June 30, 2025 • 32 mins
In this episode of the EV Charging Podcast, we go way beyond the box. Join Daniel Carson and Jeff Sykes from Solar Choice as they sit down with visionary entrepreneur Stéphane Grosjean—founder and CEO of Smappee—for a thought-provoking journey into the past, present, and future of smart energy.
From building remote meter readers in the '90s to developing cutting-edge home energy management systems and dreaming of ocean-based charging kites, Stéphane shares the story behind his 30+ year mission to revolutionise how we produce and consume electricity. Discover how Smappee is using EV chargers as a Trojan horse for a smarter, more responsive energy grid—and why the sun might just be humanity's ultimate nuclear solution.
This episode is a must-listen for anyone passionate about renewables, decentralised energy, and where the EV and smart home ecosystem is headed next.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_03 (00:10):
Hello everybody and welcome to the EV Charging
Podcast, taking you behind thescenes of the electric vehicle
charging industry in Australiaand around the world.
I'm Daniel Carson.
And I'm Jeff Sykes.
And we're your hosts from SolarChoice, Australia's largest
(00:32):
independent quote comparisonplatform for electric vehicle
chargers, solar, heat pumps andbatteries.
This week, we're bringing you aninteresting conversation from
late last year with StéphaneGrosjean, the CEO of Smappy.
Stéphane has been in the energyindustry for a long time.
(00:55):
He's a serial entrepreneur, andhe's looking way into the future
with some creative, fun,mind-boggling ideas about what
might be on the distant horizon.
We know you'll enjoy this one.
(01:18):
Welcome to the EV ChargingPodcast.
We're very fortunate today to bejoined by Stéphane Grosjean,
joining us all the way fromBelgium.
Stéphane is the founder and CEOof Smappy, or now Smappy Group.
and has a really long history ofan entrepreneurial journey,
starting lots of companies inthe energy space.
(01:38):
And we're really thrilled tohave you joining us.
Thank you, Stefan.
SPEAKER_00 (01:41):
It's my pleasure.
Looking forward to the rest.
SPEAKER_03 (01:44):
Excellent.
Well, we've been very fortunateto speak to a number of guests
as part of our podcast who haveprobably not been in the game
quite as long as yourself.
Some of them in their firstcompany or the start of their
entrepreneurial journey.
Maybe you could wind back theclock for us and tell us a
little bit about how you startedand and how you got into this
sector with the first companythat you started?
SPEAKER_00 (02:06):
Well, as a young engineer, I started in a telecom
company making modems, the time,you know, when we used modems to
connect to the internet.
And that was the time whereelectricity companies had
mechanical meters, you know,with the disk, non-digital and
with pulse contacts.
(02:26):
And large customers had to beread remotely because there were
really lots of millions involvedin the monthly consumption bills
and they were looking for asolution to do data collection
remotely.
That is where I learned my firstor had my first expertise to
build a data logger and theassociated software to really
(02:49):
collect energy data for theutility companies here in
Europe.
and i founded my company i was28 that's a long time ago in
1991 and had two business unitsin mind two solutions one was
for those utility companies thegrid companies to collect really
(03:11):
commercial industrial meters Butthose large energy consumers
also saw the value in the energydata, how they could submit or
eventually their processes, howmuch energy do we consume for
the production of this producton production line one and two.
(03:31):
So that led me into using thesame data collection for energy
efficiency, energy management.
And as such, with this companythat I built up to a global
leader internationally after 20years being market leader in
utility space, but also incommercial industrial for
(03:53):
submetering and energyefficiency.
I sold the business to Elster,which was a electricity, gas,
water meter manufacturer, now inthe hands of Honeywell, as the
complement of what they made.
I saw that customers likeWalmart, 5,000 tours in US, or
Tesco in UK, were able to reduce40, 45% in their energy usage
(04:18):
and consumption by looking atthe data, having the insights,
tuning air conditioning systemsthat were running without
liquid, cooling liquid, andconsuming and running all the
time.
So by looking at the data thatwe collected with energy, we
were able to give them a BI too,an energy BI, business
(04:42):
intelligence too, that led toreductions, optimizing the way
they consume, reducing the cost,and being able, and that was
what we saw, to participate indemand response programs to help
the utility companies to reducethe consumption at peak points
by engaging those very largeenergy consumers.
(05:03):
So that is what I did for 20years.
I sold the business after beinginternational, going public, and
I found it snappy to do actuallythe same but with behind the
meter for homeowners initiallybecause I saw that and the time
was ripe in 2012 to use appsbecause software has had to be
(05:29):
very easy and available for ahome user you wouldn't send them
to a SaaS platform on theinternet they wouldn't do it
anyway and the time came wasripe to start providing data in
a intelligible way.
And we saw a change of behaviorwith those users that reduced
(05:50):
the consumption in homes,households by 12%.
And that is what is still ourambition with Smappy, to provide
a tool that reduces theconsumption.
The problem we saw was thatself-install was good for 5% of
the population, the tech-savvypeople, but that the mass market
(06:11):
wouldn't do it.
So we turned toward electriciansinstallers and first to solar
installers who went in to sell afew thousand euro dollar
whatever and then take that homeenergy manager along to help
provide those insights to homeusers what we have seen is That
(06:34):
standalone, it didn't workbecause it was 250, 300 euro and
too cheap for an electrician tosay, I won't make money on that.
And I will get a lot ofquestions.
I won't do it.
So we had to combine it in a waywith solar and nowadays with EV.
