Good morning and welcome to this, the Market Monitor for demand Side Flexibility. Looking back at 2024, this is the 6th annual presentation of the market monitor produced by LCP, Delta and Smarten. And in that time, we've been through the low prices of the COVID years to the high prices of the energy crisis in 2022. We've seen the emergence of grid scale batteries and highs in renewables, seeing the closure of coal, the growth of demand side flexibility, particularly from smart charging and even seeing vehicle to grid emerge on the networks. We've seen the rise of smart meters and dynamic tariffs engaging consumers in flexibility. And although we've had record renewable output, we've also seen record curtailment of renewables and negative prices. So over that period from a niche topic, flexibility has really become part of the vocabulary of the markets. The term that's grown in its use in recent years has been multi market optimization as flexibility has come out of the ancillary services markets and into the wholesale DSO and capacity markets. So while we're waiting for people to join, we'll move on to the next slide where we will have the first of our three polls during this webinar. In your experience, have you seen a positive step forward in the accessibility of markets to demand some flexibility in 2024? So please use the poll function in the webinar software. There's also a question and answer section. So please ask questions during the session. We'll do our best to answer them as we go through and we'll leave time for questions at the end of the webinar. The slides that we're using today won't be available for download because the Market monitor itself will be available on the LCP, Delta and Smarten websites with the full public version. I can see nearly half of attendees have submitted a response to the poll. So I'll move over to the results. You can keep answering as as we go. And I think the overall view 70%, just over 2/3 have seen a positive, positive step forward. Just under a third say they have not. So I'm looking forward to discussing this further. If you have any particular areas where you have or haven't seen positive steps, please do put them in the Q&A and we'll, we'll do our best to discuss them during the webinar. So as I said, this is the 6th annual presentation of the of the LCP Delta Smart and Market Monitor. I'm joined by my colleague Lucy Merley from LCP Delta, where we are researching consultancy focused on the energy transition for the past 20 years with expertise across both the upstream and downstream markets across Europe. So, hello, Lucy. Hello everyone, lovely to see you all again and I can't believe it's been the 6th edition but yeah, it's been great. And also joining us from Smarten is Andres. Thank you, John. Indeed, Andres Pintobello. I'm the Head of Research and Projects at Smarten. For those of you who do not know Smarten, we are a Business Association based in Brussels. We represent the flexible demand management industry, which is our elaborate way of saying or incorporating the whole value stream of of demand set flexibility from software providers, platform providers to independent aggregators, large energy consumers, suppliers. So really a whole spectrum of of companies that are all invested in with the same goals that is provide consumer driven solutions for their clean energy transition. And with that, I think we can move to the next poll that we have ready. And this is a bit of more elaborate and it will help us steer the discussion at the end. We would like to know in your opinion, in your personal experience, what would be your main call to action to policy makers to unlock the full potential of demands and flexibility? We have five options here. They're not exhaustive, can be more. So please let them let us know in the chat. But the first one is open all markets to distributed energy resources. There's obviously a lot that goes into that under this this question or under this option. The second one is provide price, transparent price signals to consumers so that they're exposed to the variations of wholesale markets that they're also exposed to, to the grid costs. Encourage system operators to procure clean and affordable sources of flexibility. Of course, we're talking here about incentivizing the use of local flexibility markets to use the use of demand set flexibility as an alternative to quick reinforcements. And the fourth option is introducing direct subsidies for a demands and flexibility or support mechanisms to boost the development of these technologies. And the final option is quite linked to the second option, but takes a different approach and rather to redesign a network tariffs in a way that they're purely cost reflective that they send to the consumers the signal of yeah, the physical state of the grid at any given moment and allows them to make the the best informed decision. So these are five options. I'm curious to to see what you think. What would be your request to your policy makers? I also see in the 10D list a lot of them. So it's also good opportunity to send this message now here. This will also help us discuss later on and and see what we thought would be the the main cause to action for unlocking the potential of demands and flexibility. I see that we have almost half. Yeah, nearly half of the attendees have permitted this. Also, Andres, a comment in in the Q&A of an option that isn't in in in the list of five