Tom Pakenham, OVO/Kaluza – Episode 33

What’s it all about? Tom is one of those, like me, that tried to bring business acumen to a very nascent, and very hippy, clean and renewable energy sector in the UK in the late 2000’s. His journey, passion and drivers are fascinating to share, as is the story of Kaluza, a company really creating the Internet of Energy (IoE), across a range of domestic devices, proving new incomes and opportunities for businesses and consumers. Take a listen. About our guest Tom Pakenham is Director of Electric Vehicles at Kaluza, OVO Group’s intelligent energy platform. Driving the transition to a distributed, zero-carbon energy system, the Kaluza platform is able to securely connect millions of smart devices and create mass flexibility, helping offset costly and carbon-intensive peaks. Tom plays a crucial role in scaling this unique technology across the fast-growing electric vehicle market. Before Kaluza, Tom helped lead OVO Energy’s transition from a pure kWh retail business into a diversified energy services company. In 2017 he spearheaded the launch of OVO’s ‘EV Everywhere’ energy bundle and developed industry-leading smart charging propositions for customers. Tom also developed strategic partnerships with key players including Chargemaster, the UK’s biggest provider of electric vehicle charging infrastructure, Indra Renewable Technologies, and ChargedEV. Prior to OVO, Tom founded greentomatocars in 2006 - the world’s first low emission taxi company, which he sold to global transport conglomerate Transdev. After selling greentomatocars, Tom launched greentomatoenergy - an energy efficiency and micro-renewables business - which was acquired by a private equity firm in 2013. After this, Tom led the Business Development and Innovation team at Transdev Plc.  Tom graduated from Cambridge University with a History MA and has a Postgraduate Diploma in Law from BPP Law School. He is a qualified solicitor. About Kaluza Our mission is to securely connect all devices to an intelligent zero carbon grid Kaluza is an intelligent energy platform able to connect and control millions of smart devices across people’s homes, such as electric vehicles, heaters and batteries. The machine learning platform introduces new flexibility into the energy system by optimising individual devices to use energy during off-peak hours, when costs and carbon are lower. An OVO Group company, Kaluza operates end-to-end, providing software, hardware and in-home installation services to a range of partners and is driving the global transition to a distributed and secure, zero-carbon grid.  GUEST LINKS Kaluza on twitter: https://twitter.com/Kaluza_tech Kaluza on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/kaluza/ Tom Pakenham on Twitter: https://twitter.com/tom_pakenham Tom Pakenham on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-pakenham-7424b3/ Kaluza home page: https://www.kaluza.com/ EPISODE LINKS Small is Beautiful – EF Schumacher - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Small-Beautiful-Economics-People-Mattered/dp/0099225611 The Story of Stuff – Animations - https://storyofstuff.org/ Follow us online, write a review (please) or subscribe I'm very keen to hear feedback on the podcast and my guests, and to hear your suggestions for future guests or topics. Contact via the website, or Twitter. If you do enjoy the podcast, please write a review on iTunes, or your usual podcast platform, and tell your cleantech friends about us. That would be much appreciated. Twitter https://twitter.com/weekincleantech Facebook https://www.facebook.com/thisweekincleantech/ Instagram https://www.instagram.com/davidhunt2013/