Where in the EV land, we noticedthat first we tried to interface
(06:57):
to all kinds of EV brands, EVcharger brands.
to make them smart, use energywith dynamic rates, optimize
their own solar energy usage bycharging faster when you have
excess solar so you don't injectit in the grid to take it back
in and provide the grid withexcess energy and problems.
(07:21):
We said we will optimize that.
That's what I anticipated.
But we saw that it didn't workbecause energy chargers for car
industry were guys making a boxwith a cable, an outlet for a
car.
They didn't understand energymanagement.
And so we stepped into makingbetter charges with good,
(07:42):
accurate measurement, allembarked, and that is how we
used the EV charging as theopportunity to get into the
homes, but with the finalendgame to provide a tool to
homeowners to get insights, toreduce their energy consumption,
because the 12% you don'tconsume, you don't even have to
(08:03):
produce them with solar it'salways better and then the next
thing is to optimize the use ofenergy to facilitate and
accelerate the transition tosolar to wind where the only
problem we have with solar andwind is is the fact that you
can't turn on the wind and thesun when you need more energy
(08:25):
you can't turn it off when youhave too much so instead of
turning the valves in the powerplants we turn the valves in the
homes and in the businesseswhere we use more or less energy
according to grid.
Our ambition is to be the homeenergy manager, the business
energy manager and controlcontrollable assets in such a
(08:48):
way that we toggle or we addressthe challenge that renewable
bring, the fact that you can'tcentralize the control, that you
have decentralized distributedgeneration production that you
need to manage there.
That's actually the The bigpicture of the history what I
(09:11):
did, how I came, it's more than30 years, so I have seen the
evolution and this allowed me toanticipate, be a bit visionary
if I may say it, because I wasearly in that market of
telecommunication.
I have seen what data withenergy can do, how we can
reduce, and how we cancontribute to that faster
(09:35):
transition to renewable energy.
SPEAKER_03 (09:38):
Yeah, it certainly seems like you've been thinking
about this problem and thesolutions for a lot longer than
a lot of people.
And maybe you're in the rightplace at the right time and had
some of the right ideas that setEnergy ICT up to be so
successful.
but then carrying those ideasinto a residential setting and
using SMAPI as an electricvehicle charging company, almost
(10:01):
masquerading as an electricvehicle charging company when
really the core of the businessor the vision is in energy
efficiency and management.
SPEAKER_00 (10:10):
It is indeed still the case.
Energy data is where we comefrom and where we will end in.
in controlling those uh to becontrolled assets that really
need to be uh controlled in thatsmart way in a smart grid uh
that's that's absolutely um thecase
SPEAKER_02 (10:33):
yeah so stefan uh if we go back even further you've
built a career in energy whenyou were a young man, a student.
Did you always know that theenergy space was one that you
were passionate about or did yousort of stumble into it?
SPEAKER_00 (10:51):
Absolutely.
If I look back at notes that Ifound at home, digging into
boxes and when I was 14, Iremember that I was so impressed
by the chemistry lesson hydrogensplitting water into hydrogen
(11:12):
and oxygen with just electricityI did that at home took water
salt because I heard that thishelped the ions were useful two
tubes and I started to produceand of course I was 14 and I
made some assumptions and Imeasured how much electricity I
(11:34):
did put and I measured thevolume of hydrogen I created and
said, oh, I'm making a literwith so much electricity.
And I was aware that at thattime, some car could run on
hydrogen instead of liquefiedpetrol gas.
I had read that and did put thelink that, oh, I make a liter, I
(11:59):
will take the alternator of themotor, produce the electricity
to split the water and then feedit into the motor of course
being a bit older you understandas an engineer that this is a
perpetual mobility and that thisdoesn't work my calculation
error was that i was usingliters in gas and liters were in
(12:25):
LPG were liquefied so there is adifference between a volume a
liter of gas and the liter ofand and that is where I made a
mistake but I was intrigued andpassionate about making a motor
running on electricity by theintermediate fuel being hydrogen
(12:52):
and And that is in the way thatI was looking into things, how
does it work, being curious,thinking, inventing in a certain
way.
And on that note that I foundthat was written, this is the
motor of the future, the motorof energy saving.
(13:12):
Really, I found that note somefive years ago and said, Jesus,
that's connecting my dots.
My thing has always been innature in actually I wanted to
build an undersea boat a littlevan kind of dimensions that
(13:33):
would be an undersea boat and ofcourse it had to run on
something well the seawater iswater with salt and that
imagination led me because Iwanted to travel around the
world undersea and beindependent of not have to pay
energy and be clean as well soSo imagination and thinking in a
(13:59):
different way, creating, is whatleads to new ideas.
I don't know how we say inEnglish, but my life saying, I
would say, or phrases come fromJules Verne, the French author,
writing books on going to themoon 80 days around the world
(14:25):
with the air balloon 20,000miles under sea.
He said that all great things inthis world have been created and
thought in the name ofexaggerated hope.
Maybe it's exaggerated hope, butit drives me.
And at the end, I have...
(14:47):
done nice things.
I built companies, I helped, Icontributed.
And my end game, if you want toknow, one of the many divisions,
that's why I'm CEO of the SmappyGroup.
I have a CEO that will run themachine, do the stuff I don't
want to do, you know, thepeople, the things.
And I'm creating new divisions.
(15:08):
And the last division, I won'tsay what I'm doing, the four,
five, six, but fantastic,incredible products.
But one of the The last thingthat I want to do is recharging
boats in the oceans.
At a certain point in time,boats will also drive electric
or be fueled with the currentcombustion engines.
