Battery Revolution Clubhouse Recording - Energy Access

0:00Transcript

0:00Welcome to the eighth session of Battery Revolution. We're very excited to finally have our club today. So we'll be definitely hosting more topics on anything about batteries, EVs, stationary storage, etc. We have my co-host here today as well, Simon. I'll pass on Simon to do some introductions about the room. Simon, off to you. Thank you so much, Catherine. Yeah, very excited. As it says in our title, it's the eighth time, which is crazy how time flies. But I think it still feels we're just getting started, really. I think we're all really excited about his conversations on batteries and all the related fields. Just a few things about the room. There's a few. One thing is you've seen the title. We'll be recording this as well as a podcast. I'm sorry that we haven't published them yet. I actually have them all here on my computer right now. I'm editing away. Hopefully today and tomorrow we're going to publish some of the previous sessions as well, as well as this session.

1:00The idea is that lots of people don't have iPhones and we want to make sure that everyone who's interested in these topics can also access them. So if you go on batteryinsiders.com, you can find it. You can also go, I think, on my profile or you can find that as well. Yeah. And maybe just one thing. I think we also thought if you want to come on stage, please raise your hand. And there's two ways you can, essentially, Catherine, maybe you can illustrate. There's the clapping with the mute button, exactly as Catherine is doing right now. And you also can do like a bit of a slow clap to kind of say, you know, you want to speak next. And that's really going to help us, you know, to moderate. Yeah. So, you know, for free to raise your hand if you want to speak later. But, you know, we really like to have these conversation starters to kind of get us all started into the topic.

1:45And today, we're very excited to have Harini with us. So maybe, you know, Catherine, if there's nothing else, we can go straight to that. Great. Fantastic. Thanks for that. So, as Simon has mentioned, we're very happy to have our Firestarter speaker today, Harini. Harini will be sharing more with us on the topic of energy access. And she has a PhD in batteries. I'll let Harini introduce herself very shortly in a second. But, yeah, for anyone who's interested in this topic, feel free to raise your hand and we'll let you on the stage. So, off to you, Harini. Great. Thanks. Hi. Hi, everyone. And thanks, Catherine and Simon, for having me here today. I'm very excited to talk about this topic. So, perhaps just a quick intro. So, as Catherine said, I have a PhD in batteries from Imperial College in London. And then, after completion, I went into a company called M-Copra Solar that makes and retail solar home systems in sub-Saharan Africa. And I was their battery research lead for three and a half years.

2:56And since then, I've gone solo. And I'm now a consultant for energy storage issues in the off-grid sector. So, that's me. So, I guess I'll just dive in into the topic. So, we can start by asking ourselves, why are we talking about energy access today? And that's because of SDG 7, really, which is the global goal to ensure access to affordable, reliable and modern energy for all by 2030. And there's many ways to have access to energy and connection to grid electricity is one of them. But what we have seen is that since really early 2010, the rise of the off-grid energy sector, which is currently serving over 400 million people globally. And, you know, what's encompassing the off-grid energy sector is mini-grids, solar home system providers, and PicoSolar products. So, there will be solar lanterns, solar lamps. And I guess from the global population who doesn't have access to electricity, three-quarters of that population is in sub-Saharan Africa. So, that's where most of the effort has been concentrated in.

4:22Where essentially over 50% of the population are still off the grid. So, from a technology perspective, so since 2010, the main technology in terms of energy storage has been lead-acid battery. And I guess that fit the bill for the initial need, which was providing lighting and perhaps, you know, small appliance like a torch or a radio. But as the products offered by that sector evolved to, you know, solar TVs and solar fridges and large appliances, the technology changed with it. And there's been this turn toward lithium-ion batteries and mostly lithium-ion phosphate chemistry, which is, you know, cheaper and also safer and performs better at a higher temperature. So, that was the first shift. And now we see a third shift, which is that while initially providers would go toward, you know, cheap lithium-ion phosphate batteries that they could find, there's this real need now to find better quality batteries. So, just to give you some understanding, you know, you have these big names as tier one suppliers, such as LG Chem and Samsung, et cetera.

5:48But off-grid providers are most likely going to turn to tier two, even tier three suppliers, who are going to be small producers based in China. And a lot of these manufacturers seem to have a homogeneous price list, but the performance between manufacturers is going to change drastically. And we're talking about companies who don't necessarily have the experience or the, you know, the technical knowledge to understand what's the difference between a good and a bad battery at the manufacturing stage. And there's been these conversations in terms of setting standards and, you know, I guess quality auditing protocols in place in the sector so they could build bigger and better batteries to match the, you know, the needs of their customers. And there's been a lot of challenges because if these customers' devices stop working, suddenly you're in the middle of the field, you don't have access to a shop and you just have no electricity. So, that's an issue for the population, but also for these different off-grid suppliers.

7:01So, that's kind of the current stage that industries are. And I guess the latest and most exciting prospect is this merging of e-mobility and energy and, you know, stationary storage where suddenly energy access is also linked to e-mobility where you see a lot of companies turning toward electric tuk-tuks and electric motorbikes. And what that means is that there's going to be, you know, charging stations that will be put in place for these different mobility appliances that are also going to be able to serve the electricity need of the populations around. But the battery itself within the tuk-tuk or the electric motorbike can be used as stationary storage at home. So, we're thinking now of the battery no longer as a product, but more as a service. Well, as in as a source that can provide multiple services. So, that's essentially where the sector is at now. And I think that that is the most exciting piece. But I think it has the off-grid sector has a lot to learn, obviously, of the more established electric mobility sector in Western countries.

8:27But I will leave you here and open the floor to more discussions on this. Thank you so much for that, Harini. It's very interesting that you mentioned that the off-grid sector is thinking about batteries not as a product, but as a service. Basically, batteries should be used to serve multipurpose. We actually touched a little bit about that in a few sessions earlier, just talking about how batteries could, you know, standardization of batteries and how to maximize the usage of it in the whole value chain to fully utilize a battery for, you know, across different applications, for example. And what do you think about an idea such as this? What do you think about, you know, having a battery or any type of business that runs in the way they use batteries for multipurpose applications to power a whole ecosystem? What are some of your thoughts to that? Well, I think, I mean, I think it's the way forward, and especially in this sector, but I think the challenge is going to be developing the kind of skill set and also the infrastructure to be able to manage suddenly batteries that are significantly bigger than, you know, a typical solar home system that might be, you know, around 50 watt hours.

9:52So I think there's a learning curve for that industry, but I think that is the way forward. Thanks for that, Harini. We have also Anthony and Lee that just joined the stage. Would you like to share your thoughts about this, Anthony, and followed by Lee? Yep, definitely. Harini, I was just listening to you right now, and yeah, it's funny that you're mentioning some of the things. I'm also Western African as well. I'm Nigerian to be exact, and I'm kind of working on a very, I don't want to say similar concept because I don't really know all the details of yours right now, but I'm kind of really focusing on the tuk-tuks right now and how low D, the low income population in Africa, starting with Nigeria in this case, can really optimize their tuk-tuks, but not even in a complete electric system, but kind of like a retrofit hybrid system. And this way we can reduce the size of the battery packs, use the smaller battery packs, but they can also be able to use it at home, maybe for one or two little things that might really just improve their lives a little bit.

