Energy storage steps up: the growing role of batteries on the grid, and the challenge from winter storms

Texas is like a supercharged capitalist state with all the dialogue and all the rhetoric from politicians and so forth. The bottom line is they have deployed a giant amount of batteries in the last two years. We're only in Harry and you know you need, you need as an industry to take that casera out and put the no faster casera in that's gonna drive it at a much higher speed that's the way we need to work. Those same companies that are going to space they need electricity and they need it now. That's right. Right and so if the utility sector doesn't provide it they'll figure out a way to provide it for themselves. How do we want to make the grid so much efficient than nobody will think I better disconnect because I can do it by myself because the grid is the best way of providing electricity efficient and economically and reliably. Wood McKenzie's solar and energy storage summit is back in Denver on the 29th to the 30th of April 2026. It's co-located with a brand new North American power and renewables forum featuring senior speakers from across the US power sector. Joy-Lay for 450 senior leaders from US power developers, utilities and independent power producers will be coming together to address the industry's biggest challenges. From navigating life after tax credits to tackling the low growth boom, discover how the energy mixes evolving and how the US will meet surging demand for power. Seats are limited, they've registered now at woodmack.com. Hello and welcome to the Energy Gang, a discussion show from Wood McKenzie about the fast changing world of energy. I'm Ed Crix. On this show we're going to be talking about what is probably the hottest sector in the global energy industry right now, which is battery storage. To talk about that, it's a pleasure as a wister. Welcome back Amy Mars, Jeffy. Amy is the director of the Energy, Climate Justice and Sustainability Lab at New York University. Hey Amy, how are you? I'm great Ed and I survived, you know, minus 10 degrees or whatever it was at night here in the New York metro area and I just sang, I'm excited to have a show on batteries today because miraculously my electric car was buried under a foot and a half of snow for three days and after I dug it out, it started and the battery was still fully charged, miracle. Fantastic, that is very impressive. And as you say, it's exactly these issues we want to get into with our guest on the show today who is Julian Nibreida, who is the president and chief executive of the battery storage company Fluence. Hello Julian, welcome to the show. Thank you so much. Thank you for the invite and looking forward to this course. Likewise, very much going forward to the conversation. So look, I want to come on to Fluence at a moment, talk about what the company does and what what its role is in the electricity system. Before we do that though, Julian, I wanted to talk to you a little bit about yourself, your personal story. As you probably know, the first time we have anyone new on the show, we would like to ask them a bit about their careers and energy, how they got started. So what's your story? What first made you decide to pursue a career in energy? I wanted to be a public servant. I wanted to go into public service, politics, that world. And as I started working, started looking at electricity and it was the closest thing to public service in the private sector. And that's what I got here. I really, really saw that really liked my career, the opportunity, how directly connected is what we do in the power sector in general, with the welfare of human beings and how they live and how they, you know. So that's how it started. That's why I decided to go into this industry and therefore keep here today. So I've been talking about Fluence as a battery storage company. Do you want to explain exactly what it is that you do? So we design manufacture and deliver and maintain and battery solutions or solutions for the power sector using battery technology. So, you know, we go from the design of the solution, manufacture the product mostly to contract manufacturing. We are not a contract, you know, not a manufacturing company and when we deliver the product, maintain the product through its life and help and recycle when the end of life of the product. That's our solution. We define ourselves as a solutions company using battery technology. That's a core of our technology solution. That's the way you should see that. And your customer base then is utilities and developers and anyone who needs power. We as a company are we work mostly in front of the mirror, but now we're doing some behind the mirror, but utility scale. So we sell to utility. We sell to IPPs to independent power producers. We sell to developers of power projects. And we also sell to C&I, including now data centers, which is kind of the new hot topic, which are big consumers of electricity, where we can provide utility scale. We don't do residential or small C&I. This is, you know, our core, our value proposition is to with utility scale, you know, in front of the mirror, generally. Yeah, and certainly want to come on to data centers in a bit because I think it's worth digging into a bit. What's going on there? But just in general terms, I know you've just recently in the last few days reported court leanings for the first quarter of your company's financial year, the fourth quarter of 2025. How are things going? How's business? Well, tremendous, man. You know, we have seen, especially in the US, after what, in 2005, where we had kind of a calm US market, to use a software. And now we're seeing the US picking up again, you know, driven some of AI, but also C&I utilities are also looking so tremendous investment in the sector. I think that was the defining point of our earnest goal. And do you think in the US market, is it extreme weather? Is it the realization that you can't really add generation capacity quickly? And so therefore, you need these other solutions. I know in Irkaut, where people believe that, you know, it's the home of natural gas, actually, batteries have been the solution of choice for the last two years. So a few things in the US market. First, the US market was a little bit, you know, went to some disruptions last year with a one big beautiful bill lag, which created, you know, normal regulatory uncertainty and the liberation, the tariff announcements, which also created some trade uncertainty. But so that kind of put a break breaks on the US market for doing parts of last year, but that has went now to pick them up. And what we see today, the US market is tremendous need for capacity. No, but you were saying some of it being by the new demand for, you know, data center, but not only data centers, the economy is growing. There's a big effort to bring in new manufacturing capacity to the US, you know. So those, those drivers, stronger economy, data centers and new, you know, industrial processes that are coming to us, putting a lot of strain, you know, or a