 This presentation is based on a discussion document I submitted to a competition run by the Electricity Association of Ireland, for which the given title was Dinosaurs of the Past or Innovators of the Future, designing digital strategies to engage domestic customers. I was hugely honoured to have been selected to represent the Association at the Euroelectric Conference in Berlin and also to have won the European level competition due to what I can only fathom to have been a combination of luck, human error and a small dash of electrical engineering know-how and obviously because I'm from UCD as well. On my own background, I'm a PhD student at the Electricity Research Centre, conducting my research into the network impacts of residential demand response on the networks under Dr. Andrew Keane. The ERC is supported by a network of major electricity industry players from Ireland, along with major funding and national and international funding agencies. My own research is funded by the Sustainable Electrical Energy Systems Cluster, funded by a consortium of ERC industry members and Science Foundation Ireland. So the title of this talk is considering whether the electricity industry will be the dinosaurs of the past or the innovators of the future. Now, as you've probably guessed, I've not come up here to tell the assembled delegates from the electricity industry that they are in fact a legion of prehistoric lizards. As for innovators of the future, well, I'm no soothsayer, so they're either. So I'll consign myself to what has been and the rapid change that is happening now. We often forget how much electricity has changed and transformed our lives and is this forgetfulness of how far the industry has come that has led to such disparaging dinosaur remarks. So to remedy this, my talk begins at no better place than the starting point of the beginning of the industry itself with electrification. Electrification was one of the greatest and often most overlooked achievements of the 20th century. It required ambitions of national scale. It was up to the nation states of Europe to set up vertically-integrated, state-owned utilities to provide the generation, transmission, distribution, and supply of electricity. As a society, we are totally disconnected to an idea of a world before electricity, a world before the services sector, before widespread communications. This was a world of letters, steam engines, gas lamps, and intense smog, a time when what we now consider mundane tasks such as washing, drying, cleaning, or hard, laborious jobs. This was a time when the Ford factory floor assembly line was run by legions of labourers instead of a multitude of robotic arms and digital sensors. We often forget that the provision of electrical energy played a key role in promoting economic prosperity, social cohesion, the liberation of women, and defining the health and quality of life for Europeans of today. Electricity gave its benefactors the ability to work, provided the lighting, heating, refrigeration, and cleaning appliances with the energy they need in the home and energised the agricultural, industrial, manufacturing, and commercial processes that are the backbone of the modern economy. This is Europe electrified, the light of the European power system, one of the largest and most complicated systems in the world, connecting every socket, house, building, and generator in Europe, a critical piece of infrastructure with which we can't live without. Looking at this system, it is important to remember that electricity actually is not that old. Even in the most urban areas of Europe, electricity has been delivered to it most for generations. Today we would find it hard to imagine a life without electricity, and that is again because it is so fundamentally shaped and changed the world we live in. The fundamental challenge of the 21st century is how we can maintain the same standard of living in a sustainable way. It is a challenge that is increasingly imperative in the face of the potential consequences of climate change. It is not our electric world that is causing climate change, but rather the way in which we generate the power we consume. We could, if you wanted, reorganise the title of this talk to the phrase that in order to be the innovators of the future, we must stop consuming the dinosaurs of the past. This is our Earth from the International Space Station. It's pictures like this that give us a sense of perspective. Our climate knows no borders and climate change is the first truly global threat. The future electricity system will also need to be global, and we will need to continue to radically change our power systems and pool our resources to transform our global energy system. Huge transformation of what the demand and generation sides are required to combat this threat. We are undergoing a generation transition, and I mean that in two senses. We are moving away from a generation of people who did not need to worry about the impact of their consumption to another generation who will fully bear the consequences of how they consume energy. And we are also moving away from a system where the primary source of electricity generation was from fossil fuels to a system with large-scale renewable generation. This is a paradigm shift in both the electricity system and society as a whole. Not only this, but both the drive to sustainability and depleting fossil fuels will eventually lead to a complete transformation of the transport and heating sectors. The electrification of which could easily treble current electricity demand, the second worldwide electrification. But this needs to be seen not only as a challenge, but a huge opportunity to reinvent a system not only for this generation, but for future generations to come. The way in which the nation states of Europe deal with these challenges will be fundamentally different to that which has gone before. The vertically integrated state-owned utilities of the 20th century have generally been dismantled into a whole host of different entities to form the competitive electricity markets of the 21st century. As a requirement of increased competition and the dismantling of state-owned electricity monopolies, European states must achieve these difficult tasks by providing economic incentives for the market to make this energy transition without direct state intervention or control. We meet the challenge of climate change as a time when the digital realm is further transforming our world and our lives. The staggering speed at which technology has changed since the creation of the first transistor, the number per square inch closely following Gordon Moore's prediction of doubling every two years since 1975 has led to most European consumers having a piece of technology sitting in their pockets that has more computing power than that which helped put the first men on the moon. Here we have two chips. On your left is one of the first integrated circuits or ICs with the mere 