Hello, it's Anthony Chadwick from the webinar Vet welcoming you to another one of our vet chat podcast episodes. Vet Chat is the leading UK's veterinary podcast channel. I'm really pleased today that we've got Peter Vogel on the line who is the director of business development at Otter Energy.

Peter, great to see you. Perhaps you can let us know a little bit about what the company does. For sure, and thank you, Anthony for, for having me on today.

It's a pleasure to be here. Sure, by way of, of quick introduction, Otter Energy is an Ontario, Canada-based, clean energy design build company. So we focus primarily on, designing and installing solar PV systems as well as battery energy storage systems.

We've been in business since about 2009, which, in the, the world of, of renewable energy is, is pretty ancient. Our focus has kind of historically been on medium and large scale commercial solar and battery installations. Although in the early days of the pandemic, we really, put, put our heads around, getting, a residential programme going as well, kind of seeing how a lot more people were spending time at home, and, their home energy use was sort of more front and centre.

But overall, it's, it's been a very interesting journey and, and, the company is growing quite rapidly. Our main sort of home territory is, is Ontario, Canada, but we also operate in other provinces, including, Manitoba and in Nova Scotia as well. So certainly happy to be here and, and offer, a bit of a, a perspective, you know, not only from the Canadian side, but perhaps more importantly from So the inside of the clean energy industry and again, it's nice to be chatting with you here today on that.

Obviously, er, Peter, we're having real energy problems in the UK at the moment which are well documented and of course green energy really comes into its own at that time. Are you having similar challenges in Canada or are they different challenges? Certainly, we, we're having our own challenges in Canada, and, and those kind of vary between provinces.

But, but you know, certainly not facing the same type of, of situation as, as you folks are in Europe. However, you know, we are also seeing, challenges that arise from, you know, the reliable supply of energy or, or certain supplies of energy being unavailable. In, in Ontario, for example, one challenge we're facing is that we have an ageing nuclear fleet in the province, so, we have a number of nuclear facilities that are, either in need of, of significant refurbishment or slated for decommissioning.

And, because nuclear provides about, you know, 40 to 50% of our base load power. Those plants coming offline or any portion of those plants coming offline will, will create a pretty significant shortfall in, in our energy supply. So there's a bit of a, a rush right now, here, to, to replace that, that missing gap with other forms of generation.

And we're looking at replacing that with a combination of, of natural gas-fired plants, but more importantly, through renewable generation, through things like demand response, so kind of reducing demand in response to, to peak load on the system, and also through, through large scale battery energy storage. So, You know, to answer your question, we are, we're certainly facing our own challenges, and it really underscores, I think, one of the, the, the most attractive and important attributes of, of, you know, renewable energy such as solar and distributed energy is the idea of, of some form of kind of energy independence and, and ensuring a secure supply because certainly, the, the sun is, is arguably the most reliable source that, that we have. Which is also presumably why the big companies, you know, don't want us to become decentralised cos of course they will lose money from it, but it absolutely makes sense that we can produce our own energy.

Talk, talk to me a little bit about batteries because obviously that technology has really come on. I, I don't have a battery in my own house. I have photovoltaics about 4 kilowatts on my roof and I have some solar, .

Solar panels as well, some, some thermal solar panels, should I say. When I was asking about battery last year. The guy said, you know, it's not really worth having a battery.

I don't have an electric car, I've got a hybrid car, which I don't drive a lot cos I mainly use trains. So I'm not, I'm, I'm still wondering whether I should change to electric or not, but then I don't have a, a, a driveway because I keep it all as garden, so I can have the birds. This is all the compromises we make.

But yeah, tell me a little bit about battery as, as to where you're using that, you know, in your commercial. And in your residential properties that you're fitting. Yeah, happy to do so.

So I think the value of batteries, really depends a lot on, on where you are and, and kind of the, the electricity or utility rates that, that you're paying. So in, in some jurisdictions, for instance, there is, there is economic value to what we call load shifting. So, for instance, charging your battery from the grid or from solar when, when energy is very cheap.

