Why Long-Duration Energy Storage Could Be the Key to Grid Reliability

UVA Darden.

The Disruption, a lively discussion between UVA Darden School of Business professors Yael Grushka Cocaine and Mike Lennox on cutting edge technologies and practices that are challenging the status quo.

Hello Yael.

Hey Mike, how are you?

I'm doing real well today.

So I'm gonna begin with a question for you.

Yes, please.

Um, we're moving into the summer season here in Charlottesville.

Oh yeah, and that means, you know, thunderstorms, sometimes pretty big thunderstorms.

Oh yeah, and dare I say, sometimes those thunderstorms knock the electricity grid out.

They do, they do.

So here's my question for you.

Do you have backup storage in your, at your home?

Great question.

After a very rough Winter one year, maybe 3 years ago, we invested in a generator that runs on propane in our backyard that is set to automatically kick in if we lose power.

So you got one of the complicated systems that kind of turns on automatically.

Does it power everything in your home?

It powers select most of the stuff.

Uh, we, I live on, uh, 4 acres of land, so I have my own well, and so the main concern is the water.

Uh, actually, interestingly.

Concerned, yep, same as that well water.

It definitely, uh, provides enough electricity for the pump to work and everything to kind of operate on that front, uh, but it's not, it won't last for that, that many days if we indeed lose power.

So not that many days.

I want to hold on to that.

So I'm, uh, you know, the Lennox household, I also resisted getting some type of backup generator for years and years and occasional, you know, power outages, and Macy would get mad at me, my wife, and then eventually I'd be like, all right, so finally I pulled.

Trigger, we were the same way.

Yes, we decided, uh, not surprising knowing me, to go solar with, um, with a, a, a Powerwall from Tesla.

Powerwall, Powerwall, basically a large battery to back things up, and it's solar.

So, so the advantage of that is assuming that it's not overcast, you can continue to charge the battery even as you're discharging it, so it can last even longer, but only because we have a generation source.

If it was just for.

Or you know, uh, um, just the battery, it would only give us, you know, maybe a few days if we didn't use everything else like the washer, dryer and things.

Is it, is it more of a useful, um, uh, storage mechanism in the summer than it would be in the winter?

I think the coolest thing, it sounds like you might have this as well, is it's actually seamless.

Like we've lost our electricity and didn't know it for hours, um, and so it really is just automatically kicks in when we, when we lose.

There.

Well, the, the, the whole reason I wanted to talk about this is today's topic that I'd love to talk about are EE.

Eldes.

You know what Eels are?

You know what Edes are, OK, so that's long duration energy storage.

Exactly.

And this is a particular technology that's evolving quickly to meet um a very poignant need we have with our electrical generation.

So I just wanna highlight that we have talked around this issue a number of times on this podcast.

Our very, very first podcast was EVs.

I remember that 3 years ago on EVs.

EVs are an important part of this because obviously they do have large batteries, but their batteries are designed for something very, very different, which is quick discharge to give you that acceleration in your car.

That's why we use these lithium-ion batteries.

That's where most of the capacity of these batteries is going towards our electric vehicles here.

It's important to today's discussion.

Because they're one of those things we're now using the electrical grid often to charge, and you know, the question is how do we manage that, uh, that distribution system and I can imagine that as electricity needs are growing rapidly because of, you know, increased needs around computation, data everything as well as seeing an influx in requests.

So you've got EVs being out of the grid, and then we've talked before about LLMs and data centers.

In particular, and what they are doing in terms of energy demand used to be relatively stable or has been relatively stable in the US for the last decade, largely because of energy efficiency gains, and now suddenly we have this massive increase in electrical demand.

On the other side of this, another topic we talked about renewable energy and distributed energy, this idea that we're moving from a few sources of electrical generation, whether it's natural gas generators or nuclear.

Power plants to now this world where there could be potentially millions of point sources of electrical generation, solar on your home, solar on commercial applications, all needing to be interconnected in this very, very, uh, uh, complex but integrated electrical grid.

And I know from, uh, the project management side of things that I am engaged with heavily, as you know, in my research, that the International Energy Agency, the IEA.

Has billions and billions of dollars in development, so I, I can tell that this is a very hot area.

Lots of projects, lots of lots of capital going into this.