lot of strain in the power sectors. And today, the fastest and most economically efficient way to deliver capacity is battery storage, as you were saying, even in places where gas can be abundant, there's no way of resolving your capacity needs within natural gas, you know, storage is the best way to resolve the capacity needs. Look at the liver products, our products can be from idea to, you know, actual operations very, very quickly, 18 to 24 months, that compare that to one term, any term of project or any developed, any renewal project, it will take a much, much longer. So last was driving in the sense of urgency that we have today and the ability of our technology with, you know, the cos-hows and the improvements in technology that puts us in a very, very good competitive position. So Amy mentioned extreme weather and very much in everyone's minds, the brutally cold conditions we've had here in North America over the past couple of weeks. I see from looking at my phone now, I think the weather showed me that it's still minus 11 Celsius outside, about 11 Fahrenheit, and it's actually warmer than it was yesterday, I think, perhaps the worst of it has really passed. So it has been a really challenging period, very heavy snowfall as well. And in this difficult period of extreme weather, on the whole, the US power grid does seem to have held up pretty well. If you compare it to winter storm ure, in 2021, almost exactly five years ago, that killed many hundreds of people, most of them in Texas. But compared to that, they have been this time fewer deaths and fewer power outages. And when you look at the reasons clearly, there's been an improved performance from thermal power generation, definitely one of the big issues, in fact, the single biggest issue in winter storm ure was the collapse of gas fire generation and to an extent, coal fire generation in Texas, those sectors have been much better this time around. So that's an important part of the story. But we are also now seeing this contribution from battery storage. Numbers I was looking at, there was a peak of batteries just charging to the grid at about six gigawatts in total across the US, and that was about 1% then of total power supply across the country. So you could say, well, that's not that much, only 1%. But at the other hand, that 1% wasn't there, you'd definitely notice it. So, Julian, I'm interested in your thoughts about this. When you think about grid resilience during this kind of extreme weather event, how important is battery storage now? Do you think? So I think there are all that are at the storage place in any sort of fraying situation for the grid. Let's say this case, we're talking about natural weather issues, but in any strange situation, is the ability that battery storage has to respond quickly? And to ensure that new source of generation can be integrated into the market in an organized manner. Because what happens in the electricity sector? We saw two desirée in Spain, when one power generation goes down, because a gas line has a problem, or a pump doesn't work somewhere. If the market does not react immediately, you go into a domino effect, one falls, and then it goes away, the physics of electricity from the system. What has been the big difference, I think, from today and here, besides ensuring that pipelines are ready for weather, all of that sort. It's like we had some issues with some gas plants, but battery storage was able, was able in the case of Texas, to react very, very quickly. To ensure that the market did not see a disruption, and that allow a new pipeline, a new gas plan somewhere else within or interconnection capability to ring and resolve the issue. And I think that too has been extremely, extremely, extremely useful and has been tremendously valuable to ensure that the unreliability coming out of weather, that's the case of Texas or any other situation does not convert into a crisis. So as you said, 1% doesn't sound like a lot, but it's a lot when you want to ensure that any problems you may have does not convert into a disaster. No, the chase problem, you know. Well, and some of that 1% is concentrated in key markets. So, you know, it has a much bigger impact. I was recently on a panel with a very smart person from New York ISO, and they were explaining this thing about, you know, we think about batteries as being really good about solving the duck curve. You know, we have this once a day peak demand in the summer from 4 to 8 p.m. and, you know, you can utilize the batteries and some of it can be automated. But he made the point that with winterizing, you have two big demand periods, one first thing in the morning, you know, crack a dawn. And then the second one actually after peak. So like 8 p.m. when it gets very cold and some people using electric heaters and so forth, he made it sound like batteries can't handle it to a day peak. And then I thought to myself, is that really true? And I just get your input. Like, is you're working on these projects? We sell systems that are designed to deliver two charges, two the charges and two charges a day, two cycles a day. Especially in Europe, in New York, I don't think we have that I remember. But in Europe, most of the European cities have two peaks, one bigger, no more chili, but they want battery systems that can actually serve both peaks. And we design systems and for that, without any problems or no issues at all, no technical issues of any sort, we can charge them quickly and have them ready. Usually the two peaks are a difference of time of, you know, six, eight hours a month, it's more than enough time to charge a battery and get them ready for the second peak. So and so is my experience, you know, I in the past, when I didn't have a home charger, I couldn't, there were days where I couldn't actually get the fast charger to charge my car in the winter. But now that I have a home charger, it's been pretty reliable. I have to say, shockingly so. What about cold? Like, you know, people say when you have a car, typically your battery, you have the heat on in the car, your battery drains a lot faster in the winter. What if it's a stationary solution? Yeah, we have solutions that work in Finland, you know, I was a closer to the North Pole that you can ever get. 99% availability, no issues. We had during the recent winter storm in Texas for systems that were not especially designed for cold weather, but the can manage cold weather clearly. You know, 96, 97% availability, very, very high availability. So no main issues on our ability to respond to weather conditions, you know, that in my, I know five degrees, 10 degrees, in the case of Finland, you know, and we had, we go without any problems about all during the year. So, historically, that was the argument, you know, during cold weather, batteries don't work, you know, just since a matter of it's like, but you, you know, gas pipelines, if you do not have the ready to work during cold weather, they won't work, but, you know, it's not that difficult to ensure that pipelines are weatherized, already for all work you, they