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Jordan O’Brien

Editor

Electrical Review

Jordan O’Brien has more than a decade’s experience covering the latest technologies. During his career, Jordan has appeared on both BBC Radio 4 and BBC Breakfast to offer his expertise. You’ll now find him steering Electrical Review through its historic 150th Anniversary, as well as the regular host on the Powered On Podcast.

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Simon Orr

Net Zero Plan Lead

National Grid

Simon began his career in the research and development of hydrogen fuel cells with Johnson Matthey and Warwick University, completing his PhD before joining National Grid.

Since then he has worked in roles across power system analysis, engineering design, product development and business strategy. 

He is currently Net Zero Engineering Manager, responsible for National Grid Electricity Transmission’s strategy for enabling the clean energy transition.

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Martyn Allen

Technical Director

Electrical Safety First

Martyn leads the Charity’s electrotechnical team as an impartial centre of excellence for the safety of electrical installations and products – including representing consumer safety interests on a range of British, European and International Committees. Originally trained as an underground electrician with British Coal, he worked in  engineering risk management with Royal and Sun Alliance for 16 years before joining the Electrical Safety Council (the forerunner of Electrical Safety First), in 2006.

He is a Chartered Electrical Engineer and Corporate Member of the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET).

Kayla Ente MBE

Founder and CEO

Brighton and Hove Energy Services Co-operative (BHESCo)

Kayla Ente MBE is the founder and CEO of Brighton and Hove Energy Services Co-operative (BHESCo). 

BHESCo empowers people to meet their heat and power needs with efficient buildings and clean, affordable, community-owned energy. They do this by designing, financing, and project managing the installation of energy saving and renewable energy technologies, and have delivered 58 successful projects in and around Sussex since 2015.

Kayla is a qualified accountant with an MBA in Environmental Management from the TIAS Business School in the Netherlands. She began her career with Deloitte & Touche in San Francisco and Ernst & Young in Amsterdam before becoming a financial manager at Greenpeace International in 1993.

In 1999, as a business and project development consultant, her client portfolio included Nuon, a Dutch utility, and Ecofys (European pioneers in renewable energy).  At Nuon, she was the financial technician on wind farm development in China and Spain, supporting the development of PV projects in California and Hawaii. She advised the IEA on the feasibility of a very large scale PV project in the Sahara Desert for DESERTEC.

In 2004, Kayla moved to London, to start a consultancy service providing business development and advisory services to utilities and SME’s in the Cleantech industry. Kayla has been living in Brighton since 2012.

Kayla is a non executive director of RetrofitWorks, a transformational co-operative offering quality assured energy efficiency measures using their unique retrofit platform.

Kayla was honoured with an MBE in 2021 for her services towards community-led energy efficiency.

Matthew Knight

Head of Market and Government Affairs

Siemens Energy

Matthew Knight is Head of Market and Government Affairs for Siemens Energy in the UK, where he spends his time making sense of the energy transition to net zero.

Matthew is a Chartered Engineer and a member of the IET Energy Policy Panel.  He is on the Government’s Hydrogen Expert Group.  He is a previous Board member of Renewable UK.  Past government engagement includes membership of the Renewables Advisory Board, Carbon Capture and Storage Taskforce and other groups.  Matthew has a background in electricity grid projects and offshore wind farms. 

Matthew is passionate about customers, safety, collaboration and being a human being at work. He likes telling stories and is curious about the way culture drives human behaviour and especially energy politics.

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Phil Steele

Future Technologies Evangalist

Octopus Energy

Phil is the Future Technologies Evangelist at Octopus Energy, leading the research & development team, and applying cutting edge technology to develop new innovation across the whole of the energy chain.

Some of the tech-led innovation Phil is working on includes the Octopus Agile tariff, making the grid more flexible to cope with the realities of intermittent renewable generation, and Powerloop, a project that could turn millions of electric cars into mini battery packs to supply the grid when renewables energy is in short supply.

Phil joined Octopus Energy following the acquisition of his entech startup nCube, a pioneer in IOT platform development, with award-winning tech that acts as a bridge to connect IOT devices, using Z-Wave, WiFi, Zigbee, Bluetooth and LAN. 

Prior to nCube, Phil helped launch a mobile advertising startup in Canada, and delivered numerous innovations at O2 such as messaging, pre-pay & mobile internet. He regularly subjects his wife and three children to trialling out his latest gadgets in energy tech.

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Tom Callow

Head of External Affairs

myenergi

Tom Callow is myenergi’s head of external affairs. A leading voice in the electric vehicles sector, he has more than fourteen years’ experience in senior level strategic and operational roles, working with some of the world’s largest automotive and electrification brands.

Prior to joining myenergi, he was head of insight and external affairs at bp pulse, with responsibility for both monitoring and influencing the regulatory landscape, as well as representing the business to a wide range of external industry stakeholders. He also held the role of head of external communications at Cox Automotive (previously Manheim UK) and helped to build the brand’s national profile as a leading provider of auto auction, defleet, remarketing and retail operations.

