Speakers - SGCP13

Philip Sellwood, CEO, Energy Saving Trust

The presentation will look at how smart meters and smart grids can help to shape the UK’s energy future, with a particular focus on how this will help consumers be more energy efficient in the home. It will also recommend how organisations and government can effectively communicate the smart meter roll-out and new energy technology to UK households to make this smart energy future a reality.

Philip Sellwood has been the Chief Executive of Energy Saving Trust since 2003. Prior to working at Energy Saving Trust, Philip had an extensive commercial career in the Retail sector, which included 20 years with Marks & Spencer. Alongside his work with Energy Saving Trust, Philip is a trustee for the Ellen MacArthur Foundation which has sustainability and education as its core charitable purpose.

Ian Ellerington, Head of Innovation, DECC

This talk will explore the efforts of government to support particular companies in cleantech, specifically innovating in energy & grids.

An expert in energy, Ian was involved in change and project management in a career that includes stretches at Meggitt in defence projects, QinetiQ, KBC consulting, after a Cambridge education, and before joining DECC to lead innovation delivery.

Dr Jane Burston, Head of Carbon Measurement, NPL

Jane will deliver a talk about the NPL's approach to measurement and how this facilitates carbon reduction in grids and power sectors.

Jane is Head of the Centre for Carbon Measurement based at the UK’s National Physical Laboratory (NPL). The Centre helps develop, test and verify the performance of low carbon technologies including smart grids and renewable technologies, and is the Verification Body in the UK for the Energy stream of the European Commission Environmental Technologies Verification Scheme (ETV). Previously Jane was Founder and CEO of Carbon Retirement, a social enterprise reforming emissions trading and carbon offsetting. In 2011 she was named in Management Today’s ‘35 high-flying women under 35’ list and as Square Mile magazine’s ‘Social Entrepreneur of the Year’. Jane has recently been selected as a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader, alongside numerous Professors, Ministers and business leaders from around the world.


Adriana Laguna, Carbon Programme Manager, UK Power Networks

Adriana's talk will cover the Flexible Plug and Play Project which runs until December 2014 and has a budget of £10mn. The project is about enabling faster and cheaper connections of distributed generation to the network by trialling new technologies and new commercial solutions.

Adriana Laguna-Estopier is the Low Carbon Project Manager for UK Power Networks’ Future Networks Team. Before joining UK Power Networks, Adriana was Business Development Manager for Acciona Energía, in charge of developing 300MW of wind energy in Mexico. She also worked in the Ministry of Energy in Mexico as Adviser to the Undersecretary of Energy Planning and Technological Development, helping design the country’s first Renewable Energy Programme.Adriana holds a First-Honours Degree in Industrial Engineering from ITAM and an MPA in Environmental Science and Policy from Columbia.

Gavin Jones, Business Development Director, Electralink

Gavin was until recently Chairman of SmartGridsGB, and has been a VP at IBM. He is an experienced chairman for energy events.

Gavin Jones is responsible for growing the commercial business of ElectraLink in support of the UK Energy industry.

Gavin is involved in the UK Smart Energy arena at both customer and policy level, speaking, writing papers and meeting with policy makers across Europe. In the UK he is a member of the DECC and Ofgem’s Smart Grid Forum which is shaping the future UK policy in this area. He has been influential in setting up Smart Grid Great Britain and was its first chair. Gavin also chairs Intellect’s (the UK technology industry association) Utilities and Smart Metering and Smart Grids Working Groups.

Prior to moving to ElectraLink, Gavin was IBM’s Future Energy Leader for UK, Ireland and Nordics and had specific responsibility for leading the team selling Smart Grid solutions in the geography.

Justin Hayward, CIR Strategy

Justin formed CIR Strategy in 2001, an independent strategy consultancy offering diligence, market research, and the renowned 'Routes to Value" methodology. Justin worked at Deutsche Bank from 1996-2000 as a financial relative value analyst, looking at LIBOR trading strategies, global bond portfolios, volatility smiles, and Euroland bond spline models. He took an MBA from Cambridge Judge Business School in 2000/1 focusing on strategic management of technology. Through the 2002 HVM Report he wrote for EEDA, and the successful conference series founded that year, Justin is connected (distantly) to the foundation of the TSB HVM department, and new HVM TIC spread across the UK, and other academic departments using this title.