Though an interesting question about are we actually making the investments in our grid necessary to pull off this distributed, uh, the system.

So here's the rub.

Here's one of the big issues.

So renewables, which have been the most popular new generation source on the grid, especially solar, uh, in the last, you know, decade or so here.

Um, they have that intermittency problem we've talked about.

Doesn't always, sun doesn't always shine.

The wind doesn't always blow.

And so what it requires then is some type of storage system so you can deploy the electricity when you need it, right?

We've talked about this a little bit when we did some of those previous episodes.

And so there's two different pieces to this that are, are.

Equally important.

There's the daily flux in demand and generation that you have.

So, again, the solar is only producing during the day, but hey, we want to watch TV at night.

I need some, I need some electricity there.

So you need some type of storage that can deploy, you know, on a relatively shorter time period here.

But then there's also seasonal differences, major seasonal differences between the winter and the summer.

And are those getting actually worse with the subject?

It could be, you know, arguably with that, but either way, uh, it requires, you know, what we call long term storage here.

So this is where EES comes in, is you need long duration energy storage to be deployed during these times of, you know, higher demand with less generation, given the conditions, maybe the winter time.

Um, and, and the like, and then again, these kind of daily, uh, changes here.

So we're not talking about batteries, you're talking about something else, a different technology.

What is, what, what kind of, what do you understand that to be?

Well, again, so again, highlight lithium ion batteries, you know, uh, they are useful for some things, they are not really useful, uh, at, at scale, let's say, for LES, um, though there are some interesting attempts to use these types of batteries on the grid as a storage solution here.

So again, the LDEs are those ranging from 8 hours to days, weeks, or seasons in terms of deployment of electricity.

Um, so again, this could be long term storage, long term deployment here that could last over a really long, a lot, much longer time, right?

And there is what's really interesting.

Interesting here is a whole bunch of innovative solutions here.

Some of them are what we might call batteries based on chemical reactions, but not lithium iron.

There's metal air batteries, there's sodium batteries being proposed.

There's other electrochemical processes that could be used for storage here.

Um, there's energy is heat, so using electricity basically create heat that can be stored, right, uh, also thermal of various different types, even mechanical systems, um, pumped hydro, you might think of this way, where we literally pump water from a lower reservoir to a higher reservoir and to use it later, or we use it to produce electricity later, right?

Um, so it's a form of a, you know, kind of a A storage system that way, uh, and then other types of like hydrogen and other ways of thinking about this long term storage solutions.

And this is not just a US centric kind of phenomenon, right?

We're talking something more global here in terms of interest around the world.

I suspect it is, right?

And in fact, we're laggards in in North America, just to give you some numbers.

East Asia and Pacific is about 50, 53% of.

Best capacity that's installed.

Europe is about 28 to 30%.

North America's lagging at about 11 to 13% here.

Um, so, yes, you know, we're, we're the laggards, and we're seeing some of the, especially Asia, really start to adopt these types of technology here.

You know, I'm always curious, Mike, when we have our conversations around disruption.

It's like, uh, is there anything specific that is going on now?

Like, why is the disruption occurring now?

What is it that, uh, we finally have in terms of technology that we didn't have, you know, 5 years ago or even 10 years ago, right?

Yeah, and I think again, what, what is fascinating as a, as a systems engineer at heart is like this is the ultimate systems problem, right?

I think some of the other technologies we've looked at, they can be adopted somewhat in isolation, right, like, you know, um.

I don't know, some of the social media things we've done and they're like, this is a whole confluence of technologies that have to move together as a system if they're really gonna achieve their full potential here.

Right.

And so Ees is this critical linchpin to the deployment of renewables, the deployment of distributed energy for the deployment of kind of advanced grid technology.

All of this has to have the more distributed grid.

I think we talked about.

Has to have this, uh, as part of it.

So, um, it's great to see that there's kind of progress being made on this, but the capital expenditures, the infrastructure investment is huge.

The need is huge, as I mentioned, this is a hot area for project planning and project management for sure across the globe, uh, in many different ways.

Maybe, maybe now is a good time for us to bring in an expert.

My goodness, it absolutely is.

I think we've, we've pushed our limits here.

So we are, are really thrilled to have Anna Sefkin with us.