need to, they say we're about to. That's very interesting. And just going back to Amy's point about two cycles a day, something I'm realizing I don't know the answer to is how long does it take to charge, typically a stationary storage battery installation to get one hour of discharge? How long would you have to charge for? You can charge it, depends on what you want, the how you want to do it, you know, so generally, but they say you can physically charge it at the same speed you discharge it. That's the way you're choosing for it, if it takes a four hour session, you'll take four hours to charge it. Not like your iPhone that takes a long time to charge it. Exactly, exactly. Yeah, exactly what I was thinking. So, I think one of the things I think, as I'm hearing you explain this, I think is really important in terms of the broader debate about the energy transition, which is that the implication of what you're saying is that the batteries are very often compliments for fossil fuel generation, not substitutes. So much so, Ed, that now people who have natural gas peaking plants are talking about associating batteries with them. Yeah, absolutely. So, for instance, the classic argument is often made where look, we've had this extreme weather for two weeks, but something beyond the capability of any battery system to handle. As you've got a typical stationary storage installation, you might have two hours of discharge capacity or four hours or six, two weeks is something else entirely. From what you're saying, Julian, that's sort of missing the point. You're not really trying to say to people, shut down every natural gas plant, shut down every coal plant, batteries can do it all. You're talking about complimenting that thermal generation for rapid response, filling in the gaps, maintaining grid stability at points of extreme stress. And you would accept that you are going to need the thermal generation as well for those periods when those extreme conditions go on for a long time. Or some kind of generation, Ed, because it could be a different kind of generation depending on your location. Very true. Could be nuclear, for one, could be geothermal, I guess. Could be nuclear, geothermal, if you're Scandinavia. Could be hydro, if you're, you know, in the southern hemisphere, or even here in the United States and China. And it, I mean, in some places, it can be solar or wind. True. I will say the following. I mean, battery storage is not a fuel tank, or does not serve the same function of a fuel tank. You know, you have a fuel tank, you know, one of those huge tanks where you keep gas or oil or coal, what are you putting there? That primary energy, that serves a purpose. No, it gives primers, significant huge amounts of energy in a place that is, you know, you're ready to convert into electrons, you know, quickly. Battery storage is not that. That need, it had the need that we do not serve. We do serve other needs that a fuel tank cannot, cannot serve. We can provide capacity, or, you know, we're very, very quickly at a very, very low cost. And what is capacity essentially, the ability to be in this patch during the peak hours of the day, when there's more need than actual production. So, that's something that battery storage can do today at a much lower price point, and a much faster than any other technology. So, you were some, you am I saying you were mentioning energy gas picking plants. There's no need for gas picking plants today. You have gas plants to serve Bay's Lord. Picking should be. provided by battery storage. And you have a nov-energizing, nov-electrons being produced to serve all the-- whatever source of generation, let's not make a point. But let's use the gas on gas plant as an example. But it doesn't necessarily apply only to it. Assisted to have enough electrons to cover all the needs of the system. But they all don't need to be produced, following the demand. They can be produced in a most efficient manner. So a gas plant, if most efficient, it deserves at 80% of its nameplate capacity without moving it all day. It reduces maintenance causes, improves your heat rating. That's-- you should do that. And then it should be better as a one when there is no need for those electrons that serve safe. And when those electrons are needed, can deliver that. That work is what we do. The fuel tank does something very different, ensure that that land that needs to be working very stable and having enough primary energy to the-- that's the way you should think about what the role of batteries-- but what the role of battery storage can play as you define the sign as system. So battery storage does not presuppose a specific source of generation. That's where-- I guess that's where you were going at. Yeah, it could be renewals. What do we do when we have renewals? Because you cannot be-- they cannot be this patch. You firm them up. When they're not producing, you store the energy when they're producing, when they're not producing, you store-- but for a gas plant, we do the opposite. You have your plant running stable. When the energy is not needed, you are storing it. When the energy is needed, you release it, ensuring that the plants are much more efficient. And they are more economic use of that asset. So we are in a way a driver that will change the way that electricity systems are designed. Electricity systems were designed with a view that you'd always needed to match electricity, demand, generation, and demand. Both in terms of generation, but also in terms of transforming the energy and delivering the energy. But battery storage is that assumption. You could question it. I don't really need that plan because what I need is electrons, no, the capacity need. Oh, I don't really need that substation because I can resolve that with the energy store. It completely changes the way we can think about the electricity, about how with the Sun electricity sectors. And do you think part of the reason why in different parts of the country-- I won't mention PJM-- in different parts of the country, people are having trouble with the concept because they can't think about it in a systems way. They're just generation heavy in their thinking. I mean, they're clearly-- I mean, they're needs for generation. So let's think about it. They are needs for generation. Just as the generation is not needed to make pick them out. As a-- you need the electrons. You don't need the pick capacity. You need to be able to separate. And I mean, it's difficult to-- change is always makes people-- takes a while for everybody to feel comfortable with change. So probably a little bit or not necessarily PGM specifically. But some people say, oh, it's the whole way. We should not change it the way we've been doing it for 100 years. We should do it. I'm afraid that it won't. Well, there's this whole-- it won't be reliable. It won't be reliable. But the truth is, from your experience, it sounds like what you're saying. And I have to tell you the statistics bear it out that places that have a high deployment of batteries have less outage. Clearly. No, but but