11:04So I don't have much to kind of discuss on here, except I'm kind of really interested in that, and I would really love to connect with you, Harini, just to see if we can chat up more. And I didn't see kind of like an Instagram or Twitter on your bio, so I don't know what would be the best way to reach you on. But yes, I'm really interested in developing and accelerating e-mobility and clean tech in Africa. Okay. Hello, everyone. My name is Lee Xu. I'm originally from Shanghai, China, and being in the U.S. for 20-plus years. I just got up, so I just jumped into this room, so I'm a little bit sleepy still. We are a consulting firm, specialized project finance for renewable and infrastructure projects, particularly in sub-Sahara and Latin American markets. So we happen to have a, currently have a project in Madagascar is a solar storage solution because the condition of the island, this is probably the best option, can solve the electricity stability issue, the country facing.

12:25By the way, Madagascar is an island that technically considered the East Africa region. So I would say the battery storage technically is currently very hot already, but I don't know, and I don't understand why it is not widely used yet. With all the projects I have currently, we have about one gigawatt projects from East Africa and also Latin America. We only have one project is using this solution. So personally, I just don't understand why it's not, you know, in every single project yet. That's one thing. But I do see more and more in both solar and wind projects. I see that people start to edit the storage as a balance function. So that's my little input. Thanks for that, Lee. I think Patrick and Neil has just joined the floor as well. So if we could have you share more insights to that. And I think William has something to add, so we'll go in that order. Yeah, this is Patrick here. You know, I'll just say it's more of kind of a point to generate more discussion with the team.

13:42After some of Lee's comments, you have really this, I think even from the context of the overall power industry, the power generation industry, and admittedly, I'll say I have more of a U.S. focus. Certainly there's a coal base that's, let's say, a dying breed and dying majority of our power generation capacity. But as that translates more to natural gas, but even ultimately to renewable energy, battery is going to play a huge role. And that lithium-ion battery is going to be the predominant form of that battery. And if you look at what the, you know, what's already happening with like a Nextera, which, you know, predominantly their FP&L business and the battery storage capacity that they're building out in Okeechobee and even the new battery storage facility out in California and Monterey County. I'm curious for those who are real battery experts. I'm just a water guy, right? I know how water and high efficiency cooling and the role that water plays in the operation of that to some degree.

14:45But just curious what the battery experts on this group would say about what that build out looks like and maybe even more so what they see as the future efficiency of lithium-ion battery capabilities or maybe something better that's coming down the road. And I'm undone speaking. Thank you, Patrick. Do you, Harini, do you want to quickly go into this one or should we go to Neil first? And also, Harini, maybe you want to share for Anthony also how he can contact you because I think this was still something from before. Yeah, sure. So, Anthony, I'll message you afterwards and then we can connect. And just on Patrick's point, I guess from, you know, an energy access and off-grid sector perspective, I think the challenge is not so much on the technology and its efficiencies, but more on the cost and the availability. So, you know, we talk about new chemistries and new technology coming up, like sodium-ion batteries that would be cheaper, but it is very unlikely, I think, that the off-grid sector would be the pioneer in adopting these technologies because they need, it's just going to be more expensive at the beginning and they need a variety of, you know, supplies as well.

16:11So, I think it's likely to stick with, you know, current lithium-ion battery technology, which is perfectly good enough for its need, but where the challenge is is finding good quality and consistent manufacturing in those lower tiers of manufacturers. No, I appreciate that. I mean, I think it's exciting. Again, you know, my background is that of water, but, you know, I've been focused very much on power over the period of time as well. And, you know, again, the sun doesn't always shine. The wind doesn't always blow. And so, there needs to be a backup infrastructure. You know, you can ask any Texan what it's like when you don't have that backup infrastructure, especially when your network is not connected to the rest of the country. But, you know, beyond that, I think, you know, there's this other space that battery can really help accelerate, which is, you know, the distributed energy, the DER, where, you know, ultimately people may have, you know, battery capacity within their homes, whether that be sitting in their driveway or sitting in a, you know, a battery in their basement.

17:21But battery, I think, is really primed to transform the, I'd say, really the global power generation market, power generation infrastructure. If I may add something to what Patrick's saying, so on the, and I'm not trying to interrupt anyone else, the, when you're generating power in a central location, you're generating an enormous amount of power. So you're generating an enormous amount of power and you have to find a way to store that. So what he did mention, which is great, is that, so if you're going to use a battery to store power for use in one house, that is definitely an achievable and easy thing to do if you put batteries in there. So you're charging with this giant central located, let's say, nuclear power plant that pushes out a lot of energy. And it needs to push out energy. So in the lull time, it has trouble compensating for that. So instead of, so let's say at night when no one's using power, you may charge your batteries in your house at that time to take that lull out because otherwise what you have is you have to have a nuclear power plant with a certain capacity that can power, let's say, 65% of the energy and area needs.

18:25And then you use power generation from, let's say, you could use wind or whatever, but a lot of times they use a gas turbine engine to add the rest of the power in because you can turn that on or off. Because the risk is if you're generating too much power and you don't have a load, to drain that power, you burn up the system. So you have to add power when you need it and then back down to a certain level of power. So what you do is you design the system to only put out enough power to not fill the whole area, but then you add more power by using that generator. So the extra gas turbine engine type generators. So that's why it's flexible and easier to use, let's say, coal or gas or natural gas than it is to use nuclear because you can just turn several different smaller things offline because in nuclear you have a giant reactor that puts out an unbelievable amount of energy.

19:13But in the natural gas, gas turbine type thing or a coal one, you can just have, you'll have hundreds or thousands of those to make the same power for the nuclear power plant. But that also allows you the flexibility to turn off, you know, 200 of them or something like that to drop the power level based on demand. What a localized battery in your house allows you to do is you may be able to keep the load on the large system consistent, whereas when people are using their air conditioners and using their computers and draining all that power during the day, which is the peak time, then when they go to the non-peak time, instead of it being a non-peak time now, you're now charging the batteries in your house for that. But then the hard cycle, I'll stop a second, but there are other caveats that, but you can use it to be the load in the non-peak time so that then you can instead size your nuclear power plant to be much larger and use less of your gas turbine and lesser your coal.

20:05So you have this huge power generation, but you don't have that fault of having to put things online when you need the peak power during the day, which is why that costs so much more during the day during the peak power. So if you have the battery, to make it simple then, you want to have the battery at your house and not at a central location. So if you have these giant battery banks at a central location, that doesn't make as much sense as having them distributed to each one of these houses. Does that make sense? Thank you, Daniel. Yeah, for this point, I think let's, before we go to new ones, let's keep also the order from Neil, William, Catherine, I think, and then we can go from there. Sorry, I do have a question if you don't mind, just for Simon. Sure. Yeah. Hey, Simon, you mentioned that this session has been recorded. This is Battery Revolution Age. Where can I get the remaining seven episodes?

20:54So you will get, I think not all of them, because we didn't record all of them, but most of them on batteryinsiders.com. Okay. And I will post them there. Yeah. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Anthony. Neil, do you want to go next? Sure. Happy to chime in. Hi, everyone. Happy to be here. I come from having worked in the space of mini-grids and solar home systems, primarily in South Asia. I think my two cents on the conversation here is also talking about the global South. Energy independence and ownership of batteries is usually restricted to older technologies like lead-acid batteries. And newer technologies like lithium-ion batteries haven't really caught on as much just because of the unit economics. And I'd love to hear any thoughts on how she sees this evolving. I know she's worked closely in East Africa with Mkopa and other players there. I'd love to hear your two cents on how you see the batteries of the global South. Sorry, Neil, you cut off a bit there.