16 transistors. On the right is what we have today, 2.6 trillion transistors on a single integrated circuit. Have we realized the potential of the technology we have today? What are we using the trillions of transistors we have in our mobiles, laptops and tablets to actually do? Well, it's safe to say that we probably haven't reached the potential of this technology and we've barely begun to realize what we can do with it. Even if Moore's law is reaching saturation, that is of little consequence itself as there is a huge gap between the capability of the current technology and what we actually use it for. But utilizing the full capability of this technology coupled with the communications revolution of the internet has the potential to lead to the creation of the Internet of Things. The Internet of Things will be a network of senses on our physical and electronic devices providing connectivity, data transfer and control to enable more intelligent use of the engineering world around us. And it is this network of connected devices that can be used to provide the flexibility and communication networks needed to transition from our current grid to an integrated energy system and smart grid that will deliver sustainability. The electricity system we use was designed to go from the few to the many. Large conventional generators run by fossil fuels rooted large amounts of power through the transmission network down the distribution network and finally bringing power to the low voltage network or to the layman, the hole in the wall. But this is changing. The grid of the future will be one in which a myriad of different technologies will be connected from wind to solar, heat pumps to electric vehicles rooftop solar photovoltaic to home energy battery systems. Power flow will no longer be unidirectional but will flow in all directions from a multitude of distributed resources. And this new system electricity may transition to be a service rather than a commodity in itself as more and more renewables come online and conventional generation transitions from being energy based to capacity based. In this system to mirror increased variable output of renewable generation the customer will have to become more flexible in their consumption patterns. We are moving away from the paradigm that electricity demand is an inflexible quantity that must be served at all times towards a system where flexibility is required by both generation and demand to manage renewable energy sources. It is only by controlling this multitude of different resources that we have that we can achieve the sustainable energy system that we are striving towards. The question is how can we achieve this and the answer is by using the digital world. Designing digital strategies to maximize the potential of our technology is key to engaging the customers of tomorrow. At current we have the technology to generate power for renewable generation to transition towards the electrification of heat and transport and to achieve the new building retrofit that will deliver passive and more energy efficient buildings. What is lacking is the digital infrastructure to enable the data transfer of monitoring and control between the myriad of different technologies that will make up the future energy system. The integration of these technologies will be achieved through linking the physical and digital worlds to provide better communication and control. Linking the electronic and physical worlds is key to providing the level of flexibility, control and efficiency that will be required to transition to the sustainable energy systems of the future. Only when we offer a product that not only brings energy efficiency and flexibility but improves the lives of the consumer will we be truly on the path to sustainability. But ultimately this vision will not be achieved unless we turn our focus on the consumer. The power system was built to serve the customer with a secure, reliable and affordable electricity and it must continue to do so. In this energy transition there is a widespread misconception among consumers that sustainability means sacrificing quality of life sacrificing reliable electricity. But why should the consumer worry about switching off light bulbs scheduling washing machine towers of low electricity demand trying to match the timers on their water heaters to when they need hot water changing their consumption patterns to integrate renewable technologies we are simply asking too much particularly when electricity is such a cheap commodity and has such a low priority in the reality of most people's lives. Spend 600 euro on a smartphone and it will cost you less than a euro to run it for a year. Electricity typically accounts for less than 2% of the annual household budget but the value we place in electricity is much greater than the cost we pay so how do we motivate consumers to adapt to this new sustainable power system? The answer lies in offering a digital platform that increases the consumers quality of life, reduces inefficiency and helps integrate renewable electricity sources. Don't tell the consumers that they need to worry about turning off lights but offer them a product that means that they will never need to operate a light switch again. Using digital strategies to link the physical and electronic worlds means that the consumer will no longer need to worry about their consumption but can focus on how they want to live their life whilst not worrying about their impact on the environment. The electricity consumers of Europe are those of the biggest role and responsibility in this energy transition and they are consumers and need to be sold a product that works for them. Yes we need to be more flexible and more efficient in the way we consume energy yes we need to decrease our alliance in conventional generation sources and smart use of technology through the digital world is how to achieve this. There are huge developments in the automotive industry with work and self-driving cars but from a consumer's perspective what we are offering is not a self-driving car but a self-driving house where you don't need to worry about your space heating, water heating, lighting ventilation and clean electricity. Sell the consumer a suite of products that takes those worries away and they will buy it. If we are to achieve the transition towards a sustainable energy system we need to ensure that we not only maintain but improve the standard of living of the citizens of Europe. Analogous to the economic growth and productivity that accompanied electrification in the 20th century the transition towards a sustainable integrated energy system also holds the potential to revolutionise and reimagine the economic and social model of Europe. We are undergoing the second great electric revolution and ultimately this transition should, can and needs to be in the interest of the economy, society and the environment but fundamentally as citizens and consumers of Europe. Thank you.