Liz Allan [00:00:00]:
You. Welcome to Electric Evolution with Liz Allan. This podcast is about the journey to a more sustainable future. In order for us to be able to do our bit to achieve net zero, I'll be discussing a variety of topics with experts in their fields in order to educate and increase our knowledge of clean energy, electric vehicles and the electric vehicle infrastructure. So whether you're an individual one to make a difference at home, a small business, or a corporate, this podcast is just for you. Right, okay. So on today's podcast, I have Ian Dee from Geospatial Insights. Now, Ian is a climate applications lead, and when I met you, Ian, and I saw your title, I got quite excited, I think, didn't I?
Ian Dee [00:00:48]:
A little bit, yes.
Liz Allan [00:00:52]:
Just hearing about what you and like I said, by the way, thank you for joining me. I should say to start off with, we met at the EV show back in November, didn't we?
Ian Dee [00:01:05]:
That's right, yeah.
Liz Allan [00:01:06]:
So it seems it is ages ago, isn't it? And we have tried this recording before.
Ian Dee [00:01:12]:
But we're very trying.
Liz Allan [00:01:13]:
Yeah, there were some issues, weren't there? And your wife's all right now anyway, ain't she?
Ian Dee [00:01:19]:
She's fine, yeah. Just a sore ankle, nothing dented, pride, nothing more.
Liz Allan [00:01:24]:
Oh, bless her. Oh, God. Well, yeah, I fell down the steps a couple of years ago and I had to have a shoulder operation after that, but that's another story I'm tangenting now. Anyway, right back on to you. Okay, so Geospacial Insight formed in 2012. Were you saying to me that's right, yeah. Tell everybody a little bit about what you do, what Geospacial Insight does, and a bit about tell us about your background first. How did you do this? Because you were just saying to me, weren't you, before we start recording, you set up another company and it all sort of kind of came into together because you were kind of complementing Geospatial Insight, weren't you? Tell everybody a bit about that.
Ian Dee [00:02:09]:
That's right, yeah. Well, my background is in the geospatial sector. I've sort of been in the industry since 99 ish, so 23, 24 years. But yeah, I set up a company called Energio in 2015 with the kind of core focus of using all this geospatial technology and data that we've got. So satellite imagery, aero photography, but trying to really push the agenda on using that for sustainability related applications. I know the guys from Geospatial Insight, we all used to work together at Airbus Defense and Space in the UK many, many moons ago. So they were aware of some of the things we were doing at Energyo. And Geospatial Insight was starting to develop some of their own climate applications and it just kind of made sense to bring these two businesses together and have that strength in numbers, I guess, is what they say. But Geospatial Insight originally, we're using a lot of the same technologies and data Energyo were, but for applications in the equities commodities finance sectors. But over the time, obviously, the climate agenda becomes so pushed to the forefront that they were starting to do some of their own climate related work as well. Energyo, we were largely focusing on renewable energy, so solar, wind, emobility, property, retrofit, and at Geospatial Insight, it was largely around things like emissions monitoring, air quality and carbon sequestration. So although in very different spheres, climate wise, very complementary. And as I say, late 2021, we sat down and said, look, this should all just be under one umbrella. Let's bring it all together and have the combined expertise of both teams and the knowledge of both teams and take it forward under the Geospacial Insight banner. And that's what we did.
Liz Allan [00:04:10]:
Brilliant, brilliant. So tell me a bit, if you will, about the sectors that you work with and how the technology, the types of technology that you've got. I mean, you've kind of given us a bit of an inkling there, but how does it help those sectors? What is it that you're doing? What is it that you're providing to them?