She is currently.

Currently the director for Policy and Markets North America for the Long Duration Energy Storage Council.

Um, she has a background that goes 20 years and more guiding organizations in complex energy markets.

And just to highlight the diversity of companies and organizations she's worked for.

She's worked for the private sector, Home Depot, she's worked for, uh, the government, US Department of Energy, ICF, Carnegie Mellon, she's worked in university sector, so she really has seen it all and seen it all from a number of different institutional players.

So really has that systems perspective that's so necessary here.

Anna, and she's a friend of the podcast, friend of the podcast here.

So Anna, absolutely joy to have you with us today.

Great, it's so nice to be here.

I appreciate it and I love the conversation so far.

I can't wait to dive in.

All right, so, so what have we messed up so far?

Tell us more what Eldez is and isn't.

So, well, you've, you've gotten a lot of points right.

I'll start there.

So when people, when people typically think about batteries, they think about like what you talked about, you know, it's your Powerwall at your house.

It's something small, modular, maybe you can use multiple stacks of it, but it's meant for a certain purpose, and that was to address that intermittency that you talked about with solar and wind.

But what we're seeing now and kind of the real disruption is this significant increase in demand at the exact same time we have some of these technologies that are really ready and they are being deployed.

So I think that's sort of the intersection of this coming together.

We've got some markets that are getting the right policies in place.

We have some states that are having some real leadership.

And we're having some technologies that have been deployed in other parts of the world, as you mentioned, that are looking at the United States and saying this is our next place to go.

So why has the United States been a laggard?

Why are these others, is it policy driven, or what's the reason that these other parts of the world are leading us here?

Well, it's, it's a combination of factors.

It's complex, as you've mentioned.

So some of them, it's because governments are more involved than the United States government.

Um, our state, our statehood, and the way that our states work differently than countries in Europe, um, some of the funding mechanisms, the market design, and honestly, I just think that there's been a push towards decarbonization that hasn't wavered.

And that helps a lot, right?

So that helps those technologies continue to move forward.

One of the biggest topics that I talk about day in and day out is about bankability and how to get investors to understand that these technologies have been de-risked.

They just need to be able to see it in their own market, and we do have a very complex market system here between, you know, vertically integrated utilities, RTOs and ISOs that have different goals.

It's just a, it's a, tell our listeners what an RTO and an ISO is.

Just it's flavor of independent, independent system operator.

Um, so those are basically the United States is divided into large territories where all of the electrons go to a single place and then they get distributed back out again.

We think that when we have a utility, I live in Pittsburgh, so my utility is Duquesne Light.

We think that Duquesne Light brings me my power, but Duquesne Light goes through a whole big system to get that power to me.

And it can be electrons made from, you know, fossil based technologies or from, um, from renewables, kind of depends.

I can imagine in Pittsburgh you maybe get some electricity from Dominion Power here in the state of Virginia.

I was going to say, yeah, yeah, that's right, because it goes through what's called PJM, which is our interconnect.

Um, but it's, it's just a different system.

So anyway, long duration energy storage, you've already been calling it ELDES.

Um, we see that as 8 hours or longer.

So, although those lithium-ion batteries can go for 8 hours, they're approaching 8 hours, particularly when their chemistries are mixed with other things like salt.

Um, they have, it's an entirely different suite of technologies, so not just one technology, it's this whole class where the technologies are fit for purpose.

So you might have gravity, you might be in a cold climate, you might be in a desert.

You're going to need something different in order for that power to come together.

And so that's why we have chemical, electrochemical, mechanical, and.

Thermal solutions all within this family of technologies called ELDAS, and the idea is that they all can, can go to those durations at 8 and 10 hours, up to 24 hours, that full day cycle, 100 hours or more.

So sometimes seasonal.

So we have this opportunity in the United States because our grid is being so pressed.

We really do need some of the benefits that we can get from longer duration energy storage, which include, you've already mentioned, things like grid firming, um, making sure that our transmission is, that congestion is relieved.

Um, and that we have enough resources available to keep the lights on because that's what this comes down to is how does the grid keep the lights on, particularly when we get to peak demand, which is shifting.

Sometimes it used to be a summer month would be the highest use of electricity in a city.

Sometimes that's flipping entirely so that the winter month is now the highest electricity user.