(15:31):
And what I want to do isgenerate that energy in the
oceans, not around the coast,not to have a cable feeding the
continent.
in the middle of where boatstravel in the oceans with wind
energy with kites going a milehigh taking that giant quantity
(15:52):
of energy a football field bigkite that really drags along
little boats with like a carbreaking and generating
electricity and those littleboats boats that are like drones
(16:16):
completely autonomous will go tothe mothership where we have
either a platform or a bigmothership where we discharge
those little boats that arethousands of them in the oceans
coming to discharge or give theelectrons to the to the
mothership where in a certainway we either convert them to
(16:36):
electricity and storage andbatteries if the boats would be
like the traditional carsplugging in and charging the
batteries or making hydrogen onthe sea.
So in a way, you know, threequarters of the planet or two
thirds of the planet is oceans.
Why would we have to put thosewind turbines and sticks on the
(16:57):
land?
We need to live there.
We need to use the land foragriculture, to create food.
So that is what I want to do.
So guys, every year you canchallenge me, have a new
podcast, say, where are youbuilding that?
Remember that this is what I'dlike to do.
I hope I will be able to do it.
(17:19):
I will live.
and see that, and thenafterwards I will kind of hand
over.
So I have some time to transferthat passion into the already
passionate Smappy team.
I believe maybe this is why I'mhere in this universe, that this
(17:39):
is my mission as a human tocontribute to Smappy.
to help humanity survive on thisplanet because the planet
doesn't have a problem we alwayssay we have to do that for the
planet the planet will surviveall those floods and hurricanes
and things it's animals that areeradicated and we are a special
(18:04):
kind of animal but we will beeradicated from this beautiful
planet if we continue to dothis.
So it's for humanity we do it.
It's not for the planet.
It's for us, for our children,so that they can live in an
environment that we have known.
SPEAKER_03 (18:23):
I imagine that people that might be listening
to this podcast, they might havebeen expecting to hear a lot
more about EV charges and thedesign of the box and more
conventional topics.
But to hear the drive that's gotyou to this point gives, I
think, people a lot of contextas to what's coming next.
And to hear that people likeyourself and other people at
(18:44):
Smappy are thinking that farahead about projects that are
going to make big changes in thefuture is an exciting thing.
So if we just shift
SPEAKER_02 (18:53):
speeds for a second.
Obviously you're based inBelgium and that's a starkly
different environment when itcomes to electric vehicle
charging than what we have herein Australia.
At the moment there's less than1% of the vehicles on the road
in Australia are electricvehicles based on some figures
(19:14):
that I've seen that Belgium isat 4% now for electric vehicles
on the road and that's up to 16%when you include hybrids.
And if you look at thepercentage of new sales, it's
much higher than that as well.
So I guess in a lot of ways,Australia could be like Belgium
(19:35):
in 2017 or 2018 or somethinglike that.
So can you give us a bit ofcontext in terms of how the
growth has played out for youover the last five or six years
in the industry?
What sort of things have reallydriven the uptake of electric
vehicles vehicles for consumersand what sort of things have you
(19:58):
had to really focus on withSmappy?
SPEAKER_00 (20:00):
So I think the first thing that is present here is
the cultural aspect.
Is it okay?
No, we have many petrol hitsthat I hate them when they say,
well, range, does it work?
Is it efficient?
I mean, I So now to the petrol,that's what I tell them.
(20:27):
Even if you would produceelectricity with gas in a power
plant, in a power plant it has60% efficiency.
An electric engine has 95%efficiency.
That means that 95 multiplied by60, you're using, let's say, 55%
of gas to get the gas to thewheel, well to wheel.
(20:52):
If it's gas in your car, thebest combustion engines are 30,
33% efficiency electric is 95 96percent three times more
effective efficient so just fromthat point of view we need to go
there it's cleaner it's easierit's you can do everything with
(21:15):
electricity you know no way ithink they are at 70 percent of
all cars being electric i don'tknow the exact figures but it's
in that and out of the the newcars I think 9 out of 10 are
electric.
So how did it happen?
With subsidies.
(21:36):
So it made it cheaper.
It's still more expensive, butit made it cheaper.
What I'm always saying also toenterprises, the TCO, which is
the total cost of ownership, isbetter on electric.
If you have solar panels on yourroof, and your employees drive
electric, you charge them at theoffice.
(21:58):
You pay almost zero for thefuel.
I mean, the electricity is madefrom your roof.
Imagine your amortizer afterfour or five years, your
electricity production.
All the years after, it's freeenergy.
So you drive free.
You don't have to pay for thefuel.
So if you look at this, and thereduced maintenance on electric
(22:18):
vehicles, you don't have a gauzeexhaust, you don't have an air
filter, you don't have...
I mean, oil to refuel, toreplace.
I mean, it's just simple.
It's electric.
The TCO is better.
I think it's pure business logicto do it.
(22:39):
I am also even againstsubsidies.
You know, even nowadays,governments are talking about
subsidizing gas power plant youknow what i mean it's we
subsidize the solar industry toto reduce the cost so that
people would do it now we havesituations where we have wind
(23:05):
and solar but we have some gapsand they think yeah we need
those gas power plants to fillin the gaps okay uh i think it
can be done with intelligencethe virtual power plant concept
that we have shiftingconsumption first reducing
consumption as well use cars andbatteries no they still think we
(23:30):
need that gas power plantbecause we can turn on the valve
well you know turn on the valve,there's another guy, Putin, in
Russia, that turned the valvesin the other way and shut us
down with the gas.
So we still have a geopoliticalrisk.
With nuclear, yeah, we also havea geopolitical risk.
Wind, solar, no risk.
(23:51):
So as an economy, you don't payfor the wind.
You don't pay for the solar.
You pay for gas.
