Adam Sroka (00:02)  Hello and welcome back to the Hypercube podcast. It is a pleasure today to be joined by Peter Kavanagh. Peter, would you like to introduce yourself for those in the audience that might not know who you are and what you do?

Peter Kavanagh (01:18) Yeah, thanks very much, Adam. Good morning, everyone. I’m Peter Kavanagh, CEO and founder of Harmony Energy.

Adam Sroka (01:28) So I doubt there’ll be many people listening that don’t know, but harmony is a bit of a story. Could you kind of guide us a little bit through that journey and tell us a bit about sort of where you started and where you’re going?

Peter Kavanagh (01:42) Yeah, of course. So I set up the original business as a wind developer back in 2010. And yeah, a bit of a strange one, but on a personal level, I’d had cancer and I was working in finance at the time and had an idea about small scale of wind in the UK, having worked on larger scale wind outside of the UK and really wanted to replicate that idea.

And I was fortunate that my boss at the time backed me and said, actually, that’s a great idea. I’ll give you some time off to go and develop out that business. And after about sort of three months, I said to him, look, I need to go and do this full time. And that led on to Harmony going sort of full time as a wind developer. We built out 15 wind assets in the UK, which were backed by university superannuation scheme. And then we sold those assets in…

no sorry, December 2019. But I guess the real sort of growth from Harmony came in sort of 2016 onwards when using the money from the the wind farms, co-founded the storage side of the business alongside of Alex Thornton, our COO. And yeah, and the growth and the story from there has been super exciting to get us to where we are today.

Adam Sroka (03:06) much to unpack there. I’m interested to hear about

kind of finance actually, because from like what I see out talking to organizations like Harmony and others, like actually so much of this game developing assets and sites and such, it seems to be a finance game really with with excellent operations and execution under the hood. Do you find that? Like, do think you could have done it without that level of knowledge as the kind of the CEO of the business?

Peter Kavanagh (03:44) Probably not, because from the outset of the business, I was covering multiple things. was just me for the first few years. So you needed to have, know, having the background I had was super helpful, but also the ability to, you know, things like interact with lawyers and landowners, et cetera, get all stakeholders on board. But having the understanding of the core financial drivers is key. And I think, you know, having a high level financial knowledge is always helpful, whichever business or sector you’re in.

for sure. Does, does help. And, you know, it is, you need to make the numbers stack up, on any business, but particularly on infrastructure, it’s kind of, I guess, simpler in a way. but it’s, know, making sure you’re approaching things in the right way. And, you know, I think the good thing about where the sector is now is we don’t need to rely on taxpayer funded subsidies, which to me has been a huge game changer.

and where I always wanted the industry to end up. Because obviously helps drive down consumer costs alongside of the environmentally sustainable angle as well.

Adam Sroka (04:58) Because on the finance side as well, there’s been changes. I asked you last time we met, I said, do people get it? Very few people, I guess, have been doing this as long as Harmony has now. What’s the financial landscape looking like and how has it changed in the last 14 years?

Peter Kavanagh (05:17) It’s changed a lot because I think you go back 14 years and technology was a lot more expensive. the core drivers has been the massive decline in capex across all renewable technology, particularly battery and solar, which is batteries in the mainstay of Harmony’s business today. And that’s enabled us to not rely on taxpayer funded subsidies, not rely on contracted revenue streams.

And 14 years ago, the whole sector was in its infancy and was underpinned by attractive subsidy regime, know, long-term 20 year plus subsidies, where you could effectively guarantee, you know, your asset performance, financial performance against that subsidy. Whereas now on the battery side, it’s a lot more volatile, but it’s brilliant because we’re not relying on taxpayer subsidies. So it’s financially sustainable and environmentally.

sustainable. So that’s been the biggest shift. I think if you go back to 2010, the energy mix in the UK was about 7 % from renewables. Today, it’s not far off 50%. So you’ve seen a huge shift in that period, which is tremendous and not spoken about in terms of history. And in a 14-year period, it’s quite an incredible turnaround.

