Speaker 1: You are listening to Redefining Energy. Your co hosts from
Speaker 1: Berlin Gerard Reid and from London Laurent Segalam.
Speaker 2: Today on redefining Energy, we're going to talk about hydropower.
Speaker 3: Yes, each energy source as is on attribute in term
Speaker 3: of green, in terms of intomitency, in term of price relativity,
Speaker 3: in term of capex. None is perfect. But what is
Speaker 3: sure is we are not too king enough about idle.
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Speaker 2: Well, I agree to we're not talking enough about hydro
Speaker 2: and I want to say I think we're not talking
Speaker 2: enough about pumped hydro in particular because pumped hydro gives
Speaker 2: you flexibility. And we talk quite a lot about this
Speaker 2: Dounkel flouter or in other words, what do we do
Speaker 2: in these dark days when there's no wind and solar?
Speaker 1: Well, guess what? You store it? Right?
Speaker 3: And store it?
Speaker 1: How do you store it? You store water that sticks
Speaker 1: up on the top of a reservoir. Right, So I
Speaker 1: think it's really, really really critical.
Speaker 3: If you look at the big picture, and I've got
Speaker 3: all those data from Amber Climate, because really when it
Speaker 3: comes to electricity, they're the best. So hydro is the
Speaker 3: largest source of clin energy globally. It's fourteen percent of
Speaker 3: the global energy production. Now, what is interesting is compared
Speaker 3: to win and solar, the generation of hydro between to
Speaker 3: eighteen and to twenty three was flat worldwide because of drought,
Speaker 3: low rainfall, especially in China the US. Now there's been
Speaker 3: a strong recovery the first half of two twenty four.
Speaker 3: And if you look at the countries, you really have
Speaker 3: the big threes. You have China first, then Brazil, then Canada,
Speaker 3: then US, Russia, India and Norway. And to give you
Speaker 3: an idea, China is as big as the next four.
Speaker 3: Extraordinary China play here.
Speaker 1: Wow, China is the renewable king.
Speaker 2: It's not just hydro, it's solar, it's wind, and there's
Speaker 2: everything at this energy transition.
Speaker 1: That's the reality.
Speaker 3: So it's important to properly manage that resource. And of
Speaker 3: course when we say properly managed, we're talking about digitization.
Speaker 1: Which is why we're bringing on Jana's Goodenough, who is
Speaker 1: the CEO and founder of Hydrogrid, which is an Austrian
Speaker 1: based business focused on as well as helping hydropower plants
Speaker 1: optimize unapprove efficiencies.
Speaker 3: Look globally the capacity of all the idle plants in
Speaker 3: the world, the average is forty four percent. So it's
Speaker 3: kind of the same as of show win. But you
Speaker 3: can dispatch it whenever you want. That's what makes it
Speaker 3: extremely valuable.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, well said, Well, let's bring around the show.
Speaker 3: Johnny's welcome to the show.
Speaker 5: Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 3: Jannis.
Speaker 2: The reason we brought you almost to talk about hydro
Speaker 2: and the role of hydropower the energy transition. At the
Speaker 2: end of the day, you've been doing a hydropower for
Speaker 2: a long life. How do you say the state of hydropower.
Speaker 1: And how do you see the future of it.
Speaker 5: First of all, hydropower is a technology that is old
Speaker 5: but good, and because it's so old, it's not given
Speaker 5: nearly as much attention with regards to the huge role
Speaker 5: that hydro has to play for a successful energy transition.
Speaker 5: The hardware, the turbines and the gates, all of that
Speaker 5: has been around for one hundred years. The efficiency has
Speaker 5: been optimized to the second digit after the comma that
Speaker 5: we have a future in hydro that is going to
Speaker 5: be about digitalization to bring that fantastic technology to the
Speaker 5: twenty first century. And I'm excited of that road ahead.
Speaker 2: Can I jump in straight away with Joe just said
Speaker 2: that digitalization? So how can you digitalize our hydropower station?
Speaker 2: Because at the end of the day, orders coming down
Speaker 2: a mount and comes to a dam and then you
Speaker 2: lead it to a turbine, right, I mean, what's there
Speaker 2: to digitalize?
Speaker 5: What's to digitalize is kind of the real time reaction
Speaker 5: to continuously changing circumstances. So hydropower plants have the blessing
Speaker 5: and the curse that they are strongly influenced by their environment.