think about our systems have 99% of availability. No gas plants gets anywhere near. I'm sorry. I'm talking about gas plants. For any gas plant, coal plant, solar plant, or wind farm, any sort of generation, no matter what you do, can never get anywhere nearer. Because these are electronic systems using chemistry. And they work. They don't have that many moving parts. So they're very reliable. So that they provide a reliability influx into a system that makes the systems a lot safer and a lot more reliable. No, so-- I think that's really useful, I think. That's fantastic. I have that as a kind of a mental model of what storage is for and how it works. I think I'd never really thought about it in quite that way. And I think that's very valuable to put it like that. I suppose I'm just obviously in defense of everyone who is working in the power industry today. And something that's been said often about the inherent conservatism of that industry, that's something I have an enormous amount of sympathy for because the costs of failure are enormous and measured in human lives. And risk-taking is not really something you want to encourage. People are conservative. It's for good reason, I always think. But as you say, it's clear there are opportunities here. There is change that is possible that more can be done. And actually, with the case of storage, people are embracing it. As you-- brings me on to what I wanted to talk about, which was the general position of the US market. I was looking at our numbers. So we follow the North American storage market. What McKenzie, our number is that installations of grid-stale, installations of grid-scale battery storage in the US rose by 50% last year to about 16 gigawatts, a very, very fast-growing market. As you say, it's clear in terms of the order intake and the way things are going that's been slowed down. Probably we may see fewer installations this year than last year. But what you think it's now that market is stabilizing? Who do you know how do you see it? I think there will be a cost for those certain things we have last year. Like it always has the regulatory uncertainty and the trade issues that we had that last year, a quarter for months. But I don't think it will be-- it will not be a reset of the base. What I mean by that? That it will-- once we get out of the little bit of a dip, we will probably see for a period of time, we'll go back to the same old growth. There's a tremendous elasticity of demand on this product, tremendous elasticity of demand. So the more that the technology is proven from a technological point of view, that the more that is proven from a factual point of view and as prices come down, they seem multiplied here and here. So we are very, very confident that these years are going to be-- you might see some dips because of the-- when you go back a year back when these things were contracted. They say a little bit of it, but it's not a reset of the market and it's cheaper for more. So let me ask you about that because one of the arguments that people made when the-- you could see the big beautiful bill coming was that people beefed up their stockpiles of batteries ahead of the bill. Have we worked off that backlog or we still have enough supply waiting to be deployed? In our case, different than for solar and other technologies, there wasn't a big change in the way that the law works, not significant, that the demand that people stockpile on actual batteries, because the conditions are very, very much a law. In respect to electricity to power to a storage, it did not change significantly. It did happen in some other technologies. And that drove some of it, but for our technology wasn't a big driver of. Because you'll get the same essentially the same treatment before or after the law. That's a way used to sink on. Although what about the field rules for an entities of concern governing eligibility for tax credits, those have clearly been designed to transquease Chinese components, equipment materials out of the supply chain. Chinese companies absolutely dominate the battery supply chain at the moment. So is that a problem for you? No, I mean, let me start. We have a domestic supply change in the US that we started working years ago. I was of the view, and I took all this role, there's no way the US is going to have a power system dominated by Chinese equipment. It just doesn't work out. So I was crazy. I remember going to investor conference and people asked me, well, who let's say, which world were you? I mean, I'm from America. You got there from my accident from Latin America where I come from the things don't happen. In the USA, happen less. So the US is going to feed. I don't know how I wasn't clear how it was going to be, but it was clearly going to be restrictions on the content of integrating Chinese equipment into the replay in this important role. We as a company were ready for it or working on it from days ago and ready for the change. The locking up in a way that we're going to be able to do that. that I think it is very well organized, if you ask me my opinion in terms of allowing the industry to adapt to the needs, to the restrictions over time. So that's what I was saying that there's not like an abrupt thing that, hey, this day, you have to buy all these vatres, it's organizing a way that everybody can, can, you know, change your supply, change, and change, you know, look for the investments if they need to adapt to it. I think this is fundamental for our industry. If our industry wants to play and you know, a role in the power sectors in the U.S. has significant role, we need to bring the supply change here. There, we know, we have, we're working on many areas, cybersecurity in terms of, you know, the software insurance, there's no software from any, you know, that we control it all from pin work, insurance, all that, also, things that we control, we know where it comes from, if it isn't the sign box. But, you know, beyond that, we need to go on out of the supply change to a real, the minerals, the battery production, all those parts, it's fundamental for us, that's a security element, you know, these technologies, we're gonna pay such a pivotal role in the way the power systems are gonna work, maybe 10 years from now, you know, about the time, changing technology takes 20, 30 years. So, it will take time, but, in order to be able to do it, to be there and to deliver that value to the U.S. consumers, we need to bring the supply change to the U.S. and that's what we're working on, this is our top priority as a company. - You know, when the, in the last couple of years, some of the Americas has kind of like come up to that challenge, like Argentina and Chile, are you seeing it be, no, no, no, it's gonna be U.S. domestic, or you think this trade between the United States, Canada and Latin America is gonna sort of pick up over time. - I am a believer that we will need, I'm a believer in free trade, you know, you sound like you're a little in Congress, you're saying that needs to be made in the U.S. I think it needs to be, so, out of all that