around connectivity and and data exchange, which I know is of interest to Smarten and smarter members. Yeah, this is a a very fairpoint. It, it is quite cross cutting data exchanges, data formats that are used. This will be also something important in in establishing the relationships between different market participants or the aggregators and the OR the flexibility service providers and system operators and consumers and and so on. So definitely a very important aspect to consider. Almost 60% have replied. I think we can move to see some of the results and not unsurprisingly, the audience is quite split between different options. I take this as a message that all of them are important, that we should ask our our policy makers and lawmakers to take this multifaceted approach to policy and regulation. So we will go a bit deeper into these different options or some of these options later on, but it is good to see that there is an interest to move them all forward. I do like the message of opening all markets to distribute energy resources. That is definitely one of the the key aspects and the price signals to consumers, which ultimately are the ones that are going to provide this flexibility. So there's quite also an important message that this is the the one that that stands out now. I think John, I will pass over to you to go over you and Lucy to go over the the maps. Thank you, Andreas. So starting off with the overall view on the progress towards accept accessibility of demand side flexibility in the markets across Europe, I think it's, it's probably fair to say it's a fairly familiar refrain that there has been progress, but more needs to be done. We're still looking at some countries to fully implement the clean energy package from 2019 and yet the bar has been raised even higher. The approval of the electricity market design in 2024. We're seeing the network code on on demand response being consulted on and and looking to networks to implement over the course of the coming years. So there's clearly more to do. However, we're still seeing the same countries that are that are more advanced, but perhaps with a little bit less progress in, in the past year as these markets mature and a lot more progress that we're seeing in sort of Central and Eastern Europe as markets start to open up recognizing the the value and and the possibility of demand side flexibility. Now looking back at 2024, it's it's curious for me in the context of the poll, we just had to see Norway scoring quite so highly. One of the reasons for that is that it's been one of the countries with the highest proportion of customers on dynamic tariffs at a residential level. And yet we're starting to see perhaps concern over exposing customers to volatility in a way that we saw consumer protection being a big feature when prices rose during 2022 and 2023. Now there's concern over price volatility and different prices in different zones within the country with the Norwegian Prime Minister proposing a fixed price for all consumers. So I do think that that point from the poll that came top of exposing consumers to dynamic prices, to transparent price signals is one way to encourage flexibility. But I think as we'll see, it's not just a simple matter of exposing retail customers to dynamic prices to really see the progress of different countries in opening up their markets for ancillary services, DSO markets, capacity markets, wholesale markets and dynamic tariffs. I think it is a case that we do have to look into the detail of different countries in opening up these different markets. So I will hand over Luke to Lucy to talk about the opening of ancillary services. Thank you, John. So yes, this is one of the the maps that we get most questions asked over the years. And I guess a point on that is one of the the maps we have tried to make the most standard over the years as well. So if you have seen our previous versions, it's one of the easiest maps to look at the progression of the accessibility of tomorrow side flexibility over the years. Yes, that is a mouthful to say in one sentence. I apologize, but the the the key take away of our accessibility map this year is there has been progress and that can clearly be seen in the the darker shades of orange on the maps. But it is also a sort of a story of two halves. A lot of the rankings for accessibility map is based on the clean energy package and the Electricity Market Directive. So we would expect member states to be scoring highly. We do expect them to have relatively low barriers to entry, minimum bid sizes, product design. We we do expect them to be accessible at this point. We've been doing these maps for many years now. We started looking at the accessibility of the energy package three or four years ago. It would be a very different message if we sat here and went well, they're not doing anything. That being said, there are several member states not naming names in Southern Europe that are progressing less than potentially we would have liked. Not saying that nothing's happening, but the speed of transition that we expected is not there. Anticipating a few questions on that. This is maps specifically looking at 2024 and Andreas will point to the future looking map nearer the end of this presentation. But I did want to flag a few countries on the on the more positive light. So Poland is one that's increased significantly in the past 12 months and this is largely due to them