Adam Sroka (06:44) Yeah, that change is kind one of the reasons that a hypercube exists. The increase in renewables, you naturally increase the level of volatility. Do you see where you’re going in for new sites today? We can get into this in a bit more detail because you’ve done some really exciting stuff. But when you’re doing new sites today, do you find that the level of analysis and the kind of data requirements needed to get good longer-term

sort of modeling done is more difficult than it used to be.

Peter Kavanagh (07:19) I think it’s becoming more detailed and having that detail on the data, know, some great analysis coming through from everyone, particularly people like Modo, for example, having that granular data for operating in a market where we are relying on, you know, what we describe as a merchant income stream, it is very volatile. So anything you can help to try and translate that data to make it a clearer pathway to financial returns is super helpful and super important.

So I think it’s kind of becoming easier because there’s more people crunching that data and there’s more accountability as well. So it’s also great for the consumer. know, for example, we’ve been interacting a lot with NESO recently on the balancing mechanism and how I think it’s been well covered in the wider media for people in the energy sector and people in the battery sector. It’s been very clear that it’s been massively underutilized.

to the huge disadvantage of the consumer in the last few years. We’ve had two hour batteries on the system for four and a half years that haven’t been used properly. And now because of the data, we’re seeing sort of very strong evidence to back up that and make NESO control room more accountable, which they’ve been great and pushing this transparency. But it’s super helpful to have that data to back up the efficiency of markets and hold people accountable.

Adam Sroka (08:48 ) Yeah, like, I think that seems to be the direction of travel that we are seeing, but it’s hard. Like you’re trying to change a very complicated industry at the pace that technology is moving. You’re going to get a disconnect there somewhere and it’s not just, yeah, it’s not just technology, it’s skills, it’s processes, it’s all that. And ultimately there’s no like, there’s no real test bed for this stuff, right? It’s like all or nothing.

Peter Kavanagh (09:16) Yeah, you’re right. And it’s an ongoing experiment. the wrong word for it, but yeah, it has been really testing at times. And it’s like, we’ve got this wonderful technology. Why aren’t we using it more efficiently? You know, this is not brand new technology. is technology that’s evolving. It’s become more more efficient. We need lots more of it. How do we use the data we’ve got from the networks to ensure that it’s used to its maximum efficiency? You know, again, for the environment’s use, if you use

a battery super efficiently, you don’t need as many batteries as you may think. On a very basic level, it’s sort of understanding the crunch points in the network to maximise the efficiency of batteries and other energy storage and renewable assets.

Adam Sroka (10:03) So just want to get into like, what is it? What’s the elevator pitch for Harmony? I don’t know if you do elevator pitches these days, but what do you do? Because you’re not just, you don’t just develop sites and sell them on, right? You’re kind of doing end to end.

Peter Kavanagh (10:19) That’s right. We’re sort of not unique. Others do it, but most people in our world either develop so they get sites to what we describe as construction ready or ready to build today. So you’ve got planning grid and land option in place. Then they sell it to a financial outfit who then pay and build out the site and operate it. Harmony does the whole process. So we have Harmony Energy Limited private business. Then we have Harmony Energy Income Trust, the listed fund.

And we use capital from the listed fund to build out sites. We also have joint ventures with FRB and TAG Energy that we’ve built out sites within the past. So we’re really keen to be long-term owners of this because we see a much longer story, much longer upside. You know, the need for energy storage in the UK and elsewhere where we’re active in Europe, which I can come on to later. We see a huge need for it. And we’re super excited about that future and the opportunity.

for us to grow in this space.

Adam Sroka (11:21) think it’s really interesting because again, if you zoom out and look at the context, like that makes more sense as a story considering actually one of the first earliest people to do it as well. the specialization kind of always comes later and was the decision to develop own operate like always the plan or was it an

just kind of happened organically due to the fact that actually there weren’t these other parties in the space to do the other parts of the puzzle.

Peter Kavanagh (11:55) It was always the plan because my experience from Wind was the same. saw more value in developing, owning and operating because once you’ve got one operational asset, you’ve de-risked. Okay. So there’s a lot more institutional investors are keen on that aspect because, you know, taking it through to operation, there’s a lot of hurdles to jump through with, you know, planning and grid, et cetera. So it is tough.

