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

17:57Amy Myers Jaffe:Yeah, absolutely. So for instance, the classic argument is often made, well, look, we've had this extreme weather for two weeks. That's something beyond the capability of any battery system to handle. If you've got a typical stationary storage installation you might have two hours of just discharge capacity or four hours or six um 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 complementing that thermal generation for rapid response, filling in gaps, maintaining grid stability at points of extreme stress.

18:46Amy Myers Jaffe: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.

18:55Ed Crooks:Or some kind of generation, Ed, because it could be a different kind of generation depending on your location.

19:01Amy Myers Jaffe:Very true. Could be nuclear, for one. Could be geothermal, I guess.

19:04Ed Crooks:Could be nuclear, geothermal if you're Scandinavia. could be hydro if you're in the Southern Hemisphere or even here in the United States and China. And I mean, in some places it can be solar or wind.

19:18Julian Nebreda: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, whatever you put in there. That primary energy that serves a purpose, no? We give primary 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 is a need that we do not serve, no? We do serve other needs that a fuel tank cannot serve. We can provide capacity or, you know, very, very quickly at a very, very low cost.

20:06Julian Nebreda:And what is capacity? Essentially, the ability to be dispatched 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 much faster than any other technology. So Amy, I think you were mentioning energy gas peaking plants. There's no need for gas peaking plants today. You should have gas plants to serve base load. Peaking should be provided by battery storage. You should have enough energy, enough electrons being produced to serve all the, either by whatever source of generation. Let's not make a point, but let's use the gas of gas plant as an example, but it doesn't necessarily apply it only to it.

20:58A system should have enough electrons to cover all the needs of the system.

21:02Julian Nebreda:but they all don't need to be produced following the demand they can be produced in the most efficient manner so a gas plant is most efficient if it serves at 80 percent of its you know name plate capacity without moving it all day you know you know it reduces maintenance costs it's improves the heat rate you know that's you should do that and then it should be batteries the one when there's no need for those electrons, that saves them. And when those electrons are needed, can deliver them. That work is what we do. The fuel tank does something very different. Ensure that plant that needs to be working very stable and have enough primary energy.

21:48Julian Nebreda: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, you know, design a system. So battery storage does not presuppose a specific source of generation. You know, that's where I guess that's where you were going at. You know, yeah, it could be renewals. What do we do when we have renewals? Because you cannot be, they cannot be dispatched. 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.

22:32Julian Nebreda: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, you know, they are more economic use of that asset. So we are, in a way, a driver that will change, you know, the way that electricity systems are designed. electricity systems were designed with a view that you'd always needed to match electricity demand and generation and demand both in terms of generation but also in terms of transformation transforming the energy and delivering the energy with battery storage that that assumption you can you can you know it could you could question it i don't really need that plan because what I need is electrons, not the capacity need.

23:22Julian Nebreda:Oh, I don't really need that substation because I can resolve that with energy storage. It completely changes the way we can think about electricity, about how we design electricity sectors.

23:34Ed Crooks: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, you know, generation heavy in their thinking? Yeah, I mean, they're clearly, I mean, there are needs for generation, you know?

23:58Julian Nebreda:Let's think about it. There are needs for generation. Just as the generation is not needed to make peak demand. You know, you need the electrons. You don't need the peak capacity. You need to be able to separate. I mean, you know, it's difficult to, you know, changes always make people, you know, It takes a while for everybody to feel comfortable with change. Probably a little bit of that. Not necessarily PGM specifically. But some people think, oh, it's the old 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 be.

24:39Ed Crooks: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 outages.

24:55Julian Nebreda:Clearly. But think about it. Our systems have 99 % availability. No gas plant gets anywhere near. Sorry, I'm talking about gas plants. But any gas plant, coal plant, solar plant, or wind farm, any sort of generation, no matter what, can never get anywhere near. because these are electronic systems using chemistry and they work. They don't have that many moving parts, so they're very reliable. So they provide a reliability influx into the system that makes the systems a lot safer and a lot more reliable.

25:33Amy Myers Jaffe:I think that's really useful, actually. I think that's fantastic to have that as a kind of a mental model of what storage is for and how it works. I think I've never really thought about it in quite that way, And I think that's very valuable to put it like that. I suppose, I mean, 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.

26:16Amy Myers Jaffe:People are conservative 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 that can be done. And actually, in the case of storage, people are embracing it. Which 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 at Wood Mackenzie. Our number is that installations of grid scale battery storage in the US rose by 50 % last year to about 16 gigawatts. Very, very fast growing market. As you say, it's clear in terms of the order intake and the way things are going that there's been a slowdown.