supply change, there are many roles to play. So, lithium probably you should mind it in the places where they are good mind for lithium, you know, Chile is probably a good source of Bolivia. But processing, you need to have the capacity to process lithium locally. But it is important not to close the market in a way that you do not compete, because then if not, you know, you become floppy. You know what I mean? You do not become efficient. So, you need to figure out a way of competing with international players, especially players that you trust, that, you know, play with by your rules. And that's a world of hope that we can build, you know, I'm not proposing here that we stop buying from China. It's not, you know, I'm proposing that we develop local supply change at compete with China. I mean, we're going to have Chinese tough here in the U.S. competing with what we do here locally and hopefully we'll make us both better the Chinese suppliers and the American. When I first started doing this, and I would talk about climate change, it was like another subject, like geology, hydrology, meteorology, and it was well received. And then at some point it got politicized. What made climate change political was the most comprehensive, longest-running propaganda campaign in U.S. history. I'm Amy Westervalt, the host of Drill, a true crime podcast about climate change. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Wood McKenzie's annual solar and energy story summit is back in Denver from the 29th to the 30th of April, 2026. Over 450 industry leaders will gather for two days of crucial conversations on the future of U.S. renewables. This year's agenda tackles the questions that matter most. Can renewables be competitive after the withdrawal of federal support? How do we capitalize on unprecedented load growth? Will permitting delays stall development? Will cover energy storage business models, supply chain challenges, and emerging technology as such as virtual power plants? And new for 2026, a dedicated grid infrastructure stream of the launch of our North American power and renewables forum exploring how the wider energy mix is evolving to meet surging demand for power. Whether you're a developer, the utility leader, or an investor, don't miss this opportunity to connect with peers and shape strategy for 2026. Learn more and register at woodmack.com. So close. Is that really possible, though, to build that competitive U.S.-based supply chain given how much cheaper Chinese materials and components have typically been? They've generally been the low-cost competitor, partly, obviously, because they get a lot of support for the government. Partly, probably just because they're better at it that the Chinese companies are very efficient and very good at what they do. They're clearly the Chinese. It's very difficult to see a real frontier between government support and private sector when you all work with some other companies where they get grants to a lot of their basic research. They get some other production that's supported by the local government. So I go and visit some of these places. And who finances? They're the local government. Who finances the local university? So they are the intertwined between government, the public sector, and the private sector in China. It's not as clear as in the U.S. where you see the lines more clear. But I'm a capitalist by belief, they say. So I believe that if you're a capitalist, I am, that the best way of investing is for the market to guide it, because you'll make less mistakes and you make this more resilient. So I do agree that when you looked at China and you say, how are we going to go there? How can we do it that quickly? Well, I believe that we can do it. You know, when I look at the education in the U.S., cost of electricity in the U.S., there are few things that we need to adapt, not out, but there's no risk, there's no impediment together. And I think that the capitalist rules, there is a way of ensuring that decisions are made on thinking about the market, but the market as a guide of what you are going to be sure that we will make much better and efficient decisions on the end. And what you, but the other point, which you do the same thing that Chinese need to ask, didn't you know? Well, listen, I think the really interesting opportunity here is that it was hard to do because our electricity system didn't, we were like, oh, we're going to replace, replace what we already have with this other thing, which we say is more desirable. Now you have a growing market. There's a lot of incentive to have better systems, more optimized systems, to have more efficiency, lower cost. And so the capitalist stimulus, I think, is there just naturally by the fact that we're having not enough capacity and there are bottlenecks. So the interesting kind of opportunity in that is not only, hey, we have a growing market. And so therefore, China has over capacity, but we have a growing market. So that's an opportunity for US companies. But I think the second question really is, is there some technology leapfrog? Because one of the great things about the capitalist system is that we need these batteries to do A, B, and C. And what's the next generation of batteries? Could it be better? Could we beat the Chinese lithium batteries? Because what have say solid state batteries? Or sodium, whatever batteries? Like, where do you think it's going? Well, lithium was invented in the Western world, in the US, in Japan. So, hey, it's not like they invented it. They realize how to do it at scale, at a much better price, and clearly perfect the technology to do what it does today, when it was originally. So I do believe that once we have, you made a good point, Amy. We in the power sector sometimes are thinking with the power of the view, when we were replacing technology. When the reality is you were closing a plan and putting a new one, you know, you're no more employment. You know, it's not like it was a changing employment and a changing taxes or a changing well-being of people. It's the same. So no one was in a hurry. No one. No one was in a hurry. Today we're in a different world. We're all in a hurry. If we don't deliver some of our products on time, the school districts do not get the taxes they need to build a new gynecine or stadium or classes or the hospital. You start looking at it, and the speed is going to change the way the USBA. Well, if the US is something, you know, being not having been born here, I see it. You know, how the US creates its industries so quickly, that they're only industry who are created here. And you know, I was in the US as well as that capability of creating an industry not at all. And hey, listen, Texas is like a supercharged capitalist state. And with all the dialogue and all the rhetoric from politicians and so forth, the bottom line is they have deployed a giant amount of batteries in the last two years. So, hey, the US, I think it's gonna do great. We have from the power sector. because we were used to, you know, 10 years of Northern America increases. We all feel, you