Ian Dee [00:04:29]:
Yeah, we work across many sectors, as you probably see on the website, but with a lot of the renewable energy, the emobility elements, which kind of more my responsibility, I guess. Our clients are largely split between local authorities and private sector. With the private sector, it's usually either the developers of those technologies themselves. So we work with solar developers, we work with charge point operators, or with consultants who are working across the breadth of the sector itself. So a consultant will work with players both in their own private sector and the public sector to do their element of the work. And we sometimes work directly with those as well. So it's a bit of everything, really. And what we're doing, I guess, is probably two things. I think. First and foremost, we digitalize the surveying process. And obviously, if you think of talking about electric vehicles, we met the London EV Show. One of the things we're sort of looking at at the moment as a nation is how we put more EV charge points in place. Yes, and understanding the best locations for those charge points is a complex procedure. What we're doing is trying to use data to answer a lot of those questions for those organizations that are deploying them. Why would you put a charge point here? Is it in the right place? Are there any other charging nearby? Is there proliferation of vehicle users in this area? Is EV uptake high. Is it an affluent area that's likely to have early adopters for EV at the moment? All of those kind of things. So we're doing that kind of preliminary surveying element to them. When you go and put a charge point in, or you're going to put solar in, you're going to go to site anyway. Yes, but if you go to site pre armed with a lot of information and knowing the questions you need to ask when you get there, that makes that site visit much more efficient. So I would say that's kind of the first thing that we're doing is digitalizing a lot of that process. The second thing is we're providing an evidence base on which to make decisions. The beauty of geospatial information is that you can work at scale. So we don't just look at a site, we look at a city or a county.
Liz Allan [00:07:01]:
Okay.
Ian Dee [00:07:02]:
And when you can put a county's worth of information in front of somebody about EV, charging, about solar, about wind, they can start to look at it and sort of rank and prioritize their actions based on sort of data driven intelligence. The solar is a great example of that because we're doing work on both rooftop and ground mount solar. And for all of that, we sort of say, look, you could put this much solar on this site, it would generate X amount of electricity and save you y of CO2 over a lifetime. So you can start to look at what the return on your investment is, both financially and environmentally.
Liz Allan [00:07:46]:
That's good. That's really good. What you're just saying there about solar is that the Locate Solar that you've just started kind of you've just started promoting, haven't you?
Ian Dee [00:07:57]:
It is, yes.
Liz Allan [00:07:57]:
Sounds really interesting.
Ian Dee [00:07:59]:
Yeah. So Locate Solar is a database we've created which comes with its sort of own dashboard and platform, but it's got the solar suitability of every roof in England pre mapped, so 23 million plus buildings. Scotland and Wales are coming. So, yeah, just that we've sort of finished England first and we'll move on to Scotland and Wales in time. So over the next few months, that database will have around 29 million buildings in it with all the solar intelligence.
Liz Allan [00:08:32]:
So the buildings, is it kind of like my house, or is it so is it residential areas or is it commercial areas that you've kind of got that information on everything? Is it so you've probably got my house on your house.
Ian Dee [00:08:48]:
Yes.
Liz Allan [00:08:49]:
Cool.
Ian Dee [00:08:50]:
I sort of call it an indiscriminate assessment. If there's a building there, we look at it and we'll measure its roof pitch, we'll measure its roof aspect, look at the Irradiance, figure out how many modules you can get on the roof.
Liz Allan [00:09:02]:
Oh, my God.
Ian Dee [00:09:03]:
So for every every one of those 23 million buildings, there's about 25 different attributes that tell us why that building is or isn't suitable for solar.
Liz Allan [00:09:14]:
Because so, funnily enough, we've just had a quote. Well, we've had about three quotes for solar and batteries, and I was kind of wondering, I suppose I just assumed that the company that was doing it, they would be using Google Earth, because I'm assuming yours is not. You've got lots and lots of other technology is. Right, okay. Tell me how your technology is different to Google Earth, then. What do you get? What can you see?
Ian Dee [00:09:50]:
I think the first thing is that obviously Google Earth, although you can look at things in three D on Google Earth generally, it's a kind of top down view. And also you're manually interpreting what you can see from Google Earth.
Liz Allan [00:10:07]:
Right.
Ian Dee [00:10:07]:
We have an automated method of looking at a property in three dimensions so we can extract the actual roof pitch, the actual roof aspect, the usable space of the roof, so we can sort of exclude dormer windows, chimneys. Parapet walls, air conditioning vents. And then from there, we'll kind of push that information through an irradiance calculator so we can see how much exposure to the sun's energy that roof gets over time. And then we can start to work out. Well, if the roof is this shape and can get this many modules on it and is exposed to this much of the sun's energy, then it would generate this much electricity and save this much CO2 based on removing fossil fuel generation from the grid. Yeah, the other thing we do as well is we do all of those statistics over one year. So if you put solar on your roof now, in the next year, this is approximately what you'd earn, generate, save. But we also do it over a 20 year period. So you can look at lifetime payback of putting solar on a roof.