So there's all sorts of benefits that you can't get from a single battery, but these systems and this system approach can get you all of those ancillary services that become really important for reliability and resilience.

This is fascinating.

So I was, uh, you know, top of mind for me is like, why now?

Why are we seeing a disruption?

But what I hear from you is a combination of factors, yes, there could be actual like tech innovation in terms of like hardware or some of the mechanics of it, but you're also talking about a combination of uh the right time for for for policy.

Policy change and some pressures and as we know when you know the going gets tough and and there's pressures, real innovation happens.

So is that why we're seeing the disruption now, the combination of, yes, some technological innovation from a, from a hardware and, and, and systems perspective, but also the policy and the need, you know, well, you all know this, um, as well as anyone, innovation in the energy space takes a long time.

So the technologies that were developed 8 and 9 years ago are now the ones that are getting to a a technical readiness level that makes them ready to commercialize.

So in a national lab or at a university, you might have some lower TRL levels like TRL levels 1 through 3.

This is your simple lesson on TRL levels.

Um, when you're looking at, you know, what is that novel technology that we're trying to bring into the market.

Well, those novel technologies have moved through that system and have gotten to a place where they've had a first of a kind, they've done a pilot project, they've gotten, you know, friends and family funding, maybe some government funding or state level funding, and they've gotten those projects out.

Into the world and in some cases they were in Europe and they're looking at the United States.

In some places there, it's the United States looking at the United States.

So companies are just looking at the United States as a place where we have this huge need in places like Virginia, you know, with the, the load that you all have, the, the, the estimates are staggering in terms of the amount of electricity that we're because of the data centers, because of all the data, because of the data centers, right, and because Well, institutional users, hospitals, school systems, neighborhoods, all of that has to stay online regardless of whether that particular data center brings their own energy or not.

We have to make sure that the entire grid stays up and the lights stay on.

Because it isn't, you know, when your house loses power, that's very different from if entire neighborhoods lose power.

And it's not just an hour or two.

These can be days and weeks.

Think about Hurricane Yuri.

Think about Hurricane Fern.

We had in, you know, in Texas, we had these large outages that lasted for weeks.

And That's an issue that that where human health can come under fire.

We've, we've had these instances in Charlottesville where we've had not hurricanes, but like just a big thunderstorm that knocks it out for a few days on occasion as it just was.

Well, we're having more extreme weather events, and they're lasting longer, and the infrastructure that's being destroyed is taking longer to replace, right, because it's just this.

We're having a scale problem because you can't fight, you know, a wildfire in California at the same time as a hurricane in a different part of the country.

It's like we just, we can't, we're having a hard enough time keeping up with inverters and transformers, much less how do we keep all of this equipment moving out to these places for replacement.

It's a very big problem, and we've got a lot of organizations working hard to solve it.

You know, I'm, I'm curious, uh, you talked about the timing of innovation, they have these, like, different stages of how far the technology has been proven.

You're obviously, uh, in an organization trying to promote EDS, uh, and, and its deployment.

We've done podcasts before, I should have mentioned it, you know, small module of nuclear.

Right.

And our sense is like, there's pilots going on now, but, you know, the commercial viability hasn't been been proven yet, uh, at least at scale.

Right.

What are you hearing as you try to deploy this technology?

Are, are, are people like surprised to hear that in Asia and Europe, that they're already doing this, or is there a resistance in the US to it?

So there's really not a resistance, there's just a misperception.

And so the misperception is somehow that these technologies are not ready or that they have not been fully de-risked.

We have companies that we work with, one in particular that has, you know, 53 deployments around the world.

Three of them are in the United States, right?

And those are in California, right?

There's a lot of space.

So in the last 90 days, we have gone from really a pilot situation.

Into a gigawatt scale set of commitments.

We've had some very, very definitive deals that have come through that aren't just, um, it isn't just the number of deals that we've seen that have been publicly announced, it's the size of those deals.

So we're seeing, you know, meta come forward with a A company called Noon Energy, and they're doing, um, which is, this just was announced.

It's the first hyperscaler that's committing to 100 hour storage at scale.

So, it's, these projects are enormous.

That one's 25 megawatts.

