So what if we have terawatts of renewables? Nothing matters unless we can store the energy generated and re-use it later. That’s the challenge being thrown at all the players in the energy storage industry. But developing a battery that stores 2-5 hours of energy doesn’t cut it anymore. The only word that matters is "Long-Term".
Join us in a scintillating discussion with Jorg Heinemann, Chief Executive Officer at Enervenue as we discuss the world’s most durable long-term battery technology invented, why it's economics matter and why it is the underdog to Lithium Ion!
Host: Chris Sass and Jeff McAulay
Additional Reads:
Enervenue: https://enervenue.com/
Enervenue Energy Storage Vessel Datasheet: https://enervenue.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/esv-4-datasheet.pdf
So what if we have terawatts of renewables? Nothing matters unless we can store the energy generated and re-use it later. That’s the challenge being thrown at all the players in the energy storage industry. But developing a battery that stores 2-5 hours of energy doesn’t cut it anymore. The only word that matters is "Long-Term".
Join us in a scintillating discussion with Jorg Heinemann, Chief Executive Officer at Enervenue as we discuss the world’s most durable long-term battery technology invented, why it's economics matter and why it is the underdog to Lithium Ion!
Host: Chris Sass and Jeff McAulay
Additional Reads:
Enervenue: https://enervenue.com/
Enervenue Energy Storage Vessel Datasheet: https://enervenue.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/esv-4-datasheet.pdf
03:45.65
chrissass
All right here we go folks welcome to insider's guide to energy I'm your host Chris sasing with me as always in my co-host Jeff McAulay. Jeff welcome back to the program and I'm excited about this topic. Are we going to talk about storage again.
03:59.68
Jeff McAulay
Always excited for the energy storage conversations and I do like getting back to the technical side I think we spend a lot of time in finance and markets but getting into some of the core battery chemistry and long duration. It's important.
04:14.12
chrissass
Long duration. That's where I was wondering so it's not just Storage. We're talking About. We're talking about long duration talk about something that I could use a dictionary to understand because I think that means so many different things to so many people. What how long is long duration. But I leave that for our guests. So Why don't you bring our guest on board and let's get this kicked off. Yeah.
04:33.99
Jeff McAulay
Yeah, well, we're really really happy today to have Jorg Heinemann, CEO at Enervenue with us. Jorg welcome to the show tell us a little bit about what you do at Enervenue.
04:47.17
Jorg Heinemann
Thank you! Terrific great to be here with you. In Enervenue, we make a long duration battery and we'll talk about what that means in a moment. Um, think of it though as the world's most durable battery technology ever invented. We use a chemistry called nickel hydrogen that's been around for about 50 years and was deployed in the space program for about 30 years and the best way to think of it is. It's a a battery that performs like the batteries. We know we know from our daily lives most of those are lithium ion. Means you can charge it fast. It has a high round trip efficiency. Um, and then it can be discharged faster slow depending on. However, you want to use it. However, unlike any other battery it effectively lasts forever. So it's durable in terms of cycle life. It's nearly impervious to temperature. It's safe and then it can be abused electrically meaning overcharged over discharged or drained all the way to 0 etc. So it's gamechanging in that it's effectively a battery that doesn't wear out really in any sense of the word. And that that makes it ideally suited for pretty much any kind of use case for power plans for businesses and for homes.
06:02.41
Jeff McAulay
It sounds great and I really want to dig into some of those technical Specifications. You highlighted a lot of them one I didn't hear off the bat is cost So What are the figures of merit that you sell On. And where does this fall compared to traditional Lithium I.
