Ep. 30: Jürgen Mayerhofer, CEO & Co‑Founder of Enspired – Battery Optimization, AI and the Software‑Defined Energy World

0:11 Welcome to the Smart Charge by RiDERgy podcast. This is Claudio Geyken, founder and CEO of RiDERgy. This is your show to learn about all things energy management and smart charging innovation for electric vehicles and fleets.

0:39 Welcome back to Smart Charge. Today we are with Jurgen Meyerhofer, founder and CEO of Inspired, an optimizer of battery storage. Jurgen's path runs from the early days of gas market liberalization in Austria - think the famous Baumgarten node, capacity booking and real physics - to today's software-driven power markets where batteries are dispatched in real time. We get practical about intraday trading. Germany alone sees 10+ million price updates per day, stacking day-ahead, intraday and ancillary services, and why the truly hard part is the last mile of automation:

1:22 connecting the EMS to a trading platform that can forecast, decide and dispatch quarter-hour by quarter-hour - there are 96 products per day. Jurgen explains how Inspired connects to batteries via EMS, optimizes at 100-megawatt-scale projects, and why batteries can work without subsidies if you respect location, grid impact and build for full automation rather than manual lever-pushing. If you care about turning storage into a profit-making, grid-supporting resource, this one is your field guide. I'm very proud to have Jurgen also advising RiDERgy.

1:58 And let's dive in. Hello Jurgen, how are you today? Hi Claudio, very well - thanks for inviting me. Yeah, happy to have you, and so glad to learn more about you and Inspired. So let's start with you first. I know you have quite a long background already in the energy space. What was the inception - where did you know that this was the space you wanted to work in? And what were the key steps in your journey so far, if you had to spend just one

2:31 minute or two about your background? OK, where do I start? First of all, I was always very interested in computer science, so it was clear to me to work in that space. I applied for a lot of different jobs without any clear goal, I would say. And by accident I moved to a - nowadays you would call it a startup, right? Back then it was just

3:05 a small company - I joined as employee number 18. It was 2002 when the natural gas market in Austria was liberalized, so we moved away from fax messages to nominate natural gas imports, to fancy Excel spreadsheets via email - meanwhile still known as the very famous KISS formats. And that's how I by accident stumbled into the energy market. So actually my background is in natural gas logistics, if you want to call it like

3:42 that. My first bigger project was writing the algorithm to optimize physical gas flows - with compressor stations and imports and exports. Back then it was a nodal system, right? There are a lot of discussions going on in the power market about nodal pricing - this is how natural gas works, roughly 25 years ago. And as soon as I found out that I was really moving physical natural gas, and the pipeline runs along the highway I had to

4:15 drive home on, and I passed the compressor station, I actually thought: that's quite cool, because software had a physical impact, and I knew what was going on there physically. So you were managing gas flows the way you're managing power flows now. Yes, actually the start was really imports at Baumgarten - that's a famous node in Austria where we import from Slovakia, so mainly Gazprom gas back then. OMV, the Austrian oil and gas

4:48 major, was I think the first to conclude a long-term contract with Gazprom. And that gas is then distributed to Germany, to Hungary, to Italy via various pipelines, and you have to book capacity there in different qualities - that's a topic meanwhile in power markets too, so firm or interruptible capacity, etc. And then you really have to consider physics: different heating values for natural gas, high and low heating values. Back then we had something

5:24 called different gas days. In the control area - the DSO equivalent - we had 0-to-0, basically a calendar day. On the transport side we had 6-to-6, and for imports we worked on 8-to-8 o'clock schedules, and we had to bring that all together, while the colleagues in Germany worked on a calendar day in kilowatt hours - so no messing around with heating

5:56 values and all that. But gas does have a quality dimension, unlike power. So that was the energy background. You also had a bit of an entrepreneurial side, and you could highlight some of the milestones that led you to Inspired, entrepreneurially speaking. I always tended to work in small, innovative companies - not because I chose them; I think they

6:30 rather chose me as their employee. From the first company liberalizing the gas markets, to being a freelancer helping customers with market entries across Europe, to doing consultancy for short-term power trading - my whole career has been driven by innovation in the software and energy space, and always luckily in roles where I could take a lot of decisions and a lot of responsibility, like in my previous role as managing director.

7:07 of Visotec. Super small Austrian company back then, and scaled across Europe within 2.5 years organically, so no investors behind, etc. So there were quite some rewards in the past, let's call it like this, for taking risks. So I think there was not a single time whenever we did the bigger strategic move that it failed. So I'm knocking on wood now, but so far we had a very good gut feeling for bold

7:41 moves. And I think that also gave us the confidence for Inspired. The first people who joined Inspired, we had worked together, we had seen that it works, what we're doing. Everybody was clear about his or her role in the organization, so I would say it was the natural result of 20 years' experience, to do what we do now at Inspired. Yeah, it's fascinating. And to what extent do you attribute your last

8:15 experience with Viso to Inspired? What were the building blocks, so to say, that you are now also leveraging? I think one topic that we all learned there is scalability. It's very easy to lose yourself in chasing exciting opportunities. A little project here, a little project there. But it just takes forever to scale a company. Another part of scalability: if you're organically growing, you're always in that mode of first signing a customer, OK, now I have enough money

8:55 to recruit two more people and I have to sign the next projects. And you're in theory always lagging behind. And if you really want to be bold and see an upcoming opportunity and you want to invest upfront, then it's really hard to do in an organic way, unless you're already a huge corporate and you have money on the side and you just invest it. But if you're growing it from zero, bootstrapped organically, I think you will be

9:24 too slow for some markets, when you think about AI advancements, when you think about what's going on with battery storage or how fast the energy industry has gone in general. I'm coming from a time where everything took years and nobody was in a hurry in the energy industry. There was no discussion about energy transition. There was no volatility, no nothing. It was a very stable, regulated business, and now I have the feeling it's exactly

9:56 the opposite. Regulation cannot keep up, incumbent players struggling a bit sometimes with speed. So there are a lot of learnings we've taken, and also things that we wanted to avoid in a sense. We have also learned what's not that smart. For example, we had been an Austrian company and everything was in German - internal documentation, emails, contracts, whatever. Which is a problem if you scale geographically in sales, which is a