22:11Is your question how the like of Mkopa and other players evolving with their technology? Yeah, it was more around the sustainability aspect as well, but also talking about how you see lead-acid batteries or older technologies sticking around because of sustainability reasons as well as cost. While lithium-ion batteries and the kind of scale that Mkopa or other off-grid energy players work with, they build solar home systems that are, say, you know, the order of 50 watt-hours. Anything that's slightly larger and when you start moving towards second-tier, third-tier, fourth-tier cities and larger towns, then it doesn't start to make as much sense because people are looking for larger energy, bigger appliances, things of that sort. So as you step up the energy ladder, how do you see battery technology evolving and which one do you see being more relevant in different cases? Also from the recyclability circularity aspect as well. Thanks. Great question. So I think from the sustainability part, so a lot of those solar home system providers have already in place, you know, partnerships with electric waste companies and there's quite a few in Kenya but others as well in West Africa and in Sub-Saharan Africa in general.

23:33So the difference between lead-acid batteries and lithium-ion batteries is lead-acid batteries are very well recycled and the recycling process is not without its challenges in terms of the kind of safety to others and ensuring that, you know, the processes are happening in a clean way. But the batteries themselves are unlikely to be sitting in the landfill because they have a monetary value so people would give them back and, you know, put them back into that recycled chain. For lithium-ion batteries, I think it's been more a learning curve where any device that would be broken tend to be and if the customer is bringing it back to, you know, a shop or an outlet of the solar home providers, it will go back to the warehouse where then it will be put in the right e-waste channels. But the challenge is retrieving batteries from, you know, peak solar products or solar home systems that are no longer working and are sitting at customers' homes where they're not contacting the provider and actually there's quite a lot of work done in that space less so directly from these companies but more through brand funding and different schemes.

24:57For example, you have the Efficiency for Access program that's really trying to design new programs and put in place tools and enable through grant funding these companies to put up new routes to collect these batteries so you avoid them being discarded in boreholes. But also a really good point in terms of increasing electricity needs and especially as you go, for example, toward urban areas or areas where energy electricity access is more established. and I think solar home systems and, you know, PicoSolar and solar home systems have their limits where you wouldn't necessarily be looking, I think, at this stage of powering a whole modern house with all its appliances from a solar home system or you could but then you're looking at, you know, a Tesla Powerwall in that case which is a very different product and would need a very different technology but also warranty. So I think these solar home products can achieve multiple appliances but after that you need to start thinking about more, you know, mini grid or mini grid type of system of several connected houses to then, you know, solar plus storage or...

26:20I think in looking at the current players it seems like, you know, a combination of the larger devices as it stands would be, you know, fridges and fans and TVs and that's where it kind of rests. Then some of these companies are also turning into backup storage so often in more urban areas what they try to do is have customers who are already connected to the grid but have what we call, you know, poor grid where it would be off quite a lot so they would want to keep a solar home system as backup. So especially in Nigeria that market is really big where people can actually afford these devices which is an issue in other countries but they just they can't seem to be able to find reliable energy. So yeah, so that's my take on it. Thanks, Zatan. Zatan. That's a lot of useful insights. I couldn't agree more on a lot of accounts. You have solar home systems on one end and Tesla power walls on the other and barely anything in between.

27:27I can only speak to the global South perspective from South Asia in particular from having worked in Bangladesh and India. Both regions have pretty solid infrastructures, manufacturing capabilities with lead-acid batteries. They're slowly starting to kickstart lithium-ion production and things of that sort as well which is primarily going to be led by EVs, I suppose, and which will potentially spill over into the solar rooftop space as well but that's a whole different perspective. I do recognize that most of your experience does primarily come from having worked in sub-Saharan Africa and it's very interesting to compare notes and would love to reach out to you otherwise as well and catch up on sharing some notes on this. Thanks a lot. Hey guys, I just want to share a little bit more. We've been working in at least 55 different countries across the globe pretty much every single continent. So with the battery, there's one unique advantage for certain locations such as island countries particularly in Southeast Asia like Malaysia, Philippines and there's a lot of islands so the grid cannot connect everything easily.

28:41so battery is going to solve that problem. In the large countries like South Africa, Nigeria is relatively large size, then the battery is relatively probably not as important as in those countries scattered with different islands. That's one thing. And number two is regardless solar, battery, how to address the waste or recycle and also wind turbines is going to be a huge issue. It's an upcoming industry because we're so busy with building and building right now, nobody even worried about how to handle the end of life of these equipment. So personally, I believe that's going to be a huge industry for maintenance and also recycle, dispose of these end of life equipment. and then the other part is I think the battery relative is newer compared to solar panel and wind turbines. So most engineering firms are probably not educated enough to put a solution together, even the technology is there. And then also the sales distribution channel of these large battery manufacturers are just not, the distribution channel has not built up yet.

30:12And with COVID, things have been slowed down a little bit. But personally, I do believe it's going to be a huge hot area to basically put battery technology in every single non-base load generation, basic solar wing. that's kind of what I'm thinking. Thanks, Lately. I think we have Mylos, Mark, Ivan, Andrew, and Jadip who have just joined us on the stage. So Mylos, would you like to give your thoughts to this topic? Yes. I think that our energy system is old, more than a century old, and the founders of this energy system, Edison, Tesla, they wanted to build the energy system based on the storage of electricity, I mean electricity system. They wanted to use the storage of electricity, but they couldn't. And not my question, but I think we are now 100 years later, our battery is in the stage where we can use storage of electricity to rebuild energy system or better to say to build new energy system based on the storage of electricity.

31:38So that changes dramatically how energy system will work. take. Because we need to build and if we have enough technology for rebuilding this energy system, what do you think about it? definitely agreed. I have an anecdote to share. Some of the panelists we have interacted with before. So something interesting for everyone to know, the company that I work for, formerly known as Boston Edison, a little while ago, a few years back, we were cleaning up our office space and we dug up a really old piece of drawing that had some distribution network schematics. And the drawing was signed by Thomas Edison, who was at that time chief engineer who designed the system. So it just goes to show the age of the infrastructure and also a lot of the ideas that we use today stem from very old times. So definitely we are due for an upgrade and we are due for some revolution in that space distribution side, particularly. I guess a broader question, kind of referring to what Lee was saying earlier.

33:15I'm curious to understand what's the activity in recycling and reclaiming space. Redwood Materials seems to be doing quite well, but are there any other companies who are doing the same type of work at the same level? Would love to hear your thoughts. We are currently still very, very busy with project finance with all the projects in the pipeline. And we're in the process trying to launch a farm because the developer we work with, no matter big or small, at some point they all have cash flow problem. And so we're in the process trying to try to launch a farm to have all the projects can move forward faster. So I noticed that also I have another advisor. He is, I believe he's, I don't know who was his position, forgot it already, but he worked with the Department of Energy and we brainstorm technology issues all the time. So one thing for sure is the end of the use of these equipment, what are we going to do with that?

34:18Because by solving one problem, we create maybe another 10 different new problems, which is just part of the process. And I do see a couple companies coming out. They specialize in recycle these old equipments, but personally I haven't seen too many companies doing that yet. After I finished all these project finance deals, I probably was going to spend some time maybe launch a company doing these recycle projects. But again, I don't think it's even in the horizon of most people's mind yet. It's a new problem created by the new solutions of old problem. Really quickly, I want to go for a little bit of a warning. So on recycling, we haven't done very well on that. And there are companies, you can definitely look up some right now that are into recycling. But the problem is, and this goes back to what Neil said, is that there's a huge difference between the lead-acid battery recycling where you just drain the acid out, scrub down the plates, add some acid back in, and it's ready to go again.