27:02Amy Myers Jaffe:Probably we may see fewer installations this year than last year. But what you think it's now that market is stabilizing, Julio, how do you see it?

27:11Julian Nebreda:Yeah, I think there will be a cost for the uncertainty we had last year. Like it always has, you know, the regulatory uncertainty and the trade issues that we had that, you know, lasted a quarter, four months. So I will, but if you, I don't think it will be a, it will not be a reset of the base. What do I mean by that? that it will, you know, once we get out of the little bit of a dip, we will probably see for a period of time, you know, we'll go back to the same old, you know, growth. I mean, there's a tremendous elasticity of demand on this product, you know, tremendous elasticity of demand.

27:51Julian Nebreda:So the more that the technology is proven from a technological point of view, that the more that it's proven from a factual point of view, and as prices come down, this thing multiplies year by year. So we are very, very confident that this year is going to be, you know, you might see some dips because of what, you know, when you go back a year back when these things were contracted, you see a little bit of it, but it's not a reset of the market and then it's cheaper for them.

28:19Ed Crooks:So let me ask you about that because, you know, one of the arguments that people made when 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?

28:41Julian Nebreda:In our case, different than for solar and other technologies, there wasn't a big change in the way the law works, not significant, that it meant that people stockpile on actual batteries, because the conditions are very, very much the law with respect to electricity, to power, to storage. It did not change significantly. It did happen in some other technologies, and that drove some of it, but for our technology, it wasn't a big driver of, because you'll get the same, essentially the same treatment before or after the law. So that's the way you should think of it.

29:21Amy Myers Jaffe:Although what about the FIOC rules, foreign entities of concern governing eligibility for tax credits? Those have clearly been designed to transqueeze 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?

29:45Julian Nebreda:no i mean let me start a we've been we have a domestic supply change in the u.s that we started working years ago i was of the view when i took all this role there's no way the u.s is going to have a power system dominated by chinese equipment it's just not gonna happen people thought i was crazy i remember going to investor conference and people asked me well i said which world were you I mean, you got that from my accent, I'm from Latin America. Where I come from, these things don't happen. In the U.S., they happen less. So the U.S. is going to be, I don't know how, I wasn't clear how it was going to be, but it was clearly going to be restrictions on integrating Chinese equipment into the grid, playing this important role.

30:31Julian Nebreda:So we as a company were ready for it or working on it from days ago and ready for the change. The law came up in a way 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 batteries. You know, it's organized in a way that everybody can, you know, change their supply chain and change, you know, look for the investments that they need to and adapt to it. I think this is fundamental for our industry.

31:11Julian Nebreda:If our industry wants to play, you know, a role in the power sectors in the U.S., a significant role, we need to bring the supply chain here. You 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 firmware to insurance also things that we control we know where it comes from if it is in the sign house but you know we beyond that we need to go on out of the supply chain to a real the minerals the the battery productions all those parts it's fundamental for this security and you know they this in this technology is going to play such a pivotal role in the way the power systems are going to work maybe 10 years from now you know all the time And changing technology takes 20, 30 years.

32:04Julian Nebreda: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 chain to the U.S. And that's what we're working on. This is our top priority as a company.

32:17Ed Crooks:You know, 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 going to be U.S. domestic? Or you think this trade between the United States, Canada, and Latin America is going to sort of pick up over time?

32:37Julian Nebreda:I am a believer that we will need, I'm a believer in free trade. You know, you sound like you're a little incongruent. You were saying that needs to be made in the U.S. I think it needs to be. So out of all that supply chain, there are many roles to play. So lithium, probably you should mine it in the places where there are good mines for lithium. You know, Chile is probably a good source or 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.

33:16Julian Nebreda: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 the world I hope that we can build. You know, I'm not proposing here that we stop buying from China. That's not, you know, I'm proposing that we develop a local supply chain that competes with China. I mean, we can have Chinese stuff here in the U.S. competing with what we do here locally. and hopefully will make us both better, the Chinese suppliers and the Americans.

33:49Amy Myers Jaffe:Wood Mackenzie's annual Solar and Energy Storage 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? We're permitting delays to all development. We'll cover energy storage business models, supply chain challenges, and emerging technologies such as virtual power plants. And, new for 2026, a dedicated grid infrastructure stream, and the launch of our North American Power and Renewables Forum, exploring how the wider energy mix is evolving to meet surging demand for power.

34:33Amy Myers Jaffe:Whether you're a developer, a 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.