It'll be 2.5 gigawatt hour pilot, um, and the pipeline takes it up to 1 gigawatt.

Um, or, uh, 100 gigawatt hours.

So to talk about scale, somebody told me this recently, the Hoover Dam is 2 gigawatts, right?

So this is half a Hoover Dam's worth of power.

I hope I have that right.

I think that's right.

We don't have fact checkers here, so you're, you're all set with that claim.

Um, but just, it's, that's just to tell you the scale of these projects.

And then every couple of days we're hearing about another one because the hyper scalers in particular, they're driving a lot of this because they don't, they don't, they're not really, they don't care so much.

They need the power, they don't really care how much it costs.

So they're willing to do these projects, um, and the cost just keeps coming down, right?

That's how the market works, right?

The more, the higher, the bigger the scale, the, the cost comes down, and that's what we're seeing.

In fact, our research says that between now and 2030, which is just 4 years from now, the price, depending on the technology, the, the, the project cost will go, it'll decline by between 5 and 47% in the next 4 years.

That's incredible, and you mentioned that that deal between Noon Energy was with Meta.

I assume that we're just watching before like Amazon and Google and others uh signed similar kind of deals with other, uh, other startups and companies that are able to deliver this type of solution.

Is that, is that what you're expecting?

Well, there, there are, there's another one that was announced in, in February of 26 between Form Energy, which is an iron air technology, um, with Excel Energy, which is a utility, and Google, which is the hyperscaler.

So that one is going to be 300 megawatts, right?

So significantly larger, 30 gigawatt hours, um, and that's the largest battery, notice it's called a battery, largest energy system.

Um, ever announced.

So it'll be about a billion dollars reported on that one.

So it's truly grid scale multi-day storage.

I'm curious with these hyperscalers, there's been a lot written about how in their desperate need for building out capacity and, and the desperate need for energy, they're going, as we call it, behind the meter, right?

They're not even waiting to hook into the grid.

Um, when it comes to ELE, is, is, are they doing that, or are they still connecting to the grid?

I imagine in some of these cases, the goal would be to use grid generated electricity to basically power up your quote unquote EE, and then that way you have it as backup and generation for your actual, uh, data center, so you don't have to both.

It's yes and yeah, that's what I'm getting at, or, or some of these being built behind the meter as well as they build out other sources of generation.

So we're, we're seeing both.

We're seeing co-location of the actual, um, physical energy system on site.

We're seeing some of those in Texas, um, but we're seeing both behind the meter and in front of the meter.

We're seeing connected to the grid.

We're seeing not connected to the grid, um, but most important is that, um, we're, we're seeing an opportunity that we haven't been capitalizing before.

So currently, about 45% of renewables are curtailed, meaning that there's no place to put them.

So here we have this storage system where you could pull down that, that that renewable resource, store it for a time when it's needed.

That is the thing that we're doing.

The grid wasn't built to do that, right?

It was like generate and then distribute, generate, distribute.

But now what we're seeing is the generation and the distribution need to happen at a different time scale.

And so storage allows that to happen.

So yes, connection to the grid, but imagine if it could actually feed back to the grid in arbitrage and give power back to make money for that company.

This is an opportunity where we can see it going both ways.

What if those hyperscalers You know, I'm not altogether convinced that having the hyper scalers get as involved as they are isn't going to ultimately help because we're bringing to the forefront the importance of this topic.

Just because we have been sort of status quo in our energy doesn't mean that's always going to be the way.

So we're getting pushes on the system in places that they weren't anticipated.

And so those markets are acting and they're doing it in a way that hopefully will benefit us with smoother power.

One last thing on that, you were talking about intermittency.

So intermittency with solar is up and down by the minute.

Intermittency with a data center is multiple thousands or millions of times per millisecond, right?

So you really are talking about a different scale in that too.

So, this is a huge opportunity and ELDAS is this solution sitting there waiting to hold this energy that could be held onto for as long as necessary.

To keep the lights on, particularly those extreme weather events and, you know, these times when we need it, focusing on grid security, resilience, and just making sure that, that the power is there when it's needed.

Well, we, um, in this podcast, we talk about disruptions, and sometimes we, um, ask ourselves around some of the negative consequences of disruption.

Not all disruptions are.