35:26Now, that's in the lead-acid battery, and there's more to it, but that's just generalizing. But in lithium-ion batteries, it's a jelly roll or it's a solid pack of stuff. And so in this case, it might be better to go to reuse of these batteries, using when they're no longer at the higher capacity they were when they were originally used. And you can extend the life that way in another application. But in order to do that, you have to understand that the number of faults in one of these batteries is proportional to the surface area, the area inside of there. So what happens is you need to use smaller cells that can be separated because no matter what size the cell, you're going to get a single cell failure. And the larger the cell is, the more likely you're going to have more failures in it in a given amount of time. So what you want is a system where you have standardized cells, which everyone manufactures, that can be easily unrolled and separated into the metal and the plastic and then washed out.

36:19And then you want to have those, you want to have something that's built for recycling and built for reuse. So if you can't remove that single cell, the whole pack is bad. Or if it's a large flat pack or a large prismatic, your only option is to get rid of that entire pack rather than be able to swap out one single cylindrical cell like you could do in a Tesla. And you can look up Pete Gruber and some of the other people that have been doing this. So there are plenty of companies out there now or a bunch of them that are more than happy to recycle and reclaim the lithium. But their actual reclaiming process, instead of it being as simple as I said for lead acid where you drain and scrub and then replace the acid and then you can reuse the battery, in this case they're shredding the lithium-ion battery into bits and then they're using a caustic, which is like a base, or they're using an acidic process or a multiple process with enormous amounts of waste, no kind of reclamation that gives you the kind of lithium you need for a high-end lithium cell, at least at this point.

37:13But it's enormously pollutive if that's what you're looking at. So in this case, it's maybe better to look at using reuse, as in reusing these cells, and that relies on standard cells rather than going into the recycling. And the reason why I'm very cautious about that is because people are more than happy to recycle something because they're getting paid for it. It doesn't mean you're ever going to get anything reclaimed from it. And some of these companies are in the business of, yeah, I want to smash that battery to bits. They don't care if it's a brand new battery or if it's even a used battery, but they'll recycle it for you because you're going to pay them for it. So I don't want to create piles of trash because right now the batteries, to give you the warning of the heads up on that, is that originally China and India took the cell phone batteries from our cell phones, which are disposable, and now they won't take them anymore and I believe Africa is the latest destination for them to pile up, to quote, be recycled.

38:03So keep that in mind. Maybe just, thanks Daniel, just a quick thing to mention also, right, we had another session on recycling and Second Life before, so I think, you know, we can, yeah, maybe if some people have been attending or they can listen to the recording once we put it online. And I think, you know, for today, if we talk about these topics like recycling, et cetera, let's really try to talk about it, especially with the, you know, the viewpoint of energy access, right, like for some of these developing countries because there's already lots of work already done in recycling. You know, you can talk about China and Europe, et cetera, you know, as we spoke about this previous session. I think, Catherine, you have a list, right, of people who wanted to speak next. Right, yeah, this is a very exciting conversation. So I think we have Carol who's been waiting for a while, so let's have Carol go next and followed by Joe, who's just joined us and also Mark, Ivan, Neil, Barbara and Casey and Stefan.

39:00Sorry, I'll repeat this, I'll repeat this list, but let's have Carol go next. Hey guys, and Catherine, thank you for allowing me to speak. I would actually like to start with a quick comment to what Lee said some time ago, but not on the recycling, but on the island working and the strength of the grids, and I think I have a pretty interesting example for that. A couple years ago, I think it must have been four or five years ago, I worked at Orsted, a Danish grid company, grid and offshore wind company, where I actually developed the first pilot project of combining a grid-sized battery with offshore wind. And we decided to launch that pilot in the UK, and why is that? Because the UK is an island, and it has a lot of grid issues, and not only everyone thinks of batteries as we want to bridge the gap with the renewables and when the wind is not blowing, we can use the battery, and when the wind is blowing, we can charge the battery.

40:01But that just didn't make the case to build the battery. The price differences in Europe, even in the UK, are still way too low to make that business case work. But what happened is that in the UK, we could use the battery as a grid service battery on top of charging and discharging it according to the wind. And what that project learned is that the business case for batteries requires stacking of services. And even when the costs come down, which will come down eventually, especially driven by the EV market, and I know because I'm now in EVs, it still needs multiple users to be actually affordable, and then I want to bridge the gap to energy access and more off-grid locations, off-grid situations, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. And somehow, I believe that the opportunity for business stacking, for use stacking of batteries, is actually quite high in those regions because they can use it for a whole lot of stuff. And Don speaking, I'm happy to take comments or continue this discussion.

41:14Thanks for that, Cara. Joe, would you have something to add? And then we can go into Mark and Ivan, followed by Andrew. Sure. Hi. Word Ninja, Dr. Joe Rome, former Acting Assistant Secretary of Energy for Efficiency and Renewables. I was just going to echo the comments that I think that reuse of the batteries is really the first step and really important to figure out and do better design for reuse. Certainly, the automotive batteries when they're not quite good enough for automotive can be used for stationary applications and that seems to make a lot of sense. I know you had a room on this a couple weeks ago, but I think a lot of this is also going to be about design and standardization and modularization. I agree with the previous comment that if you don't design with reuse and then with recycling in mind, you're just going to be left with a real mess. I'm Word Ninja. I'm done talking. Thanks for that, Joe. Mark, sorry for waiting.

42:33Thanks for your patience. Would you like to go next? Yeah, sure. Nice to be on here. I'm actually somebody who's in the business of deploying batteries, selling batteries to mostly commercial customers or aggregated residential customers through municipalities. batteries. And, you know, what's her name? Kara was just speaking about the services for the batteries to make the use case and to make it economical. And so we do that with basically three different use cases, which are peak shaving, you know, or demand response, as well as, God, it's early in the morning. Sorry about this. As well as frequency regulation which we get paid handsomely for in the United States at certain points on the grid where the grid operators or the utilities have trouble balancing the load. And we use lithium-ion batteries mostly for this, very large ones. And then also peak load mitigation. And the return on investment that we can get depending on, we work in all 50 states and I've got about 3,500 employees, so we have a pretty big company doing this.

43:49So it's not the same everywhere, but it can be as high as like a two-year return on investment. So, I mean, this is real. And yes, the prices are coming down with the advancements of technology and innovation and all that, but even today with the rebates that are available and the government help combining them with solar, for example, and getting the federal tax credit on the storage or the batteries, we're getting these ROI cases of two, three, you know, even four years, you know, and that's basically, for those of you who are good at math, that's like saying that you can earn 50% on your money or, you know, or 25%, and those are very high returns and that's all makes it financeable, whether it's a PPA or just traditional financing or customers who, you know, are, if they're in business, they, you know, earning 50% on your money is, is better than, than most businesses can do with their own capital, so this is happening now, I've got a pretty growing business that's, that's participating in it, we're having a lot of fun, and so I like talking about the practicalities of it and where we can go next, you know, rather than some of these hypothetical conversations, which are lovely to have, but, you know, we have people with boots on the ground actually doing it, and so if anybody has questions about that, you know, or, yeah, I can, I can talk, I can talk about the practicality about that, is in my company, we are the, sorry, Boris, yes, sorry to interrupt that, I think, let's, let's keep the old order, right, I think we had an order, Catherine mentioned before, okay, but then we won't talk about the practicality, okay, great, thank you, guys, that's okay, that's okay, Boris, that's fine, I'm happy to talk to anybody, you know, any other time, you can reach me on an email or follow me or whatever, however you want to contact with me, but we're doing some pretty large, you know, anything from hundreds of thousands of dollar projects to multi millions, and Jigger is a big fan of all of this, and I think the batteries are just a wonderful thing, and I think they're going to keep advancing, and we're going to keep doing our role to help make that happen.