35:11Ed Crooks:Subscribe to The Texas Standard wherever you get your podcasts.

35:42Julian Nebreda:Chinese, it's very difficult to see a real frontier between government support and private sector when you go and work with some of these companies where they get grants to a lot of their basic research, they get some of their production that's the support by the local government. I go and visit some of these places and hey, who finances? Hey, the local government, who finances is a local university. So they are 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, you know, I'm a capitalist by belief, they say.

36:29Julian Nebreda:So I believe that if you're a capitalist, like I am, that the best way of investing is follow is for the market to guide it because you'll make less mistakes and you make business more resilient so i do agree that they when you looked at china to say how how 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 the education in the u.s cost of electricity in the u.s you know there are few things that we need to adapt no doubt but there's no reason there's not impediment to get there and i think that the the capitalist rules, the way of ensuring that decisions are made on thinking about the market, but the market as a guide of what you do, are going to ensure that we will make much better and efficient decisions.

37:22Julian Nebreda:And the other point, we should do the same thing that Chinese did to us.

37:28Ed Crooks: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 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 costs. 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, you know, kind of opportunity in that is not only, hey, we have a growing market.

38:10Ed Crooks:And so therefore, you know, China has overcapacity, but, you know, we have a growing market. So that's an opportunity for U.S. companies. But I think the second question really is, you know, is there some technology leapfrog? because, you know, one of the great things about the capitalist system is that, you know, we need these batteries to do A, B, and C. And, like, what's the next generation of batteries? Could it be better? Could we beat the Chinese lithium batteries because we're going to have, say, solid-state batteries or sodium whatever batteries? Like, you know, where do you think it's going?

38:50Julian Nebreda:Well, lithium was invented or, you know, in the Western world, in the U.S., you know, and Japan. So, you know, hey, it's not like they invented it. They realized how to do it at scale at a much better price and clearly perfected the technology to do what it does today, you know, 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 syncing with the paradigm or the view of when we were replacing technology. when you know the reality if you were closing a plan and put in a new one you know you're no more employment in the you know it's not like it was a change in employment and a change in taxes or or a change in the 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 the new gymnasium or stadium or classes or the hospital.

39:54Julian Nebreda:You know, you start looking at it and the speed is going to change the way the U.S. behave. If the U.S. is something, you know, not having been born here, I see it, you know, how the U.S. creates these industries so quickly that, you know, all these industries were created here. And, you know, I don't think the U.S. has lost that capability of creating in an industry. Not at all.

40:19Ed Crooks: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.

40:35Julian Nebreda:So the U.S. I think is going to do great. We are from the power sector because we were used to, you know, 10 years of no demand 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 gonna be the norm for now get ready because we're all in a hurry and you know you need we need as an industry take that cassette out and put the you know faster cassette in that's gonna drive at a much higher speed because that's the way we need to work and and there are many many industries in the US that work that way. You know, space today with all the work we've seen in space, not only SpaceX, but all the other companies that are changing the way, you know, no other countries going with that, you know, number of companies, number of people, number of in an industry that, you know, so I think that we need to copy those models and bring it into our, we will do it, it will up and change the way it seems to work.

41:40Ed Crooks:And those same companies that are going to space, you know, 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.

41:55Julian Nebreda:And there is something that, you know, clearly, you know, our technology, but I still believe the grid is the best way of providing electricity. It's the best way. and my technology when we think about it we're not thinking about a we want to eliminate the grid with battery storage it's not the way we think 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

42:31Amy Myers Jaffe: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 with being this organizational technological marvel that it is, is also a fantastic solution for supplying electric power to the customers who need it.

42:52Ed Crooks:Well, so here's the interesting question about that. It's not that I disagree per se, But as you know, Ed, 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.

43:34Ed Crooks:NRG 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 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 um you know into their business no and i'm not

44:33Julian Nebreda:proposing that the grid you know became became you are 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 bpp 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 there are 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, than any sort of your own solution type of.

45:14Julian Nebreda:But the grid needs to, we need as 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, it's because they have no other option.

45:26Ed Crooks:Yeah, no other option. I mean, that is exactly my point.

45:30Julian Nebreda:That puts a, I don't know how to run a grid, but if I were running a grid today, I'd be saying, hey, I'm losing a customer. Why? I need to be able to do this better than somebody else by itself. You know?

45:44Ed Crooks:Hey, 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 Enron 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 can ensure, ensure, ensure the health and safety of everybody near this facility. And Tesla and some of the Sunrun 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.

