as we mentioned, we have a lot of pv, and it's more or less predictable, or wind, it's more or less predictable. We can delay the charge to charge at that moment. If we have a lot of cars connected, like in an island, if we have control over all the chargers, we can do a lot of benefit to the grid just by controlling when they are allowed to charge.
[00:24:08] Speaker B: We've mentioned different phases of. Different stages of maturity. What about the regulation that's now got to regulate for all of these countries at different stages? Do we need to adapt the regulation?
[00:24:19] Speaker D: Definitely, definitely. I would maybe compare this to telco. So a few years ago, we still paid for roaming, or you experienced that now with charging your electrical vehicle, because Ross was telling us the story about trying to go from one country to the other, or using an electrical vehicle with a specific app of that country. And the matter of fact is, for example, one of the countries we've been, which is Slovenia, they are very small and actually for work, they travel quite a lot to other countries. For them, it's like a nightmare to go into a different country, and then you need to. For you to pay or for you to spot a specific charger, you need to use the specific apps. And we actually encounter this concept of roaming like capabilities, border electrical vehicle charging. Because for you to invest in electrical vehicle, we also need to understand that there's of course a financial aspect. So people think I'm going to save money, right? It's not just of course it's more sustainable, but also I'm going to save money in gas. You consider that for long trips, but long trips means then crossing the border. So what happens when you cross the border? So at the pan european level, I would say that they should try to create a specific, I don't know, a universal way of you finding or an app or something that help people to just very quickly hook in and then you can use a charger in a specific country because with the car, and it's funny, when we are talking about this experience, the users will tell us, yeah, because it should be as simple as me, you know, going to a gas station and then I just fill up the tank and that's it. So what is as simple as that for an electrical vehicle? And a parallel needs to be created as well.
[00:26:03] Speaker B: And you think that telecoms are a good example to follow?
[00:26:06] Speaker D: A good example, yeah. Because in terms of roaming, at the beginning there was always charges, right? So when we move, when we try to call, so we are here in Portugal and then you move and you try to call to Spain, there was always this charge and they removed that. They realized that then people were finding other ways to call as well and they were losing money. And this is always, you know, of course money is a good driver in that sense. Yeah. Inspires new innovative solution and I think there's need of that as also is that the problem is that again, we don't have that many users yet. It is growing. But that's again, chicken and egg problem because there's not enough users, then you don't have a big enough market to justify companies to really fully invest in that as well.
[00:26:52] Speaker C: In this point, I think that the European Commission has a very large interest because they are the ones that have the power to push the grid operators to talk between themselves and agree when a user from one country travels to the other, it can charge there using the costs or the contract that it has on its own country. I mean, it's a way that the grid operators have to find contracts between them inside european space. And this will benefit everyone that not only using electrical vehicles, but in many other things to have this kind of agreements between the grid operators of every country.
[00:27:31] Speaker B: Let's play a game. I'm going to ask an open question to each one of you, based on your role in the project, about what's working and what's not, and what do you think should be implemented to solve? I mean, we've addressed some of the problems and we know what the benefits are, what's going to work going forward.
[00:27:47] Speaker C: From our experience in the type of technology that we are developing. So we have technology that satisfies the homeowner inside his own space to charge its vehicle. So that's okay. But when you want to charge in a public space, that's much different. Imagine that you don't have a parking space in your own place, so you live in an apartment building, but you have to, to park outside. You need to leave your car outside and find one charging spot. The main difficulties, like Diogo said, is not about technology. Technology is there, it's on regulation, and the difficulties on pushing in an easy way the plugs to the street and allowing everyone to charge their car in front of their building. This is where we should put our effort in, because there are a lot of interests on acquiring EV's, but people are not going there because they know that the difficulties that they will come forward with if they want to charge their electrical vehicle in a public space. And most of people that live inside cities, really in city centers, they don't have their own private spaces to park, they need to charge outside in the street. And that's where city planners and managers and also the regulators of the electricity system in the country should put their effort in. So allow solutions to push electricity from buildings to the street and to people to be able to charge in any given parking spot.
[00:29:24] Speaker B: Sonia, what's working, what's helping to convince them to adopt?
[00:29:27] Speaker D: So we understand that owning a garage, it's a luxury, right? And in the city, even more so. So we understand that public charging is so important, we didn't invest enough on that kind of infrastructure, but then there's the details of it. So we also think that when we install a charger in the street, then the story ends there. It actually starts there, because there's so many nuances, how you charge a car. So if you would compare to top up or put gas in your car, it takes just a few minutes to charge a car. That's something else. And we also need to understand that there's human people, that they're in the street under the rain, under the snow, under the weather conditions to charge the car. We actually heard in the ground many stories of people saying, yeah, I actually have specific rain boots and a jacket. Then if I actually need to charge in the street, I take it all out and I have a whole system mounted to do that. And you think, wow, why didn't someone actually think of that? Because indeed, when you go to a gas station, there's a rooftop, right? You think like. And that for us is very basic, but I think it's growing, it's evolving, but there needs to be focus there and not just an afterthought. So the onus would be really public structure and really understanding how do people charge? Kind of go with them and, okay, show me how you do it. This is actually one of the exercises we did, and we learned quite a lot.
[00:30:51] Speaker B: Sonia has touched on two hurdles for adoption. One is the time required to charge and then how long that charge actually lasts. For how far away is the technology from getting us to a point where we can charge in a really convenient time, and for that charge to last.