Adam Sroka (12:10) Mmm.

Peter Kavanagh (12:24) But once you’ve got it through, there’s a lot more investor appetite and space for operational assets. I think we’ve built, we’ve been lucky. We’ve got a great team to enable that whole platform and to operate the batteries as well as getting through the development stage. So yeah, we’re fortunate to have the team we have to enable us to run that way.

Adam Sroka (12:48) You have an interesting story around the actual technology, like the batteries you use. When you entered into Bez, you established a partnership with Tesla and were one of the first people in Europe to be using or deploying the Tesla MegaPak. Could you just talk through that a little bit? Because I think you some interesting anecdotes about where things were at the time and how that played out.

Peter Kavanagh (13:11) Yeah, I mean, it really goes back to sort of 2015, 2016. I went to see Tesla in California and, at the back of their office, they had what looked like a sort of big fridge unit, which at the time was their first sort of version of their commercial battery storage. And you could see from the energy in their office, excuse the pun, the direction of travel and

the excitement and appetite for developing large scale energy storage. And we were speaking to others throughout Europe at the time, other suppliers and trying to get a gauge on who was sort of leading edge technology. And it was very clear to me the direction of travel at that time was Tesla. And the issue we had was trying to raise the money because Tesla technology was very strong and people were saying, hey, yeah, the technology is amazing, but their balance sheet didn’t look great at the time. So that was always a big hurdle. And we eventually overcame that.

with our partnership with FRV, who were actually introduced to us by Tesla. So that relationship goes back a long way and has been a really great stakeholder to work with. And then we ended up energizing our first site, it seems tiny now, it’s sort of seven megs, 14 megawatt hours, a site called Holes Bay on the south coast in the UK, in a JV with FRV, like you said, using the first Tesla MegaPak in Europe, but also

It was the first one in Europe to use the, what we call that auto bidder trading system. So that was the route to market solution we’ve used on multiple other Tesla assets we’ve developed out.

Adam Sroka (14:49) And you must be quite a big success story for Tesla to be talking about how you’ve had this success and they’ve seen you grow alongside. Because it’s interesting at the time, those kinds of risks. For some people, that’s insurmountable stuff. The risk mitigation for that kind of partnership is really hard. And being able to stick to building a true partnership with a supplier like that, I think just takes a lot of guts, I guess.

Peter Kavanagh (15:20) Yeah, I guess on reflection, I think, you know, we’re both really super keen on the sector. We could see the massive requirement for this globally. And, you know, I don’t want to overplay it. We’ve got other really great relationships like with InVision. We’ve used them on the last two batteries and that’s been fantastic as well. So there are some really good suppliers out there, but, you know, that certainly the relationship with Tesla has been very valuable to us. And, you know, I think we’re one of the biggest customers in Europe.

So, you know, I think it works both ways and that sort of storage division became profitable last year. So I think in terms of the overall Tesla picture, obviously incredibly well known for the amazing stuff they’ve done on cars, but a lot less well known for the stuff they’ve done on commercial and domestic storage, just because I suppose it’s a less interesting story to a lot of people, but to us, it’s amazing. And it’s great to see that, you know, they’re growing massively globally in that energy storage space.

not just on the car front. So, you know, it is a major piece of their business that’s often overlooked.

Adam Sroka (16:26) So fast forward a bit, I mean, you’re doing a load of really exciting stuff now, like France’s largest best facility, largest solar farm in New Zealand, moving into Italy, talking about Poland. Like, what’s the international expansion journey been like? Because it sounds like you’ve turned it all up a notch and shifted gears. I can only imagine how complex it is trying to wrangle all that.