Negative in essence, but there are risks or some concerns that emerge from typical disruptions, um, as we experience them.

What are some, what are, what are some of the issues here?

What are some of the concerns that maybe some folks have?

Maybe, uh, uh, you know, where are you seeing pockets of maybe, uh, folks that suddenly their jobs might change or there might be some kind of negative, uh, impact.

So, you know, it's interesting.

I was on an airplane earlier today, and I thought to myself, I, I passed over a, a, a farm, what used to be a farm, and it was a solar field.

And then I passed over an area that was a lot of data centers, and I thought to myself, you know, these are two different scenarios that we could have gone.

You know, and, and, and solar was somehow looked at as, well, it's not attractive or whatever, and I'm thinking data centers, there's so many in the concentrated areas where they're going to be.

That there can be neighborhood disruption, right?

Like, so I think the placement of where they are, I think the proximity of places where they are in terms of jobs, they, you know, there's construction jobs, there's the typical building jobs, but you do have an asset that sits somewhere for a while.

So I believe in, you know, good permitting, good, good siting.

And all of those things are being addressed at the local level, um, but I would, you know, those are the kinds of things, I see a lot of upside, um, because we are, um, we're not building fossil-based fuel plants, right?

So that's actually really the kind of incumbent in this particular space.

So if we're, if we're not holding on to electricity that we've already made.

Um, we're having to make new electricity.

Making new electricity typically means trying to build a new, uh, natural gas peaker plant, for example.

There are plenty of natural gas peaker plants, but when we start talking about Quality and we talk about decarbonization, you know, those plants, the newer plants are better performing than maybe older plants, but we still, you know, we have the same challenges that we have because, you know, we've got to get that gas from somewhere.

Uh, we've got transportation for that gas.

We've got, you know, any of the air quality related.

So that's where some of the resistance is going to come from, the more legacy type of relationships that existed in terms of that's the creation and the distribution of, well, it's, it's, it's the known versus the unknown, right?

So what we're talking about is a group of technologies that are lesser known against technologies that are well understood.

But I do think it's interesting, you know, the big tech companies, the data centers in particular, have been driving some of these changes for, for really decades now.

Part of the reason that like the Amazons of the world were pushing for renewables is they saw, um, a, a, a risk reduction strategy given the volatility sometimes of natural gas.

We only look at the current moment and you can see that you're really subject to kind of geopolitics and what happens in the fossil fuel industry.

In a way that, you know, once you build your solar plant, you're, you're not subject to.

Um, so I think, I think it's really interesting to think about this current moment in this technology.

Now, not to get too political here, we try to avoid generally politics on this podcast.

This is generally less political.

Well, that's what's gonna be my question, you know, we, we, we have a current administration who's been antagonistic to renewables and certain parts of this, um, you know, system that we're talking about.

Is Elde being brought in in any way into the politics, or do you see this as something that is?

You know, bipartisan bipartisan support.

So, uh, we're, we're, it's actually very bipartisan, um, it, it hasn't suffered in the way that some of the other, um, technologies that you mentioned have, and by technologies, I mean, um, solar and wind.

Um, it's because it's, it's fundamentally about, uh, reliability and resilience, um, and those aren't partisan issues.

Like nobody wants the lights to go out.

We've talked about that a couple of times.

Nobody wants to be the one responsible for that.

So when we're talking to, you know, utility commissioners and state legislators, we always lead with great resilience, um, energy security, keeping the lights on, and that resonates across the entire spectrum.

Um, there's also a part of deferring those additional power plants that have to be built.

I mean, that's taxpayer dollars, that's also land use, and this manufacturing aspect is really important because a lot of these factories are being built in the United States.

They are sourcing within 100 to 500 miles.

They're creating jobs locally.

Um, in Pittsburgh alone, there are, and that's where I live, there are 3 or 4 different companies that are growing up right there, and they're manufacturing locally with local talent.

Um, and so we're not seeing that sort of broader cultural or political debate.

One thing I also wanted to mention, I know we talked about like, you know, what are some of the downsides.

One of the kind of positives is that, I mean, these can sometimes it's storage underground, right?

Sometimes they look just like a building.

So you're, they're not as visible as some of, you know, as a, a wind turbine could be.

And it's additive to the grid instead of taking something away, right?

