Ep. 0: Intro to Smart Charge by RiDERgy

0:11 Welcome to the Smart Charge by RiDERgy podcast. This is Claudio Geyken, founder and CEO of RiDERgy. This is your show to learn about all things, energy management and smart charging innovation for electric vehicles and fleets.

0:41 Dear listeners, welcome to the Smart Charge by RiDERgy podcast. I'm Claudio. My background is in energy engineering, renewable energies, or sustainable energies, and I was passionate about that topic since the 2004, um, really acceleration of this phenomenon of installing solar and wind, and then I, I bought into the idea of getting to 100% renewable energy has been much better for the world, and I studied that. And not only am I a very techy person, I am not only in love with technology, but I'm a

1:16 bit of a strange animal as I love business entrepreneurship. I speak 9 languages fluently, and I'm gonna deep dive a little bit on the entrepreneurship aspect in a second and how that came to be. But first, so how did I get to 9 languages, uh, as an engineer focusing on, yeah, thermodynamics and other complicated tech topics. Uh, myfata is Deutsch, um, Yamam my Italiana just near Paris, so I was born in, in, in, in Paris with two parents from different countries, so the three languages were

1:46 there from the get-go. Then I learned English because one has to alert friends in the TV series a vivido muchosanos en espana tambe particular men in Barcelona la ciatcundal magrada multisim um ya plugote etopocotejoa so yolera me svenca tambefalo portugue conssutake dubrazio poque goes to mutoda cultura eddu paisoyahushu id and the jungwen uh yinwe o fechan shiwan jungwen hanza. R Jie Zhongguo Chuangdong wen hua ejian zhongguo the ren feng bang zhong ren feng bang. Entrepreneurship basically was ingrained to me by the masters with I know

2:30 Energy where I met a lot of entrepreneurs that were in their program as well as this mindset of getting to really hands down, hands down and really getting to the challenges solving problems. I, um, uh, then created initiative to connect people in the ecosystem and I got hired to basically do that then by by the CEO of Inno Energy and. Gave me quite a lot of insights and freedom to build up a community inspired by TEDx and LinkedIn, so a few 1000 people were there, part

3:02 of the community. We had 60 events per year with 150 volunteers helping out every year, and that was a great insightful experience to understand how energy shaped by regulation is not just building an e-commerce shop. And especially all the business intricacies and tech intricacies related to building a business in the energy space. So after that, I decided to um move and create RiDERgy. The reason being that in the 2020s we desperately needed more sophisticated solution than what was there to basically shape the demand to the

3:42 production times, uh, consume energy when there's lots of wind and solar, when the grids are not congested, and also delivering batteries back. Most of the solutions that were there at this time were not very sophisticated and a lot has to be done. Uh, also, I built RiDERgy with the intention of being DER first so they can notice DER being capital letters, distributed energy resources connecting over the long term assets like EVs, solar panels, battery storage, etc. across multiple transactions and different organizations and people. That's what

4:16 we want to enable with this software and AI driven platform. And now we focus on businesses, so companies that usually have a lot of electric vehicles in their company operations, be it logistics providers, vans, trucks, but also company fleet employees, corporate employees and office workers. Since we started a couple of years ago, uh, a few years ago in, in Berlin with my co-founder and a few others in the team, we have achieved already quite significant, um, amount of things, um, namely also working with big corporate

4:50 employers having large EV fleets. And um yeah, now expanding from Germany and Europe as well to other countries. So very exciting times for us at RiDERgy. If you want to learn more about it, ridergy.com or follow us on LinkedIn. We're quite active. Well, how did this podcast came to be? I'm an avid and passionate uh podcast listener. Um, the numbers talk for themselves. Spotify told me in the rap that I had 18,000 minutes listening to business and entrepreneurship and tech podcasts last year, which made me