10:33 problem if you onboard your first employee who doesn't speak German. So you either limit yourself and say, sorry, only German speakers allowed, and you miss out on a lot of great talent, or you do that fundamentally different. That was something we did from day one at Inspired - everything is English, all contracts are English. We rather had to struggle the other way around. German customers asked for German contracts and we were like, oh my God, we don't have them,

11:00 even as an Austrian company. So there were things that worked very well, like focus on scalability and what it takes, and there were other things that we just learned because it was very cumbersome in the past, how we set it up. So I think it's a good mix of different experiences. Cool. And talking about software, languages, cultures and scaling, I'd be very curious to hear your opinion. As

11:30 we are in this age of AI as well, there are plenty of companies built in the US that are successful, also from the internet age - software companies - and we seem to struggle in Europe compared to the US and China and some other regions. Whereas you are a brilliant example of a software company that is successful internationally and has been able to develop top-notch software out of Europe. What's your take on this, and what

12:03 makes you optimistic that Europe can also turn things around? And what do you attribute to this weakness of Europe, and how come there are not more Inspireds out there? I think there are quite some. The problem that we have is we reached some kind of glass ceiling at some point in terms of scaling. I think entrepreneurship in Europe is still not recognised as super valuable.

12:38 We still live from the well-known brands that have been established decades ago and are now big companies. I think it's pretty good in Europe to get early-stage funding up to a certain stage, but if you really want to scale a business, very often investors from the US, Asia, etc. are involved. So I think we have the talent and we have the technology, but we're just not brave or bold enough. I mean, you

13:08 could challenge me now and say, what held you back from raising €500 million and going all in? And it's not the vision - it's just the capital. Other companies burn billions of euros based on the vision, and typically these companies are sitting outside of Europe. And these are the admired ones. I think there is one financing issue, and the other is cultural. Everything

13:40 has been working well, right? The automotive industry - but nobody thinks back on, I mean, they also started small, and now they're established. And I think there is not enough support in terms of capital, regulation sometimes, and sometimes just recognition from, I don't know, politicians, other industries, etc. So that's my take. I know that's a very high-level one, but I think if somebody would say, "Hey Jürgen, do you want to have 200 million to go totally crazy"

14:14 on a global level, we would know how to spend that money, right? I'm pretty sure. OK. So I'm looking forward. You already have raised your Series B. Obviously, you will probably not stay there and we'll come back to that. Just one more point before we move and deep dive into Inspired and what you do - to the point we just made: is there, in your view - we talk a lot about decentralization of the energy world, but in my view

14:43 we don't talk enough about the software definition of the energy world and these changes. We talk about in mobility, as we are at the intersection of mobility and energy, there's always the concept of the software-defined vehicle coming up over and over. I feel in the energy world we don't talk enough about it also transitioning towards a software-defined energy world. I'd love to have your take on that. I mean, everything we do is software,

15:09 right? Everything is automated, so no human intervention from the point in time the algorithm is live - from automated retraining, to optimizing the parameters, to adapting to fundamental situations. I think, to be honest, it will be the only way, because decentralized small assets are fundamentally different to dispatch and to manage than centralized large assets, right? I think incumbent players are extremely good at managing their large portfolios, but what we

15:47 see is that we just lack, as an energy industry in general, execution capabilities for decentralized setups, right? Ranging from smart meter - I wouldn't even call it software that you need there - from smart meter rollout to behind-the-meter optimization, that's all super nascent, right? I have all this fancy setup at home, from EV to charger to battery storage to heat pump, whatever, and the solutions are just not where they are on slides in reality.

16:26 Unfortunately. So I think there is far not enough focus on software and technology. It's still: get this battery, buy it, install it, and you're done. And I think that leaves out quite some potential. And of course you have the incumbent world that kind of holds us back a bit, right? Because politically I see that there are also different directions being taken with conventional power plants, etc. So I think some stakeholders are stuck in the old world

17:02 that they've known for decades, which goes back to the previous question, right? If they would be bold on technology, there should be way more investment in AI, in energy tech companies and whatsoever. But I think they have not realized it yet, because the incumbents tell them, "Guys, everything is fine - build some gigawatts of whatever power plant type and we will solve it the old way," which is correct, right? It worked in the past, why shouldn't it work

17:31 now? But you just have to ignore the energy transition and all the other things. So I think the players who will win are those that have good software capabilities. Thanks. Now I'd like to do a maybe fun exercise. One of the most impressive things you have, next to building Inspired, is that you're also a father of five kids. How do you explain Inspired to your kids? If you have to explain it in a simple way, in a short way - what does

18:05 dad do, so to say? The easiest one is if we're in the car, right - in Austria we have quite some wind farms. I always tell them that we take the power out of that wind farm, store it, and deliver it whenever it's needed, so that the lights are on. That's the pitch for four-year-olds, right? I've of course shown them our projects on pictures - 100 megawatts that we optimize - and then

18:34 they are blown away that the battery could be that big, right? They still - you know, they're kids - they think of the small little things for their toys, that's a battery in their world. But that's the easiest one, right? Having something tangible, because it's basically impossible to describe a software platform or full automation - that doesn't mean anything. But if you have a physical wind farm that you pass by with the car and you show them a picture of a battery and say you just store

19:01 it and release it later, they're most probably fine with it. Nice one. I like it. And how do you explain Inspired shortly to an energy expert, somebody who knows the industry well? Then I would typically explain that we're a commercial optimizer of battery storage, right? So we connect via the EMS with our platform, connect on the other side to all markets - which is wholesale and ancillary services - and with our fully automated

19:34 setup, take care of all the forecasting and bidding decisions in between, with the goal to generate maximum revenue for the asset owner. Something like that - and typically there are still follow-up questions coming. Exactly, and that's a good segue to the follow-up questions. So in the value stream, what was also the insight compared to the conventional trading that was done before Inspired, so to say?

