BP's exciting new businesses

Solar
Lightsource has been building solar projects since 2010 with various partners. It is still led by Lightsource’s founder, Nick Boyle. It changed its name to Lightsource bp when bp bought a 43% shareholding.
So far it has developed 5.4GW in 17 countries (enough to power 5m homes). They have a target of 25GW by 2025.
Lightsource bp develops and builds projects. Often the projects are simply bought after being established by others. It will also manage them afterwards. It will often continue to own them but is willing to sell an asset.
Some examples:

• 247MW in Zaragoza, Spain – five-site cluster
• 70MW Pennsylvania
• 88 bp service stations in New South Wales to be 100% powered by solar
• 1.06GW portfolio acquired in 2021 with 124 sites across Madrid, Andalucia and Castille y Leon
• 9GW solar US development pipeline acquired in 2021
• 300MW built in Colorado to supply the world’s first steel mill to run almost entirely on solar (750,000 panels), equivalent to taking 92,100 fuel-burning cars off the road each year.
• 29 MW Lancashire
• 5MW Kansas
• 3MW Surrey – floating on reservoir
• 3MW in Devon

Electric vehicle charging and Convenience sites
BP Pulse
Since 2019 bp has almost doubled its EV charging points to more than 13,000 worldwide. The managers see enormous growth potential in both charging and shops/stations, what it labels “convenience”, with plans to double 2019’s earnings from convenience and mobility to $9 - $10bn in 2030. By then there will be more than 100,000 bp charging points.
Already almost half of bp’s EV charging points are fast or ultra-fast. It also supplies charging points to fleet operators and expects this business to increase 100-fold by 2030.
EV charging has been loss-making as it invests heavily in expansion and is not expected to be profitable until 2025.
Convenience sites amount to 20,500 currently, with 2,700 of those regarded as “strategic convenience sites” meaning a “food for now and food for later” offering, such as M&S Food stores (at 300 sites).
Murray Auchincloss, FD, 3 Nov 2021: “if you wanted to measure returns the general statistic we hold is, if you get 10% utilisation on a faster charger, you’ll make a 10% return. That’s just for pure electrons themselves. It’s about convenience as well. And when somebody goes to charge their car, they spend probably 8 minutes, as opposed to 4 minutes. And hopefully they come in and get a nice cup of Wild Bean coffee and a sandwich and that will certainly enhance those returns.”
Bp Pulse has the UK’s largest EV public charging network and is to expand its ultra-fast charging (UFC) infrastructure across the UK, with a series of new EV-only hubs.  Charging around 50p per KWh
The charging hubs will play a key role in helping to achieve bp pulse’s aim to double the size of its network in the UK to 16,000 charge points by 2030, with a particular emphasis on ultra-fast chargers. The total amount of charging on the bp pulse network is set to grow 30-fold by 2030.
bp and Volkswagen Group have agreed to a strategic collaboration, with plans to develop ultra-fast charging (UFC) at bp retail sites in the UK, Germany and elsewhere in Europe.
The partnership would give EV drivers greater confidence in being able to access nearby, reliable, quality charging options. bp estimates that approximately 90% of people in the UK and Germany live within a 20-minute drive of a bp or Aral site.
The network would be integrated into VW’s cars, making finding and paying for charging easy. It would also be available for other EV customers, improving access to UFC more widely.
bp pulse for commercial operators.
For example, Uber drivers in London can now access dedicated fast chargers in the heart of Central London. The new multi-charger hub on Park Lane already has 10 rapid 50kW chargers, with a further 12 being added soon. bp intends to open hundreds of similar hubs across London and other UK and European cities by 2030.
Aral
This is bp’s market-leading fuel retail brand in Germany. It has begun the roll-out of ultra-fast charging points at its retail sites. Now operating under a new name, ‘Aral pulse’.
It already has 500 ultra-fast chargi........