Speaker 1: Pushkin. America's power grid is arguably the largest machine ever
Speaker 1: built in the history of the world. Thousands of power plants,
Speaker 1: millions of miles of power lines, all delivering exactly as
Speaker 1: much power as everybody wants, almost all of the time. Now,
Speaker 1: in order to become more efficient and to move away
Speaker 1: from fossil fuel, that machine has to be completely rebuilt.
Speaker 1: The other day I talked to one of the people
Speaker 1: who's rebuilding it. You're wearing a bright yellow vet, like
Speaker 1: a neon yellow work vest, got a little American flag
Speaker 1: in the corner. So where are you right now that
Speaker 1: you need that vest?
Speaker 2: Well, I'm in the factory and we're in West Virginia.
Speaker 2: It's about five hundred thousand square feet under roof that
Speaker 2: we have right now, and the activity under that roof
Speaker 2: is everything from cell assembly. So we're operating that line
Speaker 2: to finish in construction of the building.
Speaker 1: So you're building batteries at the factory and you're also
Speaker 1: building more factory at the.
Speaker 2: Factory, exactly, yes, all simultaneously.
Speaker 1: I'm Jacob Goldstein, and this is what's your problem? The
Speaker 1: show where I talk to people who are trying to
Speaker 1: make technological progress. My guest today is Matteo Haemio. He's
Speaker 1: the co founder and CEO of Form Energy. Matteo started
Speaker 1: his company because he realized that in order to rebuild
Speaker 1: the grid, in order to move off fossil fuels, the
Speaker 1: world will very likely need batteries that are profoundly different
Speaker 1: than the batteries we have now. Specifically, Matteo's problem is this,
Speaker 1: how do you build batteries at scale that provide affordable
Speaker 1: backup power to the grid, not for two hours, four hours,
Speaker 1: or six hours, but for one one hundred hours. Matteo
Speaker 1: has been working on batteries for about twenty years. He's
Speaker 1: been doing it since before it was cool, and back
Speaker 1: in two thousand and nine he went to work at Tesla.
Speaker 2: So I went there specifically to put batteries on the grid,
Speaker 2: to take that technology and the balance of system which
Speaker 2: Tesla is excellent at, and take it out of the
Speaker 2: car and put it on the grid. And JB. Strabo,
Speaker 2: who is the CTO and my boss at Tesla while
Speaker 2: I was there, shared that vision and you know, in
Speaker 2: fact has always been a leader on this stuff, and
Speaker 2: so he gave me the room to run to do
Speaker 2: that internally in Tessa.
Speaker 1: And so you basically started the Tesla powerwall business.
Speaker 2: There is that, right, that's right, more than just the
Speaker 2: power wall, so what we call the power pack and
Speaker 2: subsequently megapac, but batteries on the grid, yes, exactly.
Speaker 1: So what is the limit of lithium and batteries? I mean,
Speaker 1: your company now is not a lithium ion battery company.
Speaker 1: Is there sort of a moment when you realize that
Speaker 1: lithium ion batteries are not going to solve all of
Speaker 1: the problems that need to be solved to shift to
Speaker 1: all renewable energy all the time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, lithium mind batteries are a fantastic technology, but like
Speaker 2: any battery technology, there is a compromise somewhere, and in
Speaker 2: the case of lithium ion, it is cost. They are
Speaker 2: phenomenally energy dense, they cycle wonderfully, they are produced at
Speaker 2: massive scale, they're very they are in fact very safe,
Speaker 2: but they cost a lot for the kinds of problems
Speaker 2: that we also want to solve on the grid. Not
Speaker 2: just single digit duration hours intermittency challenges, right the sun
Speaker 2: going down and then coming back every morning, but multiple
Speaker 2: days of duration or even seasonal imbalances, and that duration
Speaker 2: of challenge. Lithium mind simply is not suited purely from
Speaker 2: a cost perspective to address, And so that was the
Speaker 2: challenge that I went after as soon as I left us.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about Let's talk about duration, because that's
Speaker 1: obviously central to what you're doing. How long are lithium
Speaker 1: batteries sort of techno economically useful for like, presumably you
Speaker 1: could just keep adding them and you could have as
Speaker 1: much duration as you want with lithium ion batteries, but
Speaker 1: it would be wildly expensive and nobody's ever going to
Speaker 1: do it right. So for how long are they actually
Speaker 1: economically efficient for energy storage on the grid.
Speaker 2: Well, today, most of the lithium mind that's being put
Speaker 2: on the grid is between two and four hour rated
Speaker 2: power duration. So at its rated power, you start using
Speaker 2: the battery and it's empty in two or four hours.