20:06 In the era of - what would you say? How would you compare it? I would say that the era before, where I've also worked - I was involved in CCGTs and whatever - the focus was very much on the long term, on a very detailed modeling of the asset. You wouldn't know what you need to do for a spot optimization of the CCGT, what to consider, from ramps to temperatures to whatever. So I think

20:41 the last decades were really focused on the technical details of the assets and their optimization. And I think this is where we have seen our opportunity, because when we asked incumbent players, "Are you optimizing your flexibility?" they were like, "Sure." But what they meant is they optimized it, bid it into the day-ahead auction, and then went for lunch. And that was flex optimization back then, and it's not wrong - it

21:14 is actually flex optimization. But up to that point, you just needed to be very good at optimizing your asset: get your dispatch out, get your shadow prices and all that stuff, your PFCs, you bid, and you're done. And then you told the guys at the power plant, "Do this tomorrow," based on what had just been awarded in the day-ahead auction. The last mile is way more complex with intraday and real-time dispatch. So, from

21:46 both sides - for dispatching the power plant when it's not fully automated, there are still power plants where people are sitting there pushing the levers, more or less - that's a change management topic, to convince people who have been ramping it up just once a day that they should now dispatch a quarter-hourly schedule, and to explain it to them after three decades of doing the same thing. Then there are the software capabilities that you need. I mean,

22:16 there are some tools out there, but if you want to be really exceptional, a standard tool will just not give you an edge compared to all the others who buy the same standard tool. So I think that still makes it really tricky for quite a few of the incumbent players - this change in mode of operation, where suddenly there is a lot of value in the last mile of flex optimization and you need software and technology for it.

22:44 And automated processes. So I think that's fundamentally different, and that's where we jumped in and said we see an opportunity to be better than incumbent players, because we don't have to compete in the other areas - they've been doing those for decades, they know what they do. So, just maybe for the listeners' sake: we are talking about the fundamental problem that you're trying to solve - or that you solve - which is

23:16 that companies are not able to automatically control any assets. That's one big dimension, and the other is being able to react to more market signals and predict better how those market signals should interact with an asset. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you could call it like that, right? Because the new signals that you mentioned are, for example, intraday price changes - more than 10 million updates per

23:56 day in Germany, for example. Somebody has to listen to them, and it's for sure not a human - I mean, you can give it a try - but that requires technology to be very efficient with that. And I think that's just a paradigm shift in how you optimize flexible assets, especially flex assets. Yeah. And the opportunity - maybe just to lay some groundwork - there are the spot markets, which are composed

24:28 of the day-ahead and the intraday. Your price is usually a result - and is influenced much more by the volatility of renewables - and the result of supply and demand at 15-minute slots. That's one optimization that you do. And you're also, I think, participating in the balancing services markets, which are the transmission system operators - the grids that are trying to keep the capacity flowing through the different cables at

24:59 all times stable at 50 Hz. And within the TSOs - because I'm sure we will use these terminologies - there are different markets: there's the very short-term FCR, and then there's the somewhat longer-term aFRR, which are to be distinguished. I would even argue that all the markets you have mentioned are kind of balancing markets in a sense, because the big difference for wholesale is you trade before delivery - so we

25:31 can trade now for tonight and even for tomorrow already, all the 30-minute products and 96 for tomorrow. And that's kind of part of - if we stay with Germany, for example - the market model where you're required to trade out your renewable deltas, so updates. So if at a certain point in time, closer to delivery, you see, "Oh my God, there is more PV or less PV, or more wind than expected," then you have to trade

26:00 the difference. That's kind of a pre-balancing. If you skipped that, as was done in the past, you would have to take the full delta between what you thought yesterday in the day-ahead auction and what is really happening - and ancillary services then happen during the 15-minute delivery period. So the TSO says - or the frequency is automated - "This is what I'm seeing with the grid. I need assets to help me."

26:29 Right, if there is less PV than expected even half an hour ago, if there is a power plant outage - but I think the whole process that you described helps balancing the grid, right, either before or during delivery, in closer to real time. And you engage in all of these - you said yes, sure. That was kind of the innovation for battery storages, right? If you look back 4 years from now, batteries were all in frequency containment

27:02 reserve - the FCR you have mentioned - which is, let's call it, pretty easy to manage because of a frequency controller on site that measures on-site frequency, and if there is too much electricity in the grid you charge, and vice versa, right? So it's a rather passive service. There was no creative bidding strategy or whatsoever. And over the last 4 years that's transformed to a fully-fledged algorithmic optimization problem, right, trying to find the optimum of how and where to participate

27:37 with your battery storage. Very interesting. And are there limits to your solution geographically speaking? So all that we're talking about right now is the liberalized markets, I understand. So any market that is still in the old world - so before 1997 in Europe - I'm not sure how it is exactly in the US or how the history of liberalized power markets was in all countries. But is it correct that you're limited by the countries that are

28:09 not liberalized? Yes, to be precise - to have the biggest added value of our software, or our service actually, right, because you also get route to market, not only - so we don't license the software but offer the full service. You would ideally have ancillary services or balancing markets organized by the TSOs, which is typically the case, plus a liquid wholesale market, or also imbalance markets like the Netherlands or Denmark, etc. So

28:47 several revenue streams. If you have a country where FCR would be dominant, right, and there is no wholesale market, you can use our software, but it will not provide a huge uplift compared to what incumbents do, right? So that would be a red flag for us to enter that market, because we only go if we add more value. So Europe is well suited in general. We're also entering the Japanese market with a

29:19 partner - announcement to follow soon. The US is differently organized via the ISOs, in 5-minute granularity, but would work. Australia the same. But I would not argue for every country - for more than 200 on this planet, right? So we need a certain infrastructure of a liberalized market - a pool for liquidity and different services; otherwise the optimization problem is not big enough that it requires us. But let's say, to take one example

29:55 that I think is always underdiscussed in the Western world and is still shaping the energy transition like no other: how would Inspire be used in China? Or could that be an option? I think in theory yes. Last time I talked with somebody, like 3–4 weeks ago about it, I'm not clear yet if spot markets are fully established and accessible for third parties, etc. - and those would be things that we just use, right. So it has to