Having started his career agency side, Callow has been involved in ground-breaking low-carbon, cleantech and electrification programmes for more than a decade.

Jon Berry

Data & Digitalisation Manager

Western Power Distribution

Jon is currently Data & Digitalisation Manager at Western Power Distribution and has worked in the electricity distribution industry since 2006. He has previously held a number of roles within the organisation, most recently leading WPD’s innovation programme. 

He now leads the digitalisation and data activity at WPD which focusses on increasing access to and insights from data, data quality, and developing and employing digitalised solutions to enable benefit to driven to a wide range of internal and external stakeholders. His work focuses on ensuring that WPD has the ability to meet and exceed data and digital requirements, serving the current and future needs of the energy system and delivering data and digitalisation developments in line with stakeholder and customer requirements.

 

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Darren Jones

UK Technology Manager

Hitachi Energy

Darren Jones has been Technology Manager at Hitachi Energy, previously Hitachi ABB Power Grids and ABB, since September 2018. 

He is responsible for promoting Hitachi Energy’s technology portfolio into the UK electricity transmission and distribution utilities, understanding and influencing the future direction of UK electricity distribution network development and leading on collaborations with a broad range of academic and industry stakeholders in order to meet the net zero challenge for the UK.

Damien Kelly

Innovation Lead, Prospering from the Energy Revolution

Innovate UK

Damien is an Innovation Lead on the Prospering from the Energy Revolution team at Innovate UK, where he oversees the delivery of the Smart Local Energy System demonstration projects, and the technology and digitalisation workstreams.

Prior to joining Innovate UK, Damien spent 3 years at ENGIE UK and Ireland working across the Investment & Strategy, and Innovation Teams where he lead the delivery of the Clean Growth Innovation CVC investment fund.

Damien has also worked across the npower, RWE and Innogy group in a number of roles covering onshore wind development, energy supply and distributed energy solutions.

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Ita Kettleborough

Deputy Director

Energy Transitions Commission

Ita is the Director of the ETC. She is responsible for managing the delivery of the ETC’s analytical workstreams, coordinating the international programmes, and supporting the ETC’s Commissioners and Representatives.

Prior to this, Ita was a Manager at Bain & Company working with business executives to address strategic challenges at international organisations in the UK, Europe, and the USA. Ita worked across industrial, consumer products and heavy transport sectors, in addition to advising central government and not-for-profit clients.

Ita worked as a policy advisor at the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. As a core member of the team delivering the 2017 Industrial Strategy White Paper, Ita developed the UK’s ‘Grand Challenges,’ including the Clean Growth Challenge. This included brokering consensus across critical government, civil service and industry stakeholders.

Ita holds a Bachelor of Arts in Social Studies from Harvard University.

Dr Laura Schade

Energy Engineer - Senior Executive Officer, Department for Business

Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS)

Dr. Laura Schade is an Energy Engineer in the Science and Innovation for Climate and Energy (SICE) directorate in BEIS. Her role consists in using a wide variety of science and engineering analysis to influence Government policy in energy and decarbonisation. Laura’s work is focused on the shift to a smart energy grid, particularly in the area of flexibility and domestic demand side response, ensuring that effective technical solutions are in place to support the transition to Net Zero.

Laura holds a PhD from University of Oxford with a thesis on perovskite photovoltaics, a Master’s in Condensed Matter Physics and a Bachelor’s in Physics from Sapienza University of Rome, both summa cum laude. She has a diverse range of experience on solving sustainability issues and the ambition to support the transition towards Net Zero has driven her career choices

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Jason Yates

Technical Services Manager

Riello UPS Ltd

Jason Yates is the Technical Services Manager for leading uninterruptible power supply manufacturer Riello UPS Ltd.

With more than 30 years’ experience in the power protection industry, Jason is one of the UK’s foremost experts in his field. He’s designed, delivered, and installed countless low and high-power systems across a broad range of industries, working with several of the country’s biggest data centres, businesses, electrical contractors, and public sector organisations.

Jason has played a pivotal role in establishing Riello UPS Ltd as one of the fastest-growing and technically-diverse UPS companies in the UK. He is also the co-author of the 300-page technical handbook ‘The Power Protection Guide’.

Professor Gregg Butler

Head of Strategic Assessment at the Dalton Institute

University of Manchester

Gregg is Professor of Science in Sustainable Development and Head of Strategic Assessment at the Dalton Institute at the University of Manchester.

He has over 50 years’ experience in most aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle including R&D, planning, commercial, plant, site and company operations and management, director, and advisory committee roles. 

He was heavily involved in the BNFL National Stakeholder Dialogue and was a member of the UK Government’s Radioactive Waste Management Advisory Committee (1991 – 2004). He is currently a member of the Committee on Radioactive Waste Management and the Nuclear Industry Research Advisory Board.