Speaker 2: And what's been interesting is to see that duration evolve
Speaker 2: over time. So when the first lithium batteries were put
Speaker 2: on the grid, they were rated at fifteen minutes of duration,
Speaker 2: and then it crept up to thirty minutes, and then
Speaker 2: it's an hour, and you know, now it's two to
Speaker 2: four hours.
Speaker 1: And is that just a function of the batteries getting cheaper,
Speaker 1: so you can.
Speaker 2: In yeah, purely a function of cost, and so you
Speaker 2: you can take that cost and duration pairing and see
Speaker 2: where it's going to go. As certain costs, there's a
Speaker 2: there's a duration that is directly implied as a result,
Speaker 2: and so we know where the cost curve for lithium
Speaker 2: mine is going, and therefore we know where the duration
Speaker 2: is also going.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about that two to four hour duration
Speaker 1: that lithium ion batteries are at. Now, Like that seems
Speaker 1: very useful in the context of like those moments when
Speaker 1: it's a hot day and everybody gets home from work
Speaker 1: and turns up the air conditioner, and you know, traditionally
Speaker 1: we're now still in many places utilities have to turn
Speaker 1: on these very inefficient gas powered peaker plants, right, and
Speaker 1: if we can use lithium ion batteries to solve that,
Speaker 1: to prevent that from happening, like, that's great, right, Like
Speaker 1: that is a very useful step in the evolution away
Speaker 1: from fossil fuel. Precise why is that insufficient? Like, what's
Speaker 1: the next thing that we need that.
Speaker 2: We don't have, Well, the next thing that we don't
Speaker 2: have is what happens if you have one day that's
Speaker 2: like that, and then the next day that's like that,
Speaker 2: and the next day that's like that. You know, stressing
Speaker 2: the peak multiple days in a row. And it could
Speaker 2: be a stress that comes from heat, or it could
Speaker 2: be a stress that comes from cold, or could be
Speaker 2: a stress that comes from cloud cover storms. Right, because
Speaker 2: you know, one premise, of course, of the four hour
Speaker 2: battery is that you can recharge it when you need to,
Speaker 2: And all of a sudden, if you're in a weather
Speaker 2: event where recharging is highly uneconomic or it's not even possible,
Speaker 2: then then different solutions are needed, and different durations are
Speaker 2: also needed. So how do you ride through entirely these
Speaker 2: multi day duration weather events which we see in every
Speaker 2: market around the world.
Speaker 1: So if we're at like four hours, there's any number
Speaker 1: of sort of hours, there's any amount of duration that
Speaker 1: you could kind of try and tackle next, right, it
Speaker 1: could be twelve or it could be twenty four. Now,
Speaker 1: but you end up going all the way to one
Speaker 1: hundred or one hundred ish, which I assume you didn't
Speaker 1: pick just because it's a satisfying round number, although it
Speaker 1: is a satisfying round number, Like why why do you
Speaker 1: decide to go all the way from four to one hundred.
Speaker 2: It's a great question before in fact, we even started
Speaker 2: the company, and the question was, well, how do you
Speaker 2: solve the seasonal challenge? Right, that sort of winter to
Speaker 2: summer challenge for energy storage? And it's you can sort
Speaker 2: of have a gut sense for it. Well, but it
Speaker 2: covers a very wide range. Do we need ten hours?
Speaker 2: Do we need two thousand hours? So how do we
Speaker 2: win of that down? And well, this is how we
Speaker 2: framed it up. What duration energy storage do you need
Speaker 2: to solve those problems? And then what is implied about
Speaker 2: the cost for that and can you build something that
Speaker 2: actually hits that cost target? And so the one hundred
Speaker 2: hours falls out of that very deep technical exercise. If
Speaker 2: we say to take the state my home state of California,
Speaker 2: for example, one percent of the carbon emissions on the
Speaker 2: electric grid comes from natural gas. There is no more
Speaker 2: coal in state of California, and if you look at
Speaker 2: the way that the natural gas fleet participates in that system,
Speaker 2: if we want to be able to drive to a
Speaker 2: deeper decarbonization for that particular grid, which California does legislatively,
Speaker 2: it's bound to, then we have to functionally replace at
Speaker 2: least some of those natural gas plants. And when we
Speaker 2: look at what the battery needs to do technically, it
Speaker 2: needs to be able to provide that at least four
Speaker 2: day duration range. So just functionally, that's what it has
Speaker 2: to do. It's got to cover those cloudy you know,
Speaker 2: three or four days in a row when the solar
Speaker 2: is not really contributing to the system.
Speaker 1: And so in the case of California, you have the
Speaker 1: law on your side exactly. It's like, well, these utilities
Speaker 1: are going to have to buy something, so let's figure
Speaker 1: out how to be the ones to sell it to them.