30:28 be liberalized and allow equal access also for third-party players. But if that's the case, China would be one. I just haven't heard from anybody who said, "Hey guys, China has everything you need," right? I think it's on its way. I've also been in contact - to give another example - with the Indian Power Exchange already before Inspire, because they were establishing a spot market. So I think there are some countries emerging

31:03 in that sense - they look at which market models have been proven successful in other regions and lean on them, right? They don't copy them, but they say, "OK, it works with these qualities, it makes sense." It's physical products, right? It's grid frequency - it's the same basically in every country, even if you have 60 instead of 50 Hz, etc. The fundamental concept is the same, right? So

31:35 no limitations - let's say regulatory maturity or liberalization maturity is the limiting factor for us to go there. And is your vision of where the energy world is going - I'm talking really the whole world - that we will have 100% renewables, so wind, solar, and batteries, and then have increasing liberalization and then optimizations like Inspire in the, let's say, next 40 years? I hope that it will be faster, to be honest, but

32:12 I think it's not only about renewables and batteries - of course that's an extremely good combination. But depending on the current generation stack, right, the initial goal is to decarbonize, right? So phasing out the most dirty ones first. I think there is still in some markets a role for natural gas, for example, as a solution before we go to a higher renewable penetration, because what we've seen in some markets like Spain or

32:45 ERCOT, etc., is that grid infrastructure is maybe not fully ready yet for 100% renewable penetration. So we see first grid-forming setups, etc., and we see a lot of co-location discussions going on, but it's more discussions than real rollout. So I think we also have to give the grids some time to catch up with the speed of, for example, PV and battery rollout. But yes, in the end I think it should work. We're also missing long

33:20 Duration storage. I'm a bit biased as an Austrian, right? We have a lot of pumped hydro, so we don't have that big a problem, but other countries don't have the opportunity to just build pumped hydro. And it takes quite some time. So I think long duration storage is the missing piece to get to a 100% renewable world, but there is no incentive in most markets yet. And it's not commercially viable, so a lot of projects

33:51 in the longer durations have been built out of a security-of-supply mindset, I would say. That's why a lot of them are state-owned or controlled by countries. So I think that's still missing something to make it commercially attractive. And what's your best guess - if you had to take a guess - what will be the long-term solution for the one-to-two-day volatility of renewables? I mean, every country is

34:23 a bit different, but let's take continental Europe in particular as an example, Germany, where we're already at 60% renewables and really heading fast to 100%. Will we have the need for hydrogen? Will we just install even more batteries because they will be getting so cheap that it will actually be economical to have a two-week battery backup? Or more interoperability - there's actually the Redefining Energy podcast and others that are talking about

34:53 plans to build a line between Canada and Europe. Some interoperability between different countries, interconnectors. Yeah, I think there are indeed some intercontinental plans for cables, etc., but those are huge infrastructure projects. I don't know how fast. I'm not a battery expert in terms of chemistry. I don't know how far you can push the duration and which would be the most cost-efficient. Maybe we get surprised by other technologies like

35:29 flow batteries, right - they've been around for quite some time but never found their sweet spot. There are biodegradable materials inside, etc., so they would even be more sustainable than classical LFPs. So maybe long duration storage, LDES, will find its sweet spot. There are a lot of experiments with compressed air, etc. I think as soon as the markets are there for the so-called Dunkelflauten, maybe TSOs will

36:06 procure long duration storage, etc., and then the commercially most competitive solution will just win, right? No matter if it's compressed air or flow or whatever it may be. So I don't have a huge bet on a single technology. I'm just not a big fan of hydrogen - to produce it from wind, lose efficiency, transport it, lose efficiency, regasify, lose efficiency, and burn it, lose efficiency again. So forgive me if you're a hydrogen fan, but

36:42 I'm just boiling it down to storing electricity via hydrogen. I'm not convinced about that case, especially as my background is natural gas and natural gas storage. I think there may be applications for hydrogen, but I don't think it will be commercially viable in mobility - at least it's very clear that it has already lost the battle in commercial transportation and in any other transportation and mobility. And, are you

37:18 following this topic a lot? You're also using AI - I find the topic of AI data centers and the build-out right now very interesting. Could it actually become a hurdle, meaning we won't be able to deploy more data centers because of grid constraints? Or how do you look at that topic? And also EVs - if there will be any capacity limitation. I think it's a bit

37:48 hyped, the topic, to be honest, from an energy industry perspective, because the consumption is not as huge as - I mean, sometimes you get the feeling when you read the media that 90% of global electricity will be consumed by data centers. I think it's not that big. It's rather single-digit percentages. And I think large power plants and large battery storages will find grid access. I'm rather interested from the flexibility side, because if you

38:23 have batch jobs, etc., these things could be quite flexible. But I think it's very, very early, because data centers that run now are rather designed to be available and not flexible. New data centers may be designed so that, if you have batch jobs, you could assign marginal costs based on electricity prices, based on when you run them, or how long it takes to complete them. So I think there will be

38:56 an exciting market. There is one trend that speaks a bit against what I'm just saying, especially in the US: the co-location of generation assets. What I just said only works if you integrate it with energy markets. If you put a huge data center somewhere in the middle of nowhere and then put an SMR next to it -

39:29 a small modular reactor, nuclear reactor - then the grid support is not that big. And that's actually a good segue into another topic: do you see major hurdles in the energy system as it stands right now in terms of flexibility versus other goals that are being favored? Examples in my view are peak shaving, where we're trying to optimize for the optimal base load - that reduces grid fees, but it doesn't really incentivize being able to react to other signals, right?

40:04 So that's a good example of the one you just gave as well. Are you optimistic that we will be fast enough to change incentives for many assets to be able to participate more and be more flexible? Yeah, so I can just share my experience working with grid operators, right? So there is security of supply - bang, it's there, don't touch it, it's the highest good, right?