opening their and three markets to demand side flexibility. But on that, I think it's very interesting that the poll results we have for the first question on the 7030 split between positive and negative in Poland, the market has opened demand side flexibility that is obviously a positive. But when you take a step back and look a bit more in detail into the communication barriers, into the fiscal responsibilities to enter these markets, they are still quite stringent. So there are still barriers to the the participation and getting boots on the ground. There was a question from an audience mind about Ireland. So I thought I'd also address the Irish market. They're a very interesting country in the sense that they have a a very different system to mainland Europe. Their ancillary service market is procured and activated in a very unusual and different way. It is still largely accessible to medium and high voltage assets though, and over the next 6 to 12 months they're going through a transition period to standardise more with the clean energy package and other EU markets. So trade and business models and service providers will be able to interchange between the Irish market and sort of continental Europe a lot easier. But before I moved on to the DSO map, there was one point I wanted to highlight and that this is a map on accessibility. It's not necessarily a map on participation. I think there are still a lot more the EU could do, the member states that could do, and also service providers could do to increase the participation. I took a few data points from our Flex track platform. Just looking at the spend of these ancillary services. So rounding admittedly in 2024, the the TSO spend on AFRR was approximately 4 billion across all of Europe. MFRR was just under 3 billion and FCR was about 1 billion. I'm not saying that all of that value is directly going to demand side flexibility, no, but as this map becomes more orange, as this map becomes more accessibility, we would expect more of that value to go to these demand side flexibility service providers. So that's what we're really trying to do, both LCB Delta and Smarten is make that value accessible. And that to us is sort of that's the, that's what we're aiming for. And just to pick up on that point, Lucy, it's, it's interesting to be looking back at the scoring system that we were using 345 years ago where accessibility to batteries was a question that we were asking. And sometimes the answer was, was no. Which looking back from today and the growth we've seen of grid scale batteries and their participation in the markets. It's almost hard to believe that it's not that long ago that a lot of countries did not allow batteries to participate in ancillary services that they didn't have a, a legal or regulatory framework for batteries to participate unless they registered as a, as a generator. And now that's that's changed and we're seeing not just accessibility, but participation of batteries in these markets, both front of the Metre and increasingly behind the Metre batteries. But we are also seeing the saturation of some markets for ancillary services where the the quantity required, the quantity procured by the TS OS is limited. And in some cases, for example, in the market in Sweden, we're seeing very high FCR prices. And then the growth of grid scale batteries in just the last year has exceeded the capacity of that market. So we've seen prices come down and that's something that we're seeing across a lot of the ancillary services across a lot of countries in Europe. Excuse. Me Speaking of accessibility, DSO markets are becoming an increasing area of of attention partly because they are seen as a new opportunity or a new revenue potential specifically for the smaller scale to multi flexibility. So low voltage or medium voltage across the board in the past 12 months we haven't seen huge developments in DSO markets, although I would preface that with saying we didn't really expect to. By their very nature, DSO markets are very locational. They are where they have the the biggest grid constraint and as such there are challenges in making them replicable. I know the EU is is working on making DSO markets more standardized, but as yet there is no DSO clean energy package equivalent. As such, GB and the Netherlands are still leading our rankings on DSO flexibility. GB, all six DSO areas now procure flexibility in a very similar manner. But again, locationally certain regions procure significantly more than others. So it is a very much a geographical lottery whether you can access this value. We have seen significantly more trials in Southern European markets this year, so Italy and Spain and Portugal specifically. And what's also interesting is the megawatts that are being procured in these trials are, they're not huge, but they are reasonable. By that I mean, let me just double check before I say the wrong figures. The Spanish one, sorry, the Portuguese one was around 30 megawatts and the Italian one was around 35 megawatts. So again, not huge volumes procured that it's more than just a few trials in one very sorry, a few megawatts in a very specific location. Unfortunately, it is a similar narrative to the TSO markets that in order to get these megawatts in these trials, they are being very open in there reducing the technical requirements. By that I mean they're essentially sandboxes. The the regulators are deliberately making it easier