Justin founded YouMuse, a transformational series of experiences for high-level execs to take back control of their learning and career programme, away in inspirational venues. He has also founded SliceMap. This is a global cluster map of all high tech companies that uses Bayesian analysis to solve the problem of noise on personalised google searches for technology-interested execs, and is both on web and as an iPhone app - a great productivity tool.

Justin trained as a physicist, taking advanced degrees MASt, and PhD from Cambridge University. He was the PhD student of Professor Stephen Hawking beginning in 1991.

Graham Ford, Director, Mansion Ecopartners

The pressures of climate change, resource constraints and affordability make the path to a green grid a difficult one. New concepts in storage and generation could solve these problems, even for the UK, providing an enhanced and optimistic vision for renewables to provide a truly green grid.

A seasoned clean energy entrepreneur, Graham founded and was CTO of Heliodynamics, a CSP company, and has worked at top tier consultancy, as PA Consulting, and an MA from Cambridge in Engineering.


Alan South, Commercial Director, Solarcentury

Alan South is responsible for driving growth at Solarcentury through proprietary products and services. His role is to lead the team, to manage innovation as a portfolio, and to maintain a five-year vision and strategic roadmap. He joined the firm in the relatively early days of solar and has witnessed its growth into a mainstream asset. In 2011 Solarcentury won the Queen’s Award for Innovation.

He has over 25 years technical and leadership experience in innovation. Prior to Solarcentury Alan was European head of IDEO, a company that features regularly in top ten lists of innovative companies. He is respected thinker and spokesperson, and has delivered executive learning programmes on behalf of Harvard and Said.


Dominic Emery, Chief Development Officer, BP Alternative Energy

BP’s Energy Outlook represents our projections of future energy trends and the factors that could affect them, including economic and population growth, and developments in policy and technology. Three key messages have emerged from the Outlook: the rapid switch in supply patterns, driven by the unlocking of unconventional hydrocarbon resources; the importance of technology and innovation, which have brought costs down rapidly for both unconventional hydrocarbon and renewable energy resources; and the great strides seen in energy efficiency at industrial and consumer levels.

Dr Dominic Emery is Chief Development Officer for BP Alternative Energy. BP Alternative Energy comprises Biofuels, Wind and Corporate Ventures. Dominic's current responsibilities include corporate venture investment, new business development and strategy for Alternative Energy.

Dominic is a graduate of Oxford and Cambridge Universities and has worked for BP since 1986. He joined Alternative Energy in 2007 having previously worked in Exploration, and BP’s Downstream and Trading businesses.

Keith Clarke, VP, Embedded Segment, ARM Ltd

Talk Synopsis: Global energy consumption is expected to grow by about 70% in the coming 25 years driven mainly by developing countries. The smart meter is a big step in the right direction towards managing this growth, however in this talk we will look at the key technical issues of communication, security, and processing capability that face designers whose products must interface with the Smart Grid. We define the Smart Grid as a combination of three key elements: the grid itself that load balances and supports the energy demand, the smart meters and the connected appliances that consume the electricity. We will review more efficient processing technologies that can be included in every element that can help make many systems smarter in terms of measurement, communication and control. 
Keith is the vice president of embedded processors with responsibility for the Cortex®-R, Cortex-M and SecurCore® processors.

Keith joined ARM in 1993 and held various positions from engineer to VP Engineering. Keith has a B.Eng from the University of Southampton and is a chartered member of the IET.

Pilgrim Beart, Founder Director, AlertMe Ltd

Pilgrim Beart [pron. BEERT] is a serial entrepreneur whose previous companies have delivered hundreds of millions of devices into the mass consumer market. Now his current venture AlertMe seeks to empower consumers with its Smart Home platform. Pilgrim will explain what this is, and how the evolution of the Smart Home is led by the needs of consumers.