Speaker 5: The weather is constantly changing, there are a bunch of
Speaker 5: environmental requirements that hydropower producers have to constantly be aware
Speaker 5: of with regards to flood and drought management, fishing, tourism.
Speaker 5: So hydropower plants are very closely integrated with their environment,
Speaker 5: and that means you need to be continuously reacting to
Speaker 5: that environment. And this reaction is the part where digitalization
Speaker 5: comes in. But there are also other parts of across
Speaker 5: the hydropower life cycle where digitalization comes in when we
Speaker 5: speak about building new power plants, predictive maintenance. So there
Speaker 5: are a number of applications throughout the whole hydropower life
Speaker 5: cycle there where there's an important role for digitalization.
Speaker 3: Jenny's if I look at hydro the past twenty years,
Speaker 3: is you really have two stories. On one hand, North
Speaker 3: America Europe where pretty much everything that could be dammed
Speaker 3: has been damned, while we've seen a lot of development
Speaker 3: in China, a bat in India, and to a certain
Speaker 3: degree they continue in Latin America. How do you see
Speaker 3: the global market?
Speaker 5: Hydropower is moving at different paces, in different continents, so
Speaker 5: to speak. So let's start maybe with the one that
Speaker 5: is the most far advanced, which is Europe. We're on
Speaker 5: the one hand side, we have probably the highest percentage
Speaker 5: of built out capacity in relation to the potential, and
Speaker 5: we also have the highest and most advanced liberalized power markets.
Speaker 5: So in Europe pretty much every country has a fully
Speaker 5: liberalized power markets, from long term future markets to day
Speaker 5: ahead intra day including ancillary services. When we move west
Speaker 5: to North and South America, we are technologically or in
Speaker 5: terms of the power market side a bit further behind.
Speaker 5: So in the US there is first of all, still
Speaker 5: in many places, quite a tightly regulated market, and over
Speaker 5: the last few years there's been a lot more focus
Speaker 5: being given to wind and solar. In addition, in the US,
Speaker 5: we have a quite large potential of unpowered dams. In
Speaker 5: the US, there are I believe two five hundred powered
Speaker 5: hydro dams, but there are actually eighty thousand, eight zero
Speaker 5: non powered hydro dams, meaning hydro dams that could in
Speaker 5: principle be used for power generation but are currently not.
Speaker 5: This is a huge potential that's currently unused. There is
Speaker 5: a study from the Department of Energy that using only
Speaker 5: the most feasible ones out of the world, those non
Speaker 5: power dams for power generation could add about twelve gigawatt
Speaker 5: of hydropower generation to the existing hundred gigawatts of hydropower
Speaker 5: generation that currently exists.
Speaker 2: Can I just interrupted and just explain why nobody knew
Speaker 2: as talks about hydro We all talk. All you hear
Speaker 2: about is tax credits going into winds, solar, bath rais,
Speaker 2: but nobody talks about hydro So why is that?
Speaker 5: Honestly, it baffles me. Also, the reason is number one.
Speaker 5: I believe hydro is seen largely from a water management perspective,
Speaker 5: flood management, draft management, and the power generation capacity of
Speaker 5: hydro is seen almost like a b side. And there
Speaker 5: have been quite a lot of efforts where from an
Speaker 5: environmental point of view, hydro power maybe has been painted
Speaker 5: not in the best light. In a few cases maybe
Speaker 5: rightfully so, but for the largest part not rightfully so
Speaker 5: at all. So it's a big root cause why the
Speaker 5: US specifically has a lot of up to do with
Speaker 5: regards to hydropower buildout but also hydropower digitalization.
Speaker 2: What you said about Europe really was that we were
Speaker 2: sort of the most developed hydro marker, right, And I
Speaker 2: suppose what I'd love to hear is what potential do
Speaker 2: you see in Europe in and around new build going forward?
Speaker 5: In Europe? Clearly a big part of the technologically feasible
Speaker 5: potential has been built, but there is still something left
Speaker 5: to do, specifically when it comes to smaller and medium
Speaker 5: sized assets and when it comes to flexibilizing those assets.
