Season 2 Ep 4 – From Doubt to Data: How Battery Storage Transformed UK Hire

Kevin Sturmer 0:00
Coming up on Leading the Charge

Neil Hordle 0:01
With that model in we still have resistance. And in the end, I said, let me just put 10 out. I said, we’ll pick 10 to put them out for a month. At the end of that month, we’re really reporting. If I haven’t saved you money, CO2 fuel, I’ll take them away and I won’t charge you.

Kevin Sturmer 0:21
This is Leading the Charge, where we talk innovation and insights in the industry of sustainable energy. Leading the Charge is brought to you by POWR2, a global provider of energy storage solutions. And now from the POWR2 studio and broadcasting everywhere from leadingthecharge.io. Here are your hosts, Tim Doling and Kevin Sturmer.

Kevin Sturmer 0:45
Welcome to Leading the Charge, where we talk battery energy storage, insights, innovation and the industry of sustainable energy. My name is Kevin, and I work in the marketing department of a company called POWR2, and with us, as always, is the incredible Tim Doling. He is the Vice President of Global Markets here at POWR2. How are you doing, Tim?

Tim Doling 1:07
I’m doing good. Kevin, how are you doing?

Kevin Sturmer 1:08
Doing so well. So well. Today we have POWR2’s very own Neil Hordle with us on the podcast. He’s our UK based Business Development Manager. He has been in the hire industry for over two decades, working with companies like Gap and Speedy and Sunbelt. But what’s really important was the key role he has played in helping those hire companies, in helping those end customers, make that energy transition. Identifying those projects where it makes sense to transition from a diesel generator to a battery, energy storage system. And it’ll save them time, it’ll save them money. And then also turning that plan into action. Neil, it is great to have you here. We’re going to get into how you did that for all of these wonderful companies in a moment, but just great to have you here. Thank you for joining us.

Neil Hordle 2:00
Thanks, Kevin. Thanks for having me on.

Tim Doling 2:01
Neil, when did it first start to come onto your radar these energy storage systems as far as rental companies or hire companies, as you call them in the UK,

Neil Hordle 2:10
About four years ago, when I worked at Speedy Hire, we had a division there called Partner Services, at the time. They’d bring in other suppliers to complement our core range of equipment. We had a company come in and partner with us then. And then we later acquired Greener Power.

Tim Doling 2:30
I see, so they did it through a partner, rather than bring on fleet themselves at that point?

Neil Hordle 2:34
At the start, yeah, and then, I think I don’t know the full background of the opportunity to acquire a business came up, and they took it.

Tim Doling 2:42
Yeah, excellent. So at that point, what were some of the applications you were seeing as a typical application for the energy storage systems?

Neil Hordle 2:50
From a personal point of view, at that point in time, I didn’t have, I didn’t get involved too much with it, but a lot of it was focused around stock side compounds and powering them up, and the reducing the reliance on the generator,

Tim Doling 3:04
Yeah, I see so you could take a generator that was typically running maybe 24 hours a day and bring that down to a fraction of that potentially,

Neil Hordle 3:11
Yeah, yeah, you know, save the fuel during the night, save the noise, you know, over the weekend, yeah.

Tim Doling 3:19
What were some of the initial reactions or hesitations concerns from customers when you’re trying to roll this, this type of technology out?

Neil Hordle 3:27
I think it was the belief that it would actually work. We had, we would present modeling, you know, we could say we’re going to we could on estimate, we would save you this much money your CO2 it was actually getting both sustainability teams and procurement teams to actually buy into it.

Tim Doling 3:47
Yeah, that’s so interesting, because that aligns directly with the type of thing I had here in the States. I can remember vividly talking to a construction manager, and he said, It’s great looking technology, but does it actually work? And that was our job to prove that the technology does indeed work and it does what it says it’s going to do. So, were there internal challenges within the companies you worked at as well, or was it just typically the customer adoption side,

Neil Hordle 4:11
You know, certainly from my side, a little bit of disbelief that it did actually work, but it was only when I regularly started to put them out to customers that you could really see the savings were true.

Tim Doling 4:23
Which segues nicely into what I was going to ask next. Was there a specific turning point whereby that started to happen? You know, the customers started to enjoy the savings, enjoy the CO2 emission savings. So the turning point happened, or is that still in the process of happening? I don’t know. What would you say for the UK market,

Neil Hordle 4:41
I think we are quite far down the journey with it. Now, I remember I had a particular customer of mine come to me and say that they were struggling on their journey to net zero, and asked, what could I do? They were a large hire of generators. Had 100-110 generators. On hire from me. Quite a large chunk of those were on unlimited hours contracts, so running through the night, running over the weekend. So I immediately said, let me put batteries on them. There was some resistance. Sustainability Team were all over it. Procurement, not so much. They were concerned about the cost and whether that saving would actually drop at the bottom as well. We presented some modeling around it, and said, Look, if you’d let us put batteries out on these, as long as the applications are right, you know, we can potentially save you this, this and this. Even with those with that modeling, we still have resistance. And in the end. I said, Look. I said, let me just put 10 out. I said, we’ll pick 10. Said, we’ll put them out for a month. At the end of that month, we’re really reporting. If I haven’t saved you money, CO2 fuel, I’ll take them away and I won’t charge you.

Tim Doling 5:55
And that job that went well?

Neil Hordle 5:58
Yeah, thankfully it went well. Nine out of the 10 present, really good savings. One of them was just just slightly off, but it still saved a good element of CO2, not so much in fuel and pounds and pounds.