46:10thank you, and I'm done. Thanks for that, Mark and Boris. Definitely hearing on the topic of, you know, practical use cases of energy access, so if anyone in the panel after this could, you know, add on to that, that would be great. Moving on, just want to Ivan and Andrew, if you'd like to, you know, add your comments to that. Yes, yes, sure, sure. I think as born and raised African, now working as an engineer in the pretty much the energy and battery storage market for kind of large applications around the world, and I'm trying to pretty much pivot with an MBA through, like, the business of this. That's really a personal topic for me. With that being said, I think if I go back to the energy access right now on the energy and battery storage, it reminds me of the early days of the cell phones. You recall when people were not really expecting the cell phone penetration to reach this kind of level in Africa and India, and it took, like, maybe five to eight years to reach this kind of exceptionally great cell phone access.

47:37I think that's pretty much the same thing that's happening with the, I think that's, there's clearly a massive potential for small off-grid application for the batteries. Recycling, that's another thing, but if I try to break it down, like, we will have some off-grid and low-income who will want to afford these leather seat batteries because it's, right now, less expensive and easy to install. and since the grid is most likely, or in many major cities in this kind of country, not really reliable, people will decide instead of going for a generator to go for, like, a power hull, the one like Tesla, or having this kind of lithium-ion battery system with some small solar on the roof. So, just to say that the market is completely different right now, and there's a massive potential for this small, or let's say, middle application in this kind of country, which is completely different than the kind of application that we will have in the, I don't know who was talking about it, that we will have maybe right now in the UK or Australia, where we will use this kind of lithium-ion battery for, the frequency regulation, or maybe to just bridge the gap when the wind is not blowing and the sun is not shining to store the energy in the battery.

49:24And the last thing that I want to talk about is this recycling thing needs to come last. Last for what? Because on the EV market and the large application of stationary batteries, batteries, we can pretty much reuse all of these batteries for another purpose. I think last week I was reading something about it on Bloomberg, where they have a company who has decided pretty much to reuse all of these batteries coming mostly for the EV market and stationary battery, where they still have enough state of health and the number of cycles was good enough for hitting some industrial facility or this kind of thing. So, yeah, that's pretty much some of my truth on that. But, yeah, really fascinating topic. Thanks for that, Ivan. Seeing that we're halfway through this session, I would just like to restart the stage for a little bit. So, the session lasts for about one hour. Currently, we have about a little more than 30 minutes left. So, we would like to give everyone a chance to speak.

50:40So, if you would like to speak, just feel free to tap the mute button twice and we'll know that it's something that you're interested in and we'll put you in the queue. Some of you, we have invited you into the room before the room started. So, you'll automatically add it onto the panel. So, we'll give you a chance to speak as well. So, we'll go in order that we see here right now. So, it's Andrew and then Jadip, you have spoken. If you have anything to add, feel free to tap the mute button and then followed up by Boris, Bobby, Casey, Stefan, and Ivan. Andrew, are you there? Hey, yeah. Sorry. Just really here just to listen and learn. Yeah. So, I'll pass it on to the others. Okay. Great. Fantastic. Boris, would you like to add anything? Yes. I think to give access to the energy, the first that we have to do is to change how the batteries are made because not all the countries have the same capabilities and the same money.

51:44And then we have to simplify the production of the batteries to make that accessible for all level of the industries and all continents. And then we will give access to the energy to these countries because not all countries need lithium-ion. There are plenty of chemistries that maybe are not the best of the best, batteries, but are way cheaper to produce, way cheaper to mine. And maybe it doesn't have the same any density that other technologies, but for some countries that now doesn't have any access of energy, it's more than enough. And also, it's very important that to give access to the energy is that we use the batteries correctly. Now the batteries are not used correctly. It's because the market is going through the fast charging and high power motors, and this is destroying the batteries, and this is killing the second use of the batteries. And then, what we have to do is to think what will happen when this battery, this car, will be changed.

53:01If we continue promoting the fast charging and the high engine, and to destroy the batteries, fast charging, fast discharging, it damages the batteries. Then, if we make more sustainable use of the batteries, we will have these batteries to use and to give access to other people that maybe can't produce the batteries. I think it's a concept of how it's going the industry that has to change. I hope to find the support to start to change that because it's very important. The technology is there, and some companies, we are working to change that, but we have to do, and we need the support to do. we don't have to follow all with the industry, because the industry that is trying to replicate is the petrol station system, and this system is not for the batteries. You don't need to charge the batteries in 10 minutes because your car is 90% of the time without use, and then you need a slow charging in this point. It's more simple than it apparently is.

54:23Thanks for that, Boris. What are your thoughts to this topic, Bavia? Hi, good morning. Yes, I, well, the first thing is, as much as I joined the conversation a bit late, so I hope I'm not being too redundant, but the main thing that I have to say is when I did join, we were talking about recycling and repurposing, and while I don't mean to open up that can of worms because it's a large one, I do think that when we talk about energy access, there are constantly conversations about getting technologies to other countries, regions of our country, here in the U.S., or elsewhere, but I think it, when we talk about taking it to different countries, it's one, looking at the need, and two, ensuring that the correct or proper infrastructure is set up so that life cycle management can take place perhaps more locally, and not via export and import, which, you know, previously at Tesla, we've had some of these conversations as well, and as things grow in the industry scales, I think that, you know, these, the answers will become clearer, but I think right now there is, there's still some gaps that have to be solved and perhaps more regionally, or perhaps solved in a more regionally specific way, and, you know, I think that work is happening in countries, so I think the work is ongoing, I don't think that this is necessarily a hypothetical or something that is still in the pipeline, I think that it's already happening, but yes, I will pass it on to someone.

56:01Thanks for the Bobby, I Casey, what are your thoughts of this? Hi, good morning, Catherine, good morning, good afternoon, evening, everyone. Yeah, so, I mean, I got, we touched on a lot of topics here, I'm just going to shoot off a lot of different thoughts, hopefully just for additional conversation. I think recycling is very important just for closing the loop in the supply chain and being more sustainable. In terms of access, I wonder, just with any new technology that is very expensive, usually access does not fully trickle down until everything's been brought up to scale. So, I'm thinking about how do we consciously and intentionally extend access and make that happen. I think standardization is big, interoperability, but also thinking more on the policy front. There are a number of states, like Mark, I work for STEM, where we're actually deploying energy storage now to large-scale applications across the United States, and we see certain states are leading, like California, with their SGIP equity program that are specifically geared towards extending access to communities and applications that normally would not, the economics would not pencil on their own, and a lot of times those incentives can cover almost the entire upfront cost of the battery.

57:40Other states are following this example and developing programs to extend access to low and moderate income and make the energy transition equitable. people. So I'm wondering if access, we ought to be more focused on policy, NGOs, and ways of building systems and access to extend those models into markets where they're needed. My name is Casey, I'm done. Thanks for that, Casey. Stephan, you're up next. Thank you. Thank you very much. So my background is I work for an investment fund, a hedge fund, and we are launching a climate fund on April 1st. And basically storage technology is a key component of companies that we invested. We're looking for companies for storage, particularly both listed and private markets. What I would say is, clearly recycling is very important. We're really key for there to be same recycling, but upcycling if possible, but that's unlikely, unless you, I guess, lithium-ion, that does not seem to be the case. But I think the one thing I would add is I'm very focused on fixed storage, which is, I think, going to be as big of a market or even bigger of a market than transportation.