Peter Kavanagh (16:53) It is complex and it needs sort of long working hours to make it work. But it’s been super exciting. I think we always knew once we’d established what we established in the UK, that it made sense to replicate it in other markets where it was needed. So France, for example, we moved into France, you know, a few years back when people just didn’t see any requirement for energy storage in that market to be blunt. And it’s a bit like when we started in the UK, you you go early, take a risk as a developer, that’s fine. So that’s

the view we took in France, in Germany, Poland, Italy, and New Zealand with solar. New Zealand, we were lucky because Pete Grogan, sort of fellow founding director, is a Kiwi by background. So he moved out to New Zealand and established a solar business out there and has done an amazing job because he’s a real entrepreneur. And, you know, we’ve got sort of close to a gigawatt of solar in New Zealand at different stages. But like you alluded to, the first one goes into build.

early next year, which is super exciting and will be New Zealand’s biggest solar farm. So all credit to Pete for driving that part of the business forward. And then, you know, we’re taking like Germany and France as examples. Very fortunately, I knew the individuals there and reached out to them to say, hey, what about setting up Harmony in those territories? you know, the great guys who’ve been extremely passionate about the sector for a long time. you know,

mutual trust was there to get those operations set up. Similar with Poland, Alex knew the guys well there so you sort of, you know, we’re lucky. It’s quite a niche market is energy storage. So if you know people that are passionate about, you know, making the difference and you trust them, it’s a lot easier to set up in those territories. You know, I’d be very reluctant to set up in a brand new territory having not known someone to enable that.

Adam Sroka (18:49) I mean, you don’t have to answer this, but I’d I’d love to know what’s the CV like you’re looking for for someone when you go, by the way, do you want to help me set up in this new territory? Like, is there a profile that you have in mind or is it just, know, the person, you know, they’re capable and you can support their skillset.

Peter Kavanagh (19:13) Yeah. So I think it’s probably the latter. You know, know, the person, you know, the skillset is the biggest tick in the box. can get, you know, you’ve, you’ve worked with them or spoken with them the past. You know, like how sharp they are, how much of an entrepreneur they’ll be because you do need, when you’re setting up in a new territory, you do need that sort of entrepreneurial spirit that you’re going to take risks. You’re going to try and get, you know, sites through to ready to build stages. The key to establishing the initial foundations for success.

And the biggest thing for me as well is actually true passion for creating a sustainable future. I wouldn’t want someone that’s just purely financial driven. think that’s when things fall down and you we are lucky in Harmony, the employees are all very passionate about the mission we’re on to drive the change. And they can see it, you know, from number one, from an environmental standpoint and number two, it’s financially sustainable as well. So, you know, it’s a win for all sides. And I think that’s what

excites people when they join Harmony. And that’s the same for, you know, the international teams as well.

Adam Sroka (20:20) It’s an exciting journey, yeah, and I don’t envy the hours you must have to juggle trying to get time zone crossover and updates and things, but I guess above a certain size, some of that headache goes away and there’s enough people to kind of carry it for you, but no, I can only imagine how many hours you’re doing each week.

Peter Kavanagh (20:39) Yeah, yes and no, is difficult. I guess the biggest time gap is New Zealand, but to be honest, Pete Grogan does a wonderful job of running that show down there and we catch up every week. But yeah, the time difference isn’t super helpful, but it does kind of run itself when you’ve got to the stage we’re at now. And we’re globally about 70 headcounts. So we’re not huge. We’re of a nice size where everyone knows each other. And it’s really, we’re fortunate to have the team that we do.

incredibly capable.

Adam Sroka (21:12) Pretty cool. I mean, we met a few weeks ago at the CMS Hypercube Join AI for Energy Sector panel. And I thought that was a really good event. There was some great conversation in the room. It was actually amazing getting the kind of legal regulatory insight from Charles. I’m interested to hear just like your thoughts on, yeah, AI in the sector, how…

Harmony is looking at data and analytics and the direction of travel there.

