The future of renewable tech
We have just about recovered from Fully Charged Live. Good Energy spent three days at Silverstone Circuit earlier this month talking about renewable power, electric vehicles, and clean tech. We also had a race or two (or three) on The Racing Bug, an incredibly addictive race car game we sponsored for the weekend, and which took centre stage in the conference hall.
This was the second Fully Charged Live and our second time sponsoring such a fantastic event. Being at the home of British racing was great fun and sometimes surreal. Outside you could hear the roaring sound of high-performance petrol cars being tested on the track. Inside we talked about how to accelerate the EV revolution and bring about the end of fossil fuels.
Robert Llewellyn was on hand to guide a succession of packed audiences through the dizzying array of debates: the era of cheap renewables and storage; how energy efficiency is a money saver; the future of autonomous vehicles; electric planes; electric trains; and the move towards community energy ownership.
There were around 10,000 people in attendance from all walks of life. All of them connected by a passion for cleaner, smarter technologies, and looking to make a difference.
Our friends and partners, Zap-Map, were busy talking to (many) electric vehicle enthusiasts about their digital platform. Their app is making it easier for drivers to use, plan, and pay for charging across the country. And it was their data which recently revealed the UK now has more EV charging sites than petrol stations. A vital milestone.
On the Saturday, Good Energy’s CEO and Founder, Juliet Davenport, spoke to a busy crowd on the need to make sustainability more appealing to the wider public. She recommended: “How we build trust with consumers is really powerful. Going forward we have to build our tribes. Word of mouth is one of the most powerful ways forward and today demonstrates it. If you think about Fully Charged, it was such a word-of-mouth social platform. We need to see more of this so people can trust and advise others”.
Elsewhere over the three days we saw a range of new electric vehicles being shown off, including a converted Delorean, Ferraris, Formula-E Jaguar, and many, many Teslas. Not to mention the advances in battery storage products, which are set to change how we all use and consume energy in the future.
If this year’s event is anything to go by, 2020 is going to be just as fascinating and popular.
