Flexible Futures 2024: finding flexible energy solutions together

Greg Jackson is the founder of OEG, the global energy and technology company driving the affordable, green energy system of the future. Launched in 2016, the Group now serves 7.2 million customers across 18 countries, and operates a £6bn portfolio of renewable energy assets across Europe.

Kingsmill Bond's role is to research the energy transition narrative, with a focus on financial market participants. His work underscores the fact that energy lies at the core of all of our systems, and that the shift from fossil fuels to renewables will compare to the last industrial revolution.

Alex Schoch leads the Flexibility team at Octopus Energy focused on developing and bringing to market next generation products and underlying technologies spanning from utility scale generation and to consumer demand. His role is pivotal in shaping the future of the environment by utilising green tech to decarbonise industries as well as domestic homes.

Marcia Poletti is currently Head of European System Change at Octopus Energy, and a Non-Executive Director at Eelpower, a UK grid scale storage company. In both these roles she is focused on driving change to deliver the energy transition as quickly and cheaply as possible.

Marcia has deep government and strategy experience, with a career spanning energy consulting at McKinsey to energy transition policy for the UK Government. She joined Octopus Energy in 2022 from OFGEM, UK’s Energy Regulator, where she was Strategy Deputy Director. She has a B.E EngSci (Hons) and an MBA from INSEAD.

Richard joined NODES in 2020 from Nord Pool where he successfully set up and lead the development of Nord Pool’s Exchange and commercial activities in the GB Day ahead and intraday wholesale electricity markets for over 10 years. Richard’s expertise resides in Business Development, Trading and Sales Management, he is an Alumni from London Business School, where he completed the Senior Executive Program, focusing on Leadership, Strategy and Transformation.

Mike is responsible for the Piclo Max product, as well as running the Market Access and Market Operations teams. Mike is passionate about the energy transition, having spent the last c.15 years across the Energy industry, including nine years at Shell, three years at Deloitte and most recently having run the JustPark EV business prior to Piclo. Mike also serves as a non-exec director at Giki Social Enterprise and is a Venture Partner at Infinium Partners.

Sotiris leads UK Power Networks’ Distribution System Operator business. He has 20 years experience in engineering, construction and innovation of electricity networks. For the last decade he has championed innovative ways to plan and operate smart networks such as flexible connections and flexibility markets. Sotiris studied electrical engineering at the University of Manchester and has an MBA from the University of Cambridge.

Ben heads up the Distribution System Operator function for National Grid’s UK Electricity Distribution function and is responsible for forecasting, capacity management and developing strategic network investment options for all four of NGED's licenced areas. He is an experienced electrical engineer within the UK electrical utilities industry, spanning a number of functions including operations, planning, innovation and strategy.

Dr. rer. nat. Jochen Bammert is Team Manager of Non-Standard Markets in Products & Non-Standard Markets at TransnetBW. After receiving his Ph.D. in theoretical physics at Bayreuth University, he began his career at the TSO TenneT T working on congestion management and system operation. In 2015 he joined TransnetBW. Jochen Bammert has 10 years of experience in grid operations and services including grid capacity calculation (NTC, flow-based), CWE and CEE (flow-based), congestion management, cross-border redispatch, cost-recovery, ancillary services (especially redispatch), market design, TSO/DSO coordination and provision of flexibility for Market and Grid. Furthermore, he is also responsible for several research and implementation projects.

Luca is in charge of System Strategy department at Terna, the Italian Transmission System Operator, managing the long term scenario development of the power system and the market adequacy assessment in order to support Company’s regulated business. His previous experience includes operational management of both individual and fleets of power plants, and ten years in Enel Energia, covering different roles from portfolio management to Marketing Director.

Simona is an analyst on the Flexibility Team at Octopus Energy, where she has been driving domestic turn-down campaigns and identifying new business opportunities for flexibility across Europe. Since joining, she has helped commercialise and deploy National Grid’s Demand Flexibility Service and has product-managed Octopus's customer offering: Saving Sessions. This has allowed 1.3m customers to shift over 200MW of demand, supporting the grid, saving carbon emissions and accelerating customer flexibility.

With over a decade of experience across electricity system operations, Amy currently leads the ESO’s Flexibility Market Strategy team, setting the vision and roadmap that will unlock the GWs of low carbon flexibility needed for a net zero energy system. Having overseen commercial operations at the ESO for the past few years and leading the team behind the innovative Demand Flexibility Service, Amy is now seeking to ensure that low carbon flexibility assets, including demand side flexibility, are able to move seamlessly between GB’s electricity Markets, accessing revenue opportunities and delivering whole system value for consumers.

João Rafael is a senior business developer in E-REDES strategy team. E-REDES, Portuguese mainland DSO serving more than 6 million customers, is committed to achieve the energy transition goals. Flexibility, as a way to promote efficiency and leverage renewables integration will have a central role to fulfil our ambition.