And then, drawing on that battery when energy is most expensive, what times of day that the energy is most expensive, and you can kind of arbitrage your, your electricity rates that way. The majority of jurisdictions, at least in North America and Western Europe, I don't, don't have quite that, that significant a gap between what we call on and off-peak, times, to make that necessarily the The, the number one use case. So I will say that predominantly, and this goes for both commercial and residential, still the main, the main driver and the main reason for, for, adding energy storage is for resiliency and for backup.

And so there's, there's a really high perceived value for, for many organisations and many individuals to being able to have that, that security and certainty in the event of a grid outage, you know, that you can still, still have power and, and I think as we, as we sort of see the effects of climate change manifest themselves in the forms of Of more extreme weather, certainly, I can speak for us in North America. We've had way more, you know, grid outages and serious weather events in the last few years than we, we have previously. And so I think that, that concept of, of having, you know, resiliency and security, is an important driving factor at this stage for, for people to adopt battery storage.

Do you know that's another great pointer, Peter. I know when we chatted previously to prepare for this podcast. One of the things that was a little bit of a light bulb moment for me was very much.

In the UK we we had solar panels that became very popular because of government subsidy and the solar panels were, were being put in and then suddenly the government thought, and this was probably 5 to 10 years ago, which would have been an ideal time to be liberal with, you know, allowing people to put solar panels up before, you know, the, the pandemic and the energy crisis, and then suddenly they realised that. There were a lot of solar panels going up and it might cost them a bit too much and they withdrew the subsidy and of course a lot of energy companies like yourselves who've been set up on the back of subsidy, etc. Just, you know, stopped working, went to the wall, stopped trading, which was a real sad moment, you know, where we, I think lost a bit of an opportunity.

But when we were chatting you gave the opposite view which was actually. You know, government flip and flop, certainly our government at the moment, we've, we've had about 4 or 5 chancellors in the last couple of months. So, you know, trying to get some sort of coherent, cogent sort of policy from government at the moment, certainly in the UK has been incredibly difficult.

It's now at the level where I think business and individuals just need to take responsibility and actually get and do this and as you say there, I've been thinking all the time about battery as. How to store energy for, you know, using it at different times, but actually that whole area of resilience of business is something I haven't considered, so, you know, thanks for reminding me and, and about that. But yeah, what are your thoughts?

I know, have you had any sort of other thoughts on subsidy and and so on? How, how do you see that working, cos, I have a vision, I would love to see every veterinary practise in the UK that can have it, that's got, Safe roof, it's not listed building, etc. You know, they should be having solar panels on their roof.

Maybe just for that very reason of resilience, shouldn't they? Yeah, absolutely. And, and you raise a very good point.

And, and certainly we've lived that, that experience as far as, you know, transitioning from a market that was, you know, highly subsidised with usually some form of feed-in tariff. This is a long-term contract with the government or the utility, where if you install solar panels on your property, You get an exchange of, let's say a 20-year contract to sell that energy from the solar back to to the government or to the utility at a, at a predetermined rate. And, and so there was, it was attractive from that standpoint, and deliberately so because I think in, especially, you know, 10 years ago when a lot of these programmes came out, they wanted to encourage.

You know, the, the growth of the solar industry and, and, and really try to help that, get over that first, you know, bump of and hurdle of adoption. But, but it, it started to make less and less sense, and, and I think that you know, from our perspective, we would, we are of the opinion that, you know, the, the more that you can stay away from government and its subsidies and, and government funding, the better off you are. I mean, a lot of times these types of programmes are discretionary, or for instance, they, there's a long time lag in between, you know, applying for certain government programmes and actually getting, getting that, that funding.

So, so really we've taken the approach that, that we have to be able to create value for our clients really on, from a, from a free market-based approach and, and on the merits of, of, the technology and, and the solutions themselves. And so where things have, have, have transitioned is that we've moved from this model of feed-in tariffs where 100% of the energy that you're generating from solar. I sold to the grid or sold to the utility, we've transitioned away from that into usually some form of net metering or self-consumption.

This is where the energy that you're producing from solar is actually used in your home or in your business. So you're not just selling everything back to the grid and, and your utility bills being completely separate. Right now, you, you, you're generating, the model is to generate electricity to reduce your own electricity bills and to be able to, to generate your own electricity and consume that as opposed to having to buy energy from the grid.

