Utility Week

TACKLING CLIMATE CHANGE IS NOT A PERIPHERY SPORT As with so many of the new breed of energy entrepreneurs coming into the market, there is very much a fairer society dimension to the Pivot Power venture. "Ge ng out of bed for me has always been about more than making money," Allen says, "and the culture of the team and those involved are all about that." Originally from California, Allen has been in the UK for 13 years and in the energy sector for 10. He had s nts at Bloomberg and Good Energy before se ng up Become Energy in November 2015. Pivot Power currently employs 10 people, has 20 to 30 consultants, and plans to scale up to 30 or 40 full- me staff by the middle of the year once the first projects have got into build mode. The company is currently based in Old Street in the City, although Allen says it is looking to open a second office in the Midlands. In future he would like to get into behind-the-meter storage linked to solar on the roof, and distributed energy. "A big part of the business is giving to the community. We're commi ed to being fair and transparent on cost and to making it affordable; we're also exploring local ownership." He says that more details will be revealed about the company's commitment to social value in the coming weeks. "Being sustainable and tackling climate change is not a periphery sport," he says. "We want to get people involved." cost – rather like it does with its other customers." He goes on: "Once we are connected, the tables are turned, and Na onal Grid essen ally becomes a customer of ours." Allen is hoping to roll out 45 ba ery sites by end of 2024. "By Q4, Southampton and Carlisle will be on stream; in 2020 there will be another eight, and then 10 more each year." Planning permission has been granted for five Pivot sites so far. The ba eries are lithium ion devices, of which there are about a dozen manufacturers in the market. "We're supplier- neutral," Allen says. With each new facility cos ng around £25 million, the success of the plan will depend on ge ng investors on board. UK-based private equity firm Downing has provided funding "to get the business off the ground, build up a team and make the con nuedoverleaf With a total capacity of more than 2GW, it will be the world's largest network of ba eries, able to store roughly two-thirds the energy generated by the planned Hinkley C nuclear power plant. Allen says his mo va on is to tackle climate change; future-proofing the UK's energy system and accelera ng the uptake of electric vehicles will also help to clean up air quality. Allen's latest venture comes a er a spell taking a behind-the-meter approach to storage, with a company called Become Energy, which has just completed a ba ery storage facility at the Emirates Stadium, the home ground of Arsenal FC. Become Energy has been subsumed into Pivot Power, which bought it for a pound. "Pivot Power is a before-the-meter approach on transmission scale, which is our USP," Allen says. "Our system is visible in the control room of Na onal Grid, allowing it to address the frequency challenges and to balance supply and demand." The idea of launching Pivot first surfaced 18 months ago. "It came to us when we began to ask why the EV charging side of the business had not rolled out as fast as was needed. Where were people going to charge? And would it be fast or slow charging? It was clear to us there was a gap to be filled, so we approached Na onal Grid with the concept." Uniquely, the storage will be built on Na onal Grid-owned sites located close to towns and major roads and be fed directly by the high-voltage transmission network. Each site will have a 57MW grid connec on. Pivot has said that co-loca ng ba eries and chargers in this way and connec ng them to the transmission network will reduce the construc on and opera ng costs, giving the business a compe ve advantage over rivals who are installing ba eries and chargers separately or connec ng them to distribu on networks. In par cular, the ba eries will allow Pivot to maximise the value of costly grid connec ons, which would otherwise need to be bigger. THE RIGHT-SITE EQUATION "Sites were selected where there was the capacity, where we could host a ba ery on Na onal Grid land, and where these sites were close to the road network and popula ons," Allen explains. "We therefore narrowed down poten ally 300 sites down to 45." Pivot Power is taking a long-term lease with Na onal Grid on commercial terms, and is not ge ng any subsidy or grants. "We are a customer of Na onal Grid. We essen ally put forward connec on applica ons to Na onal Grid, which evaluates them and sees if it has spare capacity and at what I N A S S O C I A T I O N W I T H UTILITY WEEK | 22ND - 28TH FEBRUARY 2019 | 27

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