Liz Allan [00:11:17]:
Oh my God.
Ian Dee [00:11:18]:
Okay, that's become really the key statistic is that lifetime element, because we don't work with consumers. So our data does not go out into the public realm for people to go and look at their own properties. It goes to a housing association who want to make their tenants lives more comfortable, more affordable, but also to decarbonize their stock. It would go to a local authority who are putting their climate strategy together and maybe want to look at their own estates buildings. Or it would go out to a solar developer who are looking at putting big installs on warehouses and industrial roofs under power purchase agreements, perhaps. And they're interested in that payback over the 1520 years rather than just what they're going to get over the next twelve months.
Liz Allan [00:12:05]:
That's interesting because like I say, so the company that we've, or the three companies that we've had the information come back from, the fact, the last one, the information that they provided, to be honest. You know what I did? I actually went to my husband because he's the data geek. Out of the two of us, I went, right, you can have a look at that one. You'd probably have liked that, but actually the information that they were providing was really in depth. Do you know what, to me so I just thought, no, this is providing us with something that we've not had before. And looking at the payback. We'd had payback over time because at the moment, the energy tariff that we're currently on is it's been fixed for probably two or three years before we, you know, before we yeah, we kind of ended up sort of locking into that, which was really quite fortuitous in a way, because of what's been going on in the last kind of 6912 months. But that runs out in June.
Ian Dee [00:13:10]:
Yes. We've got similar kind of April or May for us. So we're sort of along the same lines, really. But it's interesting that kind of like you say, that level of detail you're getting, it needs somebody who kind of understands solar to look at it and pull those pieces of information together. What we're doing is we're doing that at scale.
Liz Allan [00:13:32]:
Yes.
Ian Dee [00:13:33]:
That needs somebody to sit at a desktop and interpret that. And doing that for your property probably took them 30 minutes, an hour, whatever that might have taken, by having that data off the shelf for 23 million buildings in the UK again, they're still going to come out and look at your house and do a full roof survey before they put solar on. But that initial piece of I've been asked about putting solar on this roof. I can have a look at some data now that gives me a really good insight as to whether that roof is suitable, what it might generate. So when I go to site or when I go and speak to the homeowner or the Occupier, I've already got a lot of information, I'm pre armed with it, and it just makes the conversation a lot easier. Even if our data said, actually, that roof's not suitable for solar, that's a good way of sort of excluding lots and lots of buildings. And a lot of our local authority clients do exactly that. They'll look at the data and go, okay, we've got a million buildings in Kent, for example, but 300,000 of them aren't suitable for solar. Let's go and work on what are the top 10% of the rest are where we're going to really get our bang for our book.
Liz Allan [00:14:44]:
Yeah, fully enough. You're kind of saying that about excluding, bizarrely enough, out. Actually, I was thinking, I think we've had four companies now, because one of the companies, the second one, and I was really disappointed, came out and said we weren't suitable, but the other three have said we were.
Ian Dee [00:15:05]:
Yeah.
Liz Allan [00:15:06]:
So isn't it funny? Why would that be? Why would they interpret it that way and saying we weren't if the others have said we are?
Ian Dee [00:15:16]:
Yeah. I think every property is generally suitable to some degree, to what degree? That is, most properties will have some sort of solar suitable roof facet. It's just how big that facet is. How many modules would you get on it? Does it need a bespoke design that's going to take extra time? Is it an engineering challenge to get the solar on the roof? There might be lots of elements that come into play there and perhaps that specific company was looking for a less challenging installation or a quicker win, maybe.