46:31Ed Crooks: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 LA. 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 6 or 10 % of capacity.

47:08Julian Nebreda:No, no, clearly like any market, the grid is a market with imperfections. So, you know, you're right. And I think it's very, very important that we allow for solutions like that because that keeps the grid and the grid operators and the grid regulators and our industry, yay, 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

47:41Amy Myers Jaffe:or more efficiently you know so so julian i wonder then how this is affecting your business at fluence in terms of the customer base or the use cases that people are finding when they buy products is that changing i mean you mentioned behind the meter power are you starting 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 this facility online so tell you a data center which is an interesting

48:20Julian Nebreda:microcosmos of greed, 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 overlapped, so don't think, you know, they're not like defined 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, that has the biggest demand is what we call speed to power. So what is it? It is a data center that wants to connect to a grid. But the grid is telling them, hey, I need to have the ability to interrupt you any times a year or any times a day.

48:59Julian Nebreda:Or I'm not going to give you firm power. I'm only going to give you firm power for eight hours a day. So whatever, each grid has its own limitations. and they're bringing battery storage to be able to meet the grid conditions. So the grid tells them, I'm going to interrupt you any this amount of hours a year. So you need batteries for that or no firm power. You cannot take any power from the grid during peak hours. And that's today they make big driver. Even though you read a lot about bring your own generation solution, when you talk to the market, they all want to connect to the grid. and they're trying to figure out a way of connecting to the grid, you know, more quickly, you know, as quickly as...

49:45Ed Crooks: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 have this voluntary program where, like you say, you bring your own resource that's probably going to be battery storage and it sits there and then they give you 24-hour notice and you use it.

50:07Julian Nebreda:That's right. So that's today. Then we have the bring your own generation solutions. Some of them are renewal. Some of them are thermal. Generally, what we do, our technology either, you know, firms up renewal generation, you know, we provide, or we help flexibilize what we call dispatchable energy. So ensure that if you have a gas plant that you want to have outages and you want it to run as stable as you can, And battery storage can help you ensure that, you know, you can adapt that dispatchable energy to the actual demand. So those are the, you know, I'll say if you ask me, the two main, bring your, you know, speed to power is by far the biggest demand.

50:48Julian Nebreda:Then this one is the second. And then we have, you know, more ancillary supports. One is clearly backup power. now that you're already connected to the data center, you can resync the number of gensets you want to distill gensets you need because, hey, you already have that capacity. So we can also deliver backup power. So that's very helpful. And the second one is quality of power. You know, data centers are 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 and you know we can help dampen that you know to

51:29Ed Crooks:connect so that's interesting so 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 up the load goes up and down but it's very quick you need you need response

51:45Julian Nebreda:times in less than 10 milliseconds so that's less than 0.01 over a second it's extremely extremely quick so you need high speed we are not the only solution as you know they they have all the solutions to address this they they run what they call phantom calculations so they actually consume energy if they were training to ensure that they to reduce a little bit their profile so but we are trying to help that and they're clearly chips are getting more and more efficient so which you see over time that will get better but we can we help them on that solution But if you ask me today, where we have, you know, the great majority of the demand we have from data centers is speed to power.

52:30Julian Nebreda:I have a condition from the grid, I'm going to meet it. So there's a huge demand for this. And this is what drives these people. Most of the data centers need to connect to the grid very, very quickly. And they know that the best way and the fastest way to meet the grid conditions is connecting to. and we've been working with them and we're very happy. We're excited about this change, you know.

52:54Amy Myers Jaffe: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 power demand covered potentially by batteries so they'd have, if it's a one gigawatt 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 interruptible you can cut us off the grid for two hours or four hours a day whatever it is if you were fully

53:29Julian Nebreda:interrupted if you can interrupt you fully you probably need you know 100 but i will say that the fully interrupted are not that many or fully interrupted you know every day you know so so So I think they do probabilistic analysis and then decide, and with the cost of availability, they decide how much they want to put. So today we don't have, this is a new market segment, as you know. I cannot give you like a rule of thumb of how to think. If you see 100 megawatt data center, it should have 100 megawatt batteries. We're not there yet in terms of where the market will sell.

54:10Amy Myers Jaffe:right as we often say it's a very fast moving industry it's evolving rapidly we're all of us still finding out exactly how these business models are going to work where the most effective solutions are going to be and yeah it's a changing it's exciting it's

54:28Julian Nebreda:exciting to see for me what 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 and we are fluent is what we think about this we'll play a role all around all around the value change you know of of a battery store from power you know from generation to youth and we will play a role the roles change clearly it's our ability the versatility of our technologies that we can play the role of demand the role of generation, the role of a transmission line, the role of a transformer. We can play many, many roles just by charge, by ability to charge and discharge very quickly.

