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We talk about EVs, from the British perspective.Ā
Practical, Technical and all about Electric Vehicles.Ā
Hey, everybody. Welcome to the next episode of Take It Ev. I'm Greg, and let's gonna have some fun. So today, I've got Dan the battery man from Duracell Energy, and we're gonna be talking about all the Duracell Energy products and battery technology. Welcome to the show, Dan.
Dan:Awesome. Thank you very much for having me on on, Take It EV.
Gregg:No worries. No worries. So, you've got a presentation in front of you. Let's just, you know, I'm good I'm gonna let you, get on with the, your your, your introduction, but, obviously, like, talk talk to people about who are Duracell Energy, what do you do at Duracell Energy, and, you know, introduce yourself, basically.
Dan:Awesome. Well, my name is, Daniel Miller. Started to try and make myself known in the industry as Dan the Batman to try and build a bit of self brand. That's a superhero. Yeah.
Dan:So I've been working with, Pure Drive Energy. It's actually our company name. So, I've been working with Pure Drive Energy now for four and a half years, and we're a local family business based in Cheltenham, the United Kingdom. So we've we're actually a family business, so it's my dad's company. My brother works with us as well.
Dan:And over the last four and a half years, you know, it's been really exciting to be able to see the company grow from only 4 members of staff when I joined, to now having over 70 members of staff here in the UK and, expanding through to West Europe and South Africa as well.
Gregg:That's amazing. And, obviously, you guys provide energy solutions.
Dan:Yeah. That's right. So we have a ecosystem of fully integrated products that allow homeowners to get more out of their solar panels. So more and more homes now are getting solar panels installed on their roof and you can at times get grants for this from the government to reduce the cost of those installs, where, you know, it's being incentivised now to actually become more green and reduce your dependence on the grid where our energy demand, you know, globally is continuously growing. So, you know, the government are quite keen to push forward with moving to more of a sustainable energy network and decentralising the energy market, whereas at the moment, it's quite centralised where it's all bought from, energy providers, essentially.
Gregg:Okay. Okay. And so there's a whole plethora of projects that you guys have or products that you have apart from the batteries, right?
Dan:Yeah. That's correct. So, like I said, you know, our ecosystem of products supports homeowners with getting more out of their solar panels, so we've got a variety of products that support people doing that, and all these products communicate together. So we have a home battery system which works with our hybrid inverter. We also have an EV charger, and we're about to launch a solar diverter as well.
Dan:So these products will seamlessly communicate together to to increase the amount that you can get out of your solar panels.
Gregg:That's amazing. So, you're obviously like, who's your customer? Is it somebody who doesn't have any any solar panels, or or would you, you know, like, talk to me, like, you know, like, I don't have anything, basically. Just tell me, like, sell me just give me a quick pitch, and then we can talk about technical stuff.
Dan:Awesome. Okay. Yeah. So if you have a home with or without solar panels, our product can be used. So a lot of homes initially were, in the UK particularly, installed solar panels when the feed and tariff was around where the government were paying you for any energy which was exported out to the grid.
Dan:And now this is no longer a thing. So it reduced initially the the payback period of installing solar panels because, you weren't getting any money for the energy which was going out to the grid and wasted. You got nothing for that. So now having a battery system allows you to utilise that energy and essentially use the sun at nighttime. So you charge your battery filled with energy, from solar panels during the day and you use that in the evening.
Dan:And it it works quite well because with solar panels alone actually roughly only 30% of the energy you generate is used in the home and 70% is wasted out to the grid and unused. So by adding a battery storage system, you know, you can become 90 plus percent, use use 90 plus percent of that energy which is generated from your roof, which is really awesome.
Gregg:It's like a big capacitor, basically, on the I mean, for the technically minded electronics people, they'll know what I'm talking about. It smooths the air.
Dan:Yeah. The That's right. And you can also use batteries without solar panels. So now there's more and more energy providers providing tariffs on the market, which have different prices at different times of the day. A very popular company at the moment in the UK is Octopus Octopus Energy Yep.
Dan:And they've got a variety of tariffs, which are dynamic tariffs. So they've got, like, Octopus Agile, which has different pricing every half an hour, and this is updated daily. So the prices are different every half an hour and this changes every 24 hours. And this is based upon, you know, how much sun is shining, how much wind is generating. So the the energy price essentially for the homeowner varies depending on how much they would pay for it as how much octopus have to pay for it
Gregg:rather than
Dan:it being, like, a fixed rate.
Gregg:Yeah. And sometimes you get you can get paid for it if if you believe it or not, to to just get the energy out of them, usually at night. Doesn't happen very often these days, but, yeah, I think it's because, you know, it it costs less money to shut down the the no. To give people money instead of shutting down a power plant for 2, 3 hours to you know, and then spin it back up if it's a, you know, like a gas, power plant. Obviously, we we don't want that, but, like, you wanna start the energy when the, the the energy is the greenest if that's your your thing, or if you want a, you know, quicker payback on the on the, on on your installation, then you basically, you know, get the the cheapest energy at night and then use it during the day when in when the, the energy is more expensive.
