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With Loron's segle and from London and
Gerard read from Berlin. This is Redefining

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Energy Minutes, Episode one hundred and
twenty three. Laurn one, how are

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you? And two? What's the
number your week? I'm fine and in

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fact I've got three numbers. Okay, ten years, two thousand employees,

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three billion dollar invested, So they're
all linked together. Episode exactly. Okay,

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give me a clip. You have
one in your pocket, so have

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I You got me? Come on
one, got a club? The Apple

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car has been canceled. The Apple
car has been canceled. They kind of

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realized that making a car was a
bit more complex and making a phone,

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and the margin one much lower.
So y'all we've been around. I've been

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at the Energy storage some in London
a few weeks ago. You've been to

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E World, And of course those
two important events were the same day,

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so we split ourselves. This probably
be the E World to our listeners.

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And what did you see? Yeah? The E World is the largest utility

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trade show in continental Europe. It's
normally actually the dark region, you know,

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the German speaking regions, but actually, let me just tell you this

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time there was an incredible amount of
people from across the world there. That

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was number one. I think the
number two thing was I was there a

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year ago in the midst of the
aftermath of the initial shock of the Ukrainian

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Russian War, and I mean the
atmosphere was terrible last year. This year,

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the guys who were bankrupt last year
are clapping their hands, going,

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god, we had a great year. Oh my god, it was brilliant.

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Tell my god, it's amazing.
It really is amazing. I'm talking

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particularly about the power generators. You
had power generators which two years ago had

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liquidity issues. Well now what's happened
two years later is the hedges that they

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have place have unrolled and guess what, and they flush for cash, right,

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so they're all very happy and looking
to spend money. I think that

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was the biggest takeaway I got from
it. How about you utel me energy

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storage so much, which I love. The great event was there last year?

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I really enjoyed it. Yeah,
look fascinating, well compared to last

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year when we had this crazy,
irrational exuberance because everybody had done thirty percent

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returns. So in fact, it's
the kind of mirror to your world.

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While the utilities were bleeding. The
battery guys were making a fortune. Now

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this year the mood was back to
rationality and back to strong matiority. It

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was not battery at all costs.
It was let's think a bit, how

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do we invest in batteries. So
you had one thousand and five of the

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delegates, so that was really a
lot. And I would say three types

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of companies were there. A lot
of software guys optimizing everything upside down,

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so a lot of software, a
lot of d EPCs, the fluence,

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the vart silas, but now even
G and cemen, so everybody's doing DPC.

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And of course you add all the
Chinese cell manufacturers, and you add

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the cattle, the bids, but
a lot of the copycats and of our

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ev and of course Trina Storage,
Gincos Storage. I think the technology has

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stabilized. If I look at the
cells, they all look the same.

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This is, you know, the
prismatic LFP that Cattle has pioneered, and

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everybody's jumping the ship. Of course, the prices are going down absolutely insane,

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where since the beginning of the year
they lost twenty percent. There's another

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twenty percent which is announced, So
now we're talking about close to fifty dollars

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par kilo what hour, something that
even the best expert explained we would reach

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with a luck in two or thirty. You're talking at the cell level there,

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just really yeah, yeah, a
level. I mean it's insane.

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It's the same phenomenon as solar.
Last year there was a lot of talk

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about sodium batteries, but I think
it has really quiet down now. The

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price of lethion mass collapsed and absolutely
no appetite for long duration as the storage,

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which is really something only pushed by
academics, lobbyist and salesman. I

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mean, nobody's interested, no investor. Everybody do want to do batteries,

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but they want to do it smartly. There's a lot of talk about the

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revenue, stock and so on,
and fascinated how fast the technology has crystallized.

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Yeah, it's interesting you're talking about
storage because it was also a big

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theme at the world but it was
They're coming from a different point of view,

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which is they're coming from, oh
my god, this is going to

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disrupt the market. How are we
going to learn about it? What are

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we going to do? What are
we going to do when when we have

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all these minus prices on the summer
day. That was like the type of

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the discussion that was going on there, and the conclusion really was a storage

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It's just it's going to get big. And we know it's a big in

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front of the meter, but I
also just want to make a point it's

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also behind the meter as well.
That is definitely a huge, huge growth

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area, particular in areas which have
high retail power prices, because then you

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put somewhere on the roof and then
rather than feed in the grid and buy

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back at a higher price, you
use batteries. Absolutely, And what was

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very interesting is I share a series
of round tables by countries and each table

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had to give me the assessment of
the grid, the level of regulation,

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the ecademics of storage, and I
don't want to enter too much into details,

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but we had three groups of countries. The one who are like super

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abeat so you're Texas. The guys
from Texas were there, Germany and Italy.

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Italy one of the reasons is the
degree is pretty excellent. The medium

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level was Australia, Poland and Scandinavia. But as always Scandinavia the guys said,

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but you know, Denmark two and
Sweden three, but okay by and

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largest medium, and the one word
the most downbeat was gb because which we

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went over our ski we devel looked
too fast. So people are fighting for

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the same crumbs. And Ireland also
was kind of downbeat. And Spain was

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very pessimistic really because of the poor
quality of the grid and the regulation were

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not there, which is a shame
because I mean, if there is one

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place where you should put batteries of
Spain. But anyway, even the most

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pessimistic guy were optimistic going forward around. I tell you the thing that was

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for me really interesting, which is
what I called balcony solar And there was

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a few of these guys selling balcony
solar systems Alian world. Have you heard

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of this phenomena? Oh yeah,
yeah, you told me several times.

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Yeah, it's sunny. So let
me just give you something. If you

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want to have one point two kilowatts
of solar panels and one point six killer

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what hours of batteries? How much
you think that would cost? Okay,

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so one point to that would give
you two panels, it's probably let's say

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three panels of four, right,
so it's one point two kilo and then

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one point six kilo. What hours
of storage A thousand, two thousand,

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so sixteen hundred euros I see.
And by the way, just to be

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clear, this is balcony solar because
I just plug it into my manes,

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I don't need to have an electrician. Now, if I look at that

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type of thing, you look at
the payback period of that, it's pretty

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short, four to five years you're
down. Depending on the country you're in,

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you can be as low as two
to three years paid back without subjidy.

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So for me, that that was
I was looking at these systems going,

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oh my god, even an idiot
like me can install this. You

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know, the revolution that's going on
around us. That's what I took when

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I was at this as well.
You're looking at all these incumbents and you

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could spot them a mile away because
they're all in their suits and white shirts,

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all of them. If you work
for utility, that's what you have

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to do. And then you had
the new generation of companies and they were

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completely differently in dressed. So it's
quite quite interesting to see this beginnings of

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this classic cultures in this energy space, the old versus the new, and

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I think the new wins, yeah, because the incumbans is what I call

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the circular economy. You have to
explain that to me. Come on,

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I know what the circular economy is. But in relation to that, tell

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me, so the circular economy is
you high molobyist so you can get more

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subsidies, so you can hire molobyists, so you get more subsidies. So

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it's circular economy. But the problem
is, at the end of the day,

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all those lobbyists and all those subsidies, you know, you find them

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in everybody's bills. Yeah. Absolutely, I think we bubbled enough for this

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week. Enough for this week.
All right, my friend, I wish

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you a good week, same and
talk to you next week. Cheers,

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look forward. Thank you for listening
to Redefining Energy. Don't forget to rate

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