06:23.54
Jorg Heinemann
There. So um I think cost is probably the number 1 thing that matters in the battery long term and and when we get to talking about what's the definition of a long duration battery. My view is it fundamentally comes down to economics. Um. We have a battery. Our cost is effectively at parity with Lithium Ian and most importantly, where that's going and I'm and I'm referring to all flavors. So lithium iron phosphate etc. So we've got a a technology that can keep pace on cost yet at the same time give customers. Additional value that they are willing to pay a premium for so the things I describe the longevity the durability even the safety those are things that you can you can price into and many of them you can calculate on a spreadsheet and we can effectively price to value. And give the customer additional value and they so and even though they're paying more for the battery and they still come out ahead relative to using other forms of technology like lithium ion.
07:27.64
Jeff McAulay
And what applications are we talking about I think ah when we bring up long duration I'm thinking of grid tide front of the meter large scale Multi Megawatt installations is that the right place to think about this.
07:40.84
Jorg Heinemann
Yeah, it's It's all of that and then eventually it scales down for commercial and for residential as Well. Our battery has a unique combination of fire safety and no maintenance and that allows us to create a new Category. We call building integrated energy storage. So think having our batteries hanging next to the Drainage pipe say underneath your floor in the crawl space of a home or up in an attic etc that's down the road for us think Fiveplus years out etc. In the as we're scaling Up. We're focused mostly on grade Scale. Typically solar plus storage and then use cases where a customer would want to do more than one charge Discharge cycle a day So think solar plus storage maybe an additional cycle for faster for ev charging or a morning bump like a lot of markets around the world have where they have a an evening. Spike they need to smooth as well as a morning spike they need to smooth out.
08:40.81
chrissass
You mentioned in your answer or make it clear you keep saying we have this battery and you talked about that the the powers this battery battery space or storage is a crowded space these days so help us understand a little bit of the landscape because you're saying your long duration. Not quite covered with that is it sounds like your grid scale from the question Jeff asked. That's your near term with with longer term going smaller. What what does the battery space look like and what specifically is the problem that you set out to solve.
09:11.96
Jorg Heinemann
Yeah, well let's let's start with the definition of long duration and I think that stems from if you look at the the energy landscape right now. There's kind of there's 2 ways to view it. There's the folks that come from the legacy energy industry and. We're all accustomed to our electric power grid working effectively the same way as it has for the last hundred years central station generation transmitting large blocks of dispatchable power one way across a distribution network ah a high-speed network and then consumed at a point of variable load. All at super inexpensive prices on a relative basis. Um, so if you come from that industry. You're used to power coming in the form of big blocks. So I'm going to bring a thousand Megawatt hours megawatts up I'm going to keep it steady for 8 hours I'm going to drop it back down on another level etc. Um. And that most of the energy world thinks that way. There's a different part of it comes out of the opposite way. That's more think kind of Microgridish issue I'm go to take solar I'm going to put it in the battery I'm going to consume it. However I want to and so you get a lot of folks who are saying well gee I need a battery that will last. 4 hours now 6 hours now 10 hours maybe 24 maybe a hundred hours at peak capacity and at interve you the way we see it is a little bit different that really what the market needs depending on whether whether you're coming from the legacy energy world or you're moving. You're skipping the landlines you're moving into the full distributed generation.
10:45.15
Jorg Heinemann
Micro grid well what I really want is a battery that works like my cell phone I want to be able to charge it fast'd say within 1 to 2 maybe 3 hours whenever there's cheap solar power available or just simply ah extra excess electrons on the grid and then I want to be able to dispatch it. Based on my use case either faster or slow. So the the notion oh yeah I want both I want a batter that'll last ten plus hours 24 hours maybe 3 maybe three days but also be able to drop it really quickly into an electric vehicle and say 15 minutes if I need to and that that. Flexible this batch ability is really hard to do in the battery world lithium I can do it. We can do it. We can actually do it perhaps even better because we we have no limitations in terms of the the delay the the long-term durability of the battery. The customer can. Can do that 30000 times if they want to so think that big that be 3 times a day for 30 years it's basically a infinite life battery.
11:49.59
Jeff McAulay
That's great and and it would be wonderful to get into some of those specs so ah, 30000 cycles with less than 20% capacity fade or something is that how you define cycle life.