Gregg:Right?
Dan:Yeah. Exactly. So these dynamic tariffs allow you to charge your battery when energy is cheaper, and you can use that throughout the day. So a a more basic example to use from from an energy provider would be a standard economy 7 tariff or even these EV tariffs which have a period overnight where the energy is cheaper. And you can fill your batteries with this cheap overnight energy and use that all throughout the day effectively shifting your grid usage to a period where there's less demand on the grid.
Dan:So this sort of flattens the curve of of when people are using energy. So you're shifting your energy usage to a time where there's less demand on the grid, which is good for the grid as well. So that's why they're actually, they don't mind people using that cheap overnight energy and storing that in a battery to use all throughout the day. Some people think, oh, well, will the energy providers catch on that people are doing this and stop people from doing it? But actually, it's supported.
Gregg:They they kinda want it to happen.
Dan:Yeah. So, yeah, we're supporting, you know, shifting grid usage to, when there's less demand on the grid and less stress on the grid.
Gregg:Okay. And so the the Duracell Energy batteries, let's talk about them. How how big are they? So, you know, what is the, the kilowatt hour storage, capacity? Like, what are what are the choices?
Gregg:So let's say I have I have a small can I can I put them in a small flat? Do I need a house? You know, do I need to have solar panels? And how big should I have the battery in my house? I'm sure that all these questions you've heard so many times.
Dan:No. Of course. So our our battery is 5.12 kilowatt hours. In the UK, the average home uses around 10 kilowatt hours of energy per day. And this is actually increasing now that EV cars are coming in and air source heat pumps are coming in, you know, shifting from heating with gas, moving that to electric.
Dan:You know, the whole world seems to be electrifying now, which is really exciting to see. So, yeah, the batteries are 5 kilowatt hours, so on average we see probably 2 batteries per install but it's also good for the smaller properties to have the flexibility of having a smaller sized battery as well. I think when we actually look over across the installations the average is about 1.5 that we sell per home, you know, when you average it out, 1.5 batteries per install. So, you know, some people go for 1, some people go for 2, and some people actually go for more.
Gregg:Okay.
Dan:With our new products you can actually put 32 of these batteries connected to 1 inverter which is market leading, actually. I I don't see many other companies who are able to install that many batteries on on one inverter. Normally, it's 3 to 5 you see with other companies.
Gregg:So the these batteries do require a separate inverter. So when you buy the or is it just a you know? Because I think people people when people see the the marketing shots, they just see one single box, but I think there's more involved in it, which is, you know, what usually happens with things anyway. But you have to have an inverter, so they're, you know, DC coupled batteries, but you've got an inverter that actually does the ACDC. You know?
Dan:That's completely correct. Yeah. So the the battery itself stores energy in DC, and solar generates energy in DC. However, the home uses AC energy. Yeah.
Dan:So an inverter allows us to convert this DC generated energy to AC so it's usable in the home, and also allows you to convert the energy that's taken out of the battery to AC so that can be used in the home, and vice versa if you're charging the battery from the grid that energy is taken through the inverter as AC and goes into the battery as DC. Our inverter is a hybrid inverter so you connect both the solar panels and the battery to the same inverter, so that that would go from the solar to battery straight through as DC to DC, which increases efficiency compared to some of the brands that have an AC connected system requiring you to have a separate solar inverter, which is useful if you've already got solar panels, of course, because you've already got that got that inverter there. So with our products we've got options for both. So you can install our inverter alongside an existing solar system or you can actually connect solar panels directly into the inverter and this is a great benefit as well if you've already got solar panels and you're looking at installing a battery plus more solar so you can have the battery charge from both your existing solar system, which already has its own inverter, and you can then install new solar panels into the new hybrid inverter that you're installing using our product and the battery also connects to that same inverter.
Gregg:Okay. Okay. Like I said, the I mean, if this if this seems down daunting to people or or complicated, it's really an odd one, obviously. You get somebody who knows their stuff, does a survey, and then plans out all the options and gives you all the options so you don't have to think about it if you if it's too much. But the, but like I said, the, having your own inverter allows you to have more batteries, and where when just think about it this way.
Gregg:If you wanna have solar panels and a battery, if the, if the solar panel, charges the battery directly without any intermediate steps, That's way more efficient, obviously. But if you don't have solar panels, you know, I don't know how that works out, in terms of efficiency. I mean, batteries are always DC. They're never gonna be AC, anyway, so you're gonna need an inverter whichever way, it goes. So just going back to the previous point, the, I presume because some people some people's ears might have perked up if they haven't heard about the time of day tariffs and the the fact that they can use batteries for that.
