AI is creating extraordinary new demand for electricity. But what happens when the grid can't keep up?
In this episode of Riding Unicorns, James and Hector sit down with Karl Bach, Co-Founder & CEO of Axle Energy, the energy technology company building a virtual power plant from hundreds of thousands of electric vehicles, batteries and heat pumps.
Rather than relying solely on large power stations to balance electricity supply and demand, Axle connects distributed devices across homes and businesses and intelligently shifts when they consume energy. Today, the company manages more than two gigawatts of capacity, roughly equivalent to the capacity of a nuclear reactor.
The timing is becoming increasingly important. Renewable energy creates more variability in electricity supply, while AI and the rapid expansion of data centres are creating new sources of demand. In the UK, Karl says a new data centre can face a grid connection wait of around 10 years. Axle's technology can help provide flexibility to the electricity system in weeks rather than waiting years for new physical infrastructure to be built.
Karl also shares the realities of building in a heavily regulated industry. Axle spent years helping push through regulatory changes required for distributed devices to participate properly in energy markets, while gradually building from its first EV charger partnerships into a platform managing hundreds of thousands of devices.
Topics Covered
• How virtual power plants work
• Why EVs, batteries and heat pumps can help balance the electricity grid
• Building more than two gigawatts of capacity from distributed devices
• Why renewable energy increases the need for grid flexibility
• The impact of AI and data centres on electricity demand
• Why connecting a new UK data centre to the grid can take around a decade
• Building a startup inside a heavily regulated industry
• How Axle won its first customers before it had a product
• Creating recurring revenue for EV charger manufacturers
• Karl's experience leading growth at Bulb
• What Bulb's collapse taught him about building in the physical world
• Balancing startup speed with the consequences of getting things wrong
• Hiring exceptional people inside a highly technical industry
• Why Karl doesn't believe energy will ever become free
• Building a company around a problem you genuinely care about
Karl also discusses his experience at Bulb, once one of Europe's fastest-growing companies, and how its eventual collapse following the energy crisis shaped his understanding of the risks that come with building businesses exposed to the physical world.
This is a conversation about one of the fundamental constraints on the next wave of technology: energy. How we produce it, how we move it, and how software can make the infrastructure we already have significantly more efficient.