40:33 The grid has to be available and consumers have to get the electricity, etc. Then you have this topic of affordability. The businesses are typically in most countries regulated, right? So they're not profit-oriented, or are not allowed to be. So in most markets that I'm aware of, there is a cap on how much they're allowed to earn, and you have a mechanism for distributing the costs, right? So what they do has direct impacts, typically also on end

41:06 consumers, via different mechanisms in different countries. So actually TSOs have always been incentivized to keep the systems running, right, with a long-term horizon. Don't panic. Don't experiment. Just keep it running, right? And it's great - we have a very well-working system, yeah, in Europe. I think nobody can complain, right. In other countries, it has to be said, because some listeners might not know, brownouts and blackouts and constant lack of light - it's rather the

41:47 norm. Yeah. So I think when you say flexibility, you have to put it into this box of grid planning, grid investments, etc., right? I see flexibility as an alternative to expanding or extending the grid, right? Very often you have this one node, and then just 5 times a year in special situations with super high load, etc., the grid faces constraints or comes close to its limits, right? And I think flexibility could be a very

42:21 charming way of, instead of extending this node, just putting in a battery or whatsoever, right? There are some grid booster projects already, but typically regulation holds a lot of grid operators back from doing these infrastructure projects, because of third-party access and non-discriminatory and all that stuff, right? Because it has never been designed for private investors going somewhere and building smart things - it was always under the control of utilities and TSOs. So I think flexibility is, or should be, part of

42:56 the grid infrastructure plan, simple as that, right? And there are different solutions, sometimes even cheaper ones. I'm actually very happy that currently - I mean, now finally - we talk energy transition, right? Coming from the battery space, we have private investors coming and wanting to build battery storage, right? A lot of it. And for the first time, non-subsidized, right? No incumbent players involved. A lot of people complain: "Oh, PV is being subsidized, everything's subsidized, nothing works."

43:35 And now battery comes and it works without any subsidies, right? Financing was a topic, but out of the, the 1 gigawatt that we have under management, 900-something megawatts are merchant-financed, right? So financing works - it's getting more difficult with scale, of course, and the market needs to learn. And now the last step that is missing is aligning it with different grid levers, right? And now we're finally talking about what's the impact of a battery storage

44:07 on a certain location, because you cannot just ignore where it sits, right? To be honest, 2 years ago I would have said it doesn't matter where you place your battery storage. But we also learned a lot that it does matter, right. If you're on a specific node, if there are several batteries on the same node - and what's missing is clear rules on how to integrate that. You may have noticed that in media there is this "grid supportive," "grid friendly," "grid whatever" -

44:39 all these fancy words where nobody knows exactly what it means, but it all boils down to: "Hey guys, I'm a grid operator, you have to align with me, right, because I know the grid and you want to place an asset there, and we have to communicate what helps me and what makes my problem maybe even worse, right?" If you have these 5 occasions in a year with high load and the battery does the wrong thing in these 5

45:05 occasions, grid operators won't be happy, right, even if 99% of the time you do it right. There are studies showing that this is somehow happening exactly like this - the battery naturally does the right thing out of price formation and how it works in most markets, and there may be some occasions where you want to limit its activity or align it with the interest of the grid, right? So I think we're finally at the point of having all stakeholders at the table and saying: if I

45:34 place the battery there, and I've talked to all the players, we can build a subsidy-free thing that pushes higher renewables penetration and the grid operator is happy, right? So I think we're in a very special time, right? Maybe we look back in 2 years and say 2025 and 2026 were the years where we figured out how this whole decentralized stuff works, right? So that's actually one of the maybe the most interesting conundrums, and one where society

46:07 is still not so aware - indeed, there's this discrepancy between what the grid is able to do and what the volatility of renewables in terms of production is able to do. Those are the two dimensions that one needs to think about, and the battery somehow plays in between those two as well, and that's why placing this battery at the right points is key, as you just said. And one thing - I mean,

46:36 On the optimistic side - and of course I'm a possibilist as a person, so I think there's nothing that, if you want to do it, we will be able to do it - but yeah, of course there are plenty of hurdles in between. But it's possible from a physics standpoint; we can design the grids and incentives in such a way that the two will work in sync. The best way forward, I mean, that

47:01 should be possible from a mathematical standpoint, just thinking from the physics, right? Now, in terms of practical matters, we're already seeing in countries where there are so many DSOs, like in Germany and Switzerland, that these DSOs seem to have difficulties as well keeping up with this change, and especially adapting the pricing to real-time pricing, which I think would eventually be a required measure. And then having optimizers like yourselves - which would be an interesting segue

47:34 as well - having the optimization not only at a TSO level and a TSO level but also at a DSO level, prioritizing of course the DSO as a hard constraint, probably. What's your view on this? Yeah, I think what you described is the result of a centralized system design, right? Because where have 1 GW coal blocks been connected in the past? Where have 860 MW CCGTs been connected? Where have pump storages been connected? Certainly not in the

48:07 distribution grid, at that size. So the control - and that's now my interpretation of the past; I've not been involved in writing the regulations - the control was in the hands of the TSOs, right, of high voltage, because this is where the large volumes are connected. And so I think there is a missing link to lower grid levels, and lower grid levels have

48:40 never been asked - the DSOs - to do close to real-time monitoring of grid congestions, very accurate forecasting, etc. So when we engage with them, sometimes the data is not there, or they work with a lag of X minutes, where it's basically too late. Then the call is executed by the TSO, maybe not considering the DSOs below, because below 1 TSO there is a ton of DSOs, right? And it makes a difference if you're in the north of Germany or in

49:13 the south or in the east, or if you're close to a large power plant or next to a large consumer. So I think we've missed a bit of integration - we just stopped at the highest level and said: the TSOs know everything and they make the call. And now we realize that with smaller assets on DSO level, maybe this should have been set up differently, and that we need more data to make informed decisions, and

49:44 not only at the TSO level or whatever. So I think that's an energy market design issue that we have to solve, otherwise we will struggle and not find the best solution. The alternative is we just allow decentralized assets at specific points, or they will be limited randomly at different points, if we don't find a harmonious way of data exchange and rules, also among all DSOs. So I think - but that's again the same topic -

50:20 now we're talking energy in transition across all technical levels. Technically, I'm with you, no problem at all. The data is there; it's just a different way of working. Yeah, no, definitely. And are you involved at all in policy shaping and making, and are there any policy changes on the horizon that make you optimistic related to this topic? So actually, I myself not - I mean, we deliver position papers on topics