11:59.72
Jorg Heinemann
pretty pretty pretty much yeah so it's almost infinite. So thank you? The design life is 30000. We warrant you 20000 cycles. So think at the end of 30000 cycles I would still have over 80% of my original capacity and in practical threat and that's despite. How I use it. So we let the customer do whatever they want in terms of charge rate. We give them ah a really broad range or current product that we're showing today is between 2 and and 12 hours so I can do a 2 hour charge to a 12 hour charge the chemistry supports anything from 10 minutes to 24 hours plus
12:37.90
Jeff McAulay
And can you use that and sorry the the technical term are often c rate which is so you're saying you could do a 10 minute full discharge.
12:38.36
Jorg Heinemann
But you have to optimize a bit based on current carrying capacity and that sort of thing. So it's ah it's possible.
12:48.95
Jorg Heinemann
Um, yeah.
12:52.18
Jorg Heinemann
Yeah, so think 6 c all the way to c over 24 again our current product. We've optimized for c over 2 to c over 12 to 2 hour to 12 hour charge but the chemistry is such that you can go even higher in.
13:05.91
Jeff McAulay
Wow.
13:09.72
Jorg Heinemann
In our R and D Center We do a lot of high charge rate stuff because it stresses the bat anymore. It's a good way to get more cycles in and you can make sure that performance is what you expect it to be especially over at at high temperatures or at very low temperatures.
13:22.22
Jeff McAulay
And so when you're talking about 20000 cycles warranty is that including limitations on the c rate.
13:30.68
Jorg Heinemann
Ah, effectively, no so we have a spec sheet for the battery and the spec sheet is you know in this case, it's 2 to 12 hours and then we have a temperature range that temperature I believe minus ten to plus c. So again, that's we we tighten the bounds for the the customer and we say do whatever you want with it as long as you're within that range so ends up being the the shortest warranty agreement by far in the industry.
13:52.60
Jeff McAulay
Got it.
14:00.40
Jeff McAulay
So you're going to be thermal limited before your C rate limited probably.
14:09.80
Jorg Heinemann
Ah, to to some extent? Yes, so we do a lot of testing at °c and then the the performance though even it's a fifty and fifty five we only dip we go from a round trip efficiency that say at room temperatures about 90% and a 4 hour chargeway the c over four that drops to about eighty one eighty two percent at °c and then the same thing in a way that extends well well below freezing and all of this is without air conditioning.
14:30.96
Jeff McAulay
This is.
14:40.16
Jorg Heinemann
Without heating etc. So the natural they call it kind of the Umbrella chart of our battery is extraordinarily broad.
14:45.85
chrissass
So now when someone's looking for storage. Are they having a conversation just like Jeff's having with you right now. Are they going to that detail or are they looking at this higher level today.
14:59.44
Jorg Heinemann
They're usually you know for for grid scale and and then large commercial customers. They're very sophisticated. They're modeling everything and looking at the all of the components that factor into the levelized cost of energy coming out of the the plant or the. The project that they're building so they're looking at the upfront capital cost. How much does it cost to buy the battery. How much does it cost to install it. What's my cost to capital the debt and the equity I need to finance the project and then they're also factoring in the maintenance cost so in battery terms think about it. Well I have to I have to plan for this thing to wear out. And that's one of the huge economic levers that we have at our venue is the thing doesn't wear out so there's no augmentation cost. Um, there's very little routine maintenance actually that perhaps no routine maintenance required on our battery except checking the thing every once in a while it was this chemistry was designed to be. Sent into outer space to be on a satellite for 30 years or the international space station. So the notion of having to go you know periodically replace an augment battery packs is it's not part of the equation which is a massive economic advantage.
16:05.32
chrissass
Um I Guess one of the the layman concerns that I hear when I talk to folks about batteries is supply chain and the materials going into the batteries. Um, you know people say we're going to electrify the world. We need a lot of batteries. You need a lot of different materials to make these batteries. What are the Batteries. We're talking about and how do they fit into that equation.