Gregg:I presume you're integrating with Octopus and, you know, other manu other, energy providers. That's the word I was looking for. And, you know, you can switch the charging on and off depending on those, smart tariffs. Right? Is that is that part of your
Dan:product? Yeah. That's correct. So as mentioned, a lot of people are really interested, in when buying a solar and battery system to charge their battery from a cheap energy overnight, and they're switching themselves to tariffs which allows them to do that. So we integrate with any berber rate tariff on the market, which is again is actually something quite unique to our company.
Dan:So some companies do integrate with the Octopus tariffs and as do we. However, we have our own software capability in house allowing us to integrate with any tariff on the market that that is not Octopus. I've got some notifications going off my laptop there, so I've just closed it now.
Gregg:Thank you, Windows. Always always, you know, always good to have nice sounds in the background. By the way, we're we're actually recording at, Everything Electric, Harrogate. So if there's any background noises or you're hearing people on a loudspeaker, it's because we're at the show. Just in the backroom.
Gregg:Anyway, the so, so you have you can have up to 32 batteries. Obviously, that's a that's a mad amount of storage.
Dan:That is a crazy amount of storage, and it's probably more than than anyone would go to at this moment of time, particularly with the sizes of inverters that surround. So our inverters range from 3.6 to 6 kilowatt inverters, and the batteries are 1 c rated. Now this is actually quite an interesting point with batteries, and it shows the performance of a battery of how fast it can charge or discharge. The industry average is around half a c rated. Now
Gregg:Okay.
Dan:To explain what a c rating is in layman terms, which some people might be wondering, is a c rating, essentially, is how fast you can charge a battery in comparison to the capacity. So, for example, if you have a 5 kilowatt hour battery, which is 1 c rated, it can charge and discharge at 5 kilowatts, and if you have a 5 kilowatt hour battery that's half a c rated you'll be able to charge and discharge that at 2.5 kilowatts. So that means with our product specifically, you're able to install a 5 kilowatt hour battery with a 5 kilowatt hour inverter and you can charge that battery fully within 1 hour.
Gregg:Okay. And and discharge as well, presumably. Right? Exactly. Yeah.
Gregg:Yeah. Okay. So it's a ratio, basically, of the charge versus discharge.
Dan:Correct. Yeah.
Gregg:Yeah. Okay. That's that's a that's a I I think I know what that means, but, yeah, that's an interesting way to to describe it, like, it's a it's a very simple way to describe it. So, with the, with with your batteries, you know, you say that the the other, companies have, you know, have a a c rating. Is there any other things you wanna, like, you know, compare?
Gregg:How where where do you see yourself, you know, like, if somebody's considering batteries in the UK or outside, but we're talking specifically about the UK. You know, you've got Give Energy, Tesla, and yourselves, and, you know, My Energy also do a product. How would you, like, position yourself within that landscape? Like, what what is the, what is the unique proposition that you guys have?
Dan:Awesome. No. That's a really good question. And when talking about the product and explaining the product, how we differentiate ourselves from other companies, I'd like to split that into 3 different categories. So you've got we've got a very high performing battery in comparison to others on the market.
Dan:We provide a very high level of support, so so that's really important for homeowners and installers to have a high level of support from the manufacturer. And when we came into the market, we saw that as a bit of a gap. We saw, when the company started in 2017, there were a lot of low performing batteries on the market that were very poorly supported, and we came into the market to try and fill that gap. So Mark, who's the CEO and founder of Pure Job Energy Limited, also my dad, when he started the company, you know, this was the vision. It was to fill that gap of providing a high level of support and to bring in a high quality product.
Dan:And further to that, we also have very large software capabilities in house. So this is the way that the products interact together and integrate with the bear break tariff. So those are the 3 categories that that I like to split those into.
Gregg:Yeah. The the software is the is the new thing. Right? Like, everyone's talking about software. Hardware is easy.
Gregg:Software is hard.
Dan:Yeah. No. Exactly.
Gregg:As a as a as a software engineer by day, I can I can attest to the software is not not, not that easy? And, well, it is easy, but not many people get it right. Put it that way. Just going back to your first point because I I I think this is worth reiterating. Like, there's loads of cheaper options or or, you know, cheap ish options on the market when it comes to batteries, but the, the the c rating, you know, just going back to your first point that again, is there basically, in in in a in a nicer way, it's basically like, can you do anything else but put like, sometimes you buy a battery, and if you put the kettle on and a toaster on, that energy is not gonna come from the battery anymore because the inverter is unable to output that much power.
Gregg:So you're saying, basically, 5 kilowatt hours or 5 kilowatts, sorry, is is sufficient to run the kettle and a toaster, basically, or a or a kettle and a, and an oven. Right? Which compared to many Chinese cheap products, put it this way, is, you know, is a much better offering. Right? And with a software integration, I'm just trying to reiterate your points here, is the, you know, having an integration with your energy supplier is a great thing because you can have you can dynamically adapt to the the the market because, you know, in a year or 2, the, the tariff landscape could change, and we could have another provider, that doesn't exist or they can integrate or whatever.