50:58 from an optimizer perspective on topics that touch our business model or our customers. And I'm sitting on the EPEX Exchange Council, raising the hand of - EPEX, the biggest power exchange in Europe, has a council built of members. All members of EPEX have to vote on who participates there. And this council acts like a sounding board, gives guidance on new products, or has to vote

51:37 on whether new products will be introduced at EPEX or not - so it's the voice of all members, basically. And of course our part there is to represent fully automated companies, because we have different needs than the top 4 in Germany with huge generation fleets, etc. It's a very diverse setup in that sense - players with a strong renewable focus, players with a strong conventional focus, us with a ton of batteries. So we try to provide input at

52:13 different forums, but we're not actively involved in policy shaping more than others. It's not our business; we provide advice out of operational experience. Makes sense. I mean, you talked about representing the fully automated players, and within these players I think one of the key messages you're pushing - rightly so - is transparency and how to guarantee that the promises you make to your customers are kept. Maybe can you elaborate on how

52:47 you - I think you announced an auditing with KPMG and others - can you maybe elaborate on that and how you think it will also evolve the market to make the whole promise transparent? Yeah, so on the one hand you have to consider that battery storage optimization is a pretty new discipline. We came up with cross-market optimization and presented it to the public, I think in 2022. So we signed our

53:16 first battery storage 2021, so it's pretty new, like 3.5 years old. And at some point in time, customers got confused by bankable forecasts being not aligned with daily optimization results, etc. And what you want to have is some kind of investment security, right? That has a lot of aspects, but one component is, of course, do I have the same forecast for the next 10 to 15 years, right? To build my business case. So we started actually very

53:53 early to share some of our data with players, right? But we found out that others without operational assets, and it's not good or bad, but they showed up with super high simulations and said, wow guys, we can do 300, I don't know, €1,000 per megawatt per year, etc. And on the other hand side, you also have very inexperienced asset owners, right? Because they maybe built their first battery, and quite a lot of them are actually building their first or second

54:28 battery, right? And so you don't have a lot of experience on both sides of the table, right? And that resulted in higher and higher forecasts. And we said, guys, it's kind of totally stupid. We know that it's not true because we have battery live data. We have 1-hour, we have 2-hour, we have close to 4-hour; we have Netherlands, we have Belgium, we have Austria, we have Germany, right? So we have that operational experience, and so we said the only

54:59 way to help mature the market is to make this stuff public, right? But in a way that we don't expose single asset performance, right? It's data of our clients. So to fulfill that quality criterion, we went with KPMG, an auditor, right? They have to stick to all the nitty-gritty rules - trust me, that's not fun. It took us like 8 or 9 months to go through it. So we have to provide the data, they ask you questions and say, hey, is

55:26 this representing the market, or are you suggesting - how do you avoid that you only take the good-performing assets and skip the rest? So we had to show them our contracts and the whole asset base, and so there are top-4 audit guidelines behind it. And so we published it since January this year. We will publish our two-hour storage index. I mean, I showed it at Get Inspired in Berlin. We've also shared the two-hour performance,

55:57 which we're currently certifying with KPMG. Can you just elaborate on this hourly performance, because I'm not aware and listeners might also not be? What do you mean with that? Yeah, so in the old world, 3 years or 2 years ago and even longer, you had battery storages designed to deliver frequency services, so mainly FCR. And to do that, you had to have 1 hour of storage duration. So 10 megawatts of power, 10 megawatt hours of capacity, right? How long does it

56:31 take to charge your battery from 0 to 100% is an hour. And the same for discharging. And that was the most cost-efficient dimension in capex terms, so investment-wise, to deliver frequency containment reserve. That's why in the past, all battery storages were 1-hour. Even longer ago, half an hour was OK, so 10 megawatt, 5 megawatt hours - it took you just half an hour to fully charge or discharge the battery. We meanwhile see

57:05 in all markets no shorter duration than 2 hours, so 10 megawatt, 20 megawatt hours. So it takes you 2 hours to fully charge or discharge the battery storage, and that of course comes with different revenue potential. So 2-hour storage - first of all, it's newer technology. The old ones we had were NMC; the new ones are LFP, or lithium iron phosphate, and have more cycles, etc. So these are fundamentally different configurations, let's call it like this. So we agreed

57:40 with KPMG to cluster around 1-hour storages as the old world - so 0.9 to 1.5 hours - and from 1.5 hours duration to 3.5 hours we have the second cluster, which represents the assets currently under construction. And if we ever go above 3.5 hours storage, we will add another cluster for longer durations, right? Otherwise you cannot compare the performance, right? So if you build a 2-hour storage that is under construction, you

58:14 look at our 2-hour performance for comparable assets. If you have an old 1-hour, you look at the other. If you have longer duration, you look at the upper end of our 2-hour index. So it's very important to be fair and transparent in comparing assets. So that was the idea: whoever has a battery storage, no matter if it's optimized by us, by somebody else, not optimized at all, under construction, whatever - you go to our website,

58:41 you check the numbers, you can download the KPMG report. In there is written the minimum performance, so the worst-performing asset, the best-performing asset, and the volume-weighted portfolio performance. So that one small exceptionally good-performing asset doesn't skew your overall performance. But it's all described in the documents and available for public download, and we already see that this gives a lot of confidence to asset owners, right? They look at the

59:13 old forecasts, the bankable forecasts, they look at the real performance, and say, OK, it has been slightly above, and they ask and say, oh, I understand why a forecast has to be slightly lower, because there is stuff like volatility that cannot be forecasted accurately. So it really helps educating the market, and it's basically - I would argue - impossible meanwhile in Germany to come up with a totally made-up number, right? Because a client will go on our website and say, I made 3,000, I don't

59:46 know, in May annualized, and you say you can do 800. Now tell me how this works. But other markets are at this level, right? They've been in Poland recently, in Warsaw. Same story again, no operational track record, and it's about show me the high numbers. But you know, there is fear because there is no operational data, there is no asset in cross market. We recommend to look into other countries, right? If you