Speaker 5: So we see, for instance, in the Nordics, Norway, Sweden, Finland,
Speaker 5: that there is a huge number of small and medium
Speaker 5: sized hydropower plants which physically would have the capability to
Speaker 5: become storage hydropower plants, but which for reasons of the
Speaker 5: concession that was given maybe fifty or one hundred years ago,
Speaker 5: are currently not able to store any water. So that's
Speaker 5: a point where even without constructing a completely new power plant,
Speaker 5: you could significantly increase the practical usability to the grid
Speaker 5: by making these plants flexible, which on the one hand,
Speaker 5: increases their power output because you can run at a
Speaker 5: better efficiency point. You can collect more water, so you're
Speaker 5: better able to deal with variations in rainfall, and of
Speaker 5: course it makes them also usable as a green battery
Speaker 5: to the grid.
Speaker 3: I hear you, and of course we'll go more into
Speaker 3: the detail of it. Hydro adds certain im more value
Speaker 3: to the grid and additional wind. But you know a
Speaker 3: lot of our listeners are infrastructure investors, private infrastruture investors,
Speaker 3: so wind okay, yeah, I've had some problem recently, but
Speaker 3: you know, you know how much it costs, you know
Speaker 3: how long it's going to take. There's a scale effect hydro.
Speaker 3: The last big project in Europe was this Swiss Pompidro
Speaker 3: I mean graces, but it took fifteen years to build
Speaker 3: it means that's probably the case pretty much everywhere. It's
Speaker 3: much less a private investor game than a public whether
Speaker 3: it's public utility or you know governments, which of course
Speaker 3: go at their own pace and the budget sometimes goes
Speaker 3: pretty much out of control. As an investor, do I
Speaker 3: want to touch hydro? I'm kind of freaking out as
Speaker 3: an investor. Now once it's built, I can understand very clearly.
Speaker 3: So is that the same analysis you're doing in relation
Speaker 3: to investing in a new capacity.
Speaker 5: Yes, that's absolutely true. So another reason why from an
Speaker 5: investment point of view, wind perhaps has been more favored
Speaker 5: compared to hydro is the very very long lifetime of hydro,
Speaker 5: So investors think in kind of return on investment. Hydropower
Speaker 5: plants have a lifetime of one hundred years, but you
Speaker 5: can't really capture that in a business plan. You're thinking
Speaker 5: they're in annual return rates. So Wind over the last
Speaker 5: decade perhaps has often been seen as the more safe
Speaker 5: bet because again there has been subsidies for wind giving
Speaker 5: you a fixed return, and also the commissioning process may
Speaker 5: be easier. There are perhaps less environmental factors to consider,
Speaker 5: and you can calculate your return within ten twenty years,
Speaker 5: so that is another factor for sure.
Speaker 3: Let's see probably Europe. Let's look about Canada, South America
Speaker 3: before we move to Asia.
Speaker 5: If we look a bit north from the US, the
Speaker 5: big brother Canada actually has almost the same amount of
Speaker 5: hydropower as the US, so eighty three gigawab And here
Speaker 5: we see a move towards a power market liberalization. So
Speaker 5: there has recently been a liberalization in Ontario and now
Speaker 5: power producers are moving away from this central dispatch model
Speaker 5: to a liberalized power market. Looking to the South of America,
Speaker 5: here we still have to a large extend state regulated markets,
Speaker 5: but in more and more of these countries, plants now
Speaker 5: have the option to try aid at least part of
Speaker 5: their power in a newly created liberalized market. There's also
Speaker 5: some funding incentives to modernize hydro through digitalization and other projects.
Speaker 5: But here we see that really the impact of climate
Speaker 5: is significant because the variation here on here with Elninio
Speaker 5: La Nina is really big, and this is some of
Speaker 5: the biggest challenges that these producers in South of America face.
Speaker 5: And maybe we want to move east as well to China.
Speaker 3: Talk about Asia.
Speaker 5: Yeah, China specifically, we don't have the fully exact numbers,
Speaker 5: but based on what we know, China is about three
Speaker 5: hundred and sixty gigawa of hydro capacity growing fast out
Speaker 5: of a total of about five hundred and fifty gigawat
Speaker 5: in East Asia and Pacific. So here we see a
Speaker 5: rapid expansion across all sizes, so small, medium, and large hydro.
Speaker 5: And this is for mini producers and also suppliers in
Speaker 5: the hydro industry, a market that is hard to ignore
Speaker 5: because in terms of speed of new build, Asia is
Speaker 5: definitely where it's happening because there is the largest potential
Speaker 5: of currently unfinished or unbuilt projects still definitely lies in
Speaker 5: Asia and Asia Pacific.