5:24 0.5% of the most passionate listeners. So I know a lot of the topics that are around there, different languages, even energy EV software, it's and business entrepreneurship, and I felt like these type of topics that we touch upon with RiDERgy every day that I'm super passionate about, there can be more information out there, so. The likes of Acquired or the likes of Energoner, etc. they do quite a lot, a good job in, um, in, in showcasing some points, but if you want to go in fleet

5:57 electrification, mobility, how mobility and energy start really merging together, there's several aspects that I find are not talked to about enough like electrification challenges, grid reinforcement. Um, related to how much, uh, capacity there is in cables, but also how many chargers, uh, and what chargers need to be installed and. How to best manage the charging process across route optimization, that's, that's a lot of topics that the fleets are faced and that I don't find a lot of podcasts talking about it. So I want to put

6:34 especially people working with fleets in the foreground and be it users, policy makers, solution providers, entrepreneurs, etc. Interview them and, and have, um, great insights coming from these conversations. So it's gonna cover topics like regulation, technology, business, a, a variety of topics to how the clean energy package affects member states, but also worldwide. We're gonna look at countries like China, US, or even Ethiopia that for example banned those non non-EV sales with 100% hydropower. It's a very good choice. So that's gonna cover as well topics

7:15 like. API integrations, protocols, OCPP, ISO 15118, cybersecurity, GDPR, AIX, you see a lot of buzzwords, but actually that are super important in practice. Um, we are also gonna deep dive into the energy aspects of things like all things like solar self consumption with batteries, building loads, markets, grids, distribution grid levels, transmission grid levels, so really, and, and the, the diversity of aspects and how they play together.

7:53 This, um, this so much about the, the podcast origin and the podcast topics. There's also more to say about the podcast topics, but for now I think I will, I will keep it a bit shorter, but let, let you can be surprised about what we'll all touch upon. And we will also interview in terms of who experts in their field that are very charismatic where the audio quality is gonna be amazing because we're here in this great studio offered by the also German energy agency in

8:24 Berlin Mitte and so hopefully most guests will be able to come here so that we have an amazing sound for you. The quality will also be enhanced hopefully if we add some videos sometime. And we will make sure that we have an amazing podcast shaped together as a community so we don't want to only be in the. Yeah. The only ones deciding how we are gonna shape this podcast, but also gonna take ideas from externals. As a past community builder, I know the power of community

8:55 and who knows what this podcast origin could bring us. We are, uh, going to also as a strategy we use AI, uh, use AI tools to make it multilingual, so we want to have everyone benefiting from this podcast, not only English speakers, um, I'm as a polyglot as well, really believe in the power of language and making it accessible and see how AI tools can help us there also in written format, transcribing stuff. And um their inspirations for example with Lex Friedman where he was recorded

9:32 you couldn't speak any Spanish but with his voice the interview was in Spanish so there are interesting things to come with the podcast. Technology and space is also being. Uh, developing as we speak, we will have this interview format and probably, uh, length that will not be too long, not too short. Let's see what the right fit is. If you want to have a look as well and have a sense of what I've done in the past, the Energy Change Agents podcast is a great one

10:01 to check it out. Um, I mentioned, um, before. Um, some of the entrepreneurs, for example, Simone from FlexiDAO was interviewed there with the 24/7. Initiative of Um, basically, uh, green electricity certificates working with Microsoft and Google, mm, and, and, uh, yeah, there will be, uh, others to listen there and, and, and for example, Northvolt, um, might be an, a next guest here at this podcast with their fascinating story.

10:36 I apologize if I don't manage to do this perfect at the perfect quality. I'm also busy doing many other things, building the business, and it's not my full-time gig as many maybe other podcasts um hosts are, but hopefully you you cut me some slack and, and you, but in any case, feel free to send feedback if you feel believe we can do something better or if you have ideas, suggestions. Yeah, so without further ado, you can uh subscribe to the podcast so that you don't miss

11:07 the next episode, it will come soon. Download them as well, uh, automatically so you can listen wherever you are without internet connection. I hope you have a pleasant start in 2025. We certainly have and stay tuned for more to come.