Peter Kavanagh (21:47) Yeah, I mean, it’s big part of our business. And, you know, to be honest, we’ve got our own data scientist who’s amazing. He’s built our own internal platform called Harmonize. Sounds a bit cheesy, but it’s a great platform and really important to us, at management level, to see how efficiently the assets are operating. So we’re super keen on how AI can improve the efficiencies in the system from a market trading point of view, but also from a preventative maintenance point of view, right?

goes back to how efficient we can make the kit. And if we can identify any maintenance issues super early on, the sooner we can see them, the better. And we do outsource, obviously, the operation and maintenance side on the Tesla assets to Tesla and on the Envision assets to Envision. And both have got great teams that are all sort of embracing what AI can bring to the table on those assets.

Adam Sroka (22:43) And do you have any insight to what the kind of biggest data challenges are within those sort of data science technical teams across the business? Like what data are you, has been kind of more difficult than you expected to handle or manage?

Peter Kavanagh (23:01) Yeah, I suppose on the, on the trading side, because, you know, trading energy is very volatile and it’s easy to predict through AI because you’ve got sort of a financial influence on trading as well. I can’t remember what the percentage of financial trades in the wholesale market is, but it’s enormous and that can massively distort the market. So you’re not just looking at AI trying to predict weather patterns. You’ve got to take into account what some irrational financial trader might do in the markets, right? So it’s…

It’s not as easy as you might think in terms of, and I don’t get heavily involved in that side, but that’s an example of where it’s hard. I think AI is sort growing exponentially. So as we go into the future, very exciting to see where it may lead to on the energy side. I think from other aspects, it’s quite scary in a way.

where it could go to. And that side does concern me a bit for wider societal impacts. But from the energy side, it’s pretty positive what it helps us do today and will help to do in the future.

Adam Sroka (24:16) Just interested, is there any hype train fear of missing out pressure from other stakeholders in harmony, like shareholders or investors and things like that, to do more AI? Because we see this all the time, like, we need an AI. it’s this kind of like there’s been a blog post that’s been read and someone thinks, right, I need to jump on the hype train. Do you get any of that pressure from your other stakeholders?

Peter Kavanagh (24:44) We don’t from stakeholders, to be honest. And I think we’ve always been very clear that we are technology-agnostic. So we will run with whoever has got the best technology at the time. We’re not purely price-driven. So we won’t go for the cheapest solution on the market because you kind of get what you pay for, so we will use whatever the best technology is at the time when we’re developing out sites in different territories and different territories will have different requirements. But it’s not something we get pushed on.

through the institutional investor base on the listed vehicle, for example, it’s not something that comes up very often at all, to be honest.

Adam Sroka (25:23) And then a final data question. I wanted to just ask, has there been any headaches with regards to, so over here in the UK, if like a foreign entity invests a significant part in the energy system, then you trigger loads of alarms somewhere and like NCIS and stuff like that, you have to go through quite a rigmarole process to be able to invest and build the kit that, the assets that you want to develop.

Have you seen the inverse of that in some of these other countries you’re going to, like France, for example, have they thrown up any barriers around data sovereignty, ownership, that kind of technical stuff, or has that been fairly straightforward to manage?

Peter Kavanagh (26:07) Yeah, no, it’s an interesting point. We’ve had, I mean, no blockers to be clear, but in France, we did a transaction where we sold a construction ready site. And even though that was going to a Swiss company that already had an energy business in France, it still needed to go through French government clearance, which to be fair was quite quick. And we had the same in New Zealand where we had an incoming investor that had one of the largest energy businesses in New Zealand. They still needed New Zealand government approval.

But it was less on the data side. was more like, think they’re trying to set fair parameters. And you have to go through that sort of painful, bureaucratic process. But yeah, it’s not a, it’s not a unique problem to the UK for sure. We are, you know, we are seeing that all over.

Adam Sroka (26:53) Okay.

Yeah, because in some domains like health tech and stuff, actually, like data is never allowed to leave certain regions and things like that. And I just wondered, of all the organizations, the domains you’re entering, like that could be a headache for the future. But it’s good to hear that it’s maybe less on the data side, because that’s poorly managed, in my experience, by most bodies that manage it. So

Very successful at the Energy Storage Awards. You won Developer of the Year. You got two Project Awards. Shows that you’re making a big impact and catching people’s attention. How does that feel, winning a big fancy award and getting a nice dinner and all that, as the founder of a business?