Gregg:Like, the you know, things change dynamically in this industry. So it's good good to have a like, if you buy a battery, obviously, it's a multiyear commitment. So it's good to have a backing of a of a company that can support that. So I think that's a that's a good idea. After the break, we're gonna talk about more things from Gerasil Energy.
Dan:Welcome back to the show.
Gregg:Yep. So welcome back after the break. The, Dan, so, you've got a Duracell Energy on the T shirts. You mentioned Last name. Name before.
Gregg:Yes. Let's talk about the history of the company and how you ended up with, with Duracell Energy
Dan:For sure.
Gregg:Or or rebranded yourself to whatever the journey is. Just explain us to people.
Dan:So, yeah, as mentioned, you know, our company name is Pure Drive Energy Limited, and we're a Duracell authorized licensee. We're we're a local family based business based in Cheltenham, which was established in 2017, manufacturing, designing, developing, manufacturing and distributing initially battery storage systems and have now introduced an EV charger and a hybrid inverter as well. Duracell approached us in April 2022, and they were looking for a partner to design, develop, manufacture, and distribute renewable energy products, which is exactly what we did, so it was quite a good fit. Phone's ringing there, apologies flat. So so, yeah, after after 9 months of them doing quite heavy due diligence on us, they gave us the license to use their brand.
Dan:So our company name is still PureJob Energy Limited. However, we we now have the licence to to use the Duracell Energy brand. Duracell really liked both the quality of our battery storage systems and our commitment to providing outstanding support and thought that would be a great fit for us to represent their brand. After them doing 9 months of due diligence we got the licence and we very quickly came to market, in Europe and South Africa. And how we did that very quickly is, we were obviously producing the Pure Drive battery, which we were selling in the UK, and we made a few structural changes and a few changes to the firmware of the product, but they were both made on the same production line.
Dan:So it's the Durasol original Durasol Energy battery was very much so based on the PureDrive product, and we were selling the Durasol Energy battery in Europe and South Africa and the Pure Drive battery, in the UK.
Gregg:So so this basically, like, removes the confusion? It's all now 1 merged into 1
Dan:Yeah, essentially. Yeah. So we, in the background whilst selling both Duracell and PureDrive, Duracell being in Europe and South Africa and PureDrive being in the UK, in the background, we have been developing, in conjunction with Duracell's quality processes, a new product, which we're very excited to launch and we're actually presenting it here at the Everything Electric show today. It's called the Dura 5 battery. It's the product that I've been talking about now that, you know, you can connect up to 32 in parallel
Gregg:Okay.
Dan:Etcetera. So now that new product will essentially displace the older products that we had which is what caught the old product is what caught the attention of Duracell but we've put a few new features in the product, we've made it smaller, lighter, we've managed to reduce the cost quite significantly, and it's far more stackable. So similar to other brands, our original product you could put 5 together to make 25 kilowatt hours, and with this new product we can put 32 together. And we've got some really cool ways you can mount this product. So you can either mount it on the wall or you can actually stack them on top of each other, allowing you to fit a massive amount of capacity in a very small space.
Gregg:Up to 32.
Dan:Up to 32.
Gregg:That sounds very cool. So I I have to ask sorry. Just, you know, I'm imagining people asking questions. Like, is this a product that you hang on the wall? Because you mentioned, you know, that or is is it stackable as in do you have to put it in a loft?
Gregg:Like, how much space do you need, and what are the configurations? Just let's let's just talk about that briefly.
Dan:Yeah. So you can stack them on the wall. So, in the box, when you buy the battery, normally the homeowner wouldn't see the battery box cause it's installed by an installation company. But within the box, we include everything that the installer needs to do the installation making it nice and straightforward to install for them. The benefit of this for the homeowner is it reduces the amount of time that the installer sends spends in their home and it makes the whole process, there's there's less rooms for error essentially in the way that that we produce the product.
Dan:We're very well known in the industry to have a very straightforward installation. We've got, like, a built in isolator. Everything that you need comes in the box. Okay. And, you know, that that benefits the homeowner a way that there's there's less room for error and less chance that the installer will be coming back to visit because they did something wrong on the install or anything like that, so that's a great benefit.
Dan:But you can stack these, to answer your question, is you can stack these on the wall or you can stack them on top of each other. The most common place and probably the most ideal place for these to be installed is in a garage. Inverters don't really like to be in direct sunlight, and when you put these product we we warranty the products for for 10 years. However, if they're in a nice environment, you know, these batteries and inverters could last for, you know, 20, 25 years. We warranty for 10 years for, you know, when when people are installing these perhaps in direct sunlight or or in places which compromise, the ideal performance of the product.
Dan:So really they're normally installed in a garage and yeah, you can put put them on the wall or stack them on top of each other, fitting a lot of capacity in a small space.