So it's really Much more of a, a cost savings model and a self-reliance model, than it is sort of a revenue model of being in the business of, of selling energy at inflated prices. Just to sort of follow up on that, you live in the very balmy, Toronto sort of region of Ontario, and let's say you put a, you know, several solar panels on a commercial on a residential house, . I think my, my, house is obviously further up north and I produce about 3000 kilowatts a year and I use about 2500, but I still have an electricity bill, so presumably you have houses in in sort of Toronto area that.

They're not off grid because you wouldn't want to be off grid, would you, but how does that kind of work? Are they, are they having extremely small bills or how, how is it actually working? Yeah, so, so, it, it works out really well again, from a, just in terms of sunshine and here in Ontario, although we are in a, a colder climate, we actually do get more sunshine.

We're at a slightly lower latitude than, where you are in, in the UK. We're, we're sort of at about the the latitude of, Florence, Italy, I think. So, so there, so we get, a good amount of sunshine.

And you know, when we design a system, our, our approach is really to look at what is the customer's annual energy usage, and then we try to, to design a system that matches that usage as closely as possible on a, on a 12-month basis. And, and more often than not, we're successful in, in being able to do that. So really, in many cases, we're able to eliminate our clients' electric bills, virtually 100% to the extent that All they're paying month to month is, is sort of that, that minimum monthly fixed charge, usually whether it's $20 or $35 or something like that.

Peter, believe it or not, my battery is running out, so I just need to put the charger. There is an irony, of course, in that, isn't there, Peter, that says we're talking about solar panels and everything that the the energy of the laptop is is almost going, so apologies for that, everyone, but I, I think we should leave that in as an ironic moment. But yeah, no that sounds really interesting, so you are having a situation where people are basically just using the standing charge fees.

Exactly. Yeah, if the battery fails, they can then start. Taking stuff from the grid again.

If, if the solar fails, that's right. So, so they'll, they'll continue to, to buy from the grid. And, and of course, what, what, what, what structure and setup we have in, in most Western markets now is what's called net metering.

And so that enables you, of course, like I said, to generate energy for your own use in your home or your business. So the energy that your solar produces first goes to your electric panel and goes to power the, the loads in your, in your home or your building. If there's ever a shortfall, so let's say you're, in the case of your home, you're, you're using more energy than, than your solar is producing, whatever shortfall there is will be taken from the grid as normal, or certainly in the evening or nighttime when there's no sun, you'll be buying energy from the grid as normal.

Conversely, when the solar's producing more energy than you need in your home, The excess energy flows back to the grid and effectively runs your metre backwards. And at the end of the month, the utility company will calculate, OK, how much did you take from the grid, how much energy did you take, and how much energy did you send back? And they'll calculate the net, the net bill.

And, and so that's where the term net metering comes from. The advantages is that in, in, in times where you're consistently producing more energy than you need, so let's say in the summertime, Let's say you're, you know, that's a beautiful summer weather and you're, you're gone on holiday and you're not using any energy in your home, but that solar is still, you know, doing its thing and, and producing energy much more than the home needs. All that excess energy you're sending back will, will accumulate on your, your account with the, the utility company.

And then you can use those credits and carry them forward and offset bills either the next month or even several months into the future. So, it's really a great, a great mechanism because you're always getting the full value of the energy you're producing from solar, even if you can't use it right at, at the moment it's being produced. And do your systems give a bit of flexibility that, you know, if you had a battery fitted to that, we went away for two weeks' holiday.

You almost stop the battery from being charged up because obviously once it's charged, it's charged, isn't it? And it will presumably keep that charge for a period. That's right.

Yeah. Once your battery is fully charged, it, it, you know, it, it knows when, when it's full, and it'll stop, you know, stop the charging process. One of the great things and, and this is an interesting point that you raised, one of the great things about pairing solar and battery storage is, is that when there is a grid outage, let's say, and even an extended grid outage.

The solar will help keep the battery at a higher state of charge. So while you're, let's say, drawing from that battery, the solar is charging it at the same time. So you can really extend the amount of hours, which you can, can run off the battery.

And, you know, for example, we've had clients here in Ontario call us, you know, we had a, a pretty significant grid outage in early June, where in some parts of the province, the, the power was there for 5 or 6 days. And, you know, we had a call from one of our clients, residential client, and he just said, Look, this is fantastic. You know, he has batteries and solar.