Catherine has spent the last 10 years working across the energy sector with experience in commercial procurement, operational planning, and business development. In her current role as Flexibility Markets Manager she is responsible for SSEN’s flexibility strategy. This includes procuring flexibility, gathering feedback from stakeholders and ensuring the right tools are available to manage flexibility.

Prior to joining SSEN into 2023, Catherine worked at ESO and in a startup, Smart Wires, working on business development activities across Europe.

Markus works as an advisor in the field of balancing services with a focus on decentralized flexibilities. His tasks include contract management for balancing service providers, supporting the prequalification process for new market participants and assisting with the development of the Network Codes Demand Response.

Lennart is a product manager at Next Kraftwerke GmbH, one of the largest Virtual Power Plants in Europe with over 16,000 aggregated assets.

In the past, Lennart was the project lead for pilot projects that led to the first successful prequalification of EV fleets in FCR and aFRR in Germany. In addition, he oversaw the trading of EV flexibility in the Intraday market as part of the BDL project and currently focuses on the integration of home storage systems into European balancing markets.

Before joining Next in 2020, Lennart worked for two years in energy management consulting in London.

Maddie specialises in power market design at Octopus Energy, leading Octopus' work in GB to promote the value of flexibility and break down existing barriers to maximise its potential. She led Octopus’ response and engagement on the first REMA consultation and is currently leading on a project with UKPN to trial dynamic distribution pricing with a subset of Octopus’ customers.

Dr. Lars Nolting is project manager in the Department for Digital and Flex Development at TenneT. He is focusing on projects that aim at unlocking decentral flexibilities for TSO grids and creating new digital solutions for TenneT. Before joining TenneT in 2022, he worked as a scientist and chief engineer in energy system analysis at RWTH Aachen University and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

With over 15 years of experience in the energy sector, Martin van ’t Verlaat leads Equigy’s crowd balancing platform. Equigy is an initiative founded by 6 European TSOs with the joint ambition to lead the energy transition by enabling new sources of small flexibility to participate in electricity markets.

Martin leads a team of business and IT experts to create an easy and single point of access to multiple markets, thereby encouraging market participation and setting a standard in Europe. Before joining Equigy, he was program manager in TenneT's digital transformation, and covered different roles in the TSO and DSO area.

Dr. Nicolás Morell Dameto is an Industrial Engineer, specialized in power engineering, by the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. Additionally, he holds a Master in Electricity Markets from the Illinois Institute of Technology (2018), and a PhD in Electrical Energy by Universidad Pontificia Comillas, in which his main research topics are in the field of smart grids and regulation with emphasis on electricity tariffs design. He has 6 years experience in the energy sector in a variety of companies, working for suppliers/retailers, generators/developers, and as a consultant for regulators and utilities.

Sandrine is responsible for flexibilities at Enedis, the French Distribution System Operator. She is notably in charge of implementing local flexibilities to address network congestion. She has extensive experience in market mechanisms, electrical system balancing, and system operation.

Mike has gained management experience in mergers and acquisitions of technical and IT companies, a.o. at EY. He has held crucial management roles in multiple projects for TenneT TSO such as: congestion management, reactive power, (batteries, sale of power exchange ETPA, the merger of certification companies CertiQ and Vertogas and was shareholder representative for several TenneT subsidiaries. In addition, Mike has been involved on the sidelines of GOPACS for 3 years and forms since the 1st of January together with Ranko Stojakovic the board of GOPACS.

Michael brings together optimisation design, market access and customer propositions to harness flexibility from domestic and commercial assets, at scale. Example products include Octopus Zero Bill Homes and Power Pack, both guaranteeing customers pay nothing to consume energy, covering homes and EV charging respectively. Michael holds a PhD in flexibility from distributed energy resources from Imperial College London.

Claire Addison is an experienced regulatory and policy expert, with fourteen years of experience in the energy sector including demand side flexibility, energy storage, onshore wind, gas and coal assets in the British and Irish markets. Since 2019 Claire has been Head of Regulation at Flexitricity, the Edinburgh based flexible electricity experts. She is also a distribution system operation (DSO) review panel member for Northern Powergrid, providing independent oversight and scrutiny of the network’s flexibility investment and decision-making.

Previously, Claire spent five years working for The AES Corporation, a Fortune 200 energy company, latterly as Government & Regulatory Affairs Manager for the UK & Ireland. She held responsibility for the company’s input into early energy storage policy across Europe.

Emma is a market design manager on the flexibility team with Octopus Group. Emma is a passionate and experienced regulatory economist and electricity market expert. She has 14 years experience in the British and Irish energy industries, with a particular expertise in flexibility, market design, and regulation. She also acts as an industry representative on a number of decision making bodies in the British energy industry.