INTERVIEW – STEPHAN MARTY
ON THE CREST OF THE GREEN WAVE – INTERVIEW WITH STEPHAN MARTY, CEO OF WATTSTOR Meet Stephan Marty – the CEO of Wattstor, ex-CCO of Kiwi Power. In this interview, he shares his view on the status of the energy market, impact of the pandemic, and how he continues to be on the forefront of the green evolution. You graduated with an MSc in Engineering in Zurich, moved to California, completed an MBA and exchanged a career in GE’s Energy business for leading the way in energy flexibility startups: Kiwi Power and now Wattstor. What were the defining points of your career, and how did they align with the Renewable Energy landscape? I think I’ve changed a lot together with the energy industry over the last 20-odd years. I joined the energy industry when it was not “sexy”. You could see a few wind turbines here and there in Europe – but otherwise there was no renewable energy on the horizon. My first job focused on upgrading old coal power stations to be more flexible, and this is already when you can start to see the link with what was about to become my future work. I decided to move to Los Angeles to undertake an MBA at UCLA. There, I had an opportunity to work for a startup “Solar Reserve” – and I learned how to work in a smaller company. After the 2008 crash, I secured an opportunity to join GE Energy on a rotational leadership programme with the first stint being in London, where we were defining “Smart Grid” – the new hype at that time. Most of my job was to look into the future and see how the next 5 – 10 years were going to shape the new energy economy – wind, smart grid, solar, large gas turbines, distributed energy – we were working hard to get the big tanker
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that is GE moving more in this green direction. You could see the world changing – but there were obstacles and people who thought differently as well. It is unthinkable now, it was only 2012 when I lived in France, I was chosen to give a Christmas speech around the future of the energy world to GE employees at our gas turbine factory. I talked about the changes towards renewable energy, and how the world had to adapt. Right after my presentation came a renowned professor from a big French University, arguing exactly the opposite point – that things in energy will be the same and that there can never be more than 5% renewables in the grid, because the grid wouldn’t be stable enough to accommodate it. Now we have 50-60-70% renewables in the grid – and we’re not stopping there. Of course, at the time Renewable Energy was outrageously expensive. Even so, by then we had lots of solar coming in driven by feed in tariffs, so we looked at GE’s gas turbine business, and for us it was clear – it was just a matter of time until renewables will become more prevalent, and the business model will have to change.
Why did you join Kiwi Power, when you had a good, secure career at GE? I was headhunted to join Kiwi Power and never looked back. It was the best decision I could have made. I left a great company after a 6 year career, where I had a generous package, and took a significant pay cut to do so and never had any regrets. At Kiwi , I was a key part of the team that built a successful company from a start-up, and we were at the
ENERGY MANAGER MAGAZINE • APRIL 2021
forefront of things that were important then and now – Demand Response (now DER Management) and Battery Energy Storage. My key responsibility was growing the company internationally – we went from 0 to 14 countries outside of the UK by shifting from a direct aggregator to a SaaS business model, while also working on battery storage from 2014 on – with basically no ES around – starting with the Leighton Buzzard project with UKPN. Following that learning, we built the battery storage side of Kiwi from scratch – and at one point we had the biggest battery in the UK – 6MW, which was big then – marking another step towards the green transition. Since then, the price of batteries has come down drastically, the revenue stack has changed, and our strategic focus changed to a software and trading (“optimisation”) offering.
Now that Kiwi Power is a major player, you have decided again to abandon a comfortable CCO position in an established business and lead a startup. Why? You can see a pattern here (laughs). I was always keen on bringing flexibility to the BTM (Behind The Meter) space, because I believe it’s essential for the new energy system to work. Wattstor’s mission is to empower Commercial and Industrial sites and local energy communities to reduce CO2 and electricity cost – that’s how we’re enabling the wider energy system to go green. If you think forward a few years – batteries will be even cheaper, as well
