Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: Today's show is a good show, and I can give
Speaker 2: you several reasons why. One, it's a show about the
Speaker 2: energy transition, so we got the high stakes of climate change. Two,
Speaker 2: it's more specifically about long duration energy storage, which may
Speaker 2: be the key problem to solve in climate change now
Speaker 2: that solar power is so cheap but also so intermittent,
Speaker 2: the Sun's not always out, you got to store the energy. Three,
Speaker 2: the story has some very clever, fun technical insights. Four
Speaker 2: we get some real moments of harrowing drama. And finally, five,
Speaker 2: perhaps most surprising, today's show includes a defense of fighting
Speaker 2: in hockey. I'm Jacob Goldstein, and this is what's your problem.
Speaker 2: My guest today is Curtis van Wallingham. He is the
Speaker 2: co founder and CEO of a company called the hygro Store.
Speaker 2: Curtis's problem is this, how can you store energy by
Speaker 2: compressing air in giant underground caverns, and how can you
Speaker 2: do it efficiently almost anywhere in the world. The idea
Speaker 2: of compressed air storage has been around for a long time,
Speaker 2: but it's had some fundamental problems that have limited its use.
Speaker 2: As you'll hear, Curtis thinks he and his colleagues have
Speaker 2: solved those problems. Since co founding the company fifteen years ago,
Speaker 2: Hydrostore has built a fully functioning plant and has recently
Speaker 2: signed multiple billion dollar contracts to build facilities around the world.
Speaker 2: Curtis told me he got interested in compressed air back
Speaker 2: in two thousand and eight when he had kind of
Speaker 2: a weird problem. He was working at a power plant
Speaker 2: that was generating more energy than anyone could use.
Speaker 1: So I was the head of planning a nuclear plant.
Speaker 1: I think it's the world's second largest single site nuclear
Speaker 1: plant in Ontario, called Bruce Power. And because we have
Speaker 1: so much hydro and nuclear in Ontario, when we started
Speaker 1: adding wind and solar, we started to see we had
Speaker 1: too much power. We couldn't export it, and so we
Speaker 1: would have to shed power, which for a nuclear plant
Speaker 1: it means essentially dumping steam into the Great Lakes. But
Speaker 1: it required a lot of manual labor, moving valves and
Speaker 1: doing stuff that it wasn't designed to do. So it
Speaker 1: was driving up maintenance costs.
Speaker 2: And also it's a bummer, right, Like you're generating you
Speaker 2: want to make energy, you don't want to dump steam
Speaker 2: into a lake exactly.
Speaker 1: And so then I tried to build a pump hydro
Speaker 1: plant because back there, this is two thousand and eight,
Speaker 1: the only real commonplace to store power was through pump
Speaker 1: tydro So I tried to find a site and it
Speaker 1: was just impossible to see how you could find a site,
Speaker 1: get permits and build something anywhere near a timeframe.
Speaker 2: And just to be clear, sorry, but pumped hydro is
Speaker 2: is sort of the classic kind of long duration energy storage,
Speaker 2: right where you pump water essentially up a hill from
Speaker 2: some lower level to some higher level when you have
Speaker 2: the power, and then when you when you want to
Speaker 2: discharge the battery, you just let it flow downhill and
Speaker 2: spin a turbine.
Speaker 1: More or less right exactly, any hydro electric dam, just
Speaker 1: stop the dam from producing and start pumping water back
Speaker 1: up to the top reservoir. And so tried to do
Speaker 1: that and realized there was no possible way of doing it.
Speaker 1: So I had a team of five or six people
Speaker 1: at the time, and I asked them to research is
Speaker 1: there other ways of storing power? And that's when I
Speaker 1: came across my co founder Cam who had this idea
Speaker 1: and it's essentially the opposite of pumped hydro. Put air
Speaker 1: underwater and get the buoyancy. So instead of lifting water
Speaker 1: and air, why don't you sink air underwater and get
Speaker 1: the buoyancy. And you know, as an engineer, it was
Speaker 1: kind of intriguing to me. So I thought about it,
Speaker 1: ransom numbers and you know, lo and behold, they said, hey,
Speaker 1: this is compact. It can be easier to site, has
Speaker 1: all the advantages of pump tydro much easier to permit.
Speaker 1: So took the plunge, quit my job, and threw some
Speaker 1: money in and fifteen years later here we are.