Synopsis: Title - 'Simplicity: The real challenge for 2020'. What’s happening on the Internet of Things? How is that relevant to the Smart Grid? What are the challenges to engaging with consumers in the home?

Martin Ansell, Chairman, Fault Current Ltd

Title: Fault Current Limiters - Extending the capacity of the Power Grid

The synopsis: The need for fault current limiters is driven by a dramatic increase in electrical power system fault current levels as energy demand increases and more clean energy sources, such as wind and solar, are added to an ageing and already overburdened electrical infrastructure. A Fault Current Limiter is a Smart Grid system component that can help protect the grid by absorbing the destructive nature of excessive faults, extending the life of existing network equipment and allowing utilities to defer or eliminate costly equipment replacements or upgrades. Estimates suggest that investing in Smart Grid technologies, such as fault current limiters, can save billions of pounds in asset replacement cost, increase safety, reliability and power quality.

Martin is a seasoned international executive who has worked in both the Telco and Energy industries for over 35 years. His experience spans from start-ups to Fortune 500 companies. In ALSTOM T&D, Martin helped guide the business development of its T&D Automation business and then went on to lead its UK activities in Power Electronics, EHV Switchgear and Substation Projects.

In GE, he served as a member of its newly formed global T&D executive driving growth in the EMEA region and then, as a member of GE's Smart Grid leadership team, was responsible for its Asset Management & Optimisation software business (GE Smallworld). He left GE in April 2011 to found LIG Consulting, providing strategic advise to companies wishing to grow in the global energy sector. In 2012, he also joined the board of Fault Current Limited, a smart grid spin-off from the collaboration between the University of Cardiff and Fusion IP.

Martin has a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering and has professional membership of the IET, IEEE and CIGRE.

Richard Smith, Head of Energy Strategy, National Grid

Richard has worked in the energy industry for over ten years and is currently Head of Energy Strategy & Policy at National Grid. He is responsible for leading the development of future energy supply/demand scenarios that take an holistic view of UK energy, and analysing strategic options for the optimisation of the energy system taking in to account political, economic, social, technological and environmental drivers.

Previously in his career, Richard has worked in the space industry and the manufacturing sector. He holds a Doctorate in Engineering, an MBA, a MSc in Astronautics and Space Engineering, and a BEng in Civil Engineering.

Phil Proctor, Programme Manager, Energy Technologies Institute

Talk synopsis: The presentation will provide an overview of the ETI role in accelerating the development and deployment of technologies to enable the UK to meet the challenge of hitting the 2050 targets for greenhouse gas emissions. The presentation will provide insight into some of the ETI’s strategic analysis on how energy infrastructure can be developed to support achieving the targets and where, as a result, the ETI is investing in the development of key technologies and tools.

Phil Proctor is Programme Manager of the ETI’s Energy Storage and Distribution Programme which focuses on the development of energy storage and infrastructure. A Chartered Electrical Engineer with the IET, previously Phil worked for ALSTOM Grid, project managing a large HVDC transmission project in South America.

Professor Richard Davies, Durham University

Talk Title: ‘Shale Gas and Oil: Risks and Rewards’
Whether shale gas and oil resources make a significant impact on the energy mix in European nations is probably more dependent on the social acceptability of the technology than the geology or engineering as thousands of wells would be required. The resource is likely to be significant, but understanding and communicating the environmental risks will be essential if companies are to gain the social licence to operate.

Professor Richard Davies is professor of energy at Durham University and Dean of Knowledge Exchange and Impact. He has led research on the environmental risks associated with shale gas and oil and presented findings across Europe. He is agnostic about fracking technology, but determined to pursue independent research to ensure the evidence base for decision makers is available.