Speaker 3: But that's where you come in because as we all know,
Speaker 3: there's a lot of value about being able to dispatch
Speaker 3: clean power at the flick of a switch. But of
Speaker 3: course you can't have just a guy calling another guy
Speaker 3: and say okay, pisto on on, pistol off. The way
Speaker 3: we see it, if you look at and Boss report,
Speaker 3: eighty percent of the new capacity addition in the world
Speaker 3: are wind and solar, which means we are putting more
Speaker 3: intermittency on the system, which indirectly brings more and more
Speaker 3: value to the flexible assets and in particular high or
Speaker 3: so can you elaborate a bit on.
Speaker 5: That, please, yes, exactly. In order to master a renewable
Speaker 5: energy transition, we are adding all this wind and solar
Speaker 5: what we actually have going forward. It's not an energy problem,
Speaker 5: it's capacity and storage problem. We are going to very
Speaker 5: quickly be in the situation where we have plenty of
Speaker 5: renewable energy, but it's going to be difficult to deliver
Speaker 5: that energy to the consumer when they need it. And
Speaker 5: there's really only a handful of technologies that we have
Speaker 5: available today that can be used to store energy. The
Speaker 5: first one of those is demand response, meaning not storing
Speaker 5: the energy, expecting the consumer to adjust his consumption behavior
Speaker 5: to match when the energy is available. There are a
Speaker 5: bunch of projects out there in this area, both on
Speaker 5: the industrial and on the household side. I personally don't
Speaker 5: believe in them, because we have become very accustomed to
Speaker 5: the energy being there when we want it, and anything
Speaker 5: that asks the end user to reduce their comfort by
Speaker 5: even the slightest amount I don't think personally is going
Speaker 5: to happen.
Speaker 2: Let's not put down the rabbit hole of demand response.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about storage. On the other side, do you
Speaker 2: see the role of a hydro power.
Speaker 5: In USh Given that we talk about storage, there's only
Speaker 5: really a small number of technologies that we have available,
Speaker 5: and that is effectively hydro storage and batteries. Now, both
Speaker 5: of these have their pros and cons. Hydro storage has
Speaker 5: the advantage that it is very large storage volume, it's
Speaker 5: quite quick to respond, but the downside is it's not
Speaker 5: possible everywhere. You need the geographic circumstances to be able
Speaker 5: to build a hydro dam, so it won't work everywhere
Speaker 5: in the world. And it's also a centralized form of storage,
Speaker 5: meaning you can't put this in every little household. On
Speaker 5: the other hand, battery technology has the advantage that you
Speaker 5: can build battery pretty much at any size and scale.
Speaker 5: You can put them pretty much wherever you want, and
Speaker 5: you can also use them in a completely decentralized fashion.
Speaker 5: The benefit is they also are rapid in terms of reaction,
Speaker 5: but they have significantly smaller storage volume. By storage volume,
Speaker 5: I meantio between Megawa and Mega what ours capacity?
Speaker 3: I agree with you centralize five days against decentralized two
Speaker 3: or three hours. So this is where you see not
Speaker 3: really a competition but I would say a good complimentarity
Speaker 3: between the two technologies.
Speaker 5: Exactly, we're going to need both.
Speaker 1: Jana's sort of as I love that.
Speaker 2: Really what we need to do is we need to
Speaker 2: combine hydro power plants with going forward with batteries.
Speaker 3: I mean, how do you see that.
Speaker 5: Yes, that's a very exciting opportunity going forward. So it's
Speaker 5: not needed for hydropower plants who already have storage capacity
Speaker 5: right them power plants, but for run of river power plants,
Speaker 5: this ability to have what we like to call hybrid hydro.
Speaker 5: Combining hydro run of river with battery capacity can bring
Speaker 5: us the best of both worlds, the combination of being
Speaker 5: able to turn smaller run of river power plants into
Speaker 5: somewhat decentralized storage power plants, and that really allows to
Speaker 5: combine the best of both worlds from both technologies.