Peter Kavanagh (27:42) Yeah, I mean, it’s great to have that recognition. know, I think we sometimes, because we’ve been running so hard and, you know, we built out 17 sites in a very short period of time, up against everything we’ve had over the last four years has been huge, but we sometimes don’t have time to breathe and acknowledge what we’ve achieved. So it is really nice to have, you know, a table together with colleagues and sort of proper celebration and acknowledgement from the industry against really stiff, much, much bigger competition.

to get those awards. So yeah, it was really satisfying to be recognised and yeah, you know, it doesn’t happen every year. it’s nice to have three in one night was an exceptional evening for us. So yeah, really proud of the team and all credit to them for earning those awards for us.

Adam Sroka (28:33) What’s the plan for next year?

Peter Kavanagh (28:36) Let’s go for five. No, think, yeah, no, I think, you know, it has been an exceptional year for us in terms of the build out. You know, we are building a very big asset in France at the moment, but in the UK, we’ve just got two systems have recently been energised. And then we’ve got a sort of quieter period of us building, we’re to hopefully building a new site going into Q1. So in terms of awards next year, maybe it’ll be a little bit quieter until the year after.

Adam Sroka (28:38) Five, yeah, one.

Peter Kavanagh (29:06) Maybe. Who knows.

Adam Sroka (29:09) But that was kind of my next question was, yeah, what does the next kind of 18 to 36 months look like at Harmony? Because we’ve talked about a lot of different stuff. What’s the kind of strategic focus from where you’re sat?

Peter Kavanagh (29:21) So we’ve got a very big pipeline to build out across all territories. So, you know, UK, Germany, France, Poland, that all have assets ready to build. So the focus is going to be on building those over the next few years. And, we’ve got a sort of 13 gigawatt pipeline globally, and it’s really cherry picking which ones we’re going to build in which territories and, you know, leverage our expertise to accelerate that build out.

But yeah, it’s going to be a very busy five-year period because we don’t just look at the year ahead, we look beyond that. And yeah, it’s a super exciting sector to be in because irrespective of which market you’re looking at in that mix, they’ve all got exponential growth potential. So yeah, I think we’re in super exciting space and we’ve got amazing foundations to leverage that opportunity.

Adam Sroka (30:20) begs the question, like five years is actually a really long time now in this space. because not only is like the software technology is moving at a rate, but actually like the prices of assets and like massive manufacturers coming online in China. How do you get time like as harmony as a whole get time to keep track of actually where the asset technology is moving? Cause five years like.

rate at which battery prices are plummeting and that must be a significant part of your modeling for like justifying a site but also securing the pipeline and supply chain and so on and so forth. Does that take like a lot of time in the planning stages?

Peter Kavanagh (31:07) It does. And you’ve got to map out, you know, the big sort of constraint we have not only in the UK, but globally is when sites can physically be connected to the grid networks and trying to predict where prices might be in three or four or five years time is super hard, right? Particularly when you’ve had, you know, mean, lithium ions really declined over the last year. It had a massive spike a couple of years ago. So it’s super hard to time the market and you’ve got to plan conservatively. But one of the big variances

in that planning is what does the revenue curve look like for the next 20 years? How are you going to make this asset earn money and pay itself back? And that’s when you look at things like the depth of the market, the growth in renewables that are projected within each market. And I think the most exciting thing for us is that we can see it’s not only the cost of batteries that still continue to come down, so panels have come down significantly in price. And if you get that exponential growth in solar,

you’re going to have an exponential need for more and more energy storage. So, you know, you’ve got to map out with the revenue curves to start with, then play around with where your capex may be in two or three years time and make your investment decisions based on those combination of factors and some more factors, but high level, it’s capex and revenue to build your base case and take a conservative view on both to make sure you’re not

million miles out because it’s dark art trying to predict what’s going to happen with the revenue curves. we use all the main providers in different markets and they’ve got a super tricky job because it’s merchant revenue you’re trying to predict and it’s a super volatile revenue stream.