1:00:21 don't find your dream car or the price of your dream car in Austria, you look what the Audi or whatever you like costs in Germany, right? Or what a similar car costs. So I think you get the story, right? Operational data is just way more valuable than just simulation stuff. Yeah, I mean, to be fair, we're at the inception stages, as you said. Do you know, on top of your head, like what's the deployed battery storage capacity right now in

1:00:47 key markets, or in Europe, or in Germany? I would have to lie. I haven't looked up the numbers for quite some weeks, but I think it was like 2-ish gigawatts of grid scale in Germany, but I always mess it up - there is so much residential in Germany, right. You do not do any residential, you always do more stationary and co-located, right? That's the. And then, with businesses we have

1:01:16 a VPP with a partner where we will have by end of the year some several thousand small batteries aggregated, but our core focus is grid scale - so larger batteries, single digit megawatts up to three digit. So that's the sweet spot at the moment. But we have also seen utility-scale battery storages live since 2 or 3 years. Technology-wise, not a problem. And will there be - I think there was

1:01:51 200 gigawatts in the pipeline in Germany alone? 500. 500. All right, so how much do you think will actually be built, and how fast? So we shared it very transparently - we have some really good developer customers, and we assume, out of what the really smart people make out of the pipelines, that it will be a single digit percentage, rather a small one. Because if a

1:02:26 good player who knows the business and has done, I don't know, 15 years of PV before, knows the grid operators and how the game works with getting grid access, achieves a medium single digit percentage, then you have some cowboys out there - not Germans, right? So fans outside of Germany who give it a shot. So I think we will land, I don't know, at 10 gigawatts-ish out of the 500. It's just, I

1:03:01 had a chat with, hopefully, a soon-to-be customer, and they have no 15-year PV background, and the only way to do it for them is to send grid applications. That's just the only way. It's like sales, right? If you talk traditional software sales, everybody knows you have to fill your pipeline, you will have a hit rate at every stage, and at the end there is 30%-ish

1:03:33 depending on where you start, to track. And that's the same. I think grid operators have just not designed it for this, right - with the first come, first served, etc. Because who built larger assets in the past? Incumbents, and even two decades before, they had been one company before they were unbundled. So again, the result of system design in my world. Nothing bad with it, no bad intentions on both sides. But not properly designed a

1:04:09 system to handle all those grid requests. Makes sense, yeah. And let's talk milestones. You have achieved already quite some milestones. The Series B was a bit back, and then you can share some numbers so that the listeners also get a sense of the size of where you are and what's your plan - where do you want to be in a few years' time? Unfortunately our plan changes - not our North Star, right, of being a global battery optimizer - but

1:04:41 you know, when we raised our Series B of €25.5 million 1.5 years ago, the idea was to have some countries in Europe, get Europe to break even basically, as a stronghold or as a foundation, and then scale globally. And then suddenly we work with a mind-blowing partner, Optimus Energy in Greece, on 270 megawatts. We work with an extremely good partner in Spain and Portugal, Nexus Energy. We work with Ecoortes - super matching DNA - in Poland, etc. So Europe goes crazy in terms of battery

1:05:22 storage, right? And so we always move back to even more countries. We get requests from Romania - you cannot imagine. I've spent quite some time in Bucharest in my past. But yeah, so the thing is, you have these maturing markets, right, and the UK was actually by far first in Europe. On the continent you have them stacked now, right, based on market maturities, and whenever we

1:05:57 say, OK, in 1.5 years we look, or we start looking now more into the US - it's like, here's another country in Europe, here's another country, here's another country, right? So Europe keeps us quite busy. Greece, for example, was not on our roadmap ideas, and we have - I mean, the biggest asset there is 150 megawatts, 300 megawatt hours, so quite sizable. Europe keeps us busy, the goal is global, right? We do the first

1:06:27 step with the Japanese partner, one of our shareholders, which will be announced soon. So if we have access to the Japanese power exchange, we're building the first forecasts, etc. So Japan will be our first global market. But yes, for the US, we have to first take care of our home continent, let's call it like that, before we do a bigger step.

1:07:01 geographically is quite far away? You maintain the product quality and the customer support required. Actually, that was the plan from the beginning. I would say we're finally where we wanted to be, right? 5.5 years ago when founding the company. As all of us have a tech software background, the idea was to scale with technology instead of people. And what we've achieved meanwhile - I had a chat some days ago with Wolfgang, co-founder and CTO -

1:07:35 we improved some bidding for the optimization, and suddenly the bidding improvement has impact in Germany, in Austria, in Belgium, in the Netherlands, in France. So we achieve this leverage platform-wise. Strategically, one thing is risk diversification, revenue diversification, entering new countries, but the other is really leveraging the fact that markets, especially on the continent - skip GB for now - but on the continent are harmonized. Why do you skip GB? Because they

1:08:09 never wanted to be harmonized with the rest of Europe. The market works fundamentally differently. You don't have a single shared order book, so you have different pools with different liquidity. You have auctions organized by two NEMOs, the two power exchanges. You have different ancillary services, so what the TSOs request from you is different from the continent - some similar, some not at all. Connected by interconnectors, explicit capacity auctions instead of implicit, which

1:08:45 we have with SSTEC and SIDC on the continent. So they just did not participate in more than a decade of harmonization. That means in terms of scaling and geographic expansion they are different, and I think that's also the reason why you rarely see UK players on the continent. They rather look at Australia and the US. Some do, like Octopus or Kraken, but it's a bigger jump than you would assume

1:09:16 in the first step. Other than that, we scale with technology. Some markets are easier and some are more complex, but typically it takes us some months to build something rock solid for a new country, which is mind-blowing, and that was the plan. Yeah, congrats. And switching gears to fleets and smart charging - the podcast is also about that topic. I'd be curious, and I also want to say thank you for

1:09:46 your help so far as advisor of RiDERgy - it's been super helpful. What's your view on fleets, electrification, smart charging, especially how it fits with Inspired? And if you have any thoughts related to the potential that is there for bi-directional charging and these types of topics. Yeah, I'm a passionate EV driver since nearly 10 years. Actually, a lot of people don't know that we had at Inspired

1:10:20 a first smart charging solution within an Austrian utility, around 4 years ago, I think it was live in 2021. Back then players were not even sure if smart charging and load management were the same or not. What most players meant with load management was cutting the peaks - peak shaving - and what we meant with smart charging was power-price-optimized charging of a vehicle.