And he said, you know, it's, we've been without power for 3 days. Here it is at 7 p.m.

At night, and my battery's still 90% charged. So he knew that he could effectively have that, that, that guaranteed power to run, you know, important things in his home, effectively indefinitely, if you wanted, wanted to. So that's kind of the ultimate.

Insurance policy there and the ultimate kind of resiliency for I suppose the only problem is if it's winter, then it would run out, but then even then you can be buying your solar perhaps your your electricity in the night to power the battery and then using that battery during the day, can't you when you need it. Exactly, yeah, the, the battery we set it up so that it charges first from solar, so it's charging with free electricity, and if solar is unavailable, then it would charge from from the grid. Brilliant.

I, I think it was interesting through all of that, you know, you made the point about government and obviously we're moving into COP 27. We have a Prime Minister we're the president of COP 26 and moving into COP 27 and our Prime Minister has decided not to go to that, so he's set it clear what his priorities are around Green. I think sometimes the excuse with something like COP 26, I think we had so many people agree to things like scaling down of coal rather than scaling out, so the language is always important.

And as you said, I think business and individuals are probably much more important than government. I know there's sometimes an argument, why should we stop using coal and gas when China are, you know, continuing to burn and you know, create new coal fired power stations in in in China. But I I I think you know with with coal, there's obviously local reasons, you know, to actually stop using coal as well, isn't it?

Yeah, absolutely, Anthony, and, and I know it, it is easy to get somewhat discouraged, at when you look at sort of the geopolitical side of things and you see this sort of wrangling. You know, at, at, at COP 27 or in other, in other contexts, you sort of see this wrangling between, you know, different, different governments and, and you have, you know, governments like in Western Europe and, and North America, which are so committed to, to reducing, you know, GHG emissions and, and conversely, you know, countries like China, which, which are, you know, now building more coal, coal plants than the rest of the world combined. But, but there is certainly, as you mentioned, a real local benefit, and I think it's, it's, it's easy to get discouraged and distracted by what's happening on the global scene, and we forget, you know, the benefits that, that accrue to us locally through, through reducing, you know, the carbon intensity of our grids and our lifestyles.

And so, for example, here in Ontario, in 2007, the province began phasing out coal, and I think we were fully phased out of coal about 56 years later. And, and there is a, a noticeable benefit and improvement, you know, we, we used to get, I think at one point, about 35% of our energy from coal, and now we get 0%. And I remember, you know, for years, as recently as, you know, 10 years ago, we, we may, we would have sort of air advisory warnings on some days, you know, when, especially in the summertime, because of smog and air pollution, they would say, you know, be cautious about going outside, etc.

And now we, we don't have any of those days. And, and I think that the air quality in the province is noticeably better. So, there is a lot of, of benefit even locally to being able to phase out some of these fossil fuel sources.

And I, I would encourage people to, to keep that in mind as And not get too discouraged by taking on sort of the, the woes of the world on on themselves. Well, I think this is the thing, Peter, people like yourselves and myself, you know, working on obviously green solutions. We have to be people of hope and optimism and.

I think there is real progress, you know, companies like yourself making a huge difference. We have gone past peak coal and peak oil, haven't we, you know, the 25% of our cars now in the UK are, are, battery, you know, electric vehicles. So, so there's some really, super stuff going on.

Just perhaps, to finish off, let's talk a little bit about, you know, where you see perhaps the benefits of, Solar panels in veterinary practise, and then maybe some of the tips that you would give to a veterinary practise or reasons why you think they should change if they're not already battery, sorry, solar powered and and battery powered. Sure, well, I guess I'll, I'll start off by saying that, you know, I agree with you, it's important to stay optimistic and I think that, that our job, as, as, you know, leaders in the clean energy sector. You know, our job is, is not to sort of, bash people over the head and say, you know, go green, it's the right thing to do.

I mean, I think everybody knows that. I think at the end of the day, our, our job is to make the choice of, of, of going to, to clean energy, the, the most economical, the most logical, and as we like to say, the, the biggest no-brainer that we can make it. And I think that's our job is to really find value and to create value for our clients and, and, and really make it the, the, the best choice possible.