16:23.60
Jorg Heinemann
Yeah, so what? when in our interviewue we use nickel hydrogen we use nickel and both the andid and the cathode that is the the core element of what I call the energy couple and every battery has an energy couple. Think of that as that those are the the amount or think kilograms worth of elements I need to store the electrons to form the battery. So in our case that happens to be about two kilograms of nickel per Kilowatt hour of energy storage so if you do that math you say okay take the. Street price quantity price a nickel multiply by 2 and you get your cost of an energy couple and then that can be used comparatively to other chemistries. It turns out, we're right in line with Lithium Ion the different flavors of it and where that's going nickel happens to be. Less constrained than other battery material. It's the fifth most common element on earth the twenty second most common in the earth's crust that's available in nearly every geography it. It looks from a commodity standpoint much like poly silicon does in solar. It's a function of mining capacity as opposed to. Ah, function of fundamental scarcity. That's very different than for example venadium which is used in certain types of flow batteries and then very different from catalysts. So our ah our batteryter use a ah catalytic reaction and the earlier version of this battery before in our venue changed. It.
17:54.84
Jorg Heinemann
Rely it on platinum which is a rare earth metal. Extremely expensive. Our founder professor yesh way at Stanford his team found a way to eliminate platinum from the battery replace it with a very low cost catalyst and that's what put us on the map.
18:10.64
Jeff McAulay
That's exactly what I was going to ask because it seems ah you'll you'll understand too good to be true and so it's it's a chemistry that's been out there. It's been tested in space. Why haven't we heard of this before and so it sounds like that's the reason that there used to be a precious metal. Catalyst in there which is one of the things that's Plagued Pem Fuel cells for example and so once you can get rid of the platinum that was the limiting factor to more commercial application and so now what replaced that as the catalyst.
18:34.41
Jorg Heinemann
That's right.
18:44.83
Jeff McAulay
Now that you don't have the platinum.
18:45.79
Jorg Heinemann
Yeah, in fact, so I'll I'll build on that the the cost disadvantage was so massive that back fifteen years ago when a lot of us got into renewables I got into the solar business around that time many of my colleagues got into batteries the industry drove right past this technology because the. Calculated cost. Best we can tell was somewhere between fifteen thousand and twenty Thousand dollars per Kilowatt hour eighty five percent of that was driven by platinum so it's like a forget about it. There's no way we can do this platinum costs about $30000 a kilogram the catalyst we use which is an alloy. Of earth abundant stuff costs about $20 two zero per kilogram so we took what was by far the most expensive part of the bomb and reduced it to effectively zero and then we redesigned the form factor. We made it easier for. Arts skill manufacturing and use on earth as opposed to sending up in this satellites and that kind of stuff it would get savings there too. But it's really that cat that platinum replacement that allows us to be cost. Competitive.
19:53.44
Jeff McAulay
Can you tell us about the manufacturing process and where you are in terms of Scale. We hear about Giga Factory this or that and then there's a lot of promising chemistries. That might be in scientific papers. But they're still at coin sell level. Where are you guys in terms of annual production volume.
20:11.18
Jorg Heinemann
Yeah, so one of the things I learned in moving from the high-tech world into the battery space is that batteries move really really slowly so anything that sounds like a new technology and batteries has probably been around for at least a decade and and therefore my my hypothesis is. If it hasn't worked if it didn't work ten years ago it's unlikely to suddenly work overnight right now. Um, so so our our battery technology has worked and been proven in aerospace applications for 3 decades it's got a super robust track record. We made a material substitution. We've demonstrated that that works much to my pleasant surprise it actually outperforms platinum. So our our catalyst for this use case at the current densities we operate at is actually better in terms of round trip performance. Ah energy capacity degradation all the characteristics you look at it's better. Um, our manufacturing process is super simple. We rely on what's called a large format cell so that means kind of bigger materials thicker materials which means fewer of them than lithium ion and the many other technologies our our smallest increment if you will is a. Call it an esv and energy storage vessel. It's about six feet long six inches in diameter it's a tube and has an energy storage capacity of about three kilowatt hours it's made by creating electrodes. We do that through an electro plating process which has been around for.
