What does Spain’s blackout mean for the future of clean energy?
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This week has been pretty bleak for energy transitioners. Prices are high in many parts of the world. Tens of millions of homes in Spain and Portugal lost power at the end of April. A lot of people will believe that we're going too fast.
We're halfway across the road. Now, if you've ever seen anyone hesitate crossing a multi-lane highway, that is a very dangerous thing to do. The best thing is to get right across as quick as you can.
But I think this gets us to the really meaty part of our discussion, which is about how you go and fix the grid.
You can run a very high proportion renewable grid incredibly reliably, but you don't do it like you did the old ones. Markets have got to move at the same speed as technology and engineering innovation. At some point you start saying, should we open up a debate that involves the demand side as well as the supply side.
And that's a real-life social science experiment that you went off and conducted, right?
1.6 million households signed up. All we had to do was text them saying, tonight, earn a little bit of money by shifting your demand by an hour. What we got was equivalent of turning off all of the electricity in two major cities.
This message is different to a lot of the people who have talked about the renewable transition over the last 10 or 15 years. A number of the advocates are promoting it in a way that is very ideologically driven, that is probably not very persuasive, frankly.
We signed deals in eight of the biggest house builders in the UK to build homes where there will never be an energy bill. We shouldn't try to convince people this. We should be able to show it because it's available right now, right here.
We're joined by Greg Jackson, the CEO of Octopus Energy. The company is only nine years old, but truly has enjoyed exponential growth. It's the largest electricity provider in the UK, and it serves tens of millions of homes worldwide through its software platform. I'm a happy customer, and I've been stalking Greg for several years, delighted to have him here. So today, we're going to try to make sense of the Iberian blackout. Tens of millions of homes in Spain and Portugal lost power at the end of April and dig into how we future-proof our future grid. How can we make sure they deliver clean energy safely? Or is that not going to be possible? So Greg's an expert here. Greg, the glass-jawed grid... like a boxer that just falls over at the sight of the opponent.
What happened in Spain and Portugal?
I mean, look, first of all, we should be clear that we don't know yet. Looking into major events like this, which have usually got multiple causes, takes time. And we have to let the orderly process of investigation go on. There was a major blackout that affected a very large region of the UK, including some of the southeast or most populous regions in 2019. Investigations of that, and it was a less serious event than it's been in Portugal, took many, many weeks. And facts are still emerging down the road. So let's be really clear about that. But I think we can draw a few generic lessons. And there have been kind of comparable ones. I mentioned one in the UK. We, I think in 2000, was it 2016? South Australia had a very major blackout with some very similar looking characteristics, in that case caused by storms.
There's some characteristics in common. And of course, we've seen them in Texas as well. And what they've got in common is an energy island with very little interconnection. So I think only about 3% of Spain's total capacity is available via interconnectors.
And Texas famously, Ercot, the land of the free, does not connect to anyone.
I think technically there is actually a little bit of connection, but it's very, very, very skinny. And Australia's got a similar thing, energy islands, because obviously the geography of Australia lends itself to that. So the first thing is energy islands. The second thing is lack of batteries. And I think this is really big. Essentially, you can run a very high proportion renewable grid incredibly reliably.
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