You have a geopolitical risk forgas.
The same for nuclear.
So go to that.
Make your economy productive.
help as entrepreneurs aspopulation to go there let us
transition to a full full fullrenewable based economy it's
(24:15):
cheaper it's very important thatour industry can have access to
cheap energy and that willhappen and those governments
then say we need to go tonuclear well I advocated as well
15, 20 years ago that we need togo to nuclear.
There's no CO2 emissions.
(24:35):
And this is well contained.
But the thing is, it takes 15 to20 years with permits, with
building, with having it safeand operating those things.
So too bad, too late.
The only possibility is wind,solar, with intelligence where
we consume, that we adapt to theavailability, and electric cars.
SPEAKER_03 (24:56):
The conversation around nuclear and also fossil
fuel projects is particularlyrelevant in Australia, where
exporting of fossil fuels hasbeen a very important part of
our economy for a long time.
And there's a lot of talk.
from the opposition party at afederal level, not from the
current government who's inpower, leaning towards nuclear.
(25:20):
Every few months we read aboutthe government weighing up the
options about opening a new coalplant or gas fields, but like
you said, the reality is by thetime these projects could come
to fruition, vehicle-to-grid anddistributed power is going to
have advanced so much that wewill not need those enormous
fossil fuel resources.
SPEAKER_00 (25:40):
If I may say, I really believe in the nuclear
fusion technology, S-U-N.
Yes, the sun.
What does the sun do?
It's a fusion reactor.
It's taking two hydrogen atoms.
It's fusing them to helium.
And you know, this is free.
(26:02):
it's at millions of miles awayit is safe distance and actually
there is a fantastic invisiblegrid that doesn't hurt that
doesn't pollute the environmentwith cables there's cables from
that nuclear sun reactor goingto everybody everybody can have
(26:24):
that free energy you takesomething called a solar panel
you put it in the sun and itconverts the 1000 1500 watts per
square meter that this energyfrom those photons coming that
is a byproduct of diffusionthose photons light energy waves
(26:47):
come they hit a panel and theyconvert 24 percent of that 1000
watts per square meter and youget 240 watts electric there's
no pollution it just hits thepanel you put the panel anywhere
you have those invisible hiddencables everywhere how simple and
(27:11):
nice is that how stupid is it todo the other thing to start to
try to invest and build andconcrete and things to set up a
power plant that is available ata safe distance working for us
free and you know The totalamount of terawatt years per
year, I mean the total amount ofenergy that we all consume in
(27:33):
industry, in homes, on the wholeplanet for all applications, so
transportation, everything, andall forms and fossil and
nuclear, total big number.
Well, that number that we use ina whole year, is provided by the
(27:54):
sun in just eight hours theradiation the watts per square
meters of the surface of theplanet that amount of energy
during eight hours because whattimes hours is what hours is
energy the quantity so aquantity of that wattage that we
(28:15):
get from the sun in eight hoursis the same quantity as all the
energy used by everybody and allforms on the whole planet for a
whole year so how stupid is itto think that we should do
things differently it's it'sobvious no Anyway, I'm too
(28:38):
opinionated, maybe.
SPEAKER_02 (28:39):
Yeah, I think it's a really, really good
SPEAKER_00 (28:42):
point.
SPEAKER_02 (28:44):
Yeah, I think there is also a pretty key advantage
of where we're headed in thefuture with solar and wind is
the fact that at the moment, youknow, for these People who own
these solar assets, curtailmentis a big issue.
But the only reason they arecurtailing is because they can
respond very quickly.
(29:05):
So if we think of the history ofenergy creation, it's been
traditionally through coal andnuclear, very early.
low assets to respond toanything in the market.
So if you want to turn off acoal generator and turn it back
on again, you're talking aboutweeks.
Whereas if there is instabilityin the grid or volatility and
(29:27):
you need something in thegeneration side to change, the
huge benefit of the future wehave with solar and wind is
that, particularly with solar,it can respond in a matter of
seconds.
And in the future withinterconnected batteries, that
can be a matter of nanoseconds.
So the ability for us to have apermanent, a much more stable
(29:51):
grid with renewable power isquite clear, even though the
current rhetoric aroundrenewable energy is that it's an
intermittent energy source andit can only provide part of the
power.
But I think that is somethingthat's quite often overlooked.
SPEAKER_00 (30:11):
Well, you know, I mean, it's true.
But we can control the demandside of the energy also in
fractions of a second.
We have over hundred thousandsof assets, charges we manage on
our platform, Smappy charges.
(30:32):
With a press on a button on oursystem, we can really engage
hundreds of megawatts byreducing If you are short of 200
megawatt, I press a button and Ireduce the power instantly for
those charges that are activelycharging.
(30:52):
So we have that power alreadytoday in this MAPI platform.
And when the cars will be ableto feed back, it's even better.
Gentlemen, I have a time issuebecause they took a lot of time.
Or maybe you have a lastquestion?
SPEAKER_03 (31:07):
Well, we have questions that could take us the
six hours to get through.
This has been fantastic, andwe've loved getting a
perspective that I think is verydifferent from some of the other
guests that we've had on.
We really appreciate that.
For us here in Sydney, it's 9p.m., so we might wrap this one
up, but if we could find a timein the future, it would be
fantastic, and I think theaudience would also love to hear
(31:28):
a bit more.
SPEAKER_00 (31:28):
Okay.
It's my pleasure.
Looking forward to podcast two.
Thank you so much
SPEAKER_03 (31:33):
for your time, Stefan.
Yes.
Bye-bye, guys.
Thank you so much.