Gregg:But they have to be indoors so they can't just be put on the outside external wall?
Dan:The products are both I are IP 60 rated, so you can install them both indoors or outdoors.
Gregg:Okay. Under a waterfall. I'm just joking, but
Dan:Well, IP rating, what that means is it can take water from any direction. So
Gregg:Okay.
Dan:If you were doing some jet washing and cleaning cleaning your patio and your battery was installed outdoors, there's no fear in squirting the battery with the power washer to give it a bit of a wash. So, the the IP rating is 65 rated, so it's completely suitable for that
Gregg:Yeah.
Dan:And any weather conditions.
Gregg:Yeah. But like like I said, the, you don't want things to be in direct sunlight. I mean, like any electronic device, you know, it performs better when it's not in direct sunlight. It's just a because it gets hot. Right?
Gregg:Yes.
Dan:That's it.
Gregg:That's the yeah. That's a simple solution. Like, the cars are fine because there's multiple layers, on top of the car electronics to keep it cooler, but the but something like a battery box or inverter, you know, there's a there's there's fewer millimeters between the outside wall and the, or outside of the wall of the product than the actual cells or electronic PCBs or whatever. Yeah. So, like, particularly
Dan:if you imagine, you know, the if the battery's in a location which gets direct sunlight and it's an extremely hot sunny day which means the inverter is working at full power pumping out 6 kilowatts of solar into your home and into your battery so it's doing its most, and also because it's performing when it's sunny because it's charged from solar panels. So it's not only performing at a high rate, but that's when the sun's gonna be beaming on it mainly when, you know, when the the inverter's gonna be under stress essentially from from operating at full power.
Gregg:Yeah. Yeah. The, the other question that I'm gonna I'm sure people will ask is so you mentioned stackability or expandability. Can I just buy one battery and then add 6 months later another one on top of it and just kinda plug it in? So there are some products that kinda allow you to do that just where you can just, you know, keep on adding as your as your need or as your budget improves.
Dan:Yeah. That's completely correct. So you can start with 1, and you can expand in the future with no stress at all.
Gregg:Okay. That's pretty cool. That's pretty cool. So you mentioned the so you guys became, you know, Jurisil Energy. What's the, what's the other stuff that you you mentioned?
Gregg:Like, unless unless you want you wanna talk more about the, the Duracell battery itself or the your battery as well. Sorry. Juricel Energy battery. But you mentioned I packed up my ear. You mentioned the, EV charger and other products.
Gregg:You know, what is the, what is the offering there?
Dan:Awesome. So what I like to to call our offering is the Duracell Energy Home Ecosystem, and what that is is it's a family of products which seamlessly communicate together, with the vision to maximise your solar absorption, so to prevent as much as your generated energy, as possible going out to the grid. You know, you want to get the most out of your solar rather than, you know, if you have none of these products, on average, only 30% of that energy is used, and and using them, you can get 95 or 98 plus percent of that energy, generated on your roof used in your home for your own personal requirements rather than sending it out to the grid. So as you mentioned, not only do we have a battery, but we have got an EV charger, and we are about to be launching a solar diverter as well. And the great thing about ecosystem is is becoming quite of a a buzzword in the industry.
Dan:You're seeing more and more people talking about ecosystems, and the reason, for that is and and a big driver of the reason why we launched the EV charger was from customer feedback. So people would mainly complain that when they plug their car in, it would drain the energy out of their battery, and they wanted to use that battery all throughout the evening. So by having these products communicating together, they can make smart decisions based on what each other are doing, allowing you to to firstly maximise savings, which is great, but also allowing you to have a central point of monitoring where all of these products are are monitored through one app in a very nice, easy to read way rather than having 3 or 4 different apps across different products that you've got in your home from your solar to your battery to your recharger to your solar diverter, puts everything in one nice, clean place where everything is monitored together.
Gregg:Yeah. I've I've I've heard people being, not terribly happy with the when they added the battery to the, you know, the home, all of a sudden, things just miscommunicate and this drains the power. Like you say, you plug in your, your car and, all of a sudden, you know, it takes away all the energy from the battery, but you don't want it to. What if you have excess solar in the, and you want that actually go to directly to the car when it's plugged in instead of the battery or the other way around. Like, you're having a this is one of those cases where having a well integrated product where everything's from the same brand, makes huge sense.
Gregg:But the, obviously, you don't have to. Right? Like, somebody's already already has like, I'm thinking about myself. I already have a solar panel or solar panels, I've got a charger from a completely different brand than the solar inverter, Is that gonna still work if I add, you know, a Duracell energy battery to the to the mix?
Dan:Oh, 100%. Okay. It'll work and a lot of people have that, you know? And, but you do get certain benefits by having the same product where they are integrated together. And EV chargers seem to have quite a short warranty span anyway.