59:19So, in the context of that, we're particularly looking at mixed technology storage. And I want to bring to the fore and get your thoughts on hydrogen. Hydrogen clearly is a solution to not just have storage for 12 hours, storage for basically something that you can store for days, weeks, months, and have that as something reliable. We're very focused on, you know, let's call it buy-buy diesel. The world has tremendous, and this applies to emerging markets as well as developed markets, almost anything that's sort of backed up is generally with a diesel generator. And obviously, that means a lot of carbon. So, in this transition that we know is going to happen over the next 20 years, clearly, right now, there's a lot of incentives for stuff like hydrogen, and storage is required. And I would say most of the renewables where there's going to be storage, I don't think it's going to be lithium-ion because that does not seem to be the technology that can have the cost drop fast enough.

1:00:42And frankly speaking, we don't have enough of the raw materials to really accommodate the, you know, let's call it hundreds of gigawatts of power that basically is going to be put in renewables over the next five, 10 years, let alone, you know, in energy transition to be carbon neutral by 2035 or 2040. So I want to get your comments about anybody working on mixed systems where you can have, let's say, a hydrogen fuel cell and you can have, I think, lithium-ion batteries that can bridge, you know, the microsecond gap that you need for power or even if it's Penn, there's still, you know, a Penn fuel cell. there's still very much sort of a slight delay that you need to bridge for the source to be continuously working. So I encourage anybody to reach out to me when it comes to something that needs to be funded and also on the technologies as, again, we're really excited to be investing in this space and we hope our funds can be big, obviously, and we're working with significant efforts in climate science to sort of bridge the gap between the science and the practical world of investments and to help basically bring these technologies to scale.

1:02:17We're particularly working with someone who was the lead writer on the IPCC, who co-won the Nobel Prize with Al Gore. Everybody knows the landmark 2007 win. So, you know, we're, again, right now we have about 30 companies in our portfolio and about 25 technologies. This is not just renewables, but circular economy and energy, conservation, energy storage, and again, I would say at this point the technologies are not set in stone at all, right? There's right solutions for different applications and so we'd like to get everybody's feedback on what they think about hydrogen or other technologies like flow batteries, which are very much a proven technology that's a lot cheaper than lithium-ion, especially for large-scale systems. Thank you. Thank you, Stefan. Yeah, I think, I mean, we also had a session before on some of these technologies and I think we also will have some in the future. Maybe just a quick thing, right, from accessibility standpoint, right, and, you know, like, you know, especially now on this topic of energy access, right, I think lithium-ion or like I was said before, that acid has been quite a, you know, a choice because it's quite straightforward somewhat as a system, right?

1:03:44If you bring hydrogen into the play, we have a few like efficiency, you know, difficulties, but also I'm not sure if you have ever seen a charging station, right, like for hydrogen versus, you know, battery from like, you know, like vehicles, et cetera, or if you look at micro-ability, right, I think there's some reasons why they don't use hydrogen. I think we can come back to this topic later on as well, and your funds aren't really interesting, so thank you very much for sharing this. Maybe Samsung want to go next, then we have a list already, Catherine can introduce for people who already raised their hand. Sure, yeah, really, really interesting room and really interesting to hear all of the things that have been discussed so far, so I'm mainly working in the energy access space, so I just wanted to kind of pick up on a couple of things people talking about there, and I think these things apply to energy access as a whole, but also kind of specifically to batch technologies, and I think one of the big things that has held energy access back so far, particularly in Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, is the lack of technical capacity to actually design, build, and maintain these systems.

1:05:01So if you look in the solar home space, you look at all the big players, they're all European countries who are coming in with what are essentially predatory loans, people taking on credit that is a $50 system and they're paying, or $100 system and they're paying $300 for it. So we're talking pretty serious amounts of interest that people are paying on these systems. And I think a key problem there is that people don't understand how these systems work. And if you look at battery technologies, I think there's a lot of conversation about, you know, chemistries and other technologies, but no one really talks about the software side of things and kind of battery management. You know, I think, you know, if you look at a lot of these, you know, applications like automotive, you know, home storage, they're actually just, you know, in particularly in the lithium-ion space, they're just using, you know, 18650s, right? And what differentiates them quite a lot of the time is that software.

1:06:09And so if you're talking about maintaining software, again, that capacity just isn't there at the moment. And so I think that if we're talking about increasing access to energy and kind of, you know, energy technologies, I think a really important part of that conversation needs to be around how do we build capacity for, you know, people living in countries, you know, in developing countries to be able to, you know, create these systems for themselves, to be able to adapt them to local contexts, to understand energy needs, particularly in the, you know, productive uses space, what are people actually using these energies for, and then developing technologies around those needs, things, rather than kind of coming in with technologies that, you know, more often than not are kind of designed in quite a different context, and that, you know, might not quite match up. So, yeah, I think that kind of technical capacity is a really important part of this conversation, particularly on the software side.

1:07:12Anyway, those are my thoughts. Thank you very much. Thank you so much, Tansan, for sharing. We've got a few people who have raised their hands earlier, and I would just like to reset the room before that. So, we've got about 20 minutes left in this room, and it's always the case where towards the end, people get very excited when a conversation is all warmed up and have a lot of interesting things to share. So, it would be great if you could, you know, keep your conversations pretty direct to the point and keep it short so we can have everyone who's raised their hands to chime in their last wooden topic. So, Neil, I think you're up next, followed by J-Dip and Casey. Thanks, Catherine. Just going back to the conversation on energy access, and I think also picking up from the conversation with Harini earlier, the world is not really in a binary. It's not Tesla power walls and solar home systems and East Africa being two different conversations, but there's a whole spectrum in between.

1:08:10And there's a large part of global south that actually, you know, is dependent on solutions that are in between. And in terms of electrification, most national governments have chosen grid extension as their mainstay and main narrative in terms of bringing electricity to everyone. And while there are about 800 million people that don't have energy access, there are about three and a half million people that have, that lack reasonable access to electricity when they need it. So this whole, I just want to we grids and would love to hear your thoughts on that. If anyone has any contextual experience or any experience in terms of what role batteries could play in that conversation as well. real quick, we did have a solution. I know I'm coming out of order, but this is to Neil. I did post something at the top of my profile. If you click on my picture or whatever and look at the profile, which is something we'd come up with for a gentleman in Africa and the African government on how to deal with that kind of battery issue and in a hospital.

1:09:18But maybe it's pertinent, but it's definitely pertinent to the subject matter of the day. Thanks for that, Daniel. Moving on to JDIP. JDIP, do you have anything to add here? Is JDIP's... Oh, I see that JDIP may be disconnected. What about Casey? No, nothing at the moment. I'll pass the mic. Thank you. Maybe Harini, did I see you raise your hand? Yeah, I did. I think a lot has been said, but just to Neil's point and Samsung's point as well, I guess in terms of... I totally agree that while we talk a lot about the battery itself, we haven't spoken that much about the battery management system, but I think where it varies between a good BMS for an EV and a BMS for energy access application is that you're not going to have the same tools on your hand, as in you're not going to be able to have the same granularity of the data collected from these devices, whether that's at mini-grid level or at solar home system level, because the cost of collecting that data and then sending that data is a lot.

1:10:42So, you know, having first-hand experience in the kind of solar home system industry, I know that a lot of the players are collecting data, but the amount of information you can extract from that data is much more crude compared to what you'd extract from EV data, I guess. And that was for Samsung and that just for Neil. I completely agree that there is a whole spectrum between that kind of Tesla power rule system and then solar home system, and I think that's where the rise of e-mobility is going to be really interesting in, you know, the global south, as you said, because I think these kind of charging stations and the, you know, e-mobility vehicle itself will have these multiple use, but that can also be productive use because suddenly you have this stationary storage solution, especially for charging stations that can power different appliances and needs for those communities. So one example that we saw when I was on the ground at M-Copa is, for example, if you go to different communities that would require, you know, grain milling machines or other types of big equipment but wouldn't be able to afford it, they're very much willing to pay for use of that equipment.