Liz Allan [00:15:54]:
I think you're probably right. So they were saying that do you call it a solar array when you so they said that their solar arrays were in sixes and we didn't have enough room for six, but we've definitely got more room for anyway. Yes, we'll move back onto you again. Okay, so all of this if we look at low carbon technology as kind of like a mainstay, we all need to make sure that we're trying to push towards some form of decarbonization. How do you feel at the moment that the market is going for you? Because I don't think it's every single council, for example, have declared a climate emergency, but a lot of them have, haven't they, our councils, the ones that are kind of coming to you and now and saying, as part of our climate emergency, our strategy is this, we need you to look at all of our buildings.
Ian Dee [00:16:58]:
Yeah, the local authorities is a strange one because I think 85, 90% now have declared a climate emergency. But not all of those ones that have declared a climate emergency have put strategies in place yet. Those that have put strategies in place, some of them are referring to just their own estates, so their own buildings and land. Others are referring to their administrative areas as a whole. So it's a really sort of complex area because there's no two authorities are doing the same thing. Which is kind of understandable when you think that you can have two different local authorities that neighbor, but they have very different social, economic landscapes, so it differs. Some local authorities would come to us and say, look, we've got a very definite idea about our strategy and we're interested in getting the data to underpin that and start to put it into place. Other local authorities will come to us and say, look, we've just declared a climate emergency, we don't really know where to start and we're interested in what the data would tell us. So there's two different approaches there. And then what we're getting as well is in the private sector, we're getting businesses coming to us and saying we need to be smarter about how we develop our opportunity pipeline and also how we work with a local authority because the local authorities are often the end clients in a lot of these things. If we work with a charge point operator, for instance, their end client is often the local authority anyway. But it's about how do they get more data around why their solution is the right one for that local authority and to show they've done the due diligence, they understand that local authority's area what the challenges are, and our data is helping them do that. So depending on the client and the stage they're at in their own kind of journey, we'll provide them with similar types of information or intelligence. But we'll provide a kind of little consultative wrapper around it that lets them understand it specifically for their own needs.
Liz Allan [00:19:07]:
I was going to say the due diligence side has got to be so important, hasn't it? Because and I have heard that it's not happening all over the UK. With regards to charge point operators, there are some that aren't quite as advanced as others when it comes to due diligence.
Ian Dee [00:19:28]:
Yeah. I think it must caveat this, that everyone out there is trying to do a good job.
Liz Allan [00:19:33]:
Yeah. And I agree. And please, whoever's listening and watching this, I'm not kind of dissing anybody at all. I'm just saying that due diligence is very important and actually, from a continuous improvement side of things, which is what I'm involved in, you don't want to end up doing something twice. For a start off, you're doubling your carbon footprint and actually, if you're having to do something twice, you're paying people to do it twice.
Ian Dee [00:20:01]:
Exactly.
Liz Allan [00:20:03]:
There's a massive double whammy on this. The sustainability side, the carbon footprint, it's a triple whammy, isn't it, really? And actually, we call it right first time. It was right first time, because that's what you want, isn't it?
Ian Dee [00:20:17]:
Do it once, do it right. And you're absolutely right. What we're seeing in the kind of EV charging world at the moment is we're getting much better, everybody's getting much better at doing this, but historically, we're seeing a lot of stranded assets because they've been put somewhere where we think this is a good location for a charge point, but it's not particularly evidence driven. That charge point gets put into place and it doesn't really get used. Or if it's an on street charger, it's been put in a place that might cause an obstruction if someone's trying to get a wheelchair past it, those kind of things. So trying to do that due diligence and say, actually and interestingly, one of the charge point operators we're working with, they have this kind of thought process where they say, could we put a charge point there? Should we put a charge point there? And the could is kind of almost yeah, anywhere. And the should is then all of these other elements that come along with it. And we've created a data driven model that takes in about 20 different criteria for them to say whether a charge point should be put in this particular location. So it's taking those and that criteria will be different for every single installer or every operator. And obviously it's different from on street to off street, but it's the similar principles around it. Are we putting this charge point or this charging hub in the right place, where it's not just going to be used now, but it's going to be used in five years, ten years? And actually, the longevity of that infrastructure is set. I think that's where we've failed before. We're saying the core one that I always come across is a resident request, which is a great indicator of where a charge point is needed.