Research interests and publications include the sustainability of nuclear power and its potential roles in UK and world energy, its regulation, and the analysis of regulatory outcomes, stakeholder views and values.
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Paul Verrill

Director

EnAppSys

Paul Verrillis a Director of EnAppSys. Paul is a chartered engineer and has held senior posts in asset management and development with Enron and more recently px limited (a manager of energy assets). 

Paul’s career started in asset management but for the last 15 years his roles have been predominantly in business and commercial management utilising a deep sector experience and knowledge to build value. 

Examples include development and sale of large CCGT development, sale of major UK gas infrastructure business, development of UK gas infrastructure assets, development of cavity gas and energy storage projects, preparing and implementing business growth plans and executive management of a trading business.

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Jeremy Yapp

Head of Flexible Energy Systems

BEAMA

Jeremy Yapp holds a degree in geography and anthropology and another in music performance but began his professional life managing an independent retail business, diversifying a small bookshop into an internet café, performance space, and online retailer back when such things were still new.

He worked for some years as a Hansard editor in the Australian Parliament and then in several energy and environment policy areas in the UK Civil Service, including the smart metering program, and in the corporate centre of the Energy Department, overseeing the management of its arms-length bodies, public appointments, and honours nominations.

He is a member of a wide cross-section of working groups and taskforces in the energy sector, focusing on demand-side flexibility, and leads the Technical Working Group of the EV Energy Taskforce. For BEAMA he manages an energy system strategy forum and represents the supply chain of smart metering, energy data, smart buildings, and EV infrastructure.

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Jonty Haynes

Senior Analyst

Regen

Jonty Haynes is a Senior Analyst at Regen, focussing on the future of energy as the UK looks to decarbonise over the coming decades. He currently leads Regen’s ‘Distribution Future Energy Scenarios’ analysis for electricity and gas distribution networks in England, Scotland and Wales, assessing the uptake and impact of decarbonising power, heat, transport and industry at both national, regional and local levels.

Most recently, Jonty led Regen’s ‘A Day in the Life 2035’ project with National Grid ESO, investigating a challenging winter day in a net zero power system in 2035 as part of the ESO’s Bridging the Gap workstream. This highlighted the role of low carbon power supply from nuclear, renewables, storage and interconnection, the necessity of demand-side flexibility from EVs, electric heat and industry, the operability solutions needed to keep the system stable, and the infrastructure and market frameworks required for the system to operate efficiently, effectively, and equitably.

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Jeremy Gadd

Owner and Managing Director

Covol Engineering Ltd

Jeremy Gadd is the Owner and Managing Director of Covol Engineering Ltd. Degree qualified in Engineering and member of the IET. Jeremy served a full apprenticeship at ICI Billingham and has previously held various roles spanning the last 30 years including Discipline Head at a large Engineering consultancy company, Engineering Manager at an upper tier COMAH site, Control Electrical Engineer at a large upper tier COMAH site.

Covol Engineering undertakes Electrical Engineering services covering the UK and Europe and has an extensive history in providing Arc Flash Hazard assessments to a number of major UK and International clients. The total number of Arc Flash assessments carried out by the team at Covol (and its predecessors) is over 1500 and we are recognised as one of the country’s leading Arc Flash assessment providers. The business regularly reviews the methods, means and techniques of understanding the risks associated with an Arc Flash incident in order to improve the understanding at a client level.

Kirsty Gogan

Co-founder and Managing Director

TerraPraxis

Kirsty Gogan is co-founder and Managing Director of TerraPraxis. She is a global leader in the field of nuclear innovation and has more than 15 years’ experience as a senior advisor to government on climate and energy policy, including 10 Downing St and the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister in the U.K.

Kirsty is a member of the UK Government’s Nuclear Innovation Research and Advisory Board (NIRAB), a Board Member of the Nuclear Innovation Alliance and Voices for Nuclear, and is appointed by the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to serve on a new committee to identify opportunities and barriers to the commercialization of new and advanced nuclear energy technologies over the next 30 years.

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Caroline Bragg

Director of Policy and Research

The Association for Decentralised Energy

Caroline leads the development of the Association’s policy and regulatory work and its research arm, ACE-Research – working closely with members and policymakers to promote the sustainable development of the decentralised energy sector in the UK.

Caroline has previous experience in the energy and housing sectors.

Kas Mohammed

Vice President

UK&I Digital Buildings, Schneider Electric

Kas Mohammed is the Vice President of the Digital Buildings division at Schneider Electric in the UK and Ireland. His team work within both new and existing buildings across Commercial Real Estate, Healthcare, Life Sciences and Education segments to deliver systems which ensure optimal efficiency and user comfort across all stages of the building life cycle. Kas is passionate about improving sustainability across the built environment and reducing carbon emissions in our sector.

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Naomi Baker

Senior Policy Manager

Energy UK

Naomi is a Senior Policy Manager at Energy UK, the main trade body for the energy sector. Naomi works on low carbon heat, energy flexibility, electric vehicles, and system change.

Naomi has an MBA in Strategic Carbon Management and 15-years’ experience in energy and sustainability, across a range of policy and delivery roles in central and local government, and the third sector.