21:46.70
Jorg Heinemann
5 or 6 decades used in many other industries and then we stack these electrodes and the stack separators and the precision is such that humans can do it as opposed to needing robots but it works a lot faster with robots and then we weld it together and we seal up the vessel and it's done.
22:06.65
Jeff McAulay
Is it.
22:06.81
Jorg Heinemann
There's a little bit of testing and things of course. But it's a it's a much simpler process. It's very safe. It relies on standard robotic equipment like those 6 axis robots you might see in an automotive factory or white goods manufacturing. And standard laser welding equipment again robotic so we're able to borrow from adjacent industries and avoid having to have a I'll call it a specialty line built just for us with high precision equipment that deals with super thin materials and so forth.
22:25.46
Jeff McAulay
M.
22:34.93
Jeff McAulay
Got it.
22:36.87
chrissass
So Awesome I Ah ah love the visual created in my mind as you describe that? Ah I always find manufacturing and how we get things at scale or economies at scale interesting of how you keep the engineer the costs out of things which brings me back to early in my career I was a technology in telecom and other fields. And we certainly engineered our products down and we designed them down you mentioned in the beginning of your answer kind of and ah, ah, you alluded to a technology background. Um, how much of this renewable energy in battery tech and other tech that we're doing comes from people that come from a technology background from other tech.
23:11.73
Jorg Heinemann
Yeah, interesting question I think some of it does so I began my career at Accenture I was apartment in the high tech practice for about 20 years doing large scale business process change and outsourcing stuff so think kind of build fix change for high tech companies and in the late.
23:12.20
chrissass
Fields.
23:31.45
Jorg Heinemann
So like late two thousand s I decided I wanted to make a change do something that would have a bigger impact on the planet. So I started a sustainability consulting practice within my industry group and that ultimately you could argue I guess I wasn't very good at that because. I first went out of the gate I got hired by Sun power with the Ceo there I was trying to sell him consulting work and he sold me on a job instead. So I went to went into the solar business for 8 years um and what ah what I found is I think candle. There's some big lessons in high tech versus versus energy. The biggest one is high-tech tends to operate on on first principles and doesn't rely very much on incentives I got into the solar business and it seemed like the the game was where do you chase the incentives around the world I'm going to go sell my product at the place where I can capture the the highest level of government incentives for the longest period of the time. Um, and in the high tech world. You just don't think that way you think okay, how do I make a big the best product get it out there and have it meet the customer's knees on a first principles basis and then move on ironically that's where the. The energy industry is moving to so solar today it used to be back in 2008 2009 it only worked with incentives that was true. It took about 5 years beyond that where it started to work on an economic basis in more places today I think we can all agree solar is by far the lowest cost form of.
25:04.52
Jorg Heinemann
Generation Powers generation out there on any basis without incentives now of course the industry would like to keep incentives as long as who possibly can it makes things more profitable but that's where you go no matter what and as I look at batteries the same thing applies. Well we need a battery I'm a big believer in. Business case for a battery company boy it better work without incentives now it so happens it works better with the inflation reduction act that we have in the Us and these other incentives around the world but boy this thing better hold water no matter what even after these incentives fade off into the distance and and Ed venu of course I'm.
25:40.23
Jeff McAulay
Um, is it.
25:43.57
Jorg Heinemann
Convinced that's case for us or I wouldn't be here.
25:43.73
Jeff McAulay
Yeah, you certainly mentioned that it sounds like you also manufacture in the Us So that should help with domestic content and part of those incentives as well.