Liz Allan [00:22:08]:
Yes. I didn't realize that this happened, but yeah, I've been talking to a council last week who told me this.
Ian Dee [00:22:13]:
Yeah, but one person wanting a charge point outside their house doesn't necessarily indicate that the rest of the street is ready to take that leap to EVs. And what we find is you'll get one resident request, but suddenly 20 charge points appear on that street because they go, actually, yeah, but a year later, there's still only one person on that street with an EV, for instance. So it's a challenging one, but we are getting there, we are getting better. I think the data can really help inform those decisions. Like I say, you're still going to go to site, you're still going to look at it in more detail, but you go there knowing what you're looking for or you use the data to eliminate a site and you save yourself. That work anyway.
Liz Allan [00:23:00]:
What do you reckon happens if, say, for example, a local authority, like you said, they've got that single resident request and sometimes it must be hard to argue with a resident. If they want something, you don't want to have lots of complaints going, oh, I asked for a charging point on my street, and they haven't done it. It must be very difficult because that resident, they don't know what they don't know and they just know what they want, don't they? Doesn't necessarily mean that it's the same as all the other residents, because that might be a very lucky person who's got you know, they've got an EV because it's through their job or something like that. But everybody else on that street probably maybe can't afford to have it. Or maybe they're not in that kind of privileged kind of position yet.
Ian Dee [00:23:51]:
Yeah, it's difficult. And what I think is that a local authority needs to have a strategy in place to kind of be able to answer that question, not just in the immediate term, but in the short term as well. We've been doing some work with Oxfordshire County Council and they're very good at these kind of longer term strategies. So they were looking at predominantly off street charging hubs, but in areas where people don't have access to driveways. And then you've got a central hub that residents can use. So in those instances, a resident might ring up and say, look, yeah, I've got an EV now I need a charge point. Oxfordshire County Council might go, right, actually, you live within five minutes walk of a bank of hubs or a bank of charges we put in place specifically for this purpose and push them towards that. And then again, the data can tell us that that address is within five minutes of one of these hubs, if it's outside of that. Okay, yeah. Now, we do need to have a conversation about potentially an on street solution for you. But Oxfordshire had all the information, like I say, one of those local authorities that comes to us and go, right, we've got a really good idea about what we want to do. How do we use the data to implement it? So there's that part of it there. And I saw a really interesting piece on LinkedIn this morning and I was going to comment, but I didn't quite have time. You don't want to rush you comment on LinkedIn, do you?
Liz Allan [00:25:19]:
No, you don't. You've got to take your time.
Ian Dee [00:25:23]:
It was saying that statistically, we don't need residential charging to the level that we think we do, because on average, drivers only drive 100 miles a week.
Liz Allan [00:25:36]:
Yes, I might have seen that this morning.
Ian Dee [00:25:38]:
So you can go and charge your vehicle, get you 250 miles in your battery, and then you can top up a destination charge or a journey charge or whatever it might be. And statistically, that is correct. I cannot argue with that. And to stress, this is my opinion, of course, the way that we consume has changed. We don't go out to the cinema to watch a film. We press a button. We do, and it appears on our TV. We don't go out and go to the record shop like we used to and wade through CDs, vinyls. Some people do vinyl junkies. We press play on spotify. We don't even go out to find someone to have a relationship with anymore. We go on swipe right or left, don't we?
Liz Allan [00:26:28]:
Whichever ones they are.
Ian Dee [00:26:30]:
Why should we go out and charge our car? It's new technology, and new technology is bringing everything into our houses. All of a sudden, we're being told with electric vehicles, we have to treat them exactly the same as we did with ice vehicles and take them to an EV equivalent of a petrol station. Yeah, I think most of the studies are showing now that drivers want to charge at home. Generally, sort of 70, 80% of drivers say, I want to charge at home. And I think that's because the consumer mindset is charging. So I think statistically it is right. You do not need an EV charge point on your driveway. You never had a petrol pump on your driveway.
Liz Allan [00:27:10]:
You didn't.
Ian Dee [00:27:11]:
No, it's very true that consumer mindset has changed and now we want to sort of press a button and have it happen within our own house.