to enter. On the one hand that's good for increasing participation. But the slightly skeptical side of me goes, we do need to have commercial offerings that are enduring to get the most out of them and to encourage longevity in these markets. So it's definitely something that we're going to be keeping an eye on over the next few years. The Southern markets. And also I can't talk about DSO systems and not talk about the Nordics. They are still very much active. They still have various platforms across all the Nordic regions really, but they're still very, very patchy and not necessarily unified across all countries. So we've had some relevant questions come in while you're talking, Lucy. So on the DSO markets, does that specifically include markets like Go packs in the Netherlands? Yes, yeah, Go Packs was definitely in our research for the megawatts. We didn't just specifically look at a single market platform. We looked at all of them across that were that were present in each market including Go Packs. And we have seen the emergence and the scaling up of really a handful 5 or 6 market providers that are becoming established for and setting up DSO market platforms across Europe. We have another question on the pockets of value that will remain for behind the Metre assets considering grid scale batteries can saturate markets quite quickly and I guess there's a twofold answer to that. Question 1 is looking back at the ancillary services requirements. We do expect a growth in the need for ancillary services from the current levels. We've already seen the emergence of new markets for faster acting services. We expect to see a rise in the need for FCR. The volume required to put the largest in feed loss in a number of countries is shifting away from the largest generator to the largest interconnector, but also to the point of the distribution system flexibility that is a market and a value stream that grid scale assets that are transmission connected can't address. So that there's certainly value in DSO markets for demand side flexibility that is quite distinct from that which is available to grid scale batteries. So moving on to resource adequacy mechanisms, which is to some extent a catch all phrase that covers both strategic reserves, which are typically large assets that would otherwise retire to keep them open for times of need and capacity markets which should be technologically neutral, open to demand side flexibility, storage and generation. And we are seeing the the the emergence of capacity markets across Europe, but it's still in relative infancy with less than 10 countries currently open to demand side flexibility. And participation like much of the other markets is somewhat limited. I think to some extent that's driven by the perception, the myth that demand side flexibility doesn't require capital expenditure. And so if you're investing in a new generation plant or refurbishing an existing 1, you can get contract durations of up to 15 years, whereas demand side flexibility is typically being offered a one year contract. Other impediments to demand side flexibility participating are the ability to stack value with other markets and the DE rating factors for energy constrained technologies. So if you're a gas or coal plant, you will not be DE rated as much as a battery or demand side flexibility. So all of these are limiting participation of demand side flexibility in capacity markets in most countries to less than 10%, even less than 5% in in some cases. And I think there's a lot more that can be done to open up capacity markets to demand side flexibility on a level playing field. Now that's something that we may see as designs for capacity markets do develop and and evolve and are are more open to demand side flexibility. So we're particularly intrigued with the proposals for Spain and Germany, two of the bigger countries in Europe to open capacity markets with the the first auction expected in Spain this year and in Germany in in the coming years. So moving on then to the new frontier demand side, flexibility in wholesale markets. Now historically, there's been a clear distinction between balancing service providers that are taking flexibility into ancillary services markets and balanced responsible policies or the retailers that are responsible for hedging the wholesale position for the assets and the customers in the retail markets. We're increasingly seeing an overlap where assets are looking to get value as markets, as the ancillary services market saturate from the spot markets from the day ahead and intraday markets, particularly if you're looking to schedule smart charging or electrified heating. We've seen the relatively well established NEBETH framework in France enabling assets to from the demand side to bid in to the the wholesale market and form part of the merit order. We've also seen the launch in the last winter of the modification to the balancing and settlement code in Great Britain known as P415, which allows residential assets and other behind the Metre assets to participate in the wholesale markets without the consent without needing an explicit agreement with the assets balanced responsible party. In recent years we've also seen the transfer of energy regulations in Belgium expand that that capability to demand side assets on the high and medium voltage levels, but not yet to enable participation independently for low voltage assets. So we're seeing market