25:56.50
Jorg Heinemann
we we do yeah we have a a pilot manufacturing line here in Fremont California colocated with our research and development in the same building and then we have a factory in Kentucky just outside of Louisville that will be scaling up over the next two years and that'll have a. At peak capacity. It'll reach about Twenty Gigawatt hours per year annual production.
26:22.37
Jeff McAulay
And when you think about Markets. Do you think about energy storage as a market in itself or do you think about energy storage as a product that serves other market you mentioned satellite aviation Ah Grid Scale storage. Do you think of those as the markets you're entering or more as energy storage.
26:44.91
Jorg Heinemann
So at at Enter Venue We think only ah about stationary energy storage Grid Scale Commercial Industrial residential. That's it and that's based on the limitations of our product. You ask about? Hey, what's the catch. Well one was cost going from Platinum to our catyst. The other is size and weight we are larger and heavier than Lithium Ian and always will be.. There's a physics reason I can get into if you're Interested. We are lighter and smaller than everything else in kind of any other non Lithium battery. But if it moves. Yeah. Go with something else if it's stationary. The ground is holding it up hey we're We're probably the right play for it. We're the ideal. All-p purpose battery for for power plants businesses and homes.
27:30.37
Jeff McAulay
Got it that makes total sense and it seems like that back to the point on on background that consulting rigor discipline of what are the attributes of what you need to succeed in a certain market. Is leading you to focus on what are the natural attributes rather than trying to chase too many things.
27:51.16
Jorg Heinemann
Yeah, absolutely and 1 one of the things about batteries I've learned in the energy storage industry is a it's interesting to almost everybody b the use. There's so many use cases out. There requires a significant amount of focus I can't tell you how many times. Folks have said oh can we put this on a boat. Well yeah, yeah, maybe um, could we? you know could we put it in what about a train. Yeah and but when you really or how about a you know forward operating base in the military we're going to drop in kind of a temporary. Um, you know a temporary base for a while that needs you know, short portable. Portable energy storage coupled with solar all those things might work theoretically. But if you're going to move it eventually that cost of transportation. The weight's going to be a factor and it's going to make it unlikely that our technology is the best best suited so we'll let the others play in those areas and we'll focus on. Power plants businesses and homes.
28:46.10
chrissass
Well, you're you've got a very well-defined space where your batteries go what? What problem they solve. So that's always something important. Um as I look at the demand curve going forward. So if I look at let's say twenty thirty five Twenty fifty and the projections where batteries are. You mentioned you're building a plant in Kentucky is storage at the point where if you could build it would you sell capacity is are we at that stage of the market because everything you read about is everything's getting electrified. You know the the renewables need some sort of storage to be meaningful. Um. What's the demand currently with interest rates and the market today for new projects infrastructure. Yes, we have the ira so there's there's there's money going to certain projects but is is the demand a steep linear slope and could you sell as much as you could produce.
29:36.79
Jorg Heinemann
It's it's a steep linear slope and the reality is it's probably even steeper even more linear even longer and bigger than than we think it is today so in our venue we're sold out effectively for the next six years we're in heavy heavy allocation mode while we scale up. Um I've been watching the. The demand charts that the analysts produce very sharp people are you know year on year looking at the projected market growth just for the stationary element of the market and I look at that and it's it's massive I mean there's kind of no way any way you slice it. It's far more than we could help hope to fulfill. Even if we put factors the size of the one we're doing in Kentucky multiple of those in every geographies we still don't come close to reaching what's what's needed to meet that demand and then when I look at kind of the data behind those analyst projections. Um I think they're still low as big as they are it. It's still low when you factor things like all right? Let's take a look at the annual solar panel production that's happening and then if we make a simple assumption like well what if we had to attach batteries to say ten or twenty percent of that output which is a very logical thing. You could argue that we would need hey you want 4 hours of energy storage. Attached to every megawatt of solar panel out there. You end up with even bigger numbers of of market size. So the obstacle isn't isn't market. It's how quickly can we scale this and then it's also one of those things where I think we're going to find as we have.