SPEAKER_02 (31:43):
so that's it and thanks for listening to this
episode of the ev chargingpodcast brought to you as always
by solar choice australia's onlyinstant quote comparison service
for solar ev charges heat pumpsbatteries and air conditioning
systems we also provideindependent consultation on and
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(32:06):
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SPEAKER_03 (32:16):
two weeks.
If you think this is the bestpodcast you've ever heard in
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your favorite podcast app.
Hello everybody and welcome to the EV Charging
Podcast, taking you behind thescenes of the electric vehicle
charging industry in Australiaand around the world.
I'm Daniel Carson.
And I'm Jeff Sykes.
And we're your hosts from SolarChoice, Australia's largest
(00:32):
independent quote comparisonplatform for electric vehicle
chargers, solar, heat pumps andbatteries.
This week, we're bringing you aninteresting conversation from
late last year with StéphaneGrosjean, the CEO of Smappy.
Stéphane has been in the energyindustry for a long time.
(00:55):
He's a serial entrepreneur, andhe's looking way into the future
with some creative, fun,mind-boggling ideas about what
might be on the distant horizon.
We know you'll enjoy this one.
(01:18):
Welcome to the EV ChargingPodcast.
We're very fortunate today to bejoined by Stéphane Grosjean,
joining us all the way fromBelgium.
Stéphane is the founder and CEOof Smappy, or now Smappy Group.
and has a really long history ofan entrepreneurial journey,
starting lots of companies inthe energy space.
(01:38):
And we're really thrilled tohave you joining us.
Thank you, Stefan.
SPEAKER_00 (01:41):
It's my pleasure.
Looking forward to the rest.
SPEAKER_03 (01:44):
Excellent.
Well, we've been very fortunateto speak to a number of guests
as part of our podcast who haveprobably not been in the game
quite as long as yourself.
Some of them in their firstcompany or the start of their
entrepreneurial journey.
Maybe you could wind back theclock for us and tell us a
little bit about how you startedand and how you got into this
sector with the first companythat you started?
SPEAKER_00 (02:06):
Well, as a young engineer, I started in a telecom
company making modems, the time,you know, when we used modems to
connect to the internet.
And that was the time whereelectricity companies had
mechanical meters, you know,with the disk, non-digital and
with pulse contacts.
(02:26):
And large customers had to beread remotely because there were
really lots of millions involvedin the monthly consumption bills
and they were looking for asolution to do data collection
remotely.
That is where I learned my firstor had my first expertise to
build a data logger and theassociated software to really
(02:49):
collect energy data for theutility companies here in
Europe.
and i founded my company i was28 that's a long time ago in
1991 and had two business unitsin mind two solutions one was
for those utility companies thegrid companies to collect really
(03:11):
commercial industrial meters Butthose large energy consumers
also saw the value in the energydata, how they could submit or
eventually their processes, howmuch energy do we consume for
the production of this producton production line one and two.
(03:31):
So that led me into using thesame data collection for energy
efficiency, energy management.
And as such, with this companythat I built up to a global
leader internationally after 20years being market leader in
utility space, but also incommercial industrial for
(03:53):
submetering and energyefficiency.
I sold the business to Elster,which was a electricity, gas,
water meter manufacturer, now inthe hands of Honeywell, as the
complement of what they made.
I saw that customers likeWalmart, 5,000 tours in US, or
Tesco in UK, were able to reduce40, 45% in their energy usage
(04:18):
and consumption by looking atthe data, having the insights,
tuning air conditioning systemsthat were running without
liquid, cooling liquid, andconsuming and running all the
time.
So by looking at the data thatwe collected with energy, we
were able to give them a BI too,an energy BI, business
(04:42):
intelligence too, that led toreductions, optimizing the way
they consume, reducing the cost,and being able, and that was
what we saw, to participate indemand response programs to help
the utility companies to reducethe consumption at peak points
by engaging those very largeenergy consumers.
(05:03):
So that is what I did for 20years.
I sold the business after beinginternational, going public, and
I found it snappy to do actuallythe same but with behind the
meter for homeowners initiallybecause I saw that and the time
was ripe in 2012 to use appsbecause software has had to be
(05:29):
very easy and available for ahome user you wouldn't send them
to a SaaS platform on theinternet they wouldn't do it
anyway and the time came wasripe to start providing data in
a intelligible way.
And we saw a change of behaviorwith those users that reduced
(05:50):
the consumption in homes,households by 12%.
And that is what is still ourambition with Smappy, to provide
a tool that reduces theconsumption.
The problem we saw was thatself-install was good for 5% of
the population, the tech-savvypeople, but that the mass market
(06:11):
wouldn't do it.
So we turned toward electriciansinstallers and first to solar
installers who went in to sell afew thousand euro dollar
whatever and then take that homeenergy manager along to help
provide those insights to homeusers what we have seen is That
(06:34):
standalone, it didn't workbecause it was 250, 300 euro and
too cheap for an electrician tosay, I won't make money on that.
And I will get a lot ofquestions.
I won't do it.
So we had to combine it in a waywith solar and nowadays with EV.
Where in the EV land, we noticedthat first we tried to interface
(06:57):
to all kinds of EV brands, EVcharger brands.
to make them smart, use energywith dynamic rates, optimize
their own solar energy usage bycharging faster when you have
excess solar so you don't injectit in the grid to take it back
in and provide the grid withexcess energy and problems.
(07:21):
We said we will optimize that.
That's what I anticipated.
But we saw that it didn't workbecause energy chargers for car
industry were guys making a boxwith a cable, an outlet for a
car.
They didn't understand energymanagement.
