With Loron's segle and from London and Gerard read from Berlin. This is Redefining
Energy Minutes, Episode one hundred and twenty three. Laurn one, how are
you? And two? What's the number your week? I'm fine and in
fact I've got three numbers. Okay, ten years, two thousand employees,
three billion dollar invested, So they're all linked together. Episode exactly. Okay,
give me a clip. You have one in your pocket, so have
I You got me? Come on one, got a club? The Apple
car has been canceled. The Apple car has been canceled. They kind of
realized that making a car was a bit more complex and making a phone,
and the margin one much lower. So y'all we've been around. I've been
at the Energy storage some in London a few weeks ago. You've been to
E World, And of course those two important events were the same day,
so we split ourselves. This probably be the E World to our listeners.
And what did you see? Yeah? The E World is the largest utility
trade show in continental Europe. It's normally actually the dark region, you know,
the German speaking regions, but actually, let me just tell you this
time there was an incredible amount of people from across the world there. That
was number one. I think the number two thing was I was there a
year ago in the midst of the aftermath of the initial shock of the Ukrainian
Russian War, and I mean the atmosphere was terrible last year. This year,
the guys who were bankrupt last year are clapping their hands, going,
god, we had a great year. Oh my god, it was brilliant.
Tell my god, it's amazing. It really is amazing. I'm talking
particularly about the power generators. You had power generators which two years ago had
liquidity issues. Well now what's happened two years later is the hedges that they
have place have unrolled and guess what, and they flush for cash, right,
so they're all very happy and looking to spend money. I think that
was the biggest takeaway I got from it. How about you utel me energy
storage so much, which I love. The great event was there last year?
I really enjoyed it. Yeah, look fascinating, well compared to last
year when we had this crazy, irrational exuberance because everybody had done thirty percent
returns. So in fact, it's the kind of mirror to your world.
While the utilities were bleeding. The battery guys were making a fortune. Now
this year the mood was back to rationality and back to strong matiority. It
was not battery at all costs. It was let's think a bit, how
do we invest in batteries. So you had one thousand and five of the
delegates, so that was really a lot. And I would say three types
of companies were there. A lot of software guys optimizing everything upside down,
so a lot of software, a lot of d EPCs, the fluence,
the vart silas, but now even G and cemen, so everybody's doing DPC.
And of course you add all the Chinese cell manufacturers, and you add
the cattle, the bids, but a lot of the copycats and of our
ev and of course Trina Storage, Gincos Storage. I think the technology has
stabilized. If I look at the cells, they all look the same.
This is, you know, the prismatic LFP that Cattle has pioneered, and
everybody's jumping the ship. Of course, the prices are going down absolutely insane,
where since the beginning of the year they lost twenty percent. There's another
twenty percent which is announced, So now we're talking about close to fifty dollars
par kilo what hour, something that even the best expert explained we would reach
with a luck in two or thirty. You're talking at the cell level there,
just really yeah, yeah, a level. I mean it's insane.
It's the same phenomenon as solar. Last year there was a lot of talk
about sodium batteries, but I think it has really quiet down now. The
price of lethion mass collapsed and absolutely no appetite for long duration as the storage,
which is really something only pushed by academics, lobbyist and salesman. I
mean, nobody's interested, no investor. Everybody do want to do batteries,
but they want to do it smartly. There's a lot of talk about the
revenue, stock and so on, and fascinated how fast the technology has crystallized.
Yeah, it's interesting you're talking about storage because it was also a big
theme at the world but it was They're coming from a different point of view,
which is they're coming from, oh my god, this is going to
disrupt the market. How are we going to learn about it? What are
we going to do? What are we going to do when when we have
all these minus prices on the summer day. That was like the type of
the discussion that was going on there, and the conclusion really was a storage
It's just it's going to get big. And we know it's a big in
front of the meter, but I also just want to make a point it's
also behind the meter as well. That is definitely a huge, huge growth
area, particular in areas which have high retail power prices, because then you
put somewhere on the roof and then rather than feed in the grid and buy
back at a higher price, you use batteries. Absolutely, And what was
very interesting is I share a series of round tables by countries and each table
had to give me the assessment of the grid, the level of regulation,
the ecademics of storage, and I don't want to enter too much into details,
but we had three groups of countries. The one who are like super
abeat so you're Texas. The guys from Texas were there, Germany and Italy.
Italy one of the reasons is the degree is pretty excellent. The medium
level was Australia, Poland and Scandinavia. But as always Scandinavia the guys said,
but you know, Denmark two and Sweden three, but okay by and
largest medium, and the one word the most downbeat was gb because which we
went over our ski we devel looked too fast. So people are fighting for
the same crumbs. And Ireland also was kind of downbeat. And Spain was
very pessimistic really because of the poor quality of the grid and the regulation were
not there, which is a shame because I mean, if there is one
place where you should put batteries of Spain. But anyway, even the most
pessimistic guy were optimistic going forward around. I tell you the thing that was
for me really interesting, which is what I called balcony solar And there was
a few of these guys selling balcony solar systems Alian world. Have you heard
of this phenomena? Oh yeah, yeah, you told me several times.
Yeah, it's sunny. So let me just give you something. If you
want to have one point two kilowatts of solar panels and one point six killer
what hours of batteries? How much you think that would cost? Okay,
so one point to that would give you two panels, it's probably let's say
three panels of four, right, so it's one point two kilo and then
one point six kilo. What hours of storage A thousand, two thousand,
so sixteen hundred euros I see. And by the way, just to be
clear, this is balcony solar because I just plug it into my manes,
I don't need to have an electrician. Now, if I look at that
type of thing, you look at the payback period of that, it's pretty
short, four to five years you're down. Depending on the country you're in,
you can be as low as two to three years paid back without subjidy.
So for me, that that was I was looking at these systems going,
oh my god, even an idiot like me can install this. You
know, the revolution that's going on around us. That's what I took when
I was at this as well. You're looking at all these incumbents and you
could spot them a mile away because they're all in their suits and white shirts,
all of them. If you work for utility, that's what you have
to do. And then you had the new generation of companies and they were
completely differently in dressed. So it's quite quite interesting to see this beginnings of
this classic cultures in this energy space, the old versus the new, and
I think the new wins, yeah, because the incumbans is what I call
the circular economy. You have to explain that to me. Come on,
I know what the circular economy is. But in relation to that, tell
me, so the circular economy is you high molobyist so you can get more
subsidies, so you can hire molobyists, so you get more subsidies. So
it's circular economy. But the problem is, at the end of the day,
all those lobbyists and all those subsidies, you know, you find them
in everybody's bills. Yeah. Absolutely, I think we bubbled enough for this
week. Enough for this week. All right, my friend, I wish
you a good week, same and talk to you next week. Cheers,
look forward. Thank you for listening to Redefining Energy. Don't forget to rate
the show and subscribe on Apple, Podcast, Spotify, or the platform of
your choice.