So we're not trying to replace something else.

We're literally using what we already have, holding onto it differently, and so those beneficiaries of storage are pretty wide.

So the support is really coming in.

We've seen it in California where they've just had the most aggressive mandatory ELDES procurement targets set.

Um, that was, uh, just a couple of months ago.

Virginia just passed these House bill and Senate bill that are requiring, um, 4, uh, 4520 megawatts of ELES before 2045.

Um, New York is putting together ELDES specific procurement requirements, Massachusetts, and then it just kind of keeps going.

At the federal level, the manufacturing tax credits did not go away.

The investment tax credits did not go away with the same speed that we've seen with some of those other renewable technologies, and we're sort of like reclassified over with nuclear and geothermal.

And by the way, PJM, which I've talked about, which is that grid operator, it's the largest grid operator in the country, is actively developing new market rules that will include long duration energy storage.

So all of that means that this conversation, particularly when it comes to solving the problems of the grid that cannot be solved any other way right now, it's really been a helpful part of the conversation to be able to talk about these storage technologies.

It sounds to me like this is really kind of that last mile kind of agility that we're talking about, right?

Like less reliance on large global type of networks and just really kind of solving.

The local problem to be a little bit more nimble and agile, as you say, and resilient, and part of this also explains to me like all of the enthusiasm that we're seeing among our students for, uh, for entering into this space and, and kind of taking part in some of the energy development.

And I did want to ask two, questions about the, the nature of the disruption here.

So one of them is that we often see when we have these nascent technologies, lots of different modalities, uh, ways it might be, you know, delivered a similar kind of function.

And then you eventually see the emergence of a dominant design.

VHS and Beta.

Well, VHS and Beta, standards wars, the iPhone versus like BlackBerry and things that came before us.

Is your sense that that this might eventually move to like one dominant form of Edes that just is better than the rest, or does it look like we're gonna have a a plethora of options here, as you said earlier, to meet those specific geographic needs or or uh specific grid needs?

So I, I actually think that we are headed towards a diverse set of technologies.

Makes it a little bit more complicated to describe and help people get their arms around, but I do think that we're going to have a variety of technologies that come forward.

The reason is because of space.

Um, because of the geologic geological requirements, you know, you don't have caves everywhere, you don't have bodies of water everywhere, and you don't have mountains everywhere.

So there are different technologies depending on what you're trying to do.

I mean, we, you mentioned earlier this idea there's power to power, which is creating electrons.

There's also power to heat, which is creating heat, which can also be used for electrification, but also process heat.

Right?

So, those needs exist differently around the world.

And so, there are technologies that can go on a, on a box truck, and there are technologies that are as big as a mountain.

So, We're really heading in a direction of fit for purpose, meaning that multiple technologies could, um, could, could make it, and they're all, they're becoming bankable on their own terms, right?

So they have their own attributes. that make them competitive.

It also helps that I don't have to pick between all of my favorites, because there are multiple people who are working on this, and they have incredible technologies.

So, it, you know, it's very hard to pick.

I'm going to let the market pick.

And so far, it's diverse, which is good.

I think it's good for all of us.

What about from a competition standpoint, just to, you know, give the classic, uh, incumbent companies who maybe are diversifying into this, or entrepreneurial startups?

What are you, what are you seeing?

Is it more entrepreneurial startups or, or kind of bigger industrials who maybe have been in an adjacent space?

So, it has, it's a combination of both.

So we have these sort of really, really small startups um that might be a university professor or some PhD students who have come up with a novel technology.

We have those that are in the space, um, through, you know, companies that have been around for 5 to 10 years, Companies that have been around for 30 years that are doing these technologies all the way up to, as you mentioned, some of the bigs, right?

So we have oil and gas companies who are extremely interested in these technologies, utilities must be utilities are interested.

We are seeing like a spectrum of interest and so it's, it's, it's the entire market, that ecosystem.

Because you need people to ask for it and procure it.

You also need people to build to the specifications of what's required.

Um, and so it, it doesn't need to be as big as a power plant or does it need to be something smaller in scale?

Do you need it in 12 months or is 5 years OK, right?

Because we have a variety of different technologies depending on where you are and what you need.

Amazing.

I feel like I've learned so much.