know, a little bit afraid, you know, like this emergency decree that was recently issued. Oh, people, I said, that's going to be the no for now. Get ready. Because we're all in a hurry. And, you know, you need, we need as an industry to take that casera out and put the, you know, faster casera in that's going to drive at a much higher speed. That's the way we need to work. And, and many, many industries in the US that work that way, you know, a space today. With all the work we were seeing in space, not only SpaceX, but all the other companies that are changing the way they're, you know, no, no other countries gone with that, you know, number of companies, number of people, number of, in an industry that, you know, so I think that we, we need to copy those models and bring it into our, we will do it. It will happen. And, and, and, and change away seem to work. And those same companies that are going to space, you know, so far they, they, they, they need electricity and they need it now. That's right. Right. And so if the utility sector doesn't provide it, they'll figure out a way to provide it for themselves. And there is something that, you know, I've clearly, you know, our technology, but I still believe the grid is the best way of providing a, is the best way. And my technology, when we think of it, we're not thinking about it, we want to eliminate the grid with battery storage, not the way we think of it. We think, how do we want to make the grid so much efficient that nobody will thought, think, I better disconnect because I can do it by myself. Because the grid is the best way of providing electricity efficiently, economically and reliably. I do not agree with that, Amy, I feel like I strongly agree with that point. The power grid, apart from as we sometimes say on the show, we're being this organizational technological marvel that it is, is also a fantastic solution for supplying electric power to the customers who need it. Well, so here's the interesting question about that. It's not that I disagree per se, but as you know, and I've been working on virtual power plant, like, you know, where are they going in? What kind of business model is there? Do they make any money? How do they work? Not one for one. But if you look at the places that have deployed the most virtual power plant technology, it's actually places like Florida, where in the end, you had no choice. Right? You know, the system was not providing you what you needed. And so a lot of VPP went into Florida. Big now, I think you're going to see it building out in Texas and our G has announced the program. And everybody's still grappling with, you know, how do we make money behind the meter? If we're trying to do it behind the meter, or how do we make money coordinating with the utility, the utilities themselves, some of them have had VPP programs that weren't successful, you know, Vermont, little grid, but, you know, I've talked to people up there. I mean, they eliminated the duck curve in a place where you don't even think there's enough solar radiation for that to even be possible. Right? So, so I do think that if the grid doesn't organize, like if we can't get the grid to really solve what we need, I think you're going to see more and more and more people, you like literally take matters into their own hand. And then the question is, you know, how do the ISOs, how do the utilities integrate all of that? You know, into their business. No, and I'm not proposing that the grid, you know, became became your required to be connected to the grid. Since the grid is the most efficient way to do it. And maybe a way to ensure that the grid is efficient is allowing people you can put your own VPP and if you can do it better, you know, it puts up an incentive for the grid to be better. But I think the grid, you know, like they're clearly exceptions. But I say that from 95% of the cases, a well designed grid and a well designed regulatory system will provide a much better, you know, reliability cost, quality of power, you know, then, then, then, then, they have any sort of your own solution that but the grid needs to, we need us an industry, we need to be faster. Why are the AI, some of the data centers, why are they putting, bring your own generation? Not because they think it's a good idea because they have no other option. Yeah, no, I mean, that is exactly my point. That puts me, I don't know, I don't know, I don't agree. But if I were running a grid, today, I'll be saying, Hey, I'm losing a customer. Why? I can, I need to be able to do this better than somebody else myself, you know, so, hey, I, I, I saw that firsthand when I was living in California, which was not too long ago. And we had, you know, it was sort of the backdrop of the post and Ron electricity crisis mindset. There was this accident at a place called Aliso Canyon, which was the big natural gas storage hub for the state. And, and there was all, you know, crying people on TV, there were regulators saying, no, we're not letting you bring it back on until you could've been sure, and sure, and sure, the health and safety of everybody near this facility. And Tesla and some of the sun run and some of the big aggregators that we still see around today, went running to the legislature in Sacramento and said, we can do this with solar and batteries. And they got a nod from the governor and from the legislature. And in like the course of like, I think it was like four weeks, six weeks, they put in 104 megawatts of solar and battery storage down around L.A. And then Aliso Canyon stayed closed because you could do it with batteries and it kind of proved it out. And then once it proved it out, there were a lot of players who were like, hey, this worked over here. Let's do it over here. And then it really sort of took off in California. And it's now something like six or 10% of capacity. Yeah. No, no, clearly are, you know, they're like any market, the greatest market with imperfections. So, you know, you're right. I'm not. And I think it's very, very important that we allow for solutions like that because that creates the keeps the grid and the grid operators and the grid regulators are industry. Yeah, behaving well because they, you know that if you don't do your work well, somebody else can resolve their own problem at a, you know, faster or cheaper or more less, more environmentally friendly or more efficiently. So, Julian, I wonder then how this is affecting your business at Florence in terms of the customer base or the use cases that people are finding when they buy your products, that changing, I mean, you mentioned behind the meter power, you started to get data center operators coming to you and saying, can you provide us a system to provide behind the meter power behind the meter energy storage? Because that's got to be an essential part of our package for keeping the facility online. So, tell you a data center, which is an interesting microcosm of grid, quote unquote imperfections, if you want to call it, so we have essentially four needs when you looked at it, no, that we see from data centers