Dan:So people, you know, you could install a battery now and, you know, have the feel good factor that you're future proofed. So you know that this product is installed now and in the future. Maybe my EV charger's got a 3 year warranty, but this battery's got a 10 year warranty, but will likely last 20 to 25 years. So, you know, there'd be a time in the future that that you might be getting a new EV charger. If you like the charger that you've already got, you might replace it with the same brand, and that's no problem.
Dan:Or you could move into more of a an ecosystem approach where you've got these products that are communicating through the same app.
Gregg:Okay. Yeah. I mean yeah. Integration is great. Like, one of the reasons I use certain brands over another brands, when it comes to tech is because they're well integrated.
Gregg:The It's
Dan:like Apple. You know, you've got you know your your iPhone works with your Imac with you know, you can copy something on your phone and paste it on your laptop. You know, it's just that Magic. Magic that, you know, it's a coordinated approach and the products make smart decisions based on what each other are doing, essentially, with with the the the idea to to maximise savings and to make it as easy as possible for the homeowner. That that's a big thing that really we we focused on is, you know, you have a lot of people who install these products and, you know, that they're really interested in all the tech and they wanna know every single detail of the product.
Dan:But, you know, 90% plus of the market just want to fit and forget. And they want to fit it and know that the product's doing its job and saving the most amount of money possible with as little interaction as possible. So we we've got a few cool ways that that we do that. You know? So we have, like I've mentioned, the automatic integration with Vebro tariffs.
Dan:And what this prevents you needing to do is daily analysis of the weather forecast to decide how much to charge your battery by. So what I mean by that is if you've got solar panels and a battery storage system, as mentioned, you know, you you're likely to be charging the battery from the grid to make use of that cheap energy overnight. But what you don't want to do is compromise battery capacity where you could have had, free energy from solar panels put into it. So if it's a really sunny day, your battery might get to a 100% from solar. So, in fact, you might not want to take any energy from the grid overnight at all because it might put cheap energy in your battery when you can fill it with free energy.
Dan:Yep. Yep. But vice versa, in the winter, you get less solar, so you will want to be charging the battery more during, and, you know, in the UK weather is very variable. In the summer, one day it's blazing hot sun, the next day it's cloudy and raining, right? So this means you have to be doing daily analysis, checking the weather in the next day, and, you know, editing the settings in your app to to control how much energy will charge from the grid to maximise your savings.
Dan:Now, when this is completely automated, it does a few things. It means you get the best possible savings because it's automated, there's no human error, you're not gonna forget to do it, you're not gonna do it incorrectly and it's also completely hassle free because you don't have to do anything. It does it all by itself. Yeah. So essentially, you know, we're we're giving the best possible savings with no hassle at all from the home up.
Gregg:Yeah. I I think the the classic example that I'm sure you're you've covered as well, that I hear from people who have batteries and solar is when you know, there was a couple of days that were grim and, you know, horrible, so you obviously didn't do much in the way of solar, so everything's charging from a cheap tariff overnight. But next day, it's gonna be bright and sunny, so you wanna deplete that battery or you want that battery to be depleted in the morning so that it can take all that solar free energy. And I'm sure you can just do that via magic of software.
Dan:Correct.
Gregg:Yeah. That's right. And API integrations and all the other beautiful, you know, rainbows and butterflies up in the sky and cloudy stuff. Cool. So the, the the EV charger, is it just a, straightforward 7 kilowatt charger, or do you do, a 3 phase charger?
Gregg:That's the it's actually I mean, 3 phase charging or 3 phase supply to a house is not something that's, you know, ubiquitous in the UK. Like, in Europe, it's a it's a normal thing to have when you have a house, to have a 3 point a 3 phase supply to your house, not not so much in the UK. But, is your charger capable of doing 3 phase charging as well, or, is it just a single phase 7 kilowatt hour?
Dan:So the product that we've currently got is a 7 kilowatt tethered EV charger. Okay. The the next products we'll be launching in the EV space will be an untethered version of that 7 kilowatt EV charger, and then following that, we'll go into the 22 kilowatt 3 phase EV chargers. So currently, it's just one product, 7 kilowatt tethered, designed for single phase, but as time goes on, we will launch more EV products for for untethered and also for 3 phase as well.
Gregg:I mean, it kinda makes sense if you have a battery to just have a single phase charger. Right? Because the you're gonna have unless you have loads of 32 batteries, and that that that is not divisible by 3. So say you have 3 30 batteries and you wanna have 10 of each I mean, you need a very complicated inverter than for 3 phases, but let's not go there because I'm sure, I'm sure your geeky mind goes into all the possibilities.
Dan:But we do have 3 phase solutions as well for the for for both the home because some homes are 3 phase Okay. But also for for commercial. So whether that's a small commercial all the way up to large commercial, offerings, we do. So with with 3 phase, you know, some way some people do that is they will just install 3 single phase systems, 1 on each phase, whereas we have, you know, an inverter which distributes, the the 3 phases into 1 battery bank. So you've got one centralised battery bank, and, each phase can pull from that battery bank separately, and, you know, it's got some great advantages because if you've got a single phase system, 1 on each phase, you might have battery storage capacity remaining in your battery on phase 1.