And so we stepped into makingbetter charges with good,
(07:42):
accurate measurement, allembarked, and that is how we
used the EV charging as theopportunity to get into the
homes, but with the finalendgame to provide a tool to
homeowners to get insights, toreduce their energy consumption,
because the 12% you don'tconsume, you don't even have to
(08:03):
produce them with solar it'salways better and then the next
thing is to optimize the use ofenergy to facilitate and
accelerate the transition tosolar to wind where the only
problem we have with solar andwind is is the fact that you
can't turn on the wind and thesun when you need more energy
(08:25):
you can't turn it off when youhave too much so instead of
turning the valves in the powerplants we turn the valves in the
homes and in the businesseswhere we use more or less energy
according to grid.
Our ambition is to be the homeenergy manager, the business
energy manager and controlcontrollable assets in such a
(08:48):
way that we toggle or we addressthe challenge that renewable
bring, the fact that you can'tcentralize the control, that you
have decentralized distributedgeneration production that you
need to manage there.
That's actually the The bigpicture of the history what I
(09:11):
did, how I came, it's more than30 years, so I have seen the
evolution and this allowed me toanticipate, be a bit visionary
if I may say it, because I wasearly in that market of
telecommunication.
I have seen what data withenergy can do, how we can
reduce, and how we cancontribute to that faster
(09:35):
transition to renewable energy.
SPEAKER_03 (09:38):
Yeah, it certainly seems like you've been thinking
about this problem and thesolutions for a lot longer than
a lot of people.
And maybe you're in the rightplace at the right time and had
some of the right ideas that setEnergy ICT up to be so
successful.
but then carrying those ideasinto a residential setting and
using SMAPI as an electricvehicle charging company, almost
(10:01):
masquerading as an electricvehicle charging company when
really the core of the businessor the vision is in energy
efficiency and management.
SPEAKER_00 (10:10):
It is indeed still the case.
Energy data is where we comefrom and where we will end in.
in controlling those uh to becontrolled assets that really
need to be uh controlled in thatsmart way in a smart grid uh
that's that's absolutely um thecase
SPEAKER_02 (10:33):
yeah so stefan uh if we go back even further you've
built a career in energy whenyou were a young man, a student.
Did you always know that theenergy space was one that you
were passionate about or did yousort of stumble into it?
SPEAKER_00 (10:51):
Absolutely.
If I look back at notes that Ifound at home, digging into
boxes and when I was 14, Iremember that I was so impressed
by the chemistry lesson hydrogensplitting water into hydrogen
(11:12):
and oxygen with just electricityI did that at home took water
salt because I heard that thishelped the ions were useful two
tubes and I started to produceand of course I was 14 and I
made some assumptions and Imeasured how much electricity I
(11:34):
did put and I measured thevolume of hydrogen I created and
said, oh, I'm making a literwith so much electricity.
And I was aware that at thattime, some car could run on
hydrogen instead of liquefiedpetrol gas.
I had read that and did put thelink that, oh, I make a liter, I
(11:59):
will take the alternator of themotor, produce the electricity
to split the water and then feedit into the motor of course
being a bit older you understandas an engineer that this is a
perpetual mobility and that thisdoesn't work my calculation
error was that i was usingliters in gas and liters were in
(12:25):
LPG were liquefied so there is adifference between a volume a
liter of gas and the liter ofand and that is where I made a
mistake but I was intrigued andpassionate about making a motor
running on electricity by theintermediate fuel being hydrogen
(12:52):
and And that is in the way thatI was looking into things, how
does it work, being curious,thinking, inventing in a certain
way.
And on that note that I foundthat was written, this is the
motor of the future, the motorof energy saving.
(13:12):
Really, I found that note somefive years ago and said, Jesus,
that's connecting my dots.
My thing has always been innature in actually I wanted to
build an undersea boat a littlevan kind of dimensions that
(13:33):
would be an undersea boat and ofcourse it had to run on
something well the seawater iswater with salt and that
imagination led me because Iwanted to travel around the
world undersea and beindependent of not have to pay
energy and be clean as well soSo imagination and thinking in a
(13:59):
different way, creating, is whatleads to new ideas.
I don't know how we say inEnglish, but my life saying, I
would say, or phrases come fromJules Verne, the French author,
writing books on going to themoon 80 days around the world
(14:25):
with the air balloon 20,000miles under sea.
He said that all great things inthis world have been created and
thought in the name ofexaggerated hope.
Maybe it's exaggerated hope, butit drives me.
And at the end, I have...
(14:47):
done nice things.
I built companies, I helped, Icontributed.
And my end game, if you want toknow, one of the many divisions,
that's why I'm CEO of the SmappyGroup.
I have a CEO that will run themachine, do the stuff I don't
want to do, you know, thepeople, the things.
And I'm creating new divisions.
(15:08):
And the last division, I won'tsay what I'm doing, the four,
five, six, but fantastic,incredible products.
But one of the The last thingthat I want to do is recharging
boats in the oceans.
At a certain point in time,boats will also drive electric
or be fueled with the currentcombustion engines.
(15:31):
And what I want to do isgenerate that energy in the
oceans, not around the coast,not to have a cable feeding the
continent.
in the middle of where boatstravel in the oceans with wind
energy with kites going a milehigh taking that giant quantity
(15:52):
of energy a football field bigkite that really drags along
little boats with like a carbreaking and generating
electricity and those littleboats boats that are like drones
(16:16):
completely autonomous will go tothe mothership where we have
either a platform or a bigmothership where we discharge
those little boats that arethousands of them in the oceans
coming to discharge or give theelectrons to the to the
mothership where in a certainway we either convert them to
(16:36):
electricity and storage andbatteries if the boats would be
like the traditional carsplugging in and charging the
batteries or making hydrogen onthe sea.