Speaker 3: Jenny's you pointed out, and you know, we hear that
Speaker 3: a lot that you know, the sun doesn't always shine,
Speaker 3: the wind always well, but you know, the hydros you
Speaker 3: had some good years and bad years, and we saw
Speaker 3: Glass year China had to restart coal plants because the
Speaker 3: hydro resources were very low, and the same in Europe
Speaker 3: in two twenty two. Of course price of gas because
Speaker 3: of Russia went through the roof, and of course the
Speaker 3: nuclear park in Europe was a bit of a disaster.
Speaker 3: But also at the same time there was the hydro
Speaker 3: production in Spain and Italy was an absolute disaster. So
Speaker 3: your company, your software is helping also manage the supply better.
Speaker 3: We kind of took for granted that the dams will
Speaker 3: always be full, and it's probably not the case anymore.
Speaker 3: So how can you help manage a resource which is
Speaker 3: also impacted by climate change.
Speaker 5: What we see over the last year is that the
Speaker 5: variations year on year are becoming bigger. To give just
Speaker 5: one practical example, in Norway, within the last ten years,
Speaker 5: we both had a one hundred year flood and one
Speaker 5: hundred year drought year within the period of five years.
Speaker 5: So that tells you that something is going on and
Speaker 5: that we probably have to expect that with climate change,
Speaker 5: the year on year variations make it bigger. On a
Speaker 5: global scale. Of course, it evens out to some degree.
Speaker 5: You don't have at the same time that rot in
Speaker 5: Brazil and in Norway and in Malaysia. But locally this
Speaker 5: can be a significant issue. The problem is there's not
Speaker 5: really another technology to balance that out except fossil fuels,
Speaker 5: because you can't count on the fact that wind and
Speaker 5: hydro are negatively correlated, or solar and hydro being negatively correlated.
Speaker 5: So we realistically will need some amount of perhaps backup
Speaker 5: capacity to ensure that even in those years when the
Speaker 5: new renewables so both wind, solar and hydro are not
Speaker 5: delivering to the point where we need them, that perhaps
Speaker 5: flossil fuels will still have a role to play to
Speaker 5: pick up the slack.
Speaker 2: Janis we started this whole conversation talking about digitalization, and
Speaker 2: I think it's probably a good place to sort of
Speaker 2: come to the end of this podcast.
Speaker 3: We can you talk about digitalization.
Speaker 1: And what that means and how you see that going forward.
Speaker 5: There are a number of places in the hydro life
Speaker 5: cycle where digitalization comes into play. It comes into play
Speaker 5: during the building phase to use for instance, virtual digital
Speaker 5: twins of the power plant to find the right dimensioning
Speaker 5: of the turbine given the hydrological conditions, etc. It comes
Speaker 5: to play in the maintenance area, so with predictive maintenance,
Speaker 5: trying to prevent or predict when failures are going to
Speaker 5: happen and to prevent or reduce down times. And then
Speaker 5: the third part is in the daily operation of the plant,
Speaker 5: which is also where a software like Hydrogrid Insight comes
Speaker 5: into play, which is about digitalizing the production planning process
Speaker 5: and the optimal management of water and optimal trading and
Speaker 5: selling of power.
Speaker 2: So could you dig it to that latter part then
Speaker 2: and explain what that means, because the way I think
Speaker 2: of a hydro power plant is it's almost like somebody's
Speaker 2: switching a lever and switching.
Speaker 1: On and off like that. But I presume in the
Speaker 1: future that's not how we're going to be doing there.
Speaker 5: Correct. What you just described was how hydropower plants were
Speaker 5: operated probably fifty years ago, and in many places not
Speaker 5: that much has changed since then, but a lot needs
Speaker 5: to change if we want to make hydropower fit for
Speaker 5: the twenty first century. So, since power markets are becoming
Speaker 5: more and more volatile through the addition of intermittent renewables,
Speaker 5: power markets are also becoming more and more short term.
Speaker 5: As a result, it's a bigger and bigger chunk of
Speaker 5: the total revenues that come from short term power markets.
Speaker 5: That's the one factor, and the other factor is embedding
Speaker 5: of hydro power in its environment and the need to
Speaker 5: react quickly to changes in the weather conditions. In order
Speaker 5: to manage a power plant efficiently for the twenty first century,
Speaker 5: you need to be able to react very quickly, in
Speaker 5: almost real time to changing events. And that's what, for instance,
Speaker 5: a hydropower production planning software like Hydrogrid Insight does. So
Speaker 5: we connect to sensor data from the power plant, we
Speaker 5: combine these with weather data from weather data suppliers as
Speaker 5: well as power market data from the power exchanges, and
Speaker 5: come up in real time with an inflow forecast as
Speaker 5: well as an intelligent production plan. So you can think
Speaker 5: of this a little bit similar as autonomous driving for
Speaker 5: cars but for power plants, meaning the plant is then
Speaker 5: able to seer itself intelligently in real time based on
Speaker 5: weather and market conditions.