Tim Doling 6:11
That’s fantastic. So I had a question for you, because this comes up a lot in the States, is if I’m selling unlimited power, we call it here triple shift, you’re running all around the clock. So that means I get to double my rental rate for selling that. Also means I can sell the fuel I come along and offer a battery I’m taking away from those revenue streams, and as a rep, maybe I don’t get compensated as well if I’m cutting down on the fuel sale and the unlimited runtime. Did you ever come across those type of problems, or is it a different kind of structure there?

Neil Hordle 6:43
Yeah, my the head of head of fuel at Speedy. We were really close. We worked really closely with several customers. And when I, when I started, but batteries out large scale, it wasn’t too pleased, because we were taking the revenue away from him. But then we, we switched a lot of accounts to HVO around the same time, so which commanded a better rate, so he swings around about with him. But yeah, it was the saving of fuel it takes from one and gives to the other. But we, we’re making, we’re making the customer happy at the end of the day. So the best way to do that is the way that I work.

Tim Doling 7:08
So the typical customer for energy storage would also use HVO.

Neil Hordle 7:30
That’s, that’s the dream,

Tim Doling 7:31
Yeah, yeah.

Neil Hordle 7:32
Yeah, from a sustainability point, you know, battery HVO.

Tim Doling 7:36
What’s your takeaway? And what could you How could you advise somebody else who may be coming into the industry a bit newer. How should they approach this?

Neil Hordle 7:45
I think for me, at the beginning, I didn’t understand how it worked. We had pockets of training that I don’t think from a from my personal point of view, I had enough training. Like I said, it took me until I started seeing the savings after I put them out to customers. I didn’t, I don’t think I fully believed it. And I think if you pick the correct application, you know, the savings can be huge.

Tim Doling 8:12
Absolutely can. I think that’s a really good point. As far as vendor training, from my perspective, having come into this, from coming from the world of fuel tanks, than trying to sell this is cutting down on fuel usage. I think number one is to not oversell the technology, so understand what it really can do accurately present that to the customers. That’s number one. And the second thing is, is having a vendor that can give you proper training, that knows the system well enough to give you proper training and point you to actual case studies with real data that show in this application. This is what we’ve proved in the past. Your application might be slightly different, but close enough to give you an idea of how it’s going to work. So vendor training, I think, is key.

Kevin Sturmer 8:14
Wonderful, wonderful to hear sort of the journey that you went on, from not believing it all the way to saying, Oh no, this is it, and it’s a data driven journey, that’s the thing, I think my biggest takeaway. And I think that anybody looking to make that energy transition might also have a similar takeaway.

Neil Hordle 9:10
Yeah. I mean, after we, I remember receiving the reporting through for the 10 that we put out, and I put a simple table together fuel saved, pounds saved, and CO2 saved. It was three boxes. I took all the figures out of all 10 reports, manual process, put them into a box and send them to the customer. After that, it was a free fall. Just get them out where you can we you know, we had to mobilize our whole team and get around all these sites, check what the applications were, if they were suitable. Batteries were out, and I actually caught up with the team of the customer I worked with the other day. And the fuel savings they receive in now, because they’ve still carried on with the journey, they’re fully in. Fuel savings they’re in now monthly or into six figures. Yes, and it’s huge, yeah,

Kevin Sturmer 10:01
yeah. Now I know Tim, we normally end each episode with a question, but today we’re gonna change it up. So we’re gonna play a little game that we like to call living your best life. And that is B, E, S, S, living your best life for battery, energy storage system. Here we go. Neil, are you ready to play Living your BESS life?

Neil Hordle 10:25
Bit nervous. Kevin, but yeah.

Kevin Sturmer 10:27
Here we go. Okay, true or false, you can reduce generator runtime by up to 80% by integrating a battery energy storage system into a hybrid solution.

Neil Hordle 10:40
That would be true.

Kevin Sturmer 10:41
Perfect. Okay, next question, peak shaving is when you use an electric razor between the hours of 7am and 9am true or false?

Kevin Sturmer 10:50
That one is false.

Neil Hordle 10:52
False, okay, Tim, I’m gonna throw it to you. What is peak shaving?

Tim Doling 10:55
Peak shaving is when you use the battery to top up the energy required for the load source, simply put.

Kevin Sturmer 11:01
Simply put, wonderful. Wonderful answer. Okay, all right, true or false, last question in one year of a 24/7 POWRBANK operation, one project saved over 53,000 liters of fuel and experienced 67% less downtime or contractor visits. True orfalse?

Neil Hordle 11:19
I’ll go true with that one.

Kevin Sturmer 11:22
It is absolutely true. And those are, those are the kind of numbers that one might expect when integrating a power bank into their energy solution. I will say thank you for joining us, Neil, and whatever platform you are on, hit the like button, hit the subscribe button. Do all of those wonderful, good things. If you have time, leave a review. If you want to learn more, you can go check out our show notes. We’ll have a link to connect with Neil on LinkedIn. Or you can also just visit leadingthecharge.io. For everything. Our legal team wants me to say that any statements or views expressed by the hosts or guests on Leading the Charge are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or positions of POWR2 their partners or affiliates. And a big thank you, Neil, as I said before, we really appreciate you taking the time to join us today.

Neil Hordle 12:14
Thank you, Kevin. I’m looking forward to the comments once this goes online,

Kevin Sturmer 12:18
Wonderful, wonderful.

Tim Doling 12:20
We’ll be watching carefully.

Kevin Sturmer 12:22
Yes, we will. We’ll be watching carefully, and everybody listening. Leave a comment below, leave a review and engage in the conversation of how you’re making the energy transition. And finally, we know your time is valuable, and we appreciate you spending even just a little bit of that time with us. So let’s continue the energy transition and keep Leading the Charge toward an efficient and sustainable future. See you next time.