So in a way, you know, threequarters of the planet or two
thirds of the planet is oceans.
Why would we have to put thosewind turbines and sticks on the
(16:57):
land?
We need to live there.
We need to use the land foragriculture, to create food.
So that is what I want to do.
So guys, every year you canchallenge me, have a new
podcast, say, where are youbuilding that?
Remember that this is what I'dlike to do.
I hope I will be able to do it.
(17:19):
I will live.
and see that, and thenafterwards I will kind of hand
over.
So I have some time to transferthat passion into the already
passionate Smappy team.
I believe maybe this is why I'mhere in this universe, that this
(17:39):
is my mission as a human tocontribute to Smappy.
to help humanity survive on thisplanet because the planet
doesn't have a problem we alwayssay we have to do that for the
planet the planet will surviveall those floods and hurricanes
and things it's animals that areeradicated and we are a special
(18:04):
kind of animal but we will beeradicated from this beautiful
planet if we continue to dothis.
So it's for humanity we do it.
It's not for the planet.
It's for us, for our children,so that they can live in an
environment that we have known.
SPEAKER_03 (18:23):
I imagine that people that might be listening
to this podcast, they might havebeen expecting to hear a lot
more about EV charges and thedesign of the box and more
conventional topics.
But to hear the drive that's gotyou to this point gives, I
think, people a lot of contextas to what's coming next.
And to hear that people likeyourself and other people at
(18:44):
Smappy are thinking that farahead about projects that are
going to make big changes in thefuture is an exciting thing.
So if we just shift
SPEAKER_02 (18:53):
speeds for a second.
Obviously you're based inBelgium and that's a starkly
different environment when itcomes to electric vehicle
charging than what we have herein Australia.
At the moment there's less than1% of the vehicles on the road
in Australia are electricvehicles based on some figures
(19:14):
that I've seen that Belgium isat 4% now for electric vehicles
on the road and that's up to 16%when you include hybrids.
And if you look at thepercentage of new sales, it's
much higher than that as well.
So I guess in a lot of ways,Australia could be like Belgium
(19:35):
in 2017 or 2018 or somethinglike that.
So can you give us a bit ofcontext in terms of how the
growth has played out for youover the last five or six years
in the industry?
What sort of things have reallydriven the uptake of electric
vehicles vehicles for consumersand what sort of things have you
(19:58):
had to really focus on withSmappy?
SPEAKER_00 (20:00):
So I think the first thing that is present here is
the cultural aspect.
Is it okay?
No, we have many petrol hitsthat I hate them when they say,
well, range, does it work?
Is it efficient?
I mean, I So now to the petrol,that's what I tell them.
(20:27):
Even if you would produceelectricity with gas in a power
plant, in a power plant it has60% efficiency.
An electric engine has 95%efficiency.
That means that 95 multiplied by60, you're using, let's say, 55%
of gas to get the gas to thewheel, well to wheel.
(20:52):
If it's gas in your car, thebest combustion engines are 30,
33% efficiency electric is 95 96percent three times more
effective efficient so just fromthat point of view we need to go
there it's cleaner it's easierit's you can do everything with
(21:15):
electricity you know no way ithink they are at 70 percent of
all cars being electric i don'tknow the exact figures but it's
in that and out of the the newcars I think 9 out of 10 are
electric.
So how did it happen?
With subsidies.
(21:36):
So it made it cheaper.
It's still more expensive, butit made it cheaper.
What I'm always saying also toenterprises, the TCO, which is
the total cost of ownership, isbetter on electric.
If you have solar panels on yourroof, and your employees drive
electric, you charge them at theoffice.
(21:58):
You pay almost zero for thefuel.
I mean, the electricity is madefrom your roof.
Imagine your amortizer afterfour or five years, your
electricity production.
All the years after, it's freeenergy.
So you drive free.
You don't have to pay for thefuel.
So if you look at this, and thereduced maintenance on electric
(22:18):
vehicles, you don't have a gauzeexhaust, you don't have an air
filter, you don't have...
I mean, oil to refuel, toreplace.
I mean, it's just simple.
It's electric.
The TCO is better.
I think it's pure business logicto do it.
(22:39):
I am also even againstsubsidies.
You know, even nowadays,governments are talking about
subsidizing gas power plant youknow what i mean it's we
subsidize the solar industry toto reduce the cost so that
people would do it now we havesituations where we have wind
(23:05):
and solar but we have some gapsand they think yeah we need
those gas power plants to fillin the gaps okay uh i think it
can be done with intelligencethe virtual power plant concept
that we have shiftingconsumption first reducing
consumption as well use cars andbatteries no they still think we
(23:30):
need that gas power plantbecause we can turn on the valve
well you know turn on the valve,there's another guy, Putin, in
Russia, that turned the valvesin the other way and shut us
down with the gas.
So we still have a geopoliticalrisk.
With nuclear, yeah, we also havea geopolitical risk.
Wind, solar, no risk.
(23:51):
So as an economy, you don't payfor the wind.
You don't pay for the solar.
You pay for gas.
You have a geopolitical risk forgas.
The same for nuclear.
So go to that.
Make your economy productive.
help as entrepreneurs aspopulation to go there let us
transition to a full full fullrenewable based economy it's
(24:15):
cheaper it's very important thatour industry can have access to
cheap energy and that willhappen and those governments
then say we need to go tonuclear well I advocated as well
15, 20 years ago that we need togo to nuclear.
There's no CO2 emissions.
(24:35):
And this is well contained.