Speaker 3: Joenny's when I look at the markets now, I see
Speaker 3: negative prices at noon, and then we see the evening
Speaker 3: ramp up. If I just look at California, you have
Speaker 3: a seventy gigawat I mean seventeen new clap plant just
Speaker 3: for California, a ramp up in a few hours. And
Speaker 3: I know you've been mostly in your but now you're
Speaker 3: starting to go in the US, So I would say
Speaker 3: those types of pricing means that you need to be
Speaker 3: much more granular in the way you're going to use
Speaker 3: your capacity. Do you see an evolution and using digital
Speaker 3: in the way those flex assets are being used and monetized.
Speaker 5: Yes, And the importance of this has gone up significantly
Speaker 5: over the last five or ten years. While five years ago,
Speaker 5: the difference in revenue between running your plant intelligently based
Speaker 5: on the power market for a flexible plant was in
Speaker 5: the range of ten to fifteen percent. Now with the
Speaker 5: increase in volatility, it can be up to fifty percent,
Speaker 5: which means that hydropower producers which don't tap into this
Speaker 5: potential are really losing their competitiveness in the market. And
Speaker 5: what that means is it also disengages the investment in
Speaker 5: new hydropower. So the whole industry really has an important
Speaker 5: role to play to digitalize, to make hydro power again
Speaker 5: a super exciting investment, and to show that hydro has
Speaker 5: a crucial role to play for a renewable energy transition.
Speaker 2: Johnas look, one of the greatest challenges of the energy
Speaker 2: transition is going to be this dunkle slouter in the
Speaker 2: words when there's nowhere and no solar and I presume
Speaker 2: that the real opportunity for all forms of hydro.
Speaker 5: Power, yes, exactly, dunkle flout the Statistically, there can be
Speaker 5: periods of up to two to three weeks where the
Speaker 5: wind isn't blowing as much as we would like it to.
Speaker 5: And then in addition, every single day we have the
Speaker 5: natural pattern of sunlight, so we need to transmit capacity
Speaker 5: from the day to the night. And this is the
Speaker 5: part where hydropower is crucial and where there is currently
Speaker 5: no other technology that can cover the scap because batteries,
Speaker 5: even with the huge advances, are not yet at the
Speaker 5: point where we have twelve to twenty four hours of
Speaker 5: storage capacity or even two to three weeks of storage capacity.
Speaker 5: This is where we need hydro crucially, and where as
Speaker 5: much as my environmentalist heart would like it to be different,
Speaker 5: where I believe that still we are going to need
Speaker 5: some amount of fossil fuel generation simply as a backup
Speaker 5: to cover these periods of dunkliflouten.
Speaker 1: Ch just make this the last question.
Speaker 3: At the end of the day.
Speaker 2: You're an entrepreneur in this space, and I'd really love
Speaker 2: to hear your vision of your own business over the
Speaker 2: next three to five years, and where you see going
Speaker 2: and what you want to achieve.
Speaker 5: In three to five years. I would like hydrogrid to
Speaker 5: be the established digitalization solution for hydro power, to be
Speaker 5: the globally leading player in this field, and to be
Speaker 5: the established operating system for all those hydropower operators who
Speaker 5: want to make hydro power for the future.
Speaker 2: Well, Jonas, we wish you all the best going forward
Speaker 2: with your vision.
Speaker 3: Well, Jenny's thank you very much, and you are trying
Speaker 3: to turn the tide because frankly, hydro as the worst
Speaker 3: worst pr message and it's such an easy and obvious
Speaker 3: technology to push forwards and tell you I don't know
Speaker 3: he's in charge because they are useless, but you are great.
Speaker 3: So you should be not only the voice but also
Speaker 3: the face of hydrol so we can really push that technology.
Speaker 5: Thank you so much for having me on, and thank
Speaker 5: you also for giving a spotlight to hydropower, which I
Speaker 5: agree it absolutely deserves. So thank you for being part
Speaker 5: of the solution.