and they're overlap. So don't think, you know, they're not like they find that way. There's some overlap. But the first one and the one that has a, if you look, if I looked at my pipeline, there has a biggest demand, if what we call speed to power. So what is it? He said, a data center that needs to connect one is to connect to a grid, but the grid is telling them, hey, you need, I need to have the ability to interrupt you any times that year or any times that day. Or you, I'm not going to give you a firm power. I'm only going to give you a firm power for eight hours a day. Some whatever, each grid has its own, it's, it's own limitations. And they're bringing battery storage to be able to, you know, meet the grid conditions. So the grid tells them I'm going to interrupt you any of these amount of hours a year. So you need batteries for that or no firm power. You cannot, you cannot take any power from the grid during peak hours. And that's today they make big driver. No, even though you read a lot about bring your own generation solution when you talk to the market, they really, they all want to connect to a grid. And they're trying to figure out a way of connecting to the grid, you know, more quickly, you know, ask quickly. Well, yeah, no, listen, the voluntary system in Texas was put in parallel with the curtailment law. That's right. Right. So there's a curtailment law. But if you want to connect, you can, you can have this voluntary program where like you say you bring your own resources, it's probably going to be battery storage. And it sits there. And then they give you 24 hour notice. That's right. So that's today, then we have the bring your own generation solution. There are some of them are renewals, some of them are thermal. Generally, what we do, art and knowledge either, you know, films up renewal generation, you know, we provide or we help flex your life, what we call this patch of energy. So ensure that if you have a gas plant that you want to have outages and it's you want it to run a stable as you can battery storage can help you ensure that, you know, you look, you can adapt the spatial energy to the actual them. So those are the, you know, I'll save you ask me the two main bring your, you know, speed to power is by far the biggest demand. Then this one is a second and then we have, you know, what I, more ancillary supports. One is clearly backup power. Now that you're already connected to the data center, you can rethink the number of gen sets. You want a disalgence that you need because you already have that capacity. So you, we can also deliver backup power. So that's that that's very helpful. And the second one is quality of power, you know, data centers have very volatile, you know, they move, especially AI data centers that are learning, the ones that are running algorithms to learn. They move up and up and down very, very, and, you know, we can help dampen that, you know, to connect. So that's interesting. So, the batteries have a real utility for training and for those companies that are trying to get to AGI because they can help adjust the stability of the electricity as it goes. That's what's up and down. Well, it's very quick. You need, you need to respond something less than 10 milliseconds. So that's less than zero from zero one of our tech, it's extremely, extremely quick. So you need a high speed. We are not the only solution as you know, they, they, they have all the solutions to address is they, they run what they call phantom calculations. So they actually consume AGI. If they were training to ensure that they, to reduce a little bit the profile support, we are trying to help that and they're clearly chips are getting more and more efficient. So, which you'll see over time, that will get better. But we can, we help them on that solution. But if you have me today where we have, you know, the big, the great majority of the demand we have from data centers is speed to power. It's, and I have a condition from the grid and going to meet it. For tremendous huge demand for this, and this is what drives is people, most of the data centers need to connect to the grid very, very quickly. And they, they, they know that the best way, and the fastest way to meet the grid conditions is connected to, and we'll be working with them. And we know we're very happy. We're excited about this change, you know. And so what would a typical contract there look like then? So would a data center, as you say, that's looking for speed to power to get connected to the grid quickly, would they aim to have all of their powered-demon covered potentially by batteries? So they'd have, you know, if it's one giga-watt data center, you'd have a gigawatt of battery supply, which could cover it for two hours or four hours or something. And then they would then offer that to the grid and say, we will be interruptable. You can cut us off the grid for two hours or four hours a day, whatever it is. If you were fully interrupted, if you can interrupt you fully, you probably need, you know, 100%. But I would say that the fully interrupted are not that many, or fully interrupted, you know, every day, you know. So as in they do, you know, probabilistic analysis and they decide, and with the cost of availability, they decide how much you want to put. So today we don't have, it's a new market segment as you know, I cannot give you like a rule of thumb of how to think, if you see, you know, 100 mega, 100 mega watt data center, you'll have 100 mega watt batteries that we're not there yet in terms of where the market will sell. Right. As we often say, it's a very fast moving industry. It's evolving rapidly. We're all of us still fighting out exactly how these business models are going to work, where the most effective solutions are going to be. It's a change in society. For me, what makes it the most exciting, if I can maybe give you, is that it proves a point that we will put the battery storage on, we had flown it, it's what we think about. We'll play a role all around, all around the value change, you know, of a battery store from a power, you know, from generation to youth. And we will play a role, the roles change, it's our ability, the versatility of our technologies, we can play the role of the man, the role of generation, the role of a transmission line, the role of a transformer, we can play many, many roles, Chess by Chart, by ability to charge and discharge very quickly. Julian is really like, you know, open my eyes to how broad the role can be for this technology. I mean, we've seen it kind of more or less out, right? You know, before it was just a backup system, right? And then it was like, you know, oh, you know, virtual power plant, we could make it be actual function, the same way as generation in terms of supplying the grid at different times, you know, different time of use, you know, time of day use. And I do think, you know, the sort of regulator community and even the utility community, you know, hasn't quite caught up to the potential of the technology. I mean, I guess that's what I see when I talk to people