"The way we're looking at it right now is to bring balance by not consuming. That means that your car has been planned to charge during the night. But the grid operator says that there's an imbalance on the market. And then by not charging those 500,000 cars, we’re actually delivering energy to the markets and therefore a gas fired plant doesn't have to turn on."

In this episode, I’m in conversation with Nick Verhoeven who is the strategic accounts manager for Jedlix. The energy stored in the battery in the average vehicle is 10 days worth of power for the average house if you exclude energy for heat.

"Power within your house for a whole day is just 10% of your car battery. And then the day after, you can just ride back to work, charge your car, again, probably solar power from the roof of your office and do the same thing again, tomorrow if necessary."

EVs both expand the demand on the grid but also create an entirely new energy customer relationship, which is up for grabs. We talk through what this means, and the implications for fuel retailers.  

"Imagine you're a car brand and you want to really encapsulate your customer, and you want to really be close to them, and you sell them an electric vehicle that you want to help them charge as clean as possible. Because if not, he's going to find it somewhere else, and you lose this customer touchpoint."

Nick Verhoeven is a Strategic Accounts Manager with Jedlix, a smart meter technology company based in the Netherlands. From his first career in energy sales at an oil and gas major, Nick became increasingly exposed to renewable energy, and transitioned to the world of electric vehicles (EV) which do not use hydrocarbon fuels.

"Don't forget, an electric car uses pretty much the same amount of power in a year as a house does. So having a household with an electric car pretty much means two clients [for a power utility]."

His energy background is an asset in navigating the world of EV, which is more complex and multi-party than fossil fuel markets. At Jedlix he is responsible for building out the market for vehicle energy management solutions. 

USEFUL LINKS

• LinkedIn profiles (personal, business): 

• Personal: http://www.linkedin.com/in/nickverhoeven90

• Business: https://www.linkedin.com/company/10317294/admin/

• Facebook pages:

• https://www.facebook.com/Jedlix/

• Website: 

• For businesses: https://www.jedlix.com/

• For consumers: https://www.jedlix.com/evdrivers