Maybe one last thought, leave us with, and uh, if I were to, uh, go and see the most advanced implementation of this, where would I go and look?

Is there like the poster child Elde project that you would point people to?

Well, I mean, there's a, there's a few in the United States.

There's a couple in California, um, there's a company called Hydrostore that has a technology that they're working on in Willow Creek, California.

Um, there's a really interesting project coming up in Katy, Texas, which is in partnership with a, a data center, that co-location we talked about.

Gosh, uh, you know, if you want to travel to Europe, there's some really, really great technologies.

In fact, one of them is a giant balloon that lays on the ground and holds, um, compressed CO2.

There's also some caves that you can go visit, um, and we also have boxcars, right?

So we have container trucks like a, like on an 18 wheeler.

So, it depends on what you want to see.

Um, it's not always sexy, but this stuff is doing the job.

Um, so, you know, I, I, I laugh because I thought I'd be traveling the world, visiting beautiful sites.

I'm traveling the world looking at, you know, compressed air and, um, and, uh, you know.

Uh, different technologies in different places, you know, the manufacturing is coming together with this.

Um, I've seen the locations, I've seen the sites, it's happening, and I could not be more excited.

Amazing.

Thank you so much, Anna.

This was an extremely interesting and so, so, so educational.

Anna, thank you so much for your time.

You know, we're gonna turn now. to our way we end every podcast here is our debate.

All right, I'll ask you first, good, bad, or no disruption, Yael.

Well, I feel like it's hard to say anything but good after talking to Anna.

Uh, uh, clearly there's a vision there, um, and I like the potential.

It doesn't, I can't clearly identify the downsides, which is good.

I mean that's what we like, right?

Like innovation and disruption that is a positive in nature, um, I mean I think there's a broader societal question around the all this energy needs, the growing energy needs that I think maybe we could all reflect on, but it's not the EAS itself, it's more the, the where we're headed as a world, so maybe that's a different discussion, but within.

The facts that we're headed in that direction, I think this is great.

Yeah, it's not gonna surprise you that I'm gonna roll a good disruption here from the beginning.

Yeah, we knew that from the beginning, but you know what I, what I would observe is a couple of things, you know, there is the risk of no disruption, right?

Like, why now?

Why is this taking off?

Some of these technologies that Anna talked about, you know, aren't necessarily the, the most advanced, you know, cutting edge.

These are like processes we've known for in some cases a century being applied at scale, um, and so the question I think often comes with those types of technologies is cost versus um benefit, right?

Like the huge capital cost to do some of these, does it create enough market opportunity to then motivate true adoption?

And I think that's the exciting part.

Right, that we're the increase in demand will lower the, you know, it's, it's maybe, uh, ironic that like these challenges we have create opportunities that then cause new technologies that maybe again are quite old to finally have their moment here.

Uh, again, part of this is being driven by the great success of renewable energy.

It's creating now this opportunity so we don't curtail. 40% of solar, which is just literally just wasting energy, right, um, and that creates the market conditions where doing these can work.

So, the, the sense I get is, um, even more so than maybe what we talked about before, like small module nuclear, there are market opportunities right now.

Like this is happening, like if you could build this and do this, you can make some money because of this arbitrage opportunity and, and don't underestimate that, that.

You know, we've talked before, there is grid capacity right now that sits idle most of the time to be fired in the moment we all turn our lights on at 7 p.m. at night, or, or turn on our air conditioning and the like.

And so that's very expensive to just kind of be turning on and off generation.

These systems level all that out, so.

So it's just, you know, when that moment hits, the Ede is gonna be the low-cost energy provider, and you're not gonna need that natural gas peaker plant anymore.

So it, it, again, I think it's really exciting, it's necessary and it's a good disruption, good disruption feeding into our, uh, you know, distributed energy.

Amazing.

Well, thanks, Mike.

I enjoyed chatting.

With you I used so much more than I did, you know, 50 minutes ago.

That's what we aim to do.

We're essentially this whole podcast is about educating Yael and I on things we are not that familiar with.

As always, let me thank our producer Gary, our lead researcher Becky, uh, and all of you, our listeners of Good Disruption.

Thank you.

Bye, folks.

Good Disruption is a podcast from the University of Virginia Darden School of Business.

Darden.