[00:31:07] Speaker E: Much longer, increasing the speed of charge, it's very difficult to go beyond what we are doing nowadays. I think that's a problem, mostly because there are not enough chargers, because cars are parked, let's say, 90% of their time. We are not driving all day. Well, some specific professionals do, but that's not the regular user. So as soon as I can be part in charging, so if there's a charger there, there won't be a problem of charging at a faster or a slower pace. So it's a matter of having a charger there. And we are very far away from having charges for everyone. So it's a huge challenge, not on the technology side, but on the installation on infrastructure. So a lot of people to install them, a lot of people to manufacture them. So there's a huge supply chain to work and to put the chargers there. And that was the first point. The second point is one thing that Sonia also mentioned, that people are used to go to a gas station and just fill in the tank and move forward. And it's a huge change from talking to liters that everyone knows to kilowatt hour, so no one understands that. And it's very difficult to do this change, to put people thinking differently than they are used to think on. Okay, I just go there. I feel we need 40 liters. It cost me this. They can do that math because they all buy milk, water, wine, beer and so on. They know those things. But kilowatt hour, well, they pay the bill in the end of the month, and that's it.
[00:32:36] Speaker D: So we are trying to push EV's through companies. So incentivizing companies who actually buy electric fleets. And that's very good, because that actually creates the abbot. This is always the problem, right? You need to actually have something, do something for quite some time to create a lasting abbott. This perception of how to read kilowatts, that will come with experience. So to create the experience, it needs to come from there. Then from the company side, I think that's a great way to actually start disseminating the experience, and then people be more comfortable with it.
[00:33:08] Speaker B: Diogo, you mentioned when we were chatting earlier about batteries are great for cars, but they serve many other purposes. And we've spoken briefly about v two x and v 2g. Expand on some of those other uses for these batteries that may help convince people that this is for the greater good and I can participate.
[00:33:24] Speaker E: Exactly. So one of the issues that people also think is that, okay, what will happen to my battery when it does not suit more for my ev? So there are many other purposes that can be used. So EV usage for a battery is very demanding, but we can have it as a second left battery at my own place, where it's less demanding and it still outdates the lifetime of the cars. I think that there's also work to do on there. So I think one thing to move in that direction is, okay, the passport that I mentioned previously for the battery, and also standardization, because if we look at each EV, the battery is made around the EV. So each EV will have its own battery with its own technology, which is very secret, not open. And it brings a lot of challenges in order to use it again after it's not suitable for the car. There's something to do in there in terms of the manufacturers to be more open, to allow the batteries to be used afterward.
[00:34:23] Speaker B: If I'm understanding you correctly, you're saying we need some sort of standardization that's going to allow for greater second life use of batteries.
[00:34:30] Speaker E: Exactly. So either regulatory protocols of communication, those sort of things are necessary also for.
[00:34:36] Speaker D: Batteries, but even the permission. Permission, because this is also one of the things that we heard from people, is that I wish, you know, after I move, if I want to buy a new car, I wish, you know, the manufacturer actually let me keep the battery. And maybe they're talking about letting me keep, meaning I'm able to connect the battery in my house because they also see the value in that. So that will actually really help to surpass the barrier of battery degradation. If they see, you know, there's a whole new life they can tap into, and it's not value lost.
[00:35:09] Speaker C: Yes. And those advantages from using the battery after the life it has on the vehicle are also, in some projects are also being tested, because we have examples of where an agreement has been done by an EV car manufacturer and a grid operator, and then they're testing several batteries from cars that are being used to serve the grid, to provide services to the grid, in certain points of the grid, where it's very useful. And these batteries, in fact, they increase their percentage of efficiency a little bit by being used in a regular manner, not just like jog mentioned, it's very demanding using it in an EV, but when you use it in a regulated manner, they last longer, and so the efficiency grows. And this is a very good example. And I think this should be one thing that the car manufacturers should provide to the car owners, is that they own also the battery after it served the car, and the ways that they can use the battery afterwards. And I think there is also a very good niche where you can put some business models on the batteries.
[00:36:17] Speaker B: Let's go back to the specifics of EV for EU. What next for the project?
[00:36:22] Speaker C: What are your timelines in this moment? I think most of our demos are being installed, so we have already more than one and a half years of learning, having all this research and learning up until the moment where all the technology has been developed. And now we are starting to install in the demo sites and start our testing in this period. It's very important because that's where everything that we have conceived, and on our case in the portuguese demo, is where everything is going to be installed and tested in Azores island in San Miguel, together with the local entities, electricity officer and local secretary of energy. So we have our own technology from smart energy lab being installed there, being used in a different way that has never been tested before. And we are also interacting with homeowners that have their own EV's that allow entities from the project really to operate the charge discharge cycles of their vehicle in order to test all these previous concepts that we had. So I think all the demos of the project are doing this at this moment. And then later on, on, beginning of 2025, we'll start to have the first results and get the first things out of the project.
[00:37:41] Speaker B: Rory. Sonia Diogo, it's been a fascinating conversation. Thanks very much for joining us. We look forward to joining you in Milan for in a journey where you guys will be participating and sharing your learnings with the participants there.
[00:37:54] Speaker D: Thank you for having us.
[00:37:55] Speaker B: Thanks very much.
[00:37:56] Speaker E: Thank you.
[00:37:56] Speaker C: Thank you.
[00:37:57] Speaker A: You've been listening to the EU Energy Projects podcast, a podcast brought to you by enlit and friends. You can find us on Spotify, Apple and the Enlit world website. Just hit subscribe and you can access our other episodes too. I'm Areetti Daradimo. Thank you for joining us. It.