develop there where retailers and aggregators are forming partnerships rather than having true independent access to the wholesale markets. And I think this overlap between the balancing service providers and the VIP's in the wholesale markets is, is going to be one of the areas where we do see a lot of regulatory change over the next couple of years. And we're seeing more retailers look to offer flexibility services. We're looking, we're seeing BSPS look at becoming retailers themselves and we're also looking at aggregators who are using dynamic tariffs as a proxy to provide independent services to residential customers. And we'll go into that in more detail on the next map. Thank you, John. So yes, this map is sort of new and improved for this year's edition. So we've expanded our scope of implicit flexibility quite a lot to include not only the different design of tariffs, so the time frames in which the prices are reflected to the end consumer, but we also wanted to reflect how the types of tariffs are changing. And by that I mean specifically including reference to asset specific tariffs. So admittedly there's not huge amounts of these emerging. We counted 11 EV or sorry, 11 countries with specific EV tariffs and three countries with specific heat pump tariffs. So still relatively new, but definitely an emerging factor that's come in the past, probably only really 12 to 18 months. And we also wanted to reflect the growth of network components. Again, there's only 11 countries that have some form of variability that the consumer can harness for their network variability, but it's definitely an area that we're seeing growth. I, I personally think this topic of implicit flexibility is very interesting. Having a little browse of the questions when John was speaking there, there's a few that are talking about how to get value to the end customer and how that the value that John and I've been talking about and all these different maps is translated. And I think tariffs and implicit flexibility is one way to to potentially navigate that. So a lot of the, the tariffs that we looked at for this map, they give a price signal to the end consumer. The end consumer does something and they save some money. But at the end of the day, a lot of that cost saving, a lot of that benefit just goes to the end consumer. It doesn't necessarily go to all the different service providers that enabled that. So I think the the implicit flexibility and tariffs and how you connect that to the other markets that we've been discussing, DSO markets, ancillary service markets. I think that's definitely an area to explore further, not necessarily in the in the bounds of the market monitor maps, but just more as a, as a school of thought. How can we marry up the, the tariffs that we're seeing emerging and they are emerging at a quite a great rate with also increasing participation, having different new innovative business models to get that value to the end consumer. But also, if I'm, if I'm being really frank, how can we use that low voltage, medium voltage flexibility to benefit the system? I'm not being completely altruistic. We do need flexibility and we can get it from the low voltage assets. So how do we enable, how do we get the business models to do that? That was a little bit off topic for me, but I think this is a really interesting topic and some of if I had all the time in the world I would explore. So yeah, any questions on implicit flex or resi flex, let me know. So we do have some questions come in Lucy, if, if you'd like to take them there and explore a bit. Further, take them now. We'll take them now before the poll. That's yeah. Happy to do that. Go ahead. So I guess first one that they'll say is that there are different different loads different consumer uses for energy, some more flexible than others. And so we've had a comment and a question from Tim Ryan in Australia saying that this big, big increase in controllable load for domestic hot water that that is being used for flexibility tracked as the solar to take up that sort of excess solar. Are we seeing specific service flexibility for particular assets emerging in in Europe? Firstly, thank you for joining all the way from Australia. Goodness knows what time it is over there. But yes, great question. The short answer is yes, I think it's definitely emerging. I wouldn't say it's completely widespread, but I think that's largely a reflection of connectivity and consumer attitudes towards flexibility, not so much from a technical barrier. So for example, we're seeing if I'm understanding your question correctly, your EVs or your stationary home batteries being used typically for FCR, so one of the faster acting value streams. Whereas if we look at your, your heating loads typically more your Afrs that that at the moment tends not to be an asset that does both. It's very much your batteries, your EVs do your FCRS, your heatings do, your AFRR, DSO markets. You could probably do both because the technical limitations or the technical requirements are that much easier than your than your ancillary services. But it's definitely something I think we will see an emergence of. Sorry, that's the wrong phrasing emerging of. So rather than just having a battery to FCR, heat pump to AFRR, as the connectivity in the home increases, I can see our options for residential flex or residential flexibility assets increasing significantly, which is haven't quite got the