And so from, I think from, from any, you know, veterinary perspective, and I think this applies to, to anyone who's running their own business, whether it be a small business or a large organisation. You know, you're always concerned about overhead costs, you're always concerned about what the future holds. I think the biggest, the biggest thing that, that, business owners, respond to with respect to solar is that idea of, you know, independence, the idea of, of saving meaningfully off what is probably a significant cost to your business, which is, which is energy.

And not only having that cost savings, but also that cost certainty going forward. If you're, you know, producing 90, 95% of your own energy from solar, you're not only eliminating that as a cost, but you're also eliminating the risk of facing higher costs in the future. So I, I, I think that that's a very important part of, of what, what the value proposition is for, for small business owners such as veterinarians.

One of the interesting things that's happening right now, which I think would apply to a lot of your audience as well, is that even if you're not, the owner of the building in which your practise is located, even if you're a tenant, we are seeing an increasing number of, of landlords install solar on their buildings to be able to provide that, that clean energy to their tenants. And so I would encourage you know, those, those, of your audience who, who may be in that situation to, to have an open conversation with their landlord and say, look, you know, what, what would you be willing to do as far as enabling, you know, me as your tenant to, to benefit from renewable energy. And often what form that will take is that, you know, the landlord will, will pay for and install the solar on the roof.

And then usually have some sort of, of arrangement with the tenant where they're buying the energy from that system again at a predetermined rate. So, ideally, you're buying it for a lower rate, you're buying that solar energy for a lower rate than what you would buy it for from the grid. And you have some certainty in the long term of what you're going to pay for that.

So, I think there's, even if you're not the building owner, there's, there's still a, a meaningful way for you to benefit from renewable energy. And, and I would encourage, you know, an open discussion with your landlords about that. And And certainly those, those are discussions we've been part of many times and, and usually there's, it's a win-win situation for all when, when you can structure it properly.

Brilliant, Peter, that's really useful. And sadly, obviously we're a UK based business, although we have vets all over the world including Canada. So if, if people in the UK are listening, you're gonna have to find your own solar panel provider because that probably isn't economic or right for you to fly.

Over from Canada to UK to fit solar panels, is it? But who knows? Maybe, maybe you could have a UK offshoot.

I may maybe this is a perfect, opportunity for us to open a UK office. But, but certainly there are, you know, many qualified, solar providers in the UK as well. You know, obviously, Anthony, more than happy to speak to any, anyone from your audience who may have a question, and, and I'll do whatever I can to provide some useful feedback.

And, and look, I think no matter where, which side of the pond you're on, there is a, a really compelling reason to look at solar and to look at energy storage, and to explore what, what options are right for you and, and what offers you the highest value. Peter, I think you made a great point in your closing remarks which said, you know, everybody knows it's the right thing to do. But of course what's really good is, you know, people like myself who've had solar panels up for 14 years were, you know, at the start of it, we just did it because it was the right thing.

Obviously not everybody has the money or the ability to do that. What's really satisfying is, and correct me if, if you feel this is wrong, but I feel that green power is now becoming part of the mainstream, you know, those big companies who poo poohed solar panels because they were, you know, providing electricity or gas and didn't want to lose part of their markets. And we're, we're trying to make it as difficult as possible.

I think I'm now realising that it is here, it's going to be a part of the mix. It's now becoming though a real economic thing to do and, and the piece I've learned today, which I hadn't even really thought of, so thank you so much for that, is resilience of business, you know, if a veterinary practise loses all of its electricity, its computers go down, if it's lights will turn off, then it really can't treat animals, so that is an even, Bigger part than perhaps I'd thought of before, and thank you for that learning today, for people to really consider solar, but obviously with battery storage as well, so thank you so much for that. My pleasure.

Peter, that's been absolutely fantastic. Thank you so much and we'll, we'll perhaps on the podcast at the bottom leave a an email address so that if people do want to get in contact with you, er there is that ability to do that as well. For sure, I'd, I'd be happy to do that.

And, and it's really been a pleasure chatting with you, Anthony. You're a big fan of the podcast and, you know, keep doing what you're doing. It's great and I hope we have a chance to chat again soon.

Thanks Peter, thanks everyone for listening, this is Anthony Chadwick. This has been best chat. Bye bye.