Professor Kevin Hesketh, NNL

Talk Title: Thorium – an alternative nuclear path

The talk will set out to explain the thorium fuel cycle as a potential alternative to the uranium/plutonium fuel cycle and the rationale that proponents put forward in terms of improved sustainability, economics, radiotoxicity and proliferation resistance. The talk will consider the advantages and disadvantages of the thorium fuel cycle and will briefly describe the history of thorium and summarise current R&D activities and future R&D requirements. The talk will finish by explaining the industry view of thorium. 

Kevin is Senior Research Fellow with National Nuclear Laboratory. His areas of expertise are reactor physics and fuel cycle technology. His career in the nuclear industry started in 1975, when he joined the Theory Division of UKAEA at Culham, working on magnetic confinement fusion. In 1980 he left to join BNFL where he remained until the formation of National Nuclear Laboratory. During his career with BNFL and now NNL he worked on various reactor systems, including LWRs, HTRs and fast reactors and also spent time overseas with Westinghouse doing nuclear design work for US PWRs.

Involved with many international organisations, especially IAEA and OECD Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) he is presently the UK representative on the OECD/NEA Nuclear Science Committee (NSC) and chairman of the NSC Working Group on Reactor Systems. He is a Chartered Physicist, a Fellow of the Institute of Physics and was recently appointed a visiting professorship at the School of Physics and Astronomy at Birmingham University. 

Mark Askew, Senior Manager, Policy Analysis, Ofgem

Mark will speak about: Networks regulation driving innovation and consumer benefits, Incentivising network companies to adopt Smart Grids; and Smart grid development in Britain

Mark has worked on a variety of distribution issues at Ofgem including charging and regulatory framework for IDNOs. More recently, he was part of the team that developed the Low Carbon Network Fund and ran the funding competition. He now leads the smart grid policy work at Ofgem.

Clennell Collingwood, Investment Manager, TTP ventures

Since joining TTP Ventures, Clennell has invested in electronics and telecommunications related businesses. He is now setting up an Accelerator to help emerging companies by validating ideas, proving technology, developing products, securing customers and attracting investment. The Accelerator draws on the resources of TTP and is funded by corporates.


Steve Kaye, Head of Innovation, Anglian Water

Steve Kaye will talk about Anglianʼs constant quest for innovation and how it can link into the new Smart Cities movement at the Smart Grids & Clean Power Conference in Cambridge on June 5. Looking long-term in its 25-year strategy, the company intends to explore the possibilities for collaboration with power companies to deliver a smarter infrastructure. Ten implementations in new technology have recently been adopted, including water leakage monitoring and energy saving technology.

Adam Cooper, Head of Sustainable Energy Policy

Adam leads Ofgem’s Sustainable Energy Policy team. Previously, he led a team responsible for the analysis of the business plans as part of the RIIO-T1 price controls. He qualified as a Chartered Accountant with Ernst & Young and has worked in a number of consulting and corporate strategy roles. Before joining Ofgem, he was Deputy Director of Financial Analysis at the Competition Commission.

In a talk titled: Responsive regulation in a changing energy landscape, Adam will outline some of the ways in which Ofgem’s work is meeting the challenges of Britain’s changing energy systems. This will include the RIIO-ED1 price control, innovation funding, the move to smart meters and smarter markets, and the role of demand response.

Douglas Cheung, Future Cities Group, Hitachi Europe

Title: Enabling Smart Cities and Smart Communities Douglas' presentation will provide an overview of case studies from several smart grid and smart cities projects led by Hitachi globally, including an insight into the technologies used in these projects, for example voltage stabilisation equipment, ICT platforms and energy storage, as well as a brief point of view relating to emerging smart cities and smart communities concepts in the UK.

Douglas is an experienced project manager and electrical engineer with a background in the implementation of smart and innovative automation and control technologies. As a Smart Grid Design Engineer–Project Manager at Hitachi, he is managing the design and delivery of LCNF projects for Hitachi in the UK, including a Tier 1 project in partnership with WPD in Cornwall, with a focus on voltage control and energy storage on MV and LV networks.