31:10.79
Jorg Heinemann
More energy storage at lower and lower cost. We now have more things we can do with it. So again, you get a snowwall effect The things we think we couldn't do with solar plus storage I think we're going to look back later and say yeah, actually we could especially when we marry.
31:15.88
Jeff McAulay
The hit.
31:25.46
Jorg Heinemann
Sophisticated energy I think high tech energy management capabilities with that.
31:27.50
Jeff McAulay
York I Want to come back to the energy management and maybe the software piece but just on the ramp. What is the limiting factor is it supply chain and access to cost-effective. Nickel is it permitting for the Next. Factory.. What's the limiting factor in the growth.
31:47.13
Jorg Heinemann
For for us. It's basically equipment lead times. So Although our manufacturing process does rely on mature technologies. It still takes a while to dial in the line you have to buy the equipment you have to get the robots. You know those kinds of things. And then because it's physical as opposed to software turn hardware is hard This the that expression may have heard. It's It's True. There's just there's lead times associated with making a physical thing that are very difficult to get around unlike say a software product.
32:22.70
Jeff McAulay
And on the software side is there a third party integrator who does the controls or is the chemistry unique enough that you're packaging with your own ah battery management and or application control systems.
32:37.89
Jorg Heinemann
Ah, a bit about ah both so our battery works differently from other batteries. So we have our own Bms our band battery management system which is the thing that basically controls the mechanics of how it charges and how it discharges and how it holds steady. It's designed though to integrate with the customer's Ems energy management system and those interfaces are predefined and we basically speak the same language as the many many emss that are out there.
33:08.54
Jeff McAulay
That's great. What are you most excited about it seems like you know gosh you're sold out for 6 years only limiting factor is how fast you can. You can build this stuff. It seems like you've got some great specs. On the on the spec sheet which I would be excited to keep going through but it it seems like we covered a lot of those What are you most excited about in the next year
33:33.65
Jorg Heinemann
Well um, I'm really excited I so I've got an r and d team and I'm used to working with r and b that is optimistic but then kind of falls short of expectations and um, what we've seen here since the beginning in interviewue and from my very first day meeting with eachsh way the founder then the g keshevas our Cto.
33:51.58
Jorg Heinemann
Showed me a spec sheet what they thought they could do and of course I discounted it and said well okay, it's probably only 80% of that and sure enough six months later we had exceeded but my threshold their threshold and we are actually even well above the legacy specs at that point. Um and that pattern has persisted since then. So. Ah, just now we made the decision to leapfrog from gen 2 to what we call generation 4 of our energy storage vessels. That's what we'll be going to large-scale production with and the reason for that is that the r and d team is about 2 years ahead of the engineering improvements that that they've made which. Again I'm still adjusting to that I kind of wish they would tell me a little further in advance. So I could I could let the investors know ahead of time but it's ah it's definitely a very good place to be.
34:41.35
chrissass
So other than managing internal or investor expectations. Um, one of the things battery comes up is China comes up a lot when I want to speak battery so you talked about an onshore battery production plant in Kentucky. You've talked about a development team. You talked about being in California you've you've given us a bunch of onshore technology. So how does this play and compete with China what are the lessons learned and what are you going to do well or where is China going to win or lose.
35:09.31
Jorg Heinemann
I think I think we're going to look back I think China over the last twenty years has figured out the global playbook for large scale low cost high quality. So if you if you entered the workforce like I did in the late 1980 s grew up with what was what we know as the toyota way it's basically the japanese way of doing manufacturing. That's the playbook that spread across the world and I'd say ah up to up until ten years ago if you were anybody doing any kind of manufacturing and had a supply chain. You were trying to do things in the Toyota way that set of quality principles and management structure and so forth. Um, if I were a business school professor right now I'd be writing a book called the China way I think China has dialed that in and the rest of the world is trying to figure out how to how to do that. So the. The the ability and we saw this in in in solar. For example, China Owns 80% of the solar panel production. They do it super low cost. Super high quality. They can scale faster than anyone we're seeing that in batteries with Lithium Ion batteries many other industries. Um, so it's up to the rest of the world to figure out the playbook. And then go adapt that some of that is driven by tariffs as we're seeing in the us some is driven by incentives. How can we onshore basically take take chinese companies have them build factories here so that we can learn that Playbook or how do we do our best to copy that and and that's the challenge certainly challenges anywhere in the.