Dan:However, there's no battery capacity with your battery in phase 2, and phase 2 is pulling energy, and it can't take that from the phase 1 battery. Yeah. So by having one battery bank, which is connected to all the 3 phases, it allows you to to pull energy from the battery bank, you know, whenever it's needed from any phase.
Gregg:Yeah. And sometimes you you have loads that are just single phase, so, you know, you can have unbalanced Yeah. Unbalanced, storage. Yeah. I mean and if you don't know what I'm talking about or what you're talking about, don't worry about it.
Dan:The products are quite different as well for both single and three phase for us. So we have, know, our single phase is a low voltage battery, and the three phase is a high voltage battery. And also some other differences are, the the single phase battery connects in parallel and the 3 phase battery connects in series. Now now what that means is with the low voltage battery, which connects in parallel, it's 51.2 volts. So when you add multiple batteries together that voltage stays the same because they're connected in parallel.
Dan:Whereas the 3 phase battery, is about 70 something volts. I don't I don't know it straight off the top of my head, but it's available on the datasheet which is on our website. And with that battery, when it's connected in series, the voltage increases as you add more batteries. So that's the main two differences between the products, really.
Gregg:Okay. And I presume the, the EV charger does, like, the pure solar diversion as well.
Dan:Right? That's completely correct. So when we launched the EV charger, we got some really great feedback, from both installers on how easy they are to install, but also from homeowners on the user interface of our app. We've got, like, a home page of the app, which is the live usage monitor. I'm just looking at it now actually in front of me.
Dan:I wish I wish you could see what I'm seeing.
Gregg:I'm sure. Well, we're gonna put a link in the description so people can have
Dan:a look at these
Gregg:things.
Dan:Yeah. So the the live usage, it's got like a few different bubbles which show everything that's going on. So you can see how much solar is generating, you can see your EV cars, you can see what's going on with the battery, what's going on with the solar diverter, and what's coming to and from the Brita as well. And if you click into the EV bubble, it takes you to the EV page and there's a few different modes. You've got, pure green mode.
Dan:You've got green boost mode. You've got smart mode and you've got time boost mode. Now the modes do different things. So you've got pure green mode, which essentially, is for people who are heroes and they want to be completely sustainable and only charge their car from 100% green energy. Cars require a minimum start up charge of of 1.4 kilowatts they need to initiate a charge.
Dan:So pure green mode essentially will only charge your car from 100% green energy, so you will have to have 1.4 kilowatts of excess solar available to initiate a charge. And the downside of that is if you've only got 1 kilowatt available, that'll be sent out to the grid and essentially wasted, which is why we have the green boost mode, which is more for money saving. So that will allow you to utilise that 1 kilowatt of excess, and it will top up the the remainder from either the grid or the battery, whatever is is more suitable to save more amount of money.
Gregg:Yeah. And you say you say it's gonna be sent to the grid, but it potentially might just get in your battery. Right? Correct.
Dan:Yeah. Well, so in in the scenario where perhaps your batch is a 100 it's middle of summer, bachelor's already at a 100% state of charge, it's coming into the evenings, you're generating less, you're only generating 1 kilowatt of excess, So that's the scenario, really. And and, you know, that's likely to be, you know, when you get home from work perhaps and and there's less sun at that time and you've only got batteries at a 100% because it's been charging all day with the sunlight and you've been out all day so the the the use the energy consumption in the home has been very low. So in that scenario, where you've got 1 kilo of excess, that's being sent out to the grid in pure green mode, that would essentially continue to go out to the grid because it needs 1.4 kilowatt of excess to start a charge, and in green boost it would take that 1 kilowatt and top up the remainder from either the grid or the battery.
Gregg:Awesome. I mean yeah. The the the problem always with all the smart stuff is that the, if you wanna, like, micromanage it or, like, think about all the options, there's just so much of it. It's it's a lot. I'm sure, you know, you're you're you mentioned the software integration is a is a magical thing.
Gregg:So I'm sure there's a there's an option for people who don't wanna manage too much of it. They can just say, just do the do your best. Mhmm. Be green. Like, if you say, you know, there's couple of options where you can choose the, the profile, and it will just do the magic for you.
Dan:Correct. We've also got, you know, like, a smart mode and a time boost mode, and these these modes can actually be used together. So you can have, for example, green boost mode and smart smart mode activated at the same time. And what that will allow you to do so you've got green boost mode and the green boost mode as mentioned, will take any excess available and put it into the car and top up the remainder from the grid. And smart mode will ensure that it's utilising the cheapest energy.