home connectivity yet to do that. And I guess that that's somewhat a reflection of the difference in philosophy in in what a virtual power plant is or how in in Europe you're talking about access to different markets, which is very much a sort of independent aggregator accessing the different markets for system needs. Whereas in other countries demand response, particularly at a residential level is much more driven by the retailer for a specific asset type to provide a particular service. So within Europe that sort of service specific is less what we're seeing than more asset focused aggregators and asset focused propositions looking to harness particular assets with their suitability for different markets, whether it's FCR or wholesale arbitrage or other longer duration services. I think guess that relates to another question from Tim on the bifurcation between essential use and non essential essentially inflexible and flexible load. And, and whether we're seeing that that bifurcation in in Europe. I think the answer to that is, is not particularly apart from some some trials and and pilots. However, we are seeing especially in Germany with the introduction of Article 14 A for new large assets that that are high consuming compared to to the rest of the property, the ability of the DSO to curtail those assets. So there's an element of limitation of capacity as as opposed to it being a simple on off. Are there any other polls that you've picked up, Lucy? We can move on to the poll if that's the the key questions that we've. I think related to this map it would probably be a good time to move on and then whilst audiences are replying to the poll, I can give the questions a quick read. You can see who motivated the inclusion of this poll into the webinar. 100% me. So in your opinion, which assets have the most potential for scaling residential flexibility? It doesn't necessarily have to be a who's doing the best now this really is more of a forward-looking of of which assets you think you could could be the best option to increase the participation of residential assets. I will give audience members a maybe 30 seconds, 40 seconds to respond. And I did have to draw in the urge to write a all and it depends as an option because if I, if I'm being completely honest, I think it's likely going to be a mixture of, of all of them. I don't think a single asset will win out. It'll be how can we harness multiple assets for multiple purposes? A heat pump in an EV, it could work really well in a home for, for heating, for self consumption of solar, but also for providing grid flexibility. So it's not necessarily A1 asset wins out. I'm a little conscious of time and we've just gone past 51% responses. So I'm going to move over and see the responses. Not unsurprisingly, EVs lead that I think it is, it is well accepted that the proliferation of electric vehicles will really help residential flexibility. Smart thermostats, I'm, I'm actually quite surprised about being so high. I'll be really keen to get people's thoughts on smart thermostats and maybe how much they can control heating assets because as I said, I think that connectivity and that controllability is a really interesting theme around residential flexibility. Similarly, like HEM, I'm again not surprised that that's that's ranking relatively high because depending on your school of thought, HEM assets are are pivotal in controlling all of these assets and being that bridge between the home and the wider electricity system. Stressed for that further ado, I will hand over to Andres for the final map. Thank you Lucy. Indeed, final map. So this is where we look at what are our informed expectations for the future. Of course, we do not have crystal ball. So we try to guesstimate or or see where we see the development of accessibility of demands that flexibility to different markets to develop further based on on the scoring system that you can see on the screen. This is an expectation over a few years. So don't expect this to be now in 20252026 necessarily. So we're looking at the at the horizon of five, five or six years, so up to 20-30 maybe. So there are the darker countries of course that you can see on on the map are the ones that that we expect to be you know performing better in the next years or so, being a more interesting for the business case of demands and flexibility in the coming years. Of course, the ones that are already performing well, we will expect to continue doing so over the the next years. But there are let's say, 3 important learnings that inform the the these expectations. The first one for me would be that we do need to or that there's a pressure of balancing, no pun intended there The clean electrification and affordability of this transition. And it will be playing a a key role in driving the the growth of demand set flexibility as cheaper and faster as a cheaper and and faster way to deploy the needed flexibility by system operators. So the countries that have more ambitious targets for renewable deployment and those that are also more advanced in the deployment of flexible assets or in their electrification of the economy are the ones that are expected to perform better because there will be just a need for flexibility and demand side flexibility. Is the cheaper option or is is it the more easier to deploy option rather than costly and and time intensive grid enforcement, which also been will also be needed, but but