Speaker 1: And in particular, what they're going to need to buy
Speaker 1: is order of magnitude days, not hours, not weeks of
Speaker 1: energy storage.
Speaker 2: That's right, And if you need those days, then the
Speaker 2: cost falls out of that and you have to be
Speaker 2: somewhere around twenty dollars per kilo whatt hour again one
Speaker 2: tenth maybe the future cost of lithium ion. That's where
Speaker 2: we started, and so that's where the pairing of one
Speaker 2: hundred hours and roughly twenty dollars per kilo era comes in.
Speaker 2: It all falls out of the modeling that is done
Speaker 2: to really understand the electric system and how it operates
Speaker 2: as a portfolio.
Speaker 1: So now you have this frame and you've got to
Speaker 1: figure out how to build a battery that has a
Speaker 1: sufficient duration at a low enough cost. And there's a
Speaker 1: lot of options, right, there's a lot of like weird
Speaker 1: fun things people are trying to do the thing you're
Speaker 1: trying to do, Right, So how do you get to
Speaker 1: where you get to?
Speaker 2: Well, we started doing a bakeoff. Essentially, we didn't we
Speaker 2: didn't pick the technology. We knew that design space we
Speaker 2: had to operate inside of, and that was that one
Speaker 2: hundred hour twenty dollars per killer hour range. And we
Speaker 2: had a couple contending chemistries that we liked. One was
Speaker 2: sulfur based, the other was iron based. We had some
Speaker 2: other ideas as well, but when we first founded the
Speaker 2: company and took investment, our promise for that to those investors,
Speaker 2: for the very first round of funding was we will
Speaker 2: identify the most promising chemistry, not that we were going
Speaker 2: to solve it or that we could prove that we
Speaker 2: had a market.
Speaker 1: So people are giving you money to build batteries and
Speaker 1: you didn't even know what the batteries were going to
Speaker 1: be exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but to be clear, that's because the opportunity is
Speaker 2: overwhelmingly compelling. Right, this is a trillion dollar market if
Speaker 2: you can get it right, and so that's why it
Speaker 2: was worth it to even pursue this experiment from the beginning.
Speaker 2: And so we had a couple of different technologies that
Speaker 2: we evaluated, and at the end of the first year,
Speaker 2: it was clear that iron air was the one that
Speaker 2: had the greatest chance to succeed. The entitled costs was there,
Speaker 2: the entitled embodiment of that cost as a real device
Speaker 2: was there, and the performance was there. And so that's
Speaker 2: the one that we picked, and that's the one that
Speaker 2: we said, this is what we're going to really devote
Speaker 2: our company towards.
Speaker 1: Tell me about iron, Like, why do you land on iron?
Speaker 2: Well? Iron, Besides, coal's the most mind substance on Earth,
Speaker 2: a few billion tons of it every year.
Speaker 1: Not scarce. One country is not going to lock down
Speaker 1: iron reserves for the planet.
Speaker 2: Definitely not. And you know, if you squint, it's not
Speaker 2: too hard to envision the Earth is just a rusty
Speaker 2: ball basically.
Speaker 1: Feels about right too, like vibes wise rusty balls.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, exactly, And so you're never going to run
Speaker 2: out of it, of course, and you know, humans know
Speaker 2: a lot about iron. Frankly, there was a whole age
Speaker 2: of humanity that where we really played around it.
Speaker 1: It's like, well, stone not great as a battery, Bronze
Speaker 1: too expensive, Wait a minute.
Speaker 2: And so we like the idea that there is a
Speaker 2: substance that that a lot is known about but had
Speaker 2: never really been brought into the modern understanding. Electric and
Speaker 2: other iron batteries are out there. So, for example, Thomas Edison,
Speaker 2: the battery that he went to market with is a
Speaker 2: nickel iron battery using an iron anode, and that was
Speaker 2: over one hundred years ago now, and so a lot
Speaker 2: is known relatively speaking about iron anuts, but it's not
Speaker 2: an art that has been really advanced recently. And so
Speaker 2: where we started from was the best understanding that was
Speaker 2: out there about iron air, which actually comes from the
Speaker 2: nineteen seventies roughly. There was some work that was done
Speaker 2: recently at of one academic labit, but not too much.
Speaker 2: And we saw that the performance metrics that Westinghouse was
Speaker 2: able to get at a study that they did at
Speaker 2: the behest of the US Department of Energy, that if
Speaker 2: we could achieve what they had done fifty years ago.
Speaker 2: Then we had a minimum of a viable product, and
Speaker 2: we thought, we think we could probably do that.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's the basic idea, like iron is cheap
Speaker 1: and big and heavy and not that energy dense. Of course,
Speaker 1: nobody's gonna use it for a laptop or a car.