and, you know, work with the statistics for outages and things like that. We haven't really caught up to understanding just how powerful technology could be. Yeah, I think this is not the one player or tragedy, but this firm that recent storm, I think is bringing people attention. Look, how the system behave much, much better. You know, there were more a lot of investments made into it, but you can actually calculate where in that process ourselves, hey, what role would we play? What did we avoid? Why did we have not been there? What would happen, you know, and that to bring that up to people's attention? Okay, so I have to mention Puerto Rico, because we just finished the Super Bowl, right? And we had an incredible performance, halftime performance by Bad Bunny and other celebrity singers. And of course, now it's trending on the internet that when you saw those sort of fireworks in the background, it was symbolic to the blackouts and explosions that happened in the grid in Puerto Rico. Can you tell us a little bit about that? How should we be seeing his music and how it fits in with, you know, battery versus grid solutions in Puerto Rico? I'm a fun, but I could understand that the Bad Bunny could be an acquired taste on the Northern right right? I'm a fun, but you know, I was surprised also, I watched the halftime show. And as you already had like four or five polls and he went up in one and the polls had kind of gotten fire or like they were children. And he said, you know, it tells you one of the most important, you know, star from Puerto Rico, dedicating probably his biggest opportunity to present himself to the US market talking about the own reliability of the power of the distribution network of the power systems in Puerto Rico, no? I mean, I was, you know, but it tells you when, you know, I have prepared from Puerto Rico, how disruptive to people's life and to people's capacity to, you know, meet their basic needs is having a non-reliable, a non-reliable power sector. The sun is called apagón, which is called means in our word, you know, means in Spanish, it means blackout, you know, it's a son of a that, you know, from the biggest torso. It was, you know, in a way, it's had to the Puerto Rico's going through that, please, you know, clearly, but it is good that he brought it to everybody's attention. And now, at least here we are talking about it. And I hopefully this will provide a more pressure to the people and the powers that can address this to address it quickly. Yeah, I have to say I had never knowingly heard a single note of any of Bad Bunny's music before, the Super Bowl halftime show, but I've become a bit of a fan. I very much, I enjoy the performance. And as you say, in particular, because of this very interesting contribution to the debate over Puerto Rico's grid, the, as you say in that song, Al Apagón, which I actually had looked up before this recording, I think, from which, which is the, it's his last album, is it? The previous one from 2022. Yeah, it's a big one. I have to admit, I don't speak any Spanish, so that was educational to me to learn the Spanish word for blackout. But I thought it was interesting. And I see there's been a little bit of discussion in the wake of this about what is actually the right solution for Puerto Rico. And it's clear that the problems are obvious to everybody. There has actually been some disagreement. And I think the current administration has disagreed with some of the things that the previous administration was trying to do in terms of, is it better to invest in distributed resources, solar and storage, or is it better actually to invest in the grid and more centralized generation. And so it's a debate. And that doesn't, that gets into the hurricane debate. So, Julian and I may not 100% agree. I mean, I remember during Hurricane Ian, one of the big takeaways at Babcott Ranch, which was a 100% solar community, is that 3 million Floridians were in the dark, but Babcott Ranch had electricity. And so, you know, you do wonder about this question in a place that has a lot of storm history. you know, is it better to go distribute? My own view on this is that Amy will probably not necessarily disagree. I do think that this, you know, distributed generation, which you think about a mixed system and what do I mean by that? Communities having the ability to sustain themselves, not connected to essentially sustain themselves, not to connect to a national grid, but having a national grid that will make it more, and that combination is the right approach. So you think about a smaller communities that, hey, we have the ability with our own resources to sustain ourselves and we can either, you know, depending on how you want to be on a daily life, we can export on import electricity for that community use. But when there's a crisis, when there is a storm of any sort, we'll have the ability and if the national grid gets, in the case of Puerto Rico, gets unreliable, you can, you know, this can help yourself and ensure that you can keep. I think a combination like that is a way to work on this. You need to be, you see, I think it's a false dichotomy, in my opinion, to think it's one against the other. It should be both. You clearly need in a system like Puerto Rico, where we will see more hurricanes, you know, every three or four years, one passes by. In order for a national grid to be resilient, it needs to be the, you need to be raised on this, you know, on distributed systems. You know that, that's the thing. You have a, your resiliency of the national grid depends on your ability to connect, distributed systems. And I think that will be for Puerto Rico, will be probably the most efficient way to deliver that. There's sometimes, unfortunately, politicians get, you know, get involved in discussions that are more, ideological, try to win political teams, points, and actually, you know, resolving the, the church term urgency. Hopefully, we're all watching yesterday, but they're all working to it. Well, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and hopefully also they're listening to this podcast. I think that's fantastic. The reason I'm, I think that's very interesting debate. I think that's very interesting debate. It's part by watching a Super Bowl halftime show. So, yeah, have to say, um, earns a lot of respect for that. Well, uh, unfortunately, we do have to leave it there, but it's been fantastic talking to you. Many thanks, Julian. Great. I enjoyed it very, very much. I want to be part of this gang, you know? [laughs] Well, definitely. We would love to have you back again. We will make sure that happens. Many thanks, Amy. I'm sure I'll be seeing you again very soon. Yeah, I'm sure, Ed. Thanks so much. It's just really been a pleasure today. Absolutely. Thanks to our producers, Stuart Duffy, Toby Biggins, Gilchrist, and Dan Kotroll, and above all, of course, many thanks to all of you for listening. We really do value your feedback. Please do keep that coming. And we'll be back soon with all the latest news and views on the future of energy. Until then, goodbye.