Liz Allan [00:27:21]:
Very true. Very true. Or do you think, how far off are we from kind of wireless charging, do you reckon? Because I can imagine that's got to be because I heard about buses kind of going on a bus route and there'll be a bus stop where they'll kind of stop to pick up passengers and they're actually topping up their charges they're going through. I mean, I can't imagine that on all roads, but there's got to be, if you think about it, the technology is evolving so quick. I mean, look at the technology that you guys are using. But kind of technology is evolving so quickly, isn't it?
Ian Dee [00:28:04]:
It is, yeah. Buses are a great sort of example of where inductive charging will work because they're naturally very stop start journeys.
Liz Allan [00:28:14]:
Yes.
Ian Dee [00:28:16]:
Most people who commute in a car might say their journeys are stopped. Obviously you can't just take up miles and miles of carriageway and put wireless charging in place or anything like that. So I think it will come into play, but it will just need to be very well thought out on how and where it comes into play. It could be that it becomes an alternative for a charge point on a driveway that actually you drive over a charging plate and you charge in that sense. Or if you think of on street charging, where you have a charge point in a lamp column or in a bollard, actually, if the parking bays along that side of the street had that technology in them, you could pull upon them and charge wirelessly or inductively that way. So I think it will come. But there are technologies or there are means of transport that are naturally better suited to it than kind of passenger vehicles at the moment.
Liz Allan [00:29:14]:
Yeah, I saw something on Twitter yesterday. I was having a little bit of a nosy on Twitter, and I saw one of my previous interviewees, Tom Callo, from my energy. He'd put a post on, and he was showing some on street parking charging there. And there were four photos, and he was talking about kind of, which one would you expect to be the best solution? And one of them was kind of where you had the wire underneath, kind of a protected somebody else was showing it with a gully and then there was another one with kind of like a cable cover over it. Bizarrely enough, there was one photo and you could see what had happened that the car was on the street. The charge point was probably two cars away from it, but obviously that car that was next to it had gone. It really looked a real mess because basically whoever it was had just rocked up, chuck the cable, and the cable was all over the curb, so it was a mess and it was a bit dangerous for other pedestrians. A lot of what we're saying now about kind of wireless or plates or some way of kind of charging in future is probably going to be eventually, in years to come, that's going to be the best way to stop any kind of accidents or incidents or anything like that, isn't it? Really?
Ian Dee [00:30:49]:
Yeah. The thing is, there's no silver bullet with EV charging. It needs to be a mix of technologies, whether that is cable bullies, whether it is on street bollards, off street hubs, destination, journey charging, we need a kind of mix of all of.
Liz Allan [00:31:05]:
That we do.
Ian Dee [00:31:06]:
And then it will be these new technologies coming to back. You say the wireless and inductive charging coming in, all of that will have a place because we need it. I think the government wants 300,000 new public chargers by 2030 and nearly 4 million in total. So residential as well. So it's got to be a mix, otherwise we won't get there no 300,000 of a particular type of charge point and it just won't work.
Liz Allan [00:31:35]:
I've talked to a few people about this and Sarah Sloman being one of them, and Councilor Catherine Dunn last week about this. It's also about the fact that to Decarbonize, we also need to be kind of doing more active traveling. Yeah. So active travel, walking, taking public transport more. I know that we've had an issue with the trains lately, so in some ways that's kind of pushed people back to going back in cars and then it's increasing the levels of air pollution and things like that, which is obviously not the best option, is it? But we do need to have look at all these options. Is that something that you guys provide as well? Sort of like so you're saying, right, okay, your solar can be this, your EV charging can be that. You might not be fulfilling your Decarbonization in this area, but actually, if you look at active travel and do this, is that something that you come up with or is that slightly outside it?