maybe maybe will take more longer time. The the second learning is that there is a growing appetite by consumers, especially those with flexible assets to take on dynamic price contracts. And this replies to to some of the the questions on, on the chat on how can we for residential, for residential consumers, will they be put to a side through because of other larger technologies, our front of the Metre utility scale storage, will they take over the whole cake? No, we, there's a business case for for everybody residential consumers, they're showing interest in, in dedicated tariffs for their types of assets that they have. So it might be dedicated price contract for their electric vehicle, for their heating, for different technologies, for more flexible technologies. So we expect this to grow through more dedicated offerings by, by retailers we that might be tailored for, for these technologies. And the, the final learning is that there's that the, there's a renewed support by the Commission and by lawmakers in, in investing on, on the mindset flexibility, the regulatory framework. As we've seen over the past slides, this is a critical driver for the development of of flexibility. We see a push, a renewed push to implement the the 2019 electricity Market Directive and and regulation which has been lagging in many countries. So we do expect in some of them to to to see a significant change over the next and in the near future. Even so, this will also bring the introduction for example of the independent aggregator framework to many countries or the access to wholesale markets for demands and flexibility in the in the near future, which we've seen was not that evolved in the in the previous slides. So there's also other new opportunities for for flexibility in the coming years. The European Commission introduced the the flexibility needs assessment in the latest electricity market design from from last year. It will provide visibility into what is the potential for demand side flexibility in many Member States and will also provide some impulse to to develop these solution solutions. There will be this link to this flexibility needs assessment. Introduction of flexibility support schemes. So dedicated support schemes that can be accessed only by by demands and flexibility and should facilitate the access to wholesale markets and to to other mechanisms. So this is another initiative from the Commission that if implemented could further push it and push the business case in in many European countries. So to sum it up, we do see that the best performers are obviously the countries that already have significant impulse in in, in the in demands and flexibility like GB or France. But we do see some countries like like Spain or Germany where either through regulatory change or through just the sheer appetite from consumers like in Germany where there's big deployment of of technologies that will just will just have a good feature in, in our estimations over the next few years. Now of course, this will only materialize with the right policy push and and This is why we have these the selection of three main asks or policy asks that we want to extend to to our lawmakers. This is the only way that the the full potential of flexibility will be achieved. And the first one is really straightforward. I'm happy that also the audience was agreeing with this in the the first poll is to open all markets to distributed energy resources. Of course, this goes hand in hand with other requirements like developing a framework for independent aggregation to facilitate or to lower or to make sure that requirements to participate in different markets are technology neutral and do not discriminate market parties. The framework already exists in the electricity market design, but the implementation is is lagging. So we see that there's a lack of urgency in some countries. And This is why I think this, this also important push from the industry to ask the policy makers also at national level to transpose these, these European laws. Because otherwise, and the message is quite clear. If we do not prepare now to to develop these these frameworks, the exponential growth of demand due to the to the increased in electrification and the deployment of renewables will mean that we that the alternative is just costly grid investments that will take time when the alternative could be much cheaper. So we're not putting this in doubt that the electrification will happen. The question is that what price it will happen. The second call to action is, is to to allow consumers to see pricing those from markets. Of course there are consumers that will want more security or more, more stability in their prices. But the, the, the important message is that they should have the option to be exposed to wholesale prices, but also to, to the impact that they have on on the grid. So to develop tariffs that are network tariffs that are reflective of the, the, the costs that they impose on the other create on the grid to allow them to make a more informed decision and to valorize also the flexibility that they have consuming at the at the right moment. And then the the final point is to encourage system operators or to incentivize them to to procure clean and affordable sources of flexibility. Until now how the remuneration schemes for regulated activities or for regulated actors works is that they are heavily incentivized to invest in grid infrastructure. Of