Gas stations or Petroleum stations as they are called in some countries, have served mankind amazingly well in the last 100 years. Large Oil & Gas companies who either own or franchise these retail stations, have played a key role in shaping our customer interactions and experiences that many of our intercity and intracity travels.

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Sometimes, located in the darkest and farthest corners of cities; gas stations bring familiarity and a sense of safety for long distance travellers. However, just how all good things in life come to an end unless re-invented, gas stations are reaching their timeline limits in their current form, and are at the crux of transformation and re-discovery.

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Climate change has become more visible and its mitigation need is accepted by many governments, global corporations and "prosumer turning consumers”. Large Oil and Gas companies are also amongst those organizations who understand the need for the world to move gradually to less oil burn and moving to electric vehicles running on still evolving battery technology. That journey of oil to electrons is an opportunity in re-discovering new business models and continuing to serve customers for 100 more years.

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THE ELECTRON CONUNDRUM

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“Electrons” are the energy from largely renewable sources like solar & storage. Electrons are more easily available than Oil and anyone with a solar panel can generate their own electrons . That is exactly what consumers are doing to turn into prosumers. Storage gives them the flexibility of hedging their needs during scarcity of solar power and selling power when they have excess. So while a gas station can install a solar and storage to sell electrons, it will not be the only option that business and individual “prosumers” will have to meet their green energy needs.

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‍THE TRANSITION PHASE

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The solution to this electron conundrum lies in the opportunity to give multiple wider choices to customers so that they drive in for much more than electrons. Customers must have options for fast and slow charging, have low cost charging options, get a regular convenient and affordable 2nd use battery swap service for the home battery need, provide quick EV battery change service during long distance

drives, provide convenient benefit programs for customers for offer repeatable standard services on their network during long journeys.

Customers are likely to have gasoline cars AND EV cars, for the next 10-20 years. Being a loyalty member where they can fuel up both types of cars is a convenience they will like. Add the advantage of free air fill in tires, low cost quick dry cleaning of car interiors, coupled with car polish and the convenience of using a clean washroom, buying coffee, some road shopping and more such conveniences are a good combined reason why customers will continue to enjoy continued close relation with their favorite

gas stations. The quality stamps of well known credible Oil and Gas company brands will add to the overall customer experience and deliver positive interactions per transaction. Finally gas stations will conduct their businesses with more IOT and AI technology and be efficient and optimized for its own net zero operation.

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THE TRANSFORMATION

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Once Electric vehicles and some other vehicle technologies like Hydrogen have become the preferred choices of customers, gas stations will remind customers of stability, assurance, consistency, reliability and convenience. At this time, gas stations will grow beyond their gas stations into public and private parking lots in food chains, supermarkets, convenience chains, malls and even gated residential communities. It will not be surprising to see food chains getting into selling electrons and similarly, Gas stations for selling food. Government, Auto OEMs and Oil and gas companies will together reach out to the needs of future clean vehicle owners. In this phase, it will be a challenge to ensure enough power for charging multiple EVs. Hence gas station will collaborate with power utilities for peak load and demand surge management. This relationship will be encouraged by power utilities because EV batteries, when not in use, will be a source of back up power will go a long way to ensure grid stability, preventing back outs. Thus every electric vehicle owner will become a receiver and a taker of power making her a prosumer with their personal net carbon score.

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ABOUT ENERGOS

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Energos.ai works closely with the Oil and gas industry in both the transition phase and the transformation. Our platform automates existing gas station operation and brings both energy efficiency with corresponding carbon reduction, and business operations & maintenance

efficiency. The Energos platform extends into optimizing solar, storage, battery charging and limiting demand surges which will complete the transformation. The platform further extends into charging stations outside of conventional gas stations, in public and private parking lots, thus continuing to serve their consumer-turned-prosumers for a better future world together.

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THE FIRST STEP

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The first step for an Oil and Gas company desiring to transform its gas stations in future, is to re-think the existing gas station operation and reduce its carbon footprint to meet its corporate net zero goal. This can be achieved by comprehensive energy and operations optimization solutions. Energos platform  helps gas stations to reduce cost of energy and operations & maintenance by selective controls and automated workflows. It further connects to dispensers, leak detector, air compressor, backup diesel generators, UPS battery and smart energy and water meters to provide remote control and live view of operations. This helps to reduce downtime of aging infrastructure and build predictive maintenance schedules. ML models are built and loaded on our IoT gateway to localize certain decisions.

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THE OUTCOME

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15-20% cost reduction is expected as a direct benefit out of our solution with added benefits for ongoing optimization. Further, asset and inventory management, results in further cost reduction in operations , maintenance through asset life cycle management, while also meeting compliance of gas stations. Finally, as solar + storage and EV battery charging stations are set up, the gateway will integrate these to optimize each sub-system and create autonomous flow of energy. The Energos platform has remote analytics capabilities to understand behavioral aspects of machine-to-human interactions and are an important gain from the platform in terms of understanding the business and consumer better. The platform also enables creation of digital twins based on IoT real time data and integrates with other systems like ERP.

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