Chris Wright, Founder, Moixa Energy

Distributed Energy storage at the edge of the grid

Chris will outline the value points on adding storage at the edge of the grid, installing Maslow energy storage units in customers homes for shifting peak load demand, and making storage available for network needs. He will discussing the advantages of edge of grid over centralised and the additional layers of value enabled. Moixa has also won a DECC Phase 1 contract to plan and bid for a largescale demonstration at MWh+ scale, into 750 homes in 2013/14.

Alasdair Young,Buro Happold

Synopsis: Heat networks are often associated with small scale gas fired combined heat and power or energy from waste plants. However, they could play a more strategic role in a future low carbon, resilient energy system. Heat networks have the ability to economically supply significant areas of our dense urban areas. Other opportunities including energy sharing, seasonal storage, diurnal storage, balancing intermittents, and utilising waste low grade heat.

Alasdair works for Buro Happold, an international engineering design consultancy, where he leads the energy sector. He holds a mechanical engineering degree from Cambridge University and previously worked in the pulp and paper industry. Recent work has focused on delivery of new sustainable utility systems on large redevelopment schemes along with commercial research work in decentralised energy. Projects include the Olympic Park energy strategy, London Decentralised Energy Capacity Study, London’s Zero Carbon Heat Resource study and a research project into geological heat storage with the ETI. Alasdair has evidence to the Examination in Public of the London Plan on decentralised energy and was a member of the UK Green Building Council Task Force on sustainable community infrastructure.

Dr Aidan Rhodes

Aidan is currently part of the Research Councils UK Energy Strategy Fellowship team, which is currently preparing a prospectus of the UK’s energy research, skills and training needs. Prior to joining the Fellowship team, Aidan was a key member of the Knowledge Exchange team at UKERC from January 2010. He was responsible for helping to manage the National Energy Research Network and to deliver UKERC's role in the Energy Generation and Supply Knowledge Transfer Network (EG&S KTN). Aidan has authored several influential reports in the area of smart energy and smart grids and has facilitated exchange missions of UK smart grid experts with China, South Korea and Japan in conjunction with the FCO’s Science and Innovation Network and UKTI.

Previously, after completing a PhD in analytical electrochemistry at the University of Durham in 2008, Aidan worked at Imperial College as a Research Associate managing the Centre for Sustainable Electricity and Distributed Generation and participating in several large national and international research projects in the technical and policy aspects of electricity networks. Aidan has also completed a fellowship at the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology, where he researched and wrote a parliamentary briefing paper on energy storage.

Sean Cochrane, Strategic Marketing and Applications Manager, Cyan Technology Ltd

Talk Title: Meeting the challenges of smart metering in emerging regions
Synopsys: With rapidly growing populations, many emerging regions are finding it difficult to successfully deploy smart grid infrastructure. The challenges include collecting data from meters located behind physical barriers created by unplanned urban development. Cyan addresses these issues by working with local meter vendors to create an effective path from basic Automated Meter Reading (AMI) to fully integrated Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI). This presentation describes Cyan’s approach and its robust CyLec range of wireless communication products for the metering industry.

Biography: Sean Cochrane has worked in semiconductor and embedded systems development for the last 25 years, in a variety of software engineering, applications and marketing roles. Over the last 5 years Sean has focussed on metering systems development in India with Cyan Technology. Sean gained a BSc (first class) and MSc in Electronic and Electrical Engineering from Manchester University, an MBA from the Open University and PhD from Loughborough University for research into knowledge base verification methodologies.

Mike Halley, Trilliant Inc
Mike Halley (pron. Halle) has benefitted from 20 years of bringing Silicon Valley innovation to Europe. For a decade with Hewlett Packard & Microsoft building twice divisions that exceed $1bn in annual revenue. Since 2007 via Venture Capital funded companies who disrupted the existing status quo to become market leaders like TOA Technologies for time based , cloud enabled mobile workforce management and currently using the portfolio investment from GE, ABB, Vantage Point , Zouk and UMC in Trilliant Inc from California.