course this might lead in into over dimensioning of grids, which is quite costly. So we need policy makers to ensure that the policymakers and regulators to ensure that the that the incentives for system operators lie also in the use of of cheaper options like demand set flexibility, not only encouraging them, but also making it a business case for them. So they have to be able to recover not only costs, but for them to have a return on investment over a few years from the use of of these flexible sources. And this is it from my side. I think we have a few minutes for for some questions or for a brief discussion, John. Yes, if can move on to the next slide, but I think there's some questions that I've I'll group relating first to that future development map. A number of questions have come in regarding Spain. I think it's fair to say in all the years that we've been assessing the progress, Spain has been one of those countries which has always been next year. It's the changes always in, in the future. What, what is it that gives us optimism regarding the the the regulatory changes in Spain this year? Yeah, I can maybe, maybe take this on. So indeed, and, and especially for me, this is quite personal as as as Miss Spaniard, we do, there's this, this perception, yeah, as you say that it's always this Manana, Manana, like tomorrow, tomorrow we will implement it. But there's work going on this year. We're expecting the independent aggregator framework to finally come into, into law. And there is interest by market parties, by system operators to, to, to procure from flexible effort from demand side flexibility. We do also see and This is why what I mentioned that there is the, the countries that already have a high renewable part will be also more interesting for, for flexibility because of the viability that they bring to to the table. On top of that, Spain is one of the countries that has the best or from from Europe has more advanced tariff design, network tariff design and they also have already the deployment of smart meters of advanced smart meters. So all of this together makes it makes us think that if just the right pieces fall into place, so the independent aggregated framework and the incentives for DS OS to procure flexibility if those happen, we do see Spain as an interesting country to, to for the future development. I don't know if you want to compliment John or Lucy. I think given in the interest of time we can move on. There's a couple of other points, some questions that I'd like to group and get a quick answer to. Vehicle to grid is is 1 where it's it's seen as as really opening up the capability of EVs to provide, you know, huge capacity of services to the grid. How how do we see that evolving over the next few years and what are the key barriers? Again, I think it's great, great sort of questions and my usual answer is it depends. I apologize, but I'm going to try and keep it short and sweet. I agree there's a huge potential. I think they're there. The the CapEx of them is relatively minimal compared to say AC and I are a front to Metre battery which is evidently beneficial. There is still a school of thought around DC and AC, whether the control of the battery is in the sorry, the control of the EV is in the car or it's in the charge point. So there is some almost fundamental yes, no answers which will determine the value you can obtain from that vehicle because that impacts the revenue streams that you can go into. So it's a long answer short. I think there's huge potential and I think as an industry we will harness it, but it's I don't think it's as straightforward as going all EV's can do pretty much everything. Let's start tomorrow. I think there are still some fundamental questions that need answering first. And I want to. Complement that AC, AC question of if it's, do you have to have a specific charger with that particular model of EV or is it a more open ecosystem which has a much higher cost? Andreas, we're looking to come into that question as well. Yeah. I just wanted to compliment because particularly with with EVs, it's also going to be something quite important, a question that came up before data standards and interoperability standards. This is something that is currently being discussed a lot here in Brussels and, and there's different working groups and expert groups from the Commission working on this. But this is a, a key aspect. We have to make this as easy as possible for consumers. We need to make sure that a consumer out of the, the, the, the shop that they can use their EV in the smartest way possible. And for that, we will need that this these interoperability standards to make sure that there's no 27 different data formats across Europe that factory can just type test the the vehicle for providing these different services to the grid and to make it as easy as possible to the consumer. So I think this brings it back to to that question of of data formats that we had before. Thank you, Andreas. And there are a lot more questions that we've not been able to get to today, so we will look to answer them and share them as soon as possible. So it just leads me to thank Andreas and Lucy for their participation in this webinar. I thank everyone for attending and please do go to the LCP Delta All Smart and website to download the public version of the market monitor. Thank you everyone. Thank you all, have a nice day. Thank you all. _1740208792723