Adam Sroka (32:58) It sounds like just a simple Excel spreadsheet, do the trick, nice and easy.

Peter Kavanagh (33:01) Do you know what, you sometimes

be a lot better with a simple Excel spreadsheet, probably get it right more often than the experts. It’s that hard to predict.

Adam Sroka (33:05) Yeah.

which is big bag of dice. Let’s see how we get on.

Peter Kavanagh (33:15) Yeah, I think the fundamental thing is that, you know, there is a massive requirement. So a free market would drive that. You’ve just got different levels of interference is probably the wrong word in the market. So UK market, for example, we’re still using way too much CCGT when you could be using cheaper batteries, which distorts where our revenue should have been for the last year, for example. And, know, that is now been dealt with, but it has been super frustrating that

grid has been using more polluting assets at a higher expense to the consumer. And like I said, that is shifting now, which is great to have that engagement and super keen to change that.

Adam Sroka (33:58) Yeah, no, and it must like, it’s frustrating from where I sit, so must be incredibly frustrating from that seat. But it is good that the direction of travel is headed the right way and like more voices are joining the choir, I guess, and pushing for this. I feel like the general public understanding of this is ever so slowly creeping up and how like the energy mix works and the role that things like storage have.

Peter Kavanagh (34:26) Yeah, I think that the public perception is changing and more people are getting on board. You still do get very misleading stories in the media and social media, which is frustrating. But I think all we can do as an industry is continue to collaborate with each other, which we’re doing really well with Grid, and just build out and prove it. know, Taking Harmony as an example, we built out 17 assets very quickly.

without relying on taxpayer subsidy, which you can’t dispute is driving down consumer costs and obviously massively reducing carbon emissions. So it’s that sort of core message of just get on, don’t block us from building and we’ll prove it. And I think that’s super exciting space we’re in at the moment. And as you probably know, I think we’ve got five gigawatts as an industry on the network today and we’re going to grow to sort of mid 20s

gigawatts by 2030. So massive opportunity, but we as a country just need to unblock our ridiculously outdated planning system for one, to unblock this because I see that as a very fundamental risk to not hitting the 2030 targets. And two, grid reform, which is coming through and is good to see. And we should get to see more detail on that in the coming months.

But yeah, I think the planning system needs a huge overhaul in the UK to hit these targets.

Adam Sroka (35:59) My record that I’ve heard of was someone was given 2036 as a connection date for their site for when they were like doing the initial analysis. The prediction was 2036. Just thinking like, you’ve got…

Peter Kavanagh (36:13) Yeah. it’s

fundamentally because you’ve got so many speculative developments. know, for example, we’ve seen several where they’re trying to place one gigawatt batteries in one location and these people haven’t even got a land option, for example. And you’re like, well, that’s blocking our genuine application for maybe a 200 megawatt asset. And we’ve built out 17 assets. So, you know, we know we’re going to build and it’s, it’s, it’s that sort of madness of the system, which

It’s a bit frustrating things weren’t put in place a couple of years ago when we flagged it to say, hey, you should at least have authority from the landowner to connect an asset in that location. there were some obvious things that could have been done earlier, which are now been done. But it’s all just a little bit too late. So I think probably more radical changes are needed to free up the grid and move those dates forward for people who are serious about building.

Adam Sroka (37:11) Yeah, because even any change like that is going to take a while to propagate through the system and get to a better place. It’s not like they’ll change a thing and overnight it’s going to get better. There’s a backlog of stuff that needs to clear out the way.

Peter Kavanagh (37:26) Yeah, there’s a huge backlog of stuff and yeah, it’s not an easy job that they’ve got. And to be fair, Niso are really accelerating this and it is a huge priority because they know it’s the sort of the biggest blocker. And then you’ve got planning, which is probably less on the radar, which is a huge blocker at the moment to 2030 targets.

Adam Sroka (37:55) So change gears a little bit. I think whenever we talk to you, just think your passion and enthusiasm about the sector and Harmony as a company really comes across. Could you put your finger on the most exciting thing about the future for Harmony Energy?