Synopsis : Title – Trilliant Smart Grid Maturity Model (™) - Free your company’s future from the pull of the past and escape velocity.
Utilities and technology companies need to collaborate to build new value chains to enable the smart grid and scale the maturity model , ironically both are trapped by the pull of past revenues, mature products with high margins and last years operating plan. How we partner to share our innovations and collaborate are mutually inclusive.

Philipp Grunewald, Oxford University
Over recent years Phil has studied the possible role of electricity storage in future low carbon energy systems. This work has resulted in a realisation that a) the value of storage could increase significantly over coming years and that b) demand side flexibility could become a major competitor for physical storage in certain areas. In this talk Phil will present some recent findings brought together from work with Imperial College, University of Reading, University of Oxford and the UK demand aggregator Kiwi Power. Analysis of extensive trial data suggests that some service sectors are in a position to make a meaningful contribution towards system balancing and that the scope of their provision could be enhanced through appropriate policy measures. Prior to these theoretical musings, Phil was a proper engineer building laser processing tools for the semiconductor and photovoltaic industry.

Martin Bloom, CEO Emblem Ventures

Martin is a seasoned and successful entrepreneur.

Title: Business Models for Renewables: the Need for Constant Renewal

Seeking Value in Business Models: Martin Bloom considers how value moves along different parts of the renewable energy value chain over time.

Phil Osborn, Head of Energy, Sainsbury’s
Phil has extensive experience in the procurement and management of energy, engineering and facilities services within the public and private sectors.

Throughout his career, Phil has been motivated to improve service and financial performance and has always maintained an active involvement in energy management.

As Head of Energy for Sainsbury’s, Phil is responsible for the ongoing reduction in energy used by Sainsbury’s, with a drive to reduce usage in absolute terms. Sainsbury’s has successfully reduced its energy usage on an absolute basis despite an ever increasing estate.

Sam Bose, Intellisense.io

Synopsis: Sam will speak on three themes that you might have come across a lot recently: Internet of things, big data and the 3rd industrial revolution.

Over the past decade Sam has been involved in the domain of Smart Grids, Machine 2 Machine, Energy and Enterprise Software through engagements with various leading companies. His experience includes working with Deloitte, Motorola, consulting with ARM and founding an enterprise carbon management company which he led through two investment rounds and early customer adoption.

Russell Haggar, VP Product Management, Xsilon Ltd

Russell will give a talk entitled - Hanadu: In-Home M2M connectivity for Smart Meters and Appliances

Xsilon’s “Hanadu” technology for In-Home M2M is targeted directly connecting up home energy management devices, smartplugs, smart appliances and smart meters. It is to the smart home what WiFi is to the laptop, and structured ethernet cabling is to the typical corporate network – only much, much simpler to deploy. The Hanadu SIG is available for likeminded industry partners and supporters to join us in promoting this solution to its wide audience.

Russell Haggar is VP, Product Management and a co-founder at Xsilon. He has spent 25 years in the comms technology industry, acting variously as an engineer, marketeer, investor, NED and consultant with companies such as Marconi, Madge Networks, Sagentia, Element 14 (the Broadcom one, not Farnell), Prelude Ventures, DFJ Esprit (founding partner), XMOS, 3Way Networks, SiConnect and Enlightened Technology. As well as his role at Xsilon, Russell also works directly with a range of early-stage startups as they formulate their routes to market and worldwide domination.

Ali Lloyd, Principal Consultant, Poyry

Title of Talk: The outlook for biomass electricity in the UK: 2013 update

This talk updates last year's overview of the outlook for biomass electricity, taking account of recent policy and industry developments. In particular it will focus on the Government's shift in ambition towards a greater emphasis on biomass conversion of existing coal-fired power stations.

Ali Lloyd joined Pöyry Management Consulting in 2010 and has around 20 years of commercial experience in UK energy markets. He has a detailed knowledge of the UK electricity market including support schemes for renewable and CHP generators. Ali is part of Pöyry’s renewables team, providing advice primarily to renewable and energy-from-waste developers on project valuation and off-take contracting strategy.