Dan:So you can select how much capacity you'd want in the car by a by a certain time. So say you leave for work in the morning at 7 AM, and you know you need 20 kilowatt hours being put in the car by then. You can plug your car in and it will automatically charge at the best periods to get the the the cheapest available 20 kilowatt hours into that car. So it'll take what it can from solar, It might take some out of the battery and it might take some out the grid. So it it may wait for the grid energy to become cheaper, so you can then utilise that cheap energy to charge the car, without having to think about anything.
Dan:So again, that's what I've mentioned. We we want to make this easy for the homeowner and not complicated at all. You just wanna plug your car in and know you're gonna get the cheapest, cleanest and greenest energy in your car. So that's what all of our products do, essentially. Without any hassle or thinking about anything, you can just relax and have the peace of mind that you know both your home and your car is is using the cheapest, cleanest, and greenest energy that you could possibly do.
Gregg:That sounds that sounds amazing. We're gonna take a break, and then we're just gonna talk about anything else that we have to talk about.
Dan:Awesome. See
Gregg:you after the break. Right. So, so we were talking about the, electric charger before the break and all the other integration stuff, the software magic. Right? But the, so if anybody's interested in seeing more details or actually getting it installed or, you know, finding out more like, let's talk about the the, you know, the the real kinda, like, what do I do now?
Dan:Sounds good. No problem at all. So along with launching new products with JuroStar, we've also launched a new piece of software, which enables homeowners to really quickly and easily get a quote, and get an install booked in quite quickly with with a really nice customer journey. You know, Duracell is such a big brand, and when we were awarded the license, we really wanted to maintain that and and give a really nice customer journey. So with Duracell, you can get a quote in only 30 seconds with no personal details at all.
Dan:So you can the get a quote link is on our website and also spread on social media. We've onboarded, Platinum Partners in the UK. And the reason we've done that is because with the Duracell brand, you know, it catches the eye of a lot of installers, and installers installers will want to utilize the brand essentially to to win them new business. And we wanted to prevent that from happening, and we also wanted to ensure that we only had really high quality installers installing our product. And again, providing excellent support is something that's really important to us and as a company we know, you know, there's there's around 5,000 installers in the UK who fit battery products and, you know, even if 25% of those installers came to us to use the brand, then, you know, we wouldn't be able to support essentially 1,250 installers.
Dan:So we got our heads together and thought, right. How many installers as a company can can we support very well? And we found that to be around, you know, 80 installers. And we've onboarded those installers as platinum partners, and we've handpicked them to ensure that we've got extremely high quality installers who are installed in those products, which, you know, removes a lot of risk for the homeowner where, you know, unfortunately, in the market, you do get some dodgy installers who, you know, do a quick and low cost in install and are there just to make as much profit as possible and be in and out as quick as possible. So we want to prevent that from happening because we don't want the brand to be represented in that way at all.
Dan:So when you get a quote through our quote tool, which is called DEPS, Durosol Energy Platinum Software. So when you get a quote through that, you can get a quote in 30 seconds without putting any personal information besides your address so you can locate your house. So you can, you know, without speaking to anyone, see roughly how much the system will cost for your home specifically, and also how much money you might save. So this is really useful information to have and then you can move forward with that if you're happy with the price by booking on to a meeting with one of our platinum partners, at which point, you know, you put in your name, your email address, your phone number, so that installer can get in contact with you.
Gregg:Yeah. So you get all the questions, answers without you know, because people are worried these days. They have to sell their personal information just to get a piece of information they want, and they abandon the the approach, you know, quite often. The, and like you said, the, having a a good installer is is is is you know? Like, nobody's gonna well, I hope they get you to to install it if they could, but the, the, you know, the, the real the reality is that the reality of the the fact of the fact is that they're gonna get a random person who's local installer of a particular brand.
Gregg:So, you know, that's gonna be the that's gonna be the face of the product, you know, to them. Like, this is the guy that actually put it in my house. So you you you want the the best person you can get it. And you also Yeah. Make you wanna make their life easier.
Gregg:So, so if if people wanna find out more, I'm gonna put the the link in the description. And I'm sure you've got a very good, you know, social media where I saw I saw you guys this morning recording a video. I don't think you were there, but the there were other people on your stands recording an awesome video with, like, an entrance to the to the building. It looked pretty cool. That would
Dan:have been my brother, Oliver.
Gregg:So I'm sure you've got a pretty good representation there. Any anything else to wrap it up and just, you know, to push people to your, sides?
Dan:No. That that's all for me, really. You know? Thank you for having me on here, and, you know, I hope I hope listen listeners enjoyed it.
Gregg:I've I hope I hope people learn something. Like, there's gonna be a quiz at the end. No. I'm just joking. As as always, you know, thank you guys for watching, and, thank you for giving us your time, and check out all the details in the description.
Gregg:Check out Duracell Energy, and, yeah, if you have any questions, you know, send them to Dan or or Duracell, but you can also text email me, techitev@gmail.com, and, I'll see you on the next one.