1:12:01And I think having these charging stations in e-mobility opens up the door for productive use. But I think, as you said, you know, grid connectivity is one solution, but what you see is that the grid has been kind of leapfrogged in a lot of these countries and for, I guess, for rightful reason because renewable energies and storage have, you know, come to the forefront of the agenda. So, yeah, so I think it'd just be interesting how these different combinations of solutions are going to play out in the coming years. That's it. Thank you. Thank you very much, Harini. That's, I think, really, really helpful. Yeah, and I think also maybe just one thing I want to encourage right in the last 15 minutes, you might want to have a look at some of these other profiles, I mean, either on panel or also in the audience. You know, have been really exciting people on here, so I can also highly recommend you to have a look there as well before the room closes.

1:13:00Is there anybody else has any thoughts you want to add? I think Justin has recently just joined the stage as well, so Justin, do you have anything to add to the topic? I just had a question about batteries in general, if you guys don't mind. Nope, not at all. Go ahead. Okay. So I was, you know, looking around and seeing all these different type of batteries, and I think one that I saw that was pretty interesting was the zinc air batteries, which I think are, from what I've read and heard about, they're less, you know, impactful to the environment, because our, especially with EV batteries, because, you know, lithium requires cobalt, and cobalt's really, you know, toxic, and it's hard to mine, and all that good stuff, but zinc air, there's, like, technologies where, you know, you could have a lot of good storage, they're cheaper to make, zinc is more abundant, so I was just thinking, I mean, my question is, is this something that could really take off?

1:14:08Could this be the new cheapest, best bang for our buck kind of battery storage, or is this some kind of pipe dream? I have a quick experience with zinc batteries with an investment, basically, in hearables. Before lithium-ion micro batteries, or coin-shaped little batteries, basically, took off, like, for example, if you have a wireless headset, those are all lithium-ion now, particularly from a company called Varta, V-A-R-T-A, but before that, there was questions whether zinc air could be the solution, and they were particularly used for hearing aids, which you can imagine requires even a smaller battery. And the main company was a company called Zenipower. The hearing aid industry basically found it to be totally unreliable. The problem was that basically they could only get 8 to 12 months of usage, and then they would have to replace them, and they clearly created a product that was not what they wanted. So, at least I can say for that particular applications for hearables and for hearing aids, it was not the case.

1:15:27And lithium-ion, I mean, there's still probably some older hearing aids that use that, but basically now the industry has 100% switched to these micro batteries that are lithium-ion, and we're seeing continuous improvement in the power density, even at the same size. You can see what's going to happen with Apple's new earbuds. Basically, they will have, probably the next generation will have something like 20-30% higher energy in them particularly because the noise cancellation eats up maybe as much as 30-50% of the power. So, anyway, at least that's my two cents worth on zinc air. But they could be better for other applications. Thank you very much, Stefan. Also, one thing I think Daniel also has something to say, I just want to quickly clarify also that not all EV batteries have cobalt in them, right? So, you have already like, you know, iron phosphate, for example, which is now also getting quite widely implemented by companies like Tesla, et cetera, and electric buses, et cetera, which don't use any cobalt.

1:16:36So, I just thought it's important to clarify. Yeah, these kind of air batteries, also lithium air, et cetera. They have been used in, you know, hearing ads, but this has also been one of their only major applications as far as I know, but maybe other people know more. Daniel, you had the point. No, you've both covered it very well. The main thing I would say would be there's a difference between the research and development of a battery and then when you scale up in its use case. So, always keep that in mind what you're using it for, but it was well covered. Thank you. Thanks, guys. Go ahead. Andrew, did you raise your hand? Yeah, hey. Like, just some really interesting discussions here. I was, I, it sort of, it sort of reminded me of this research article that I read talking about the lifetime cost, so the levelized sort of cost of electricity storage. And I think that's like an important topic if we're talking about energy access, right?

1:17:32So, there's a paper in Jewell coming out of Imperial College called Projecting the Future Levelized Cost of Electricity Storage Technologies. And they had quite an interesting framework that I think could be quite interesting for us to all apply when we talk about sort of comparing these different energy storage solutions. And so, one of them, one of them is really sort of, it's sort of a two axes, you know, there's an X and a Y on a chart. And you'll really have to think about, you know, how many cycles per year is this technology going through? And then also, how much energy per cycle is this technology providing? And so, you know, currently in 2020, they say, you know, lithium-ion is really good for, you know, a small amount of energy discharge, but that can be repeated many, many times per year. And sort of rounding out in the middle section is sort of pumped hydro energy storage, compressed air, and then up the very top, you know, so, you know, long duration energy storage, but low amount of cycles per year is hydrogen.

1:18:37And then they just, and then so they're sort of saying, you know, hydrogen might be competitive if you're storing over 700 hours of energy at a single time. But then, you know, you have to compete with pump hydro at that point. But really, the main takeaway is that as you go from 2020 out to 2040, lithium-ion looks like it's dominating, you know, for longer and longer hours, as well as more and more cycles per year. So that's something that we should be using to benchmark all these other technologies. Thanks. I think, Casey, you raised your hand on this one. Yeah, just clapping, but also reiterating that with the synergies with electric vehicles, the learning curves just from producing more lithium-ion batteries is going to become cheaper and cheaper. And we're already seeing, like, the starts of path dependency in lithium-ion technology for short duration stationary storage from today, like, less than an hour to four to six hours. In the future, 10 hours.

1:19:41But the biggest gap right now is long duration energy storage. So, yeah, just rearing. Thanks. Thanks for that, Casey. I think we have Samuel who's joined the floor. We'll let you give the mic to him. But just a quick note on we actually scheduled the room for one and a half hours with the last 10 minutes of our session. So, Samuel, if you'd like to, you know, give a thought to the topic. Yeah. Hi, all. I have one question for the whole panel, which is access to those batteries. I do have a couple of companies that build small series sports cars and utility vehicles with battery electric drive trains. Like us, I think there's many companies always on the search for good batteries. So how do you think we can help all these startups and smaller companies, giving them access to all the batteries that are available in this world? Does anyone have any thoughts? Maybe Harini, do you have any thoughts from your work?

1:20:56I mean, how did you source your batteries, for example, locally? Yes. So, like I said, you know, solar home system companies in Sub-Saharan Africa tend to source it from China. And the conversations are currently taking place in terms of, you know, what kind of battery should they buy and how do they know that those batteries can last, you know, two to five years, which is what the solar home systems are destined for. But it's not an easy conversation. And I don't know enough about the EV sector to kind of make parallels and how it was perhaps, you know, when it started. But there's a lot of caution there in those conversations that, oh, the battery is the most expensive bit and therefore we don't want to tell others how we get the better ones. So there is not that much kind of sharing knowledge. And I, from my experience, these conversations have been facilitated by other institutions and whether that's, you know, the Global Battery Alliance or Googler, which is the Global Association, I can't remember now, I think it's a global association for off-grid lighting.

1:22:08And those kind of neutral entities have managed to bring together these actors to try to, without revealing, you know, supplies or trade secrets, to try to decide among them, you know, what standards should be applied. So, you know, the batteries that are going to go in these, as I said, we're looking at, you know, around five-year lifetime, which is very different from a larger stationary application. Which might be 10 plus years or an EV that's going to be eight to 10 years. So they don't have to be as strict in terms of assessing the manufacturing and then the performance result. But there needs to be some standards. But I think it's mostly by those institutions and through policies that these are facilitated rather than within individual companies. I guess individual companies can always hire someone who can help them with, you know, auditing and setting up policy standards internally. But I think the way it's going to be generally adopted is if external entities help these conversations happen.