Speaker 1: It's like the opposite of what you want for a
Speaker 1: laptop or a car. But like you don't actually care
Speaker 1: in this instance if it's big and heavy, because you're
Speaker 1: just gonna put it out whatever in the desert anyways,
Speaker 1: where there's a ton of space exactly.
Speaker 2: And again, the overriding consideration here for the selection of
Speaker 2: a chemistry to pursue is cost, and specifically capex cost,
Speaker 2: and back to your earlier question, the things that we
Speaker 2: can trade off as a result. I'll give you one
Speaker 2: example cycle life.
Speaker 1: You know with you my.
Speaker 2: Batteries cycle phenomenally well thousands of times.
Speaker 1: Cycle life meaning charge and discharge and charge.
Speaker 2: Charge and discharge.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 2: But to give you an example for the way that
Speaker 2: technically we can think about a trade off in pursuit
Speaker 2: a very low cost. If I am building a battery
Speaker 2: that let's just say, discharges over the course of a
Speaker 2: week to make this easy and charges over the course
Speaker 2: of a week of efficiency. Then the maximum number number
Speaker 2: of cycles I can get in the year is twenty six, right,
Speaker 2: theoretical maximum, and over the course of a twenty year
Speaker 2: project life, it's roughly five hundred, a far cry from
Speaker 2: the thousands and thousands of cycles that lithium mine is
Speaker 2: pursuing because it needs, right, I have to be very
Speaker 2: good at charging and discharging hundreds of times, but that
Speaker 2: is a materially different challenge than thousands of times. Right.
Speaker 1: So you're close now to having real working batteries out
Speaker 1: in the world. You've been working on it for years.
Speaker 1: Is there an example of a thing that you figured
Speaker 1: out between when you started and now?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So, to be clear, we have working batteries out
Speaker 2: there in the grid right now. So we deployed our
Speaker 2: first battery connected to the grid charging and discharging about
Speaker 2: a year ago. So it was in summer of last
Speaker 2: year that our first one went out in the world
Speaker 2: and we learned a lot from that. But as far
Speaker 2: as a learning that we had along the way, it's
Speaker 2: about iron. Maybe not surprisingly. You know, iron reacts to
Speaker 2: different levels, so you have different states of oxidation for
Speaker 2: iron right, So.
Speaker 1: Basically rust in the case. That's right, that's right, that's right.
Speaker 2: And the first reaction is iron to iron hydroxide, so
Speaker 2: you have FH right, one hydroxide, and there's a theoretical
Speaker 2: limit to the amount of energy you can get out
Speaker 2: of that particular reaction.
Speaker 1: And just to be clear, this is relevant too, because
Speaker 1: your batteries when they're charging and discharging are sort of
Speaker 1: rusting and unrusting. Right, that is a version of what
Speaker 1: is happening. Yeah, that's exactly right.
Speaker 2: That's precisely what's happening. And what we have found is that,
Speaker 2: in fact, the theoretical limit is about thirty percent higher
Speaker 2: than what we originally thought it was. And I can't
Speaker 2: tell you why precisely because there's a lot of trade
Speaker 2: secret involved in this, but that's one learning that we had.
Speaker 1: That's like a basic science insight.
Speaker 2: This is not in the published literature anywhere. This is
Speaker 2: a true discovery by the team at form Energy.
Speaker 1: And tell me about deciding to go trade secret instead
Speaker 1: of patent. You wanted to try and keep it forever,
Speaker 1: why not patented and be sure you own it?
Speaker 2: Well, it's a combination of things. You know, our intellectual
Speaker 2: property approach. He utilizes different different methods depending on what
Speaker 2: it is.
Speaker 1: You figure trade cigarette work for Coca Cola, they work
Speaker 1: for it. Patent there formula years ago. Where would they
Speaker 1: be to day. We'll be back in just a minute.
Speaker 1: So you're actually talking to me today from forms factory
Speaker 1: in weird in West Virginia. Tell me about Tell me
Speaker 1: about the factory. Tell me about weird.
Speaker 2: So Weirden is where we're building this plant, and it's
Speaker 2: the home of what was weird And Steel and it
Speaker 2: was the dominant economic driver for this region in the
Speaker 2: northern what's called the Northern Panhandle of West Virginia. It's
Speaker 2: a stretch of West Virginia that sits between Ohio and Pennsylvania.
Speaker 2: And the plant was one of the most productive plants
Speaker 2: steel plants in the country for a very long time,
Speaker 2: employed about fourteen thousand people in The plant shut in
Speaker 2: the early two thousands, and so that's the site. Most
Speaker 2: of the plant is gone. There's only one remaining structure
Speaker 2: from that plant. But we are on that same historic
Speaker 2: site and it's a huge privilege to be able to
Speaker 2: build this plant here in where is.
Speaker 1: There a practical reason that you're on the site of
Speaker 1: a steel plant. I mean, is there is raw iron
Speaker 1: close by? Are the rail links good?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a phenomenal piece of physical infrastructure, is what
Speaker 2: it comes down to. And that's how most of the
Speaker 2: steel sites were picked originally in the country. You know,
Speaker 2: flat places near rivers with great connectivity to the economy essentially,
Speaker 2: and so that's exactly what this site is. So it's
Speaker 2: right on the Ohio River. There's barge access, which of
Speaker 2: course connects into the Mississippi. There's two rail lines, one
Speaker 2: one which comes directly into our site and another which
Speaker 2: is not very far away, and then phenomenal highway interconnectivity
Speaker 2: to the country as well.
Speaker 1: So you now you have a factory. You were at
Speaker 1: the factory, you're making batteries. You're building more factory so
Speaker 1: you can make more batteries.
Speaker 2: Batteries, that's right.
Speaker 1: What do you have to figure out next? Like what
Speaker 1: is sort of the frontier for you at this point?
Speaker 2: Well, at those point the things we have to figure
Speaker 2: out are the really the scaled manufacturing processes. There's not
Speaker 2: a lot more that we can do in the lab,
Speaker 2: even building sort of production intent size scale systems, which
Speaker 2: we do all the time, and we have to build
Speaker 2: those devices off of the real volume processes. So the
Speaker 2: equipment sets right, the operations right, That's where the risk
Speaker 2: remains in the company, and the only way to retire
Speaker 2: that risk is to take that step into do it.
Speaker 2: And so that's really where the focus is as a
Speaker 2: company is on that next phase to get into startup production,
Speaker 2: to produce those batteries, and to work through the challenges
Speaker 2: that inevitably pop up when you do something for the
Speaker 2: first time at that scale.
Speaker 1: So you can make a battery, the hard thing now
Speaker 1: is to make a thousand batteries or whatever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, at high quality and low cost and low cost.
Speaker 1: And so tell me, when you have like a full
Speaker 1: scale deployment, what'll it look like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it'll look pretty boring, is the short answer.
Speaker 1: And ideally the operation will be super boring, right Well, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: paint drying in a field, that's that's what it literally
Speaker 1: iron rusting. It'll literally be iron resting in a field,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: And unresting. We'll go both ways.
Speaker 1: That's the hard part.
Speaker 2: Yeah, these will because shipping containers, so forty foot containers
Speaker 2: installed in a field. In other words, it will look
Speaker 2: like pretty much any other battery that is installed for
Speaker 2: utilities today, and most people don't know what that looks like,
Speaker 2: but it is just shipping containers in salt on pads
Speaker 2: in a rays in a field. And so the size
Speaker 2: of these projects ranges from dozens of those enclosures to
Speaker 2: hundreds or even thousands in some cases.
Speaker 1: Your initial your initial projects are dozens, I imagine that's correct.
Speaker 2: So the first projects that we're doing are generally be
Speaker 2: around ten megawatts each, So that's what these utilities. They
Speaker 2: range from five to fifteen, but let's just say they're ten.
Speaker 2: And so at ten megawats one hundred hours, that's a
Speaker 2: thousand megawatt hours, right, And that puts these initial batteries
Speaker 2: that we're putting in the field, at least from an
Speaker 2: energy perspective, as some of the largest batteries ever deployed
Speaker 2: on the grid.
Speaker 1: So you talked about, you know, having to scale, right,
Speaker 1: having to figure out how to build thousands of batteries
Speaker 1: that are cheap and reliable. Is there like a particular
Speaker 1: piece of that that you're trying to figure out right now,
Speaker 1: or a particular piece of it that seems frankly daunting.
Speaker 2: So the category of challenges that we have in front
Speaker 2: of us are squarely in the engineering and specifically manufacturing
Speaker 2: engineering challenge. How can go wrong is inevitably things pop
Speaker 2: up when you're doing manufacturing at scale for the first time,
Speaker 2: and so generally these are challenges that involve sort of
Speaker 2: days to weeks of challenge that you need to solve,
Speaker 2: but you can inevitably solve them with a good team
Speaker 2: who knows what it's doing, and so that's what we've built.
Speaker 2: I think the biggest risk for us now, frankly is
Speaker 2: hiring to fully build out that team to be able
Speaker 2: to do that on time and the way that we
Speaker 2: need to. But I'm not worried at all about whether
Speaker 2: there's some technical challenge that will pop up that we
Speaker 2: cannot solve. We are through that phase of what's needed
Speaker 2: and it truly is an execution play from here. There's
Speaker 2: no magic pixie dust required. We don't need to say
Speaker 2: any prayers over a piece of technology to hope that
Speaker 2: it works. We know that it works, and we know
Speaker 2: that it works at the scale, but we need to
Speaker 2: go do it, and so that's the main challenge.
Speaker 1: And then in the media term, I mean other people
Speaker 1: are working on other kinds of batteries, other kinds of
Speaker 1: energy storage, of long duration energy storage, I mean, tell
Speaker 1: me about that sort of competitive landscape, like, what are
Speaker 1: the other technologies that you think are compelling in kind
Speaker 1: of similar duration.
Speaker 2: Well, that term long duration energy storage is an interesting
Speaker 2: one because it is used very broadly today, and that's
Speaker 2: why we actually prefer the term multi day duration storage
Speaker 2: because it puts a little bit more precision around what
Speaker 2: we're doing specifically. So long duration energy storage is used
Speaker 2: today to refer to six hours of lithium ion.
Speaker 1: For you're like fat, you call that log It's like
Speaker 1: I get out of bed in the morning, I do think.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, you know, for litium mine, it is long
Speaker 2: compared to what it used to be, but it's fairly incremental.
Speaker 1: Well, who else is going for multi day? Like? Tell
Speaker 1: me other compelling multi day storage techniques.
Speaker 2: So it's not so much that there's other storage technologies,
Speaker 2: it's that there are other technologies that could act as
Speaker 2: a substitute for what we're doing. So for example, nuclear power,
Speaker 2: carbon capture on thermal plants, for example, hydrogen is also
Speaker 2: a possibility there. Or even if you want to transmission,
Speaker 2: if we had a perfectly interconnected globe for transmission, we
Speaker 2: would never need to store energy at all.
Speaker 1: Right, Oh, interesting, right, because the sun is always shining somewhere.
Speaker 2: That's right. One eighth of the world is enjoying a
Speaker 2: summer afternoon at all. Tests right, Yeah, So now that's
Speaker 2: a thought experiment.
Speaker 1: And do you like I mean, obviously that's the sort
Speaker 1: of limit case that's not going to happen. But when
Speaker 1: you think about reasons you might not win in the
Speaker 1: long run, For lack of a better word, I don't
Speaker 1: love that word there. You think more about universes where
Speaker 1: we don't actually need one hundred hours of storage, universe
Speaker 1: where there is great carbon capture on natural gas plants,
Speaker 1: or more nuclear power, better transmission.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't think about it quite that way. When
Speaker 2: we think about competition, we need to make sure it's
Speaker 2: in the context of the market that we're opp and
Speaker 2: this is very much right now a non zero sum market.
Speaker 2: In other words, it is growing incredibly fast and large.
Speaker 2: And you know, the whole industry is just accelerating in
Speaker 2: a way that it has not essentially since it was built.
Speaker 2: So we're seeing load growth, you know, four or five
Speaker 2: percent or more in some cases. It hasn't been like
Speaker 2: that for literally fifty or sixty years.
Speaker 1: Well, growth is basically demand.
Speaker 2: For demand going up, that's right.
Speaker 1: And that's like electrification plus artificial intelligence. I mean, it
Speaker 1: is essentially those two drivers exactly.
Speaker 2: That's exactly correct. Electrification of cars for you know, residential
Speaker 2: applications and electrification of industrial processes. You know, very large consumers,
Speaker 2: you know, transportation and industry, very large consumers of energy overall,
Speaker 2: and now a lot of that is becoming electric energy
Speaker 2: that they're consuming. And so our position in the market
Speaker 2: is very strong because we have a solution that is
Speaker 2: showing up in irrelevant timeframe and it can scale in
Speaker 2: a way that our customers. These utilities need it to scale.
Speaker 2: They need all solutions to show up. We've yet to
Speaker 2: have a conversation with any utility who says I'm only
Speaker 2: going with one solution.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're trying to build nuclear, they're trying to build
Speaker 2: more natural gas, they're trying to build as much renewables
Speaker 2: as they possibly can, and they're going to need this
Speaker 2: kind of multiday duration storage. So it's it's such a
Speaker 2: growth market for us that in some ways, if you
Speaker 2: can show up with a product that meets the specification
Speaker 2: on time and at scale, they will buy it just
Speaker 2: about as much of it as you possibly can supply.
Speaker 1: So if things go the way you hope they will go,
Speaker 1: what will what will the world look like in whatever
Speaker 1: the medium term, whatever that is for you, five years maybe.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So in five years in the industry that we're
Speaker 2: in form could be a spectacular commercial success of an
Speaker 2: amazing business and still have relatively small impact just because
Speaker 2: of the size and scale of the industry overall. And
Speaker 2: I'll give you one point of reference. The US today
Speaker 2: has about twelve hundred gigawatts of installed capacity generation capacity
Speaker 2: in it and over the next five years, if we
Speaker 2: absolutely blow out of the water, we may make ten
Speaker 2: gigawatts worth of projects, which is a lot, which is
Speaker 2: a tremendous amount, right for one company to produce.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's a lot of shipping containers of iron batteries.
Speaker 2: That's right. And so it will take probably another ten
Speaker 2: years past that to see the kind of multi day
Speaker 2: stores that we're bringing into the market have a real
Speaker 2: material effect in the industry. And I think that we
Speaker 2: can get there for sure, but it requires scaling very
Speaker 2: quickly in multiple markets Europe, Asia, Africa to be able
Speaker 2: to drive the possibilities for what this kind of new
Speaker 2: type of asset in the electric system can do.
Speaker 1: So should that make me worry about the pace of decarbonization?
Speaker 1: I mean, if it's you know, even if you succeed wildly,
Speaker 1: you know, you will be very small relative to the
Speaker 1: whatever to global demand for energy. Like I get that,
Speaker 1: that's good for you, and in the long term it's
Speaker 1: good for the world. But is it worrying in the
Speaker 1: kind of short to medium term? Is it a reminder
Speaker 1: of how hard decarbonization is at various margins?
Speaker 2: Well, it certainly is a reminder of just how hard
Speaker 2: it is and how large the challenges, the scale of
Speaker 2: the challenge, And another way of thinking about it is
Speaker 2: to achieve the goals that have been laid out by
Speaker 2: governments across the globe. Roughly one hundred and fifty trillion
Speaker 2: dollars of investment are required through twenty fifty.
Speaker 1: Also good for you, but worry also good worrying.
Speaker 2: The question is how quickly can we go from making
Speaker 2: the plans and having the technologies that are nascent and
Speaker 2: scaling up to actually implementing them at scale. And so
Speaker 2: what is not so concerned to me is between twenty
Speaker 2: thirty and twenty forty. I see a huge amount of
Speaker 2: opportunity to scale exactly what we're talking about, and again
Speaker 2: it's in all of the above scenario, So I see
Speaker 2: a lot of effort that's going into just the acceleration
Speaker 2: broadly speaking, and I do think that what Form is
Speaker 2: bringing to the table can play a meaningful role in
Speaker 2: that and it will take fifteen years to scale it up,
Speaker 2: and it's very possible, and we need a huge diversity
Speaker 2: of resources to meet the demand. Our existence in many
Speaker 2: ways is based on electricity these days, and we need
Speaker 2: all the different kinds of solutions to show up, and
Speaker 2: multi data, viason storage and specifically iron air batteries can
Speaker 2: play a meaningful role in that entire system and not
Speaker 2: only drive reliability up and cost down, but also meet
Speaker 2: the goals of load growth is a really big challenge,
Speaker 2: and meet the decarbonization goals of the electric system overall.
Speaker 2: And having this kind of asset just makes solving those
Speaker 2: challenges a lot easier.
Speaker 1: We'll be back in a minute with the lightning round.
Speaker 1: That's the end of the ADS. Now, of course, it's
Speaker 1: time for the lightning round, So tell me about vocational discernment.
Speaker 2: Well, I think you're referring to the fact that I
Speaker 2: went to Divinity school at one point. This is, in fact,
Speaker 2: right before I joined the battery industry, I went to
Speaker 2: the Yale Divinity School, and Yale is a great place.
Speaker 2: I did consider going into the ministry. And one of
Speaker 2: the reasons why Yale me School is a great place
Speaker 2: is because they put you through the vocational discernment process,
Speaker 2: a very intentional process to discern if indeed the ordained
Speaker 2: ministry is right for you. And I realized very early
Speaker 2: on that I was not cut out at all to
Speaker 2: be an ordained minister, which is which is fortunate.
Speaker 1: You discerned that it was not your vocation. That's right.
Speaker 2: It's a great thing to learn early on in the process.
Speaker 2: And and so I quickly realized if not that, then
Speaker 2: what and and so taking those same skills, because they
Speaker 2: are skills you can apply to a lot of, you know, mindsets.
Speaker 2: I really tried to figure out what what did I
Speaker 2: want to work on? I do want to work on.
Speaker 2: I have always wanted to work on something that I
Speaker 2: felt was meaningful and impactful, and and so for me,
Speaker 2: I just kept coming back to energy for for a
Speaker 2: lot of reasons. As a way to really make lives
Speaker 2: better in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: One of the other elements of vocational discernment is you
Speaker 2: identify sort of key features of yourself, your personality, if
Speaker 2: you want. And one thing that I have come to
Speaker 2: learn about myself, not just them, but over a lot
Speaker 2: of time is I'm a pretty patient person for the
Speaker 2: things that I think are worthwhile, and so I was
Speaker 2: prepared to pursue something that I thought might take a
Speaker 2: decade or two, and that's what has happened. But I've
Speaker 2: stuck with it since then, and I'm glad of it.
Speaker 2: It's been it's been a great rite.
Speaker 1: Why did you think you might want to be a priest?
Speaker 2: Well, what I think I want to be a priest
Speaker 2: was because I am attracted to a lot of the
Speaker 2: intellectual elements of religion, and that is not the vocation.
Speaker 2: It turns out. I'm much more attracted to problems solving
Speaker 2: than problem listening, which is a large part of being
Speaker 2: a being a minister. So that's what I thought, But
Speaker 2: there's there. I have a huge fascination intellectually with religion
Speaker 2: and with the notion of God, and it was something
Speaker 2: that I wanted to spend time really thinking carefully about.
Speaker 1: What's something you learned in divinity school that's helpful in
Speaker 1: running a company.
Speaker 2: So so many different things, you know, the study of
Speaker 2: theology in many ways is the study of human nature.
Speaker 2: And one thing about batteries that I love it. You
Speaker 2: know why it continues to think as a category, continue
Speaker 2: to fascinate me now and half since I started, is
Speaker 2: that batteries are in some ways like humans. They're all
Speaker 2: flawed in some way, and there is no perfect battery,
Speaker 2: and they can always be improved. That's the other thing
Speaker 2: I like about them.
Speaker 1: That seems like a particularly Christian reader of batteries, if
Speaker 1: I might say, so.
Speaker 2: There's there's yeah there, you know, there's no We don't
Speaker 2: know the limits of how batteries can be. And if
Speaker 2: you're curious enough then then then the rewards can be fantastic.
Speaker 2: And the also the other thing is if you find
Speaker 2: the right fit for the battery, then the flaws don't
Speaker 2: matter so much. And that's also sort of the way
Speaker 2: humans are. Right.
Speaker 1: So you and John Steinbeck share a hometown, Salinas, California.
Speaker 1: What's one Steinbeck book? If somebody's going to read one
Speaker 1: John Steinbeck book?
Speaker 2: What should they read, Well, east of Eden, but that's
Speaker 2: a long one, so there are shorter ones. You know.
Speaker 2: It sounds strange, but dubious Battle is one that really
Speaker 2: stuck with me. It's about labor relations, which was like.
Speaker 1: The family business for you growing up, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, my father was a lawyer for farm workers and
Speaker 2: my mom was a teacher in public schools for basically
Speaker 2: kids who farm workers.
Speaker 1: What's one thing that you wish more people understood about
Speaker 1: energy or power?
Speaker 2: Well, back to some of our earlier comments, just the
Speaker 2: scale of the industry and this and the size of
Speaker 2: things that happened. It really boggles the mind to try
Speaker 2: and appreciate how big of an industry it is and
Speaker 2: how much change is happening to such a large industry.
Speaker 1: I think it was maybe lots of people have said it,
Speaker 1: but I heard Jigger Shaw describe the grid as like
Speaker 1: the biggest machine ever built in the history of the world,
Speaker 1: which is a kind of rad way to think of it.
Speaker 1: Like it's this one giant machine, and not only is
Speaker 1: it giant, it has to work all the time, right,
Speaker 1: Like that's the other wild like you can never ever
Speaker 1: turn it off, that's right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And not only that We're matching supply and demand
Speaker 2: instantaneously at all times, right, That's how the machine operates.
Speaker 2: So the way it operates is also just, you know,
Speaker 2: phenomenally complex, and it's amazing that we're able to have
Speaker 2: as much reliability as we do today. And so you know,
Speaker 2: the grid will be reinvented, it will be rebuilt actually
Speaker 2: and rebuilt again over the next thirty or four years.
Speaker 2: And so the scale, which is again hard to approximate,
Speaker 2: but appreciating that is key to understanding the direction that
Speaker 2: it will take and what will be involved to effect
Speaker 2: this change.
Speaker 1: It's like, is it the ship of theseus? Is that
Speaker 1: the one? It's like the giant, the giant like national
Speaker 1: scale ship of Thesius, where it's like the whole grid
Speaker 1: will be different and you won't even notice, You'll just
Speaker 1: flip the switch and the lights will go on.
Speaker 2: That is what we're heading for for sure.
Speaker 1: Matteo Hademillo is the co founder and CEO of Form Energy.
Speaker 1: Today's show was produced by Gabriel Hunter Chang. It was
Speaker 1: edited by Lyddy jen Kott and engineered by Sarah Bruguer.
Speaker 1: You can email us at problem at Pushkin dot FM.
Speaker 1: I'm Jacob Goldstein, and we'll be back next week with
Speaker 1: another episode of What's Your Problem.