Ian Dee [00:32:45]:
No, it's not been a core area for us. But we are having those conversations now because a lot of the data we're producing so think about the data we produce for looking at where on street charging could be implemented. We're looking at things like how wide are the pavements? Are there obstructions on the street? Like trees? Are the roads wide? So is parking an issue? And actually all of those things come into play. If you want to cycle and walk somewhere, if you know how wide a road is a footway is, you can say, actually, there's enough room there for us to eke out a bus lane or a cycle lane. Isn't this a street with lots and lots of trees on that's pleasant to walk down? So all of those things, a lot of the data we're producing, creating, using can be flipped to be used in those applications as well. But I think you're absolutely right. We can't swap an ice vehicle one for one with an EV. That just doesn't make sense because there's just going to be lots and lots of people sat in an EV on the same roads, in the same traffic as they were before. It's just going to be a much quieter, cleaner traffic jam, which is no bad thing, but it still doesn't necessarily solve the problem. It needs to be that element of how do we make a really truly integrated transport system where potentially you don't even need a car in some instances. And that's another thing we're looking at with the data that we're producing, is actually, do you really want to go and put EV charge what's, along that street? Or actually, could you move a bus stop and put a bus stop on that street or close to that street to help people get around the town and move around that way? So it's not just take a vehicle off the road and replace it with an EV. It's let's be sensible about this and make sure we're doing it for the right reasons, not just to get EV.
Liz Allan [00:34:40]:
Charging infrastructure in no certainly place.
Ian Dee [00:34:43]:
Yeah.
Liz Allan [00:34:43]:
And it's about going like you're saying about I think moving bus stops and things like that is a brilliant idea. I remember when I so I've lived in Reading since 2004, and in fact, my husband was here. He was living here when we first started going out, so in about 2000. And I remember waiting for buses and they weren't very reliable. And it's changed over the years. It's changed so much here. So it is about making sure that the money is being put in to make sure that they've got reliable services that people can people know. Right, okay. I know that there's going to be a bus every 15 minutes, so I don't really need to take my car.
Ian Dee [00:35:29]:
Exactly. And it's not just that there's other solutions, isn't there? Car clubs, I think, will have a role to play as well. So it's trying to get all of these different elements pieced together in the right way to make it work. People want to be able to get around easily.
Liz Allan [00:35:46]:
Yes.
Ian Dee [00:35:47]:
And I think sometimes the mode of travel isn't as important as the journey itself. As long as you can get to where you want to go in the right time at the right cost, then I take the train a lot. Trains can be expensive, but if you pick your tickets at the right time, you can still get a decent value ticket and travel on the train. It's a horses for courses thing, isn't it? It needs to be the right thing in the right place. EV charging isn't the right thing in the right place for everyone everywhere at the moment. Better public transport links could do that. Better walking routes can do that.
Liz Allan [00:36:25]:
Exactly.
Ian Dee [00:36:26]:
So it's just getting that right mix.
Liz Allan [00:36:28]:
In place and just remind me for the technology that you've got for everything. So you get drum footage, don't you? You've got satellite footage. How else are you kind of grabbing all the footage in the first place? To convert it to data?
Ian Dee [00:36:50]:
Yeah, so we use data, I think I would sort of say, from two different areas. There's what I would say, the geospatial data. So satellite imagery, aerial photography, drone imagery, digital mapping, all of those things where there's a naturally location based element to it. And then we bring in what I would call non geospatial data. So it's data that's been created, but has a locational element to it. So if you think of something like the National Charge Point Register, yeah, it's a database, but it tells you of the charges that are out there, but it naturally has that location. So we're bringing in things like that. Energy performance certificates, four G, five G coverage. Obviously, how somebody interacts and pays for their EV charging is critical as well. So lots of data sets from different areas as well as data sets we create ourselves and try to bring them together and put them in a dashboard or in an environment where the end user can kind of interact with them and make sense of them. One of the things I'm always very keen on is saying, look, we're not EV experts, we're not energy experts, we're not solar experts, we're geospatial people. So we know where our expertise ends. It's not our job to say exclusively, this is where you should put a solar array or a charge point or a heat pump. It's our job to give the person who knows about those things the tools to make the best decision. So that's kind of our sort of thought process on that, is we'll work with the client to give them the toolkit so that they can make that decision. We don't want to make that decision for them. But, yeah, a lot of data we bring in from the geospatial side, a lot from the non geospatial side, and then we try to push them together and ring them out as best we can to get every single piece of information we can from it. And I think, as we said earlier, it's about turning data into intelligence. So we can go from a satellite image, which kind of gives us an overview of a town, a city, a landscape, an area. But by bringing in all those other data sets, we can say, actually, in that satellite image, that is a building with a flat roof that could have 50 solar on it, and it will generate this much. So bringing all those data sets together is what enables us to do that piece.