Peter Kavanagh (38:14) I think it’s our pipeline and the team we’ve got, you know, really see like the next three to five years, like building out in all these territories, given the foundations we’ve got. And, you know, we’ve proved we can do it really well in the UK. We need to prove that in these overseas territories, but it’s a super exciting sector to be in. There’s some really good collaborative action we’ve seen in the UK. Hopefully we see that overseas as well. And that’s the nice thing about being in this sector, you know, it’s

There is healthy collaboration and people really want to make a difference. And yeah, for me, it’s about building out and proving it to almost say to sort of the naysayers, no, this does work. This is reducing consumer pricing. This is reducing emissions. This is the right thing to do and it is sensible that we are accelerating this as hard as possible. So yeah, think the most exciting thing for me is

building that out over the next five years is going to be a super exciting period.

Adam Sroka (39:20) If I was in the audience or looking at these award ceremonies and thinking, I’d absolutely love to work at Harmony, what advice would you give to someone that would want to join you on this journey and get stuck in?

Peter Kavanagh (39:35) So we’ve got like multiple skill sets across the 70 employees we have, all fantastic, talented individuals. And I think the main, if you were to say one main thing to me, it would be about genuine passion for the work we’re doing. think, you you notice it if with anyone you’re speaking to, they don’t really have a passion for the work they’re in. That’s when things go wrong. They’ve got to have a genuine motivation to be in the sector rather than just the financial.

incentives, you’ve got to have a genuine passion for sustainability, which I think really comes through in our employee base. So I think that’s the one sort of thing that I would sort of request that there’s a genuine passion for making the change.

Adam Sroka (40:21) And finally, for those people maybe just entering university or just looking at what they’re going to do next, have you got advice for young people that are maybe considering a future in the energy sector? They’ve got the passion, but maybe not any experience or skills yet.

Peter Kavanagh (40:40) I would say, you know, try and get some experience, even if you end up working for free, like work experience. and I don’t want like loads of applications into Harmony for work experience. You know, we do, do take on work experience, but, you know, sector wide experience, go and explore bigger companies and try and get some work experience. Don’t sort of expect coming in on a huge salary. Come in, do a great job, then grow organically within that organization.

but it still comes back to having that real passion to wanting to be in that sector. You’ve always got to have that for whatever you’re doing to be successful. So that’s the number one thing for me is like having a genuine passion for driving the change.

Adam Sroka (41:27) just completely agree with that. Everywhere I’ve worked that’s had like a superstar team, you mentioned suppliers earlier, like everywhere I’ve ever seen that’s really excelled, there’s that magic in the air. There’s like a real buzz about the place and there’s like the calibre of talent you can get by simply being aligned to this as like a wider mission is unbelievable. so yeah, I think if you

If you’ve got a mind to be in this domain, but just for the financial rewards, you’re going to get out competed by people that just live and breathe this stuff and like listen to all the energy podcasts and go to all the events and just really want to be a part of this journey. So I totally echo that. I think it’s a really important piece of the puzzle when you’re building a team.

Peter Kavanagh (42:17) Yeah. You’ve got to have that sort of purpose in life on you as well. And that gives you that and you’ve to be enjoying what you’re doing. Otherwise it’s not going to, it’s not going to work out well. So yeah, completely agree.

Adam Sroka (42:21) Mm.

So before we let anyone go, I always just like to ask if there’s anything you’d like to promote or if anyone wants to find out more about you or Harmony Energy, where should we send them?

Peter Kavanagh (42:42) So I guess our website’s a good starting point or our LinkedIn page, you know, is really sort of full of news updates when they come through from our side. A lot of exciting things happening within the Harmony right now. So yeah, they’re a good starting point and I’d encourage people to take a look.

Adam Sroka (43:03) Well, as always, it’s been an absolute pleasure, Peter. Thank you very much for joining us. And yeah, all the best with the trials and tribulations of global expansion and galactic domination at Harmony Energy.

Peter Kavanagh (43:16) Thank you very much, Adam. It’s pleasure being on. Thank you for having me on and all the best for you with Hypercube as well.