36:39.64
Jorg Heinemann
And the battery industry but more broadly in the energy sector and candidly pretty much every other sector that manufactures something at scale.
36:49.32
Jeff McAulay
That's really really fascinating and I love the the comparison there when you think about your personal journey. You've had the experience in the high-tech sector on a consulting basis. You've been behind the scenes at. Sun Power deploying real energy assets at scale when you think about applying some of the lessons you're seeing from China to the business today. What in your personal and professional journey. Do you think most prepared you for that next step.
37:24.14
Jorg Heinemann
Um, I think there's there's 2 things that I take with me from my consulting background. So one is um, it's a mindset of how do you take? How do you constantly improve and take cost out and there's a structured way of doing that and. The the Toyota way would be the best example kind of in the manufacturing world if you had to boil it down into 2 words but kind of the constant pressure to build fix change improve. That's one um, the second one I think is more unique to consulting than the way the people side of it works. In the consultant world. There's a constant pressure to serve the client. Well even when you're charging crazy high rates that means you have to build a team super fast and that team has to be really really good and justify that what would seem like an exorbitant billing rate to the customer. Um. And so so there's an inherent mandate to assemble my team quickly think recruiting hiring and make sure they're performing well and if they're not take action really fast. So it's this bias for building a building a really good team really fast and making that the number one priority and. The the people in the consulting world that are unable to do that. They they don't last very long. Um and I think in the rest of industry when you you know when I left I'll call it accenture in the consulting world and entered a line responsibility I found the people side of it moved much more slowly.
38:53.21
Jorg Heinemann
Most people are biased as well. I'm going to do everything else and then I'm going to write a job description and you know with my breath through the hiring process. It becomes kind of an afterthought as opposed to the first thing. Ah and and I was forced to put that first for 20 years and it's stuck with me ever since. Ah.
39:09.56
Jeff McAulay
Thinking about our audience listening to this somebody who's interested in in Intrigued maybe doesn't understand all of the technical Jargon Yet would you advise them to go out and really go deep and understand the technical specs of energy storage. Or if somebody's earlier in their career that they should go learn how to be a consultant and understand the dynamics of and industry. Obviously it's not either or but if you think back about somebody who's just getting started in their career. What do you think is ah more important as a foundation.
39:44.70
Jorg Heinemann
Oh if I were to give career advice I'd say I'd set aside industry and say go find something that where you can learn. You're working with good people and you find it fun and inspiring and you're able to make a difference and in my case I was never you know some people think. Years and years ahead I never thought more than two years ahead in my career. The same thing is true for me right now. Um, and as long as I like what I'm doing I feel like I'm making a difference I like the team I'm with and I'm learning I'll stick with it and if not I'll I'll look for a change.
40:18.76
Jeff McAulay
You are what a fantastic message to end on really love that it's inspiring. Not only the products you're building but the journey you've been on were very optimistic to hear more about and our venue in the coming years as you ramp up production. Thank you so much for taking the time today.
40:36.94
Jorg Heinemann
Thank you Jeff and Chris really enjoyed the conversation.
40:41.28
chrissass
What a fun interview. We have a definition of of long term storage. We now have some other perspective on batteries If you're interested in battery tech. Please go back through our archives We have a number of battery episodes this episode shows you some emerging trends.
40:56.59
chrissass
Follow us on Linkedin subscribe to us on Youtube and we'll see you again next time on the insider's guide to energy bye bye for now.