1:23:18This is a topic which is a lot, a lot bigger than in this room here, but we can always open something up later to discuss that maybe a later time. I have a question on that, you know, but made more of a comment. You mentioned the batteries two to five years. That's exactly what I've we've we've we've heard as well. In the Western world, we sell the batteries with a 10 year warranty, right? Basically, that's the implicit guarantee. We give consumers that don't worry the power wall 10 years. But we've heard that in practice. And I think you're confirming it, too. Now, those are only two to five years. Who has the liability? Because basically, you know, it could be, you know, like you said, two to three replacements in the battery over 10 years. And it is, you know, roughly the $10,000 price point right now for Tesla Powerwall for retail. So we've heard it could be the insurance companies that have the liability, obviously the manufacturer.

1:24:15Does anybody know? Second, I think we might be talking about different application, though, as in, you know, I'm very much talking about, you know, products that are going to people who don't have access to electricity right now. So it's going to be more on the lower scale. So, again, we're talking about less than a kilowatt hour system. And I think it's on those products that we're looking at two to five year warranty, not on any larger systems. But in terms of warranty in, you know, for that case, it would be on the, you know, solar product provider who then have to go back to the battery manufacturers. But in my experience, battery manufacturers for this kind of batteries and from tier three suppliers would give, you know, three year warranty. And that's it. Thank you. One thing real quick, I will say is that there are people thinking on this. There's legislation in China and India, which has come out of that. And then the people at Fraunhofer are also pushing the that to Europe as well.

1:25:15And so there's a lot of good study going in on that. So, Stefan, don't worry about too much of it. But yes, there's there's work going on. Thank goodness. Yeah. And from my side, I'm talking EVs. Of course, these what we see, at least in the data, is that these batteries hold a lot longer with great BMS and cooling systems. What to me is more important is, yeah, you can always find batteries. But the issue we have with cars that may be different with with these smaller installations is getting battery modules that are a standardized and be certified to use in these cars. That's why China and India separated the battery from the vehicle so that they could actually implement or build vehicles without having to go through the long process. I mean, thanks for that, everyone. Thank you. Chiba, do you have a quick point or even? Yes, I want to share my thoughts on one thing that came up like I think many times during this discussion about what's the best battery on the market, like, or what's the best way to store energy.

1:26:19I heard about, like, let's let acid batteries, lithium-ion batteries. We have several chemical technology in it. solid-state batteries. I think one of the main things people tend to forget is, like, it took, like, maybe 20 or 25 years to lithium-ion battery to reach this point. The first point is how can we really scale up the production and how, like, the economy of scale? That's the first point to really adopt this kind of product. The second one is how can we create an ecosystem where it doesn't always or it doesn't only benefit to the electric vehicle, but to many other applications. That's the second thing. And the third thing is, like, how can we then scale up the production in order to really bring the cost down? Because the cost of, if I try to focus on the lithium-ion battery, went down, like, 80% in something around maybe five to six years if my number are right. So just to say, there are a lot of other great technology on the market right now, but they are not yet mature at a stage where everyone will adopt the product.

1:27:35And we don't have this kind of full ecosystem where the price are so low that everyone wants to go for it. So just to answer this question, whether it's new guys who want to come into this market with a startup in the vehicle, it's better to start with the great work that has already been done in the lithium-ion battery. And from this point, you can pretty much add up and along the way change to solid-state batteries or something else. And that's, for me, exactly what means, like, the innovator dilemma. Do you want to be the first to start something and spend 15 years trying to force the market to adopt your product? Or do you want to start with something that's already existing and just trying to make it great over the year? That's my point on that. Thank you so much, Ivan. Maybe just look at the time. Shiba, do you have one quick point? And then otherwise we can also close it for today.

1:28:37Okay. Great. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk here. I mean, this is probably my first time here meeting you guys. Thank you, Simon. So I guess, I mean, apologies because I came in a little late, but I wanted to have a good two pointers out here. One on the battery, and you guys are also talking about the energy access. So, I mean, energy access is very close and dear to my heart in that sense. Because, I mean, I grew up in India and when I grew up in India, there were lots of electricity shutdowns and power access events in India at that time. It was extremely difficult to stay up with the rest of the community and catch up with the rest of the world in that sense. The same thing is happening today in many parts of the world. And we are seeing more and more those kinds of occurrences happening in Texas and in California. So the problem has now come, so to speak, as the ship has now reached the shores in the United States in that sense.

1:29:43What is crucial for us to understand is there are two pieces to this. I mean, we are trying to do everything electrified. We are trying to bring electrified transportation on 100% renewables grid. And at the same time, we are trying to bring in resiliency, reliability, energy access, affordability. It's a very complex problem. What we find out, and I don't want to go into too much of these technical details here, that if we have long-lasting batteries, to the point of some of the speakers that have already talked about solid-state batteries or even taking batteries that are already in scale today, thanks to Tesla's innovation with battery technology and others, and get it to market to a certain level of scale and allowing significant amount of power, handling capability with the battery and the vehicle to the grid in both directions, it actually solves many of our problems, if not all of the problems. And so I'm going to leave it at that. It seems like, I mean, you guys are creating an incredible ecosystem by having this discussion, and hopefully I'll be part of a discussion in the next round where we do talk about energy access and how to make vehicle electrification on 100% renewables grid more equitable for the rest of the world.

1:31:16Thank you so much, Shiba. And yeah, this is, you know, this was already one half hours. It always goes so quick. But yeah, so I think what I'm really excited about is that we now also have our club, Battery Evolution. So if you go on top above the title, they have this little house. And if you click on this, if you haven't joined yet, you can, you know, follow there. You know, we're going to go through all the follows afterwards and add you on. You know, you can also follow Catherine and myself and Harini and anybody else in this room you found interesting or you find interesting. You know, please take a chance to look at the profiles. Also, the audience, there's many really exciting people around. And with this, maybe Catherine, do you want to talk about what we could do for next week? Yeah, thanks for that, Simon. So just to add on really quickly about the club that we have, we could add you to the club if you follow us.

1:32:12So feel free to follow me and Simon and we can then add you into the club. So moving on to next week, we'll be having this same session at the same time, which is 10 p.m. Singapore time, 3 p.m. CET and 9 p.m. New York time. And we'll be talking about, we're still fixing the topic for now. We may be talking about supply chain. But if you have any thoughts as to, you know, any suggestions, feel free to reach out to us. We've got a long list of topics that we'll be sharing. So we're just looking for Firestarter speakers as well. So feel free to reach out to us if you'd like to, you know, start a conversation on any particular topic. And we will definitely be very interested to invite all of you on stage as well at any one point in time just to talk about something that is specifically of interest to you and in your domain. So thank you so much for your time.

1:33:05And again, once again, it's a great session, looking forward to meeting everyone next week at the same time. And now that we have a club, we may have more frequent sessions ongoing. So look forward to, you know, building the community with everyone and looking really, really thank you for your time here. Thanks so much. And I just want to thank Harini again so much for being here with us. It really makes a difference to have a great conversation on Firestarter every week. So yeah, if you have any, if you want to be a Firestarter, I think there's many amazing people in this room who could be an amazing Firestarter. So please reach out to Catherine or myself on LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. And yeah, very much looking forward to see you all again next week. Thank you all.