But the thing is, it takes 15 to20 years with permits, with
building, with having it safeand operating those things.
So too bad, too late.
The only possibility is wind,solar, with intelligence where
we consume, that we adapt to theavailability, and electric cars.
SPEAKER_03 (24:56):
The conversation around nuclear and also fossil
fuel projects is particularlyrelevant in Australia, where
exporting of fossil fuels hasbeen a very important part of
our economy for a long time.
And there's a lot of talk.
from the opposition party at afederal level, not from the
current government who's inpower, leaning towards nuclear.
(25:20):
Every few months we read aboutthe government weighing up the
options about opening a new coalplant or gas fields, but like
you said, the reality is by thetime these projects could come
to fruition, vehicle-to-grid anddistributed power is going to
have advanced so much that wewill not need those enormous
fossil fuel resources.
SPEAKER_00 (25:40):
If I may say, I really believe in the nuclear
fusion technology, S-U-N.
Yes, the sun.
What does the sun do?
It's a fusion reactor.
It's taking two hydrogen atoms.
It's fusing them to helium.
And you know, this is free.
(26:02):
it's at millions of miles awayit is safe distance and actually
there is a fantastic invisiblegrid that doesn't hurt that
doesn't pollute the environmentwith cables there's cables from
that nuclear sun reactor goingto everybody everybody can have
(26:24):
that free energy you takesomething called a solar panel
you put it in the sun and itconverts the 1000 1500 watts per
square meter that this energyfrom those photons coming that
is a byproduct of diffusionthose photons light energy waves
(26:47):
come they hit a panel and theyconvert 24 percent of that 1000
watts per square meter and youget 240 watts electric there's
no pollution it just hits thepanel you put the panel anywhere
you have those invisible hiddencables everywhere how simple and
(27:11):
nice is that how stupid is it todo the other thing to start to
try to invest and build andconcrete and things to set up a
power plant that is available ata safe distance working for us
free and you know The totalamount of terawatt years per
year, I mean the total amount ofenergy that we all consume in
(27:33):
industry, in homes, on the wholeplanet for all applications, so
transportation, everything, andall forms and fossil and
nuclear, total big number.
Well, that number that we use ina whole year, is provided by the
(27:54):
sun in just eight hours theradiation the watts per square
meters of the surface of theplanet that amount of energy
during eight hours because whattimes hours is what hours is
energy the quantity so aquantity of that wattage that we
(28:15):
get from the sun in eight hoursis the same quantity as all the
energy used by everybody and allforms on the whole planet for a
whole year so how stupid is itto think that we should do
things differently it's it'sobvious no Anyway, I'm too
(28:38):
opinionated, maybe.
SPEAKER_02 (28:39):
Yeah, I think it's a really, really good
SPEAKER_00 (28:42):
point.
SPEAKER_02 (28:44):
Yeah, I think there is also a pretty key advantage
of where we're headed in thefuture with solar and wind is
the fact that at the moment, youknow, for these People who own
these solar assets, curtailmentis a big issue.
But the only reason they arecurtailing is because they can
respond very quickly.
(29:05):
So if we think of the history ofenergy creation, it's been
traditionally through coal andnuclear, very early.
low assets to respond toanything in the market.
So if you want to turn off acoal generator and turn it back
on again, you're talking aboutweeks.
Whereas if there is instabilityin the grid or volatility and
(29:27):
you need something in thegeneration side to change, the
huge benefit of the future wehave with solar and wind is
that, particularly with solar,it can respond in a matter of
seconds.
And in the future withinterconnected batteries, that
can be a matter of nanoseconds.
So the ability for us to have apermanent, a much more stable
(29:51):
grid with renewable power isquite clear, even though the
current rhetoric aroundrenewable energy is that it's an
intermittent energy source andit can only provide part of the
power.
But I think that is somethingthat's quite often overlooked.
SPEAKER_00 (30:11):
Well, you know, I mean, it's true.
But we can control the demandside of the energy also in
fractions of a second.
We have over hundred thousandsof assets, charges we manage on
our platform, Smappy charges.
(30:32):
With a press on a button on oursystem, we can really engage
hundreds of megawatts byreducing If you are short of 200
megawatt, I press a button and Ireduce the power instantly for
those charges that are activelycharging.
(30:52):
So we have that power alreadytoday in this MAPI platform.
And when the cars will be ableto feed back, it's even better.
Gentlemen, I have a time issuebecause they took a lot of time.
Or maybe you have a lastquestion?
SPEAKER_03 (31:07):
Well, we have questions that could take us the
six hours to get through.
This has been fantastic, andwe've loved getting a
perspective that I think is verydifferent from some of the other
guests that we've had on.
We really appreciate that.
For us here in Sydney, it's 9p.m., so we might wrap this one
up, but if we could find a timein the future, it would be
fantastic, and I think theaudience would also love to hear
(31:28):
a bit more.
SPEAKER_00 (31:28):
Okay.
It's my pleasure.
Looking forward to podcast two.
Thank you so much
SPEAKER_03 (31:33):
for your time, Stefan.
Yes.
Bye-bye, guys.
Thank you so much.
SPEAKER_02 (31:43):
so that's it and thanks for listening to this
episode of the ev chargingpodcast brought to you as always
by solar choice australia's onlyinstant quote comparison service
for solar ev charges heat pumpsbatteries and air conditioning
systems we also provideindependent consultation on and
tender management for cleanenergy projects in commercial
(32:06):
and strata buildings with over17 years of experience find out
more at solarchoice.net.au andstay Stay tuned for the next
episode in
SPEAKER_03 (32:16):
two weeks.
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