Making renewable energy feasible
In 2013, the Dynamic Demand Challenge was established amid warnings from Ofgem, the gas and electricity market regulator, about Britain’s ability to keep the lights on as demand for electricity continued to grow.
Where we came in was in addressing the disconnect between when energy demand was at its highest – the famous kettle surge in the ad breaks in Coronation Street and the like – and the fact that renewables couldn’t just burn more carbon fuel then and there to cope: if the wind blows at 3am then that’s when the turbines will generate most power and there’s no solar power when it’s overcast.
Our founder Graham Oakes – and his co-founders Andy Molineux, Matt Potts and Matt Fisher – whose genius idea was to harness back-up power supplies, such as those batteries in traffic lights, to create a virtual energy store which could be drawn on when needed, tapping into an infrastructure that already existed but which wasn’t being harnessed. By building a deep-tech platform that connects this network capacity in real-time we can make the widespread use of renewable energy more viable.
And Challenge Works recognition gave that idea the instant momentum it needed to become a reality.
From zero to 100
I was personally involved from an early stage, initially as a consultant, eventually as CEO and it’s been quite a journey. In those early days the team consisted of just four full-time staff; by the end of this year we should number around 75.
And that expansion has been essential to managing our transition from when we were concerned just with developing viable software to the point where we actually began to have real-world impact: the number of megawatts under our management has gone from zero just four years ago to 79 by the end of 2019; it more than doubled in 2020, to 180, and has more than tripled already in 2021 to date, to 600 – and we fully expect to exceed 1,000 megawatts by Christmas.
We’ve had similar rapid growth in our customer base: from zero at that software-only stage to dozens to hundreds over the same period as our megawatt surge – and we expect to reach thousands and then tens of thousands in the next 12-24 months.
Challenge Works’ support kick-started all of this but what’s lately allowed us to expand in this way has been joining the green energy technology pioneer Octopus Energy. We began life as Upside Energy and in becoming part of Octopus our new incarnation as KrakenFlex was born.