Speaker 3: So jar Jenny's extraordinary entrepreneur.
Speaker 2: Absolutely and revolutionizing an industry that needs revolutionary Please, I'm
Speaker 2: sorry just the way I just look at these hydro
Speaker 2: plants and the way they've been rung, they haven't changed.
Speaker 2: They've been run for the last one hundred years, so
Speaker 2: there's much more they can do. So what she's doing
Speaker 2: is helping them digitalize and optimized. And this is brilliant,
Speaker 2: absolutely brilliant.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're talking the intro about palm storage. China is
Speaker 3: seeking to expand it's pumpid rock capacity to one hundred
Speaker 3: and twenty gigawat from fifty five gigawad now and they
Speaker 3: just open and I'm trying to not butcher the name
Speaker 3: the thing, ning term storage to tenure to build two billion,
Speaker 3: three point six gigawad twelve hours, so somehow is the
Speaker 3: same power as in clip point for five percent of
Speaker 3: the cost. It's the big it's the biggest pumpider in
Speaker 3: the world thing ningm Storage exactly.
Speaker 1: Which brings me to another point that it's a little
Speaker 1: bit of.
Speaker 2: A distraction, which is I just recently saw that Sweden
Speaker 2: has decided they are going to.
Speaker 1: Build new new nuclear and I'm trying of thinking myself,
Speaker 1: they should be building pumped hydro that's what they should be.
Speaker 3: Doing, right, But as we said during the conversation, we
Speaker 3: are representing the private sector and if you look at
Speaker 3: who are the big developers, it's a three gorge term.
Speaker 3: It's Hydro Quebec, bi Ciro electro Bras that crab so
Speaker 3: one hundred percent of public owned company. So it's really
Speaker 3: part of a national strategy and it's a tough risk
Speaker 3: for private investors.
Speaker 1: It has indeed rawn you're absolutely right on as.
Speaker 3: We can discuss until the end of the night about
Speaker 3: long jeoationary storage. But my personal opinion is the following.
Speaker 3: And I've seen a recent tender for eight hours long
Speaker 3: jeerationary storage in Australia and guess what it was won
Speaker 3: by Wu E and Lidia my own. Yeah, so that's it.
Speaker 3: Lidia my own is probably going to conquer the below
Speaker 3: twelve hours because they're getting so cheap and you know,
Speaker 3: so ubiquitous. But we need Pompiro. There's a very interesting
Speaker 3: program in Scotland for instance. For private investor, it would
Speaker 3: be a good idea to put the cap and floor regime.
Speaker 3: I'm sure that would bring a lot of investor in. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I love Pompyro and I love what Jennie is doing
Speaker 3: because managing in a much more granular way in relation
Speaker 3: to the market. In combination with wind and solar, the
Speaker 3: hydro resources that will bring a lot of value to
Speaker 3: the grid.
Speaker 1: Let me add one other things, roll on. Actually, I
Speaker 1: think the future is to combine lettyr mim a pumped
Speaker 1: hydro and actually not just pumped tyrol, which I'm talking
Speaker 1: about round the river hydro as well, because it flexibilizes
Speaker 1: you over that ten hour period, as you said, to
Speaker 1: do together, are going to be the winners come forward.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, Jah. It was interesting conversation.
Speaker 3: My message to the International Hydro Power Association is get
Speaker 3: a bitter a pr agency because right now jonas for president,
Speaker 3: Janas for pres Yeah, yeah, Jenny's for president, because they
Speaker 3: don't get the coverage that they deserve. Bring new people
Speaker 3: in and bring new dynamics in because this is a
Speaker 3: fantastic resource which is overlooked. And doing that podcast is
Speaker 3: also a way to trying to inject the humph that
Speaker 3: we've see in wind, solar and batteries into the IDOL
Speaker 3: sector with a bit snoozing right now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think the best thing we could do
Speaker 2: is you take the word hydrogen and get rid of gen.
Speaker 1: Let me just go hydro.
Speaker 3: Solve all our problems, right exactly? Okay, Chad was great
Speaker 3: talking to you with thank Camudia, our sponsor. We thank
Speaker 3: Jenny's for coming on the show, and I talk to
Speaker 3: you next week.
Speaker 1: But orders thank you for listening to Redefining Energy.
Speaker 2: Don't forget to rate the show and subscribe on Apple Podcast, Spotify,
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