1:10:52 That didn't scale back then. Not enough volatility, not enough awareness, no spot price index tariffs, not enough charging infrastructure, to be honest. There were not too many CPOs - charge point operators - back then. So I think we were a bit early. And don't get me wrong, but algorithmically it's a piece of cake compared to a battery, right? Smart charging - that will change with vehicle-to-grid, of course - but purely charging is,

1:11:27 you get it basically for free now with your spot-priced tariff. So that's the background. You can assume that I'm a firm believer in electric vehicles. I think the biggest problem in scaling so far, or why we are not further progressed, is that the mobility industry underestimated the energy industry - who owns the metering point, what's the role of the supplier of that metering point, how does it work with balancing, how

1:12:04 do you influence the forecast? I think we've seen a lot of players who thought: just connect somewhere and it's done. And then it's like, oh, if you have 10 charge points, sorry, my supply situation is different. And then, oh, it's one meter - that doesn't work to have two different tariffs on the same meter - and all that stuff. That's what I've heard and learned over the last years. So I think

1:12:32 the biggest potential from my point of view at the moment is commercial or corporate fleets, where you have control over the vehicles. Because if you have residential players, maybe they're not so happy if you mess around with their €80,000 battery. But if it's company cars, transporters, electric buses - they're typically owned, operated, or leased by the company. So I think you also get to some volume

1:13:07 That's interesting. So I think that should be a thing. It's also easier to forecast the fleet than single assets, right? And, out of a portfolio thing, and I think you can get realistically to vehicle-to-grid at some point in time, because who on earth at home would buy a €2,500–3,000 charger for vehicle-to-grid? So I think residential-wise, we're not there yet, but fleet-wise, I think there are a lot of players with large fleets already, and from Inspired's

1:13:44 point of view, as soon as vehicle-to-grid is getting interesting, because we don't care if it's 64 containers standing still at the site or if it's 200 cars that can be connected and disconnected - optimization-wise it's very similar, not the same, but similar. And will there be a conflict in your view, once we get to bidirectional, in terms of the number of batteries that will be deployed? Will there be a competition between stationary batteries and the mobile batteries?

1:14:14 Will there be a cannibalization effect? For sure on the energy side. But to be honest, I cannot judge it, if the cars are connected at the right point in time. If they will all be connected during noon, where it makes sense energy-wise, then you have very often longer durations. So it also depends on how fast the chargers are and what the cars are capable of charging and discharging, and what

1:14:47 the OEMs accept, right? Just if you have a 400 kW DC charger - I don't know if they would be happy if you drained the battery empty in some minutes of an electric vehicle and then charged it again in another 10 minutes. So I think a lot of it depends on the available flexibility in terms of power and MWh or GWh or whatever. But yes, they should play the same game, and will face the

1:15:19 same topics, right? At some point in time a DSO will come up and say, "Guys, sorry, on this node you will not charge 3 MW and you will not discharge 3 MW at this point in time." So I think it should be fully integrated and hopefully profit from learnings from the grid-scale rollout. I have no doubts that this will work, it's just a matter of time. Sounds good. On this hopeful note,

1:15:53 I'd like to ask you if you have some final messages for the listeners, and also how people can engage with you best. With me as a person or with Inspired? Both. Engaging with us is easy - as soon as you're involved in the battery space, you will sooner or later come across us at some events, etc. You can always drop us a line. The fastest way to reach me

1:16:25 is WhatsApp - that's how my wife reaches me, so I have to check if I get the message. LinkedIn is tricky; I get a ton of spam and I just realized that I didn't answer things from 3 months ago, or even longer, which was a bit embarrassing for me. But I think you will figure out how to reach out to me or my colleagues.

1:16:53 You reach out to Claudio and he drops me a WhatsApp.

1:16:58 Yeah, happy to make an introduction. It makes sense.

1:17:04 Yeah, and do you have an inspiring last message to share? I can just say: if you're not active yet in the energy industry, this is the most exciting time, I think, since decades. And it's a unique opportunity, no matter in what role, right? If you're talking about electric mobility, if you talk about battery storage supply, whatever it is, I think this is really the time where we have a paradigm

1:17:39 shift in energy, right? So I think, if you have a chance to get involved with energy, the time is now. And I hope we will all be very proud in a decade or two to tell how much work we put into the new energy system 20 years ago. So that's why I love my job, right? Energy never gets boring, and now it's extremely exciting. Unbelievable. Definitely agree with you. Thank you, Jürgen, for your time and your

1:18:12 energy. Keep it up. And have a good evening. Thanks, you too. This was Jürgen from Inspired. This conversation showed that batteries are not just pieces of hardware - they are market participants. The crucial advantage comes from fast automation that moves from measurement to forecast, from forecast to bid, and from bid to dispatch. Performance can be judged with simple, concrete metrics: the capture rate compared to day-ahead prices, the time it takes to place a trade, and the cost of forecast errors. Value is never the same

1:18:52 everywhere. It follows local congestion, imbalance volatility, and country-specific rules. Merchant battery projects can work when a proper risk book is in place, including cap and floor structures, mixed revenue streams, and early pre-qualification for ancillary services. Success in the field depends on integration details, solid EMS contracts, defined fallback states, good test plans, and reliable telemetry. Clean data and clear audit trails build trust with lenders and with regulators. Co-locating storage with wind or solar can add options, but grid limits and curtailment can remove those gains just as

1:19:38 quickly. A practical next step is to automate end-to-end in a single market zone and scale only after the same KPIs hold up outside of backtests. What comes next is more flexibility at the distribution level, faster settlement cycles, and tighter performance guarantees. It was a very complex episode and shows the level of sophistication that Jürgen and Inspired bring to the market and to the table. I'm very excited to have him advising us at RiDERgy and to keep collaborating, and hopefully scale together as well.

1:20:17 Solutions like this to fleets. And thanks for listening to Smart Charge by RiDERgy, and see you in the next episode. Stay charged.