Liz Allan [00:39:25]:
It's amazing. It's mind blowing. It's taking people from don't know what you don't know, because I'm assuming there's a lot of, for example, local authorities and private companies that have got very lack of knowledge when they start off working with you, but you're actually taking them. It's kind of an education piece, isn't it, as well? But it's been able to you interpret the data and you're educating them about what they've got, which is, that's just amazing. You're kind of what I'd class. It's a massive value added service.
Ian Dee [00:40:07]:
Yeah. A lot of what we're doing often is just confirming where their assets are and what they can do. Like we said, we've done some work with Kent County Council recently. There's almost a million buildings in Kent, and it's impossible, or historically it has been impossible to have an accurate asset database of all those buildings because some are owned by the council, some are private rented, some are retail, industrial, owner occupied, whatever that might be. There is no central repository that brings all of that together. Whereas actually, by using satellite imagery, digital mapping data, we can create that. And the other thing I always say is it's empirical observation, it is objective. We can only say what we can see.
Liz Allan [00:40:55]:
Yes.
Ian Dee [00:40:56]:
We're not guessing and we don't under the ground.
Liz Allan [00:41:01]:
You're not going in a building, you're just seeing what information you've got.
Ian Dee [00:41:05]:
Exactly. So it's a very objective process. As Catchphrase would say, say what you see, that's exactly where we are.
Liz Allan [00:41:18]:
You used to watch it too. Okay, so if I said to you, who would you want? Hopefully there'll be people, there'll be people listening to this podcast who will be really interested, who are you speaking to? Who would you want to speak to?
Ian Dee [00:41:39]:
At the moment, for us, we're very with local authorities helping them get their climate strategies together, their Emobility strategies together. We've got a great client base in that sector and some great examples of the work we're doing. So we'd love to speak to more local authorities who are really trying to up the ante on their decarbonization plans. As I say, we're working with a lot of developers. So people who are interested in developing their own solar projects, their own EV projects, whether that's charge point operators as well. So we're already working with them, but we think we can help. And everything we do is bespoke. So we don't just lift and shift the solution from one person to another, we make it bespoke, but also other people who think they could add value to what we're doing as well. So we work with a lot of data providers to add to what we're doing. So a lot of those data sets that are out there, maybe there's data we don't know about yet that could help in planning where you put low carbon technology that could come into play for us and that would be great as well. So we're interested in hearing from suppliers that can help our solutions as well.
Liz Allan [00:42:56]:
Brilliant. And if people want to contact you, then what's the best place to find you? Where's the what's the email addresses and websites and such?
Ian Dee [00:43:06]:
Well, LinkedIn always a good starting point. I'm very active on LinkedIn. Lots of pictures of me on the train, my train selfies. Always enjoy a train selfie. The website is Geospatialinsight.com. There is a generic email address which is [email protected] or you can email me direct on Ian D, which is [email protected].
Liz Allan [00:43:42]:
Fantastic. Listen, it's brilliant. So I'd love to be in your office looking at all the data that you're pulling together. I bet it's fabulous.
Ian Dee [00:43:53]:
It is, yeah. As you say, it's a geek heaven.
Liz Allan [00:43:57]:
Love it. I'm such a geek. I'm a real geek. Honestly, that's the best bit. You've got to be some kind of geek to be doing this stuff. And like I said, every day is a school day. I'm charging every single time I run one of these podcasts and I hope everybody else is kind of benefiting from this as well. But listen, thank you, Ian. You've been an absolute star. I really appreciate your time. So I'm going to say to everybody else, I shall see you next time. Thanks, Ian. And see you later, everybody. You've been watching Electric Evolution with Liz Allen. Don't forget to subscribe and click on the bell icon and you'll receive all of our weekly videos. Thanks for watching. See you soon. Bye.