55:13Ed Crooks:Julian has really opened my eyes to how broad the role can be for this technology. I mean, we've seen it kind of morph out, right? Before it was just a backup system, right? And then it was like, oh, virtual power plant, we could make it be actual function the same way as generation in terms of supplying the grid at different times of different time of use, time of day use. And I do think the sort of regulator community and even the utility community 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 work with the statistics for outages and things like that.

56:05Ed Crooks:We haven't really caught up to understanding just how powerful a technology it could be.

56:10Julian Nebreda:Yeah. I think this, not that we want to play out a tragedy, but this fern, the recent storm, I think it's bringing people's attention. Look how the system behaved much, much better. You know, there were a lot of investments made into it. But you can actually calculate and we're in that process ourselves. Hey, what role did we play? What did we avoid? Why did we have not been there? What would have happened? You know, and that to bring that up to people's attention. Okay.

56:38Ed Crooks: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 battery versus grid solutions in Puerto Rico

57:19Julian Nebreda:I'm a fan but I could understand that the Bad Bunny could be an acquired taste. I know everybody likes it, but I'm a fan. But, you know, I was surprised also. I watched the halftime show. And as you know, he had like four or five poles, and he went up in one, and the poles had kind of caught fire or like they were showing. And he's, you know, he tells you one of the most, or the most important, you know, star from Puerto Rico dedicating probably his biggest opportunity to present himself to the U.S. market, talking about their own reliability of the distribution network or the power systems in Puerto Rico.

58:01Julian Nebreda:I mean, I was, you know, but it tells you when, you know, I have prepared for Puerto Rico, how disruptive to people's life and to people's capacity to, you know, meet their basic needs is having an unreliable power sector. The song is called Apagón, which is called, it means in our word, in Spanish it means blackout. It's a song about that, from the biggest stars. In a way, it's sad that Puerto Rico is going through that, please, clearly, but it is good that he brought it to everybody's attention. Now, at least here, we are talking about it and hopefully this will provide and more pressure to the people and the powers that can address this to address it quickly.

58:53Amy Myers Jaffe: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, El Apogon, which I actually had looked up before this recording, I think, from which, which is the, it's his last album, is it, or the previous one from 2022? I have to admit, I don't speak any Spanish, so that was educational to me to learn the Spanish word for blackout.

59:33Amy Myers Jaffe: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 um 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.

1:00:09Ed Crooks:And hey, listen, 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 Babcock Ranch, which was a 100 % solar community, is that 3 million Floridians were in the dark, but Babcock 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 it?

1:00:43Julian Nebreda:My own view on this is that Amy will probably not necessarily disagree. I do think that this, you know, distributed generation, we should think about a mixed system. What do I mean by this? Communities having the ability to sustain themselves will not connect it to or essentially sustain themselves, not to connect it to a national grid, but having a national grid that will make it more efficient. And that combination is the right approach. So you think about 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 or import electricity for that community use.

1:01:28Julian Nebreda: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, disconnect yourself and ensure that you can keep. I think a combination like that is a way to work on this. You need to be using, 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 based on distributed systems.

1:02:10Julian Nebreda:You know that? Your resiliency of the national grid depends on your ability to connect a distributed system. I think that will be, for Puerto Rico, will be probably the most efficient way to deliver that. There are some times, unfortunately, politicians get involved in discussions that are more ideological, try to win political points, and actually resolving the short-term urgency. Hopefully, they were all watching yesterday. But they're all working to the... Well, and...

1:02:47Amy Myers Jaffe:with all those issues, yeah. And hopefully also they're listening to this podcast. I think that's fantastic that we can have this very interesting debate. Very interesting debate inspired by watching a Super Bowl halftime show. So I have to say, earns a lot of respect for that. Well, unfortunately, we do have to leave it there, but it's been fantastic talking to you. Many thanks, Julian. It's great.

1:03:10Julian Nebreda:I enjoyed it very, very much. I want to be part of this gang.

1:03:14Amy Myers Jaffe: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.

1:03:22Ed Crooks:Yeah, I'm sure, Ed. Thanks so much. It's really been a pleasure today.

1:03:26Amy Myers Jaffe:Absolutely. Thanks to our producers, Stuart Duffy, Toby Biggins-Gilchrist and Dan Cottrell. 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.

1:03:49Thank you.