Speaker 2: So your co founder's idea, it was a variation on
Speaker 2: this old idea of compressed air. Right, when you have
Speaker 2: more energy than you need, use it to compress air underground,
Speaker 2: and then when you need the energy, sort of blow
Speaker 2: the air back up and use that to generate energy. Right,
Speaker 2: that's the basic idea. It's an old idea, and in
Speaker 2: its basic form, it's pretty limited in what it can do. Right, Like,
Speaker 2: what's the what are the classic problems with compressed air?
Speaker 1: The first one is around how you manage heat. In
Speaker 1: traditional compressed air, they would compress the air, it gets hot,
Speaker 1: they would lose that heat. But put the compressed air
Speaker 1: underground and when you need it to discharge.
Speaker 2: When you say they would lose that heat, what is that?
Speaker 1: What does that mean? They would essentially just compress and
Speaker 1: then hot air would get sent underground and it would
Speaker 1: dissipate into the earth. And then it when it comes
Speaker 1: up and you want expand that air, then the opposite happens.
Speaker 1: It gets very cold, and because there's moisture in the air,
Speaker 1: it'll cause icicles and snow and it'll freeze up your turbine,
Speaker 1: going cryogenic we call it.
Speaker 2: So that's the problem. It's fine, you put it down
Speaker 2: in the earth and the heat dissipates, that's actually okay.
Speaker 2: The problem is when you want to blow it back
Speaker 2: up to spin a turbine, it basically freezes the turbine
Speaker 2: and the turbine snaps or whatever. That's why it's bad.
Speaker 1: Exactly, it'll ce it up and it won't spin, okay,
Speaker 1: And so to prevent that they have to preheat it.
Speaker 1: So they would burn some natural gas. So when the
Speaker 1: air comes up from the cavern, they would heat it
Speaker 1: up so that once it expands, it doesn't drop below zero.
Speaker 2: So A, that's inefficient, it costs money. And then b
Speaker 2: now when we're talking about doing this, to fight climate change.
Speaker 2: It's totally not what you want.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you have less emissions than a gas plant, but
Speaker 1: you still have half the emissions.
Speaker 2: Calling okay, So that's problem number one is you got
Speaker 2: to burn natural gas to heat up the air when
Speaker 2: you're blowing it because it gets really cold. What's problem
Speaker 2: number two with sort of classic compressed air?
Speaker 1: The problem number two is just where can you build them?
Speaker 1: And traditionally you would only build them where there are
Speaker 1: salt caverns, and salt caverns are as rare to find
Speaker 1: as good pumped hydro sites. So once you overlay, where
Speaker 1: does the grid need storage? Where is their transmission? The
Speaker 1: odds that there's a salt cavern there are very very deminimous.
Speaker 1: So it just didn't have.
Speaker 2: Some Why traditionally did it have to be a salt cavern?
Speaker 2: That seems so random.
Speaker 1: Because you need so much air and for the air
Speaker 1: to be at quite high pressures, because it gets kind
Speaker 1: of complicated. But as you think of a scuba tank
Speaker 1: pumping air in, the pressure starts rising very dramatically. Well,
Speaker 1: to get a sufficient amount of air, you got to
Speaker 1: go to really high pressures. That's too high a pressure
Speaker 1: in most rocks that it would just you would lose
Speaker 1: all of the air force its way out.
Speaker 2: So it just dissipates. You pump all this air in
Speaker 2: there and it just goes through whatever cracks or whatever
Speaker 2: little tiny holes there are. The air just kind of
Speaker 2: blows out and you don't have compressed air anymore.
Speaker 1: Exactly where salt is air tight. And so that's why
Speaker 1: you would typically do it in salt. That's why they
Speaker 1: store a lot of the natural gas and salt. But
Speaker 1: that just the salt formations aren't that common and they're
Speaker 1: not where the grid needs them.
Speaker 2: Okay, so these are our two problems and you encounter
Speaker 2: this guy who seems to have solved them. Who is
Speaker 2: the guy and what has he figured out?
Speaker 1: So the guy's name is Cameron Lewis, and he's a
Speaker 1: traditional serial entrepreneur, engineering technician. He worked in the oil
Speaker 1: patch and Canada, repurposing compressors and turbines for use in
Speaker 1: the oil patch. Then he moved to Ontario to start
Speaker 1: developing wind farms and that's when he realized, look, this
Speaker 1: wind is so intermittent. I need storage. And then he
Speaker 1: was like, how do I make storage? And that's when
Speaker 1: his mind started going because he is a true entrepreneur.
Speaker 2: It reminds me I should have had the name at hand.
Speaker 2: But I talked to that guy who who worked as
Speaker 2: an engineer in the in Texas, Texas and Oklahoma and
Speaker 2: and sort of brought the technologies of the fracking boom
Speaker 2: to geothermal energy. It's kind of Ladimer, yeah, Tim Latimer.
Speaker 2: Tim Latimer, some some parallels right to the story.
Speaker 1: Very so.
Speaker 2: So there are these two problems. One you have the
Speaker 2: problem of when you decompress, when you use your compressed
Speaker 2: air gets really cold. And two you have the problem
Speaker 2: that you can only put the compressed air in a
Speaker 2: few places, otherwise it just sort of dissipates. How does
Speaker 2: using water solve each of those problems? First of all,
Speaker 2: how does it solve the the cold problem?
Speaker 1: So what we do is when the air comes out hot,
Speaker 1: it comes out about two hundred and thirty degrees celsius
Speaker 1: from the compressor. We run it through a heat exchanger
Speaker 1: to pull that heat out, and we store it in
Speaker 1: hot water. So on the surface we have a water tank.
Speaker 1: Think of an LNG sphere filled with water now at
Speaker 1: two hundred degrees C. So we captured that energy and
Speaker 1: that heat hot otherwise would have dissipated, and we store
Speaker 1: it and wrap it in insulation. Okay, then when the
Speaker 1: comes back up, we go in reverse to those heat
Speaker 1: exchanges and use that same heat to high heat the
Speaker 1: air so that it doesn't go cryogenic and it eliminates
Speaker 1: the need for natural gas.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's it's elegant, right, It's so elegant because that
Speaker 2: heat is actually energy that in conventional that in conventional
Speaker 2: compressor was just getting lost, right, and then you had
Speaker 2: to provide more energy to heat the air backup. So
Speaker 2: in your model you capture that energy by heating up water,
Speaker 2: and then you use the hot water to heat up
Speaker 2: the air when you're blowing it through the turbine, so
Speaker 2: you don't have to.
Speaker 1: Burn gas exactly, moving the round trip efficiency from thirty
Speaker 1: five percent to seventy percent.
Speaker 2: Satisfying, Very satisfying. Okay. So the other problem is in
Speaker 2: the conventional version, you need AsSalt cavern so that your
Speaker 2: air doesn't just dissipate through whatever the little tiny holes
Speaker 2: in the rock. And why does using water mean you
Speaker 2: don't need that? You can do it in a lot
Speaker 2: more places.
Speaker 1: So the way our cavern works is if you think
Speaker 1: of a cavern where two thousand feet underground we hallow
Speaker 1: out think of cubic football field. We backfill it with
Speaker 1: water a one time fill. When you finish construction, you
Speaker 1: fill it up with water. Okay, Now, when you're pushing
Speaker 1: air in, it's moving the water down and lifting it
Speaker 1: all the way to the surface.
Speaker 2: A ha, So you just did a hand motion that
Speaker 2: I want to explain for people listening. So it's basically
Speaker 2: it like it goes down like whatever in a sink
Speaker 2: in your kitchen sink. It goes down, but then it
Speaker 2: turns back up. It's like a j There's basically a
Speaker 2: pipe that goes down out of the bottom of the
Speaker 2: cavern and then makes a U turn and goes up
Speaker 2: to the surface.
Speaker 1: That's right. And then at the surface we have a
Speaker 1: little pond with enough volume that once the air is
Speaker 1: full of the cavern. I eat caverns filled with air,
Speaker 1: all that water that used to be in the cavern
Speaker 1: has now been lifted up to the surface.
Speaker 2: And why does this solve that problem? Why does that
Speaker 2: mean you don't need a salt.
Speaker 1: Cavern because the air pressure will move the water down
Speaker 1: that jhook and lift to the surface before it would
Speaker 1: put trude through the rocks.
Speaker 2: Okay, so this is a very elegant idea. You're still
Speaker 2: you're working for a nuclear power plant. You come across
Speaker 2: this idea, but you don't decide to try it for
Speaker 2: the nuclear power plant, like what happens next?
Speaker 1: Well, that was my desire, and so I asked him,
Speaker 1: I said, well, what if we wanted to pilot one
Speaker 1: or build one with you? And he basically said, I
Speaker 1: have a company name and a patent and that's it,
Speaker 1: and I don't really know what to do next. And
Speaker 1: then I started looking for other options. There was no
Speaker 1: other options, and I said, look, we're kind of a
Speaker 1: canary in the coal mine. Every utility is going to
Speaker 1: ultimately see these challenges eventually. So I saw the opportunity.
Speaker 1: So I quit my job, drained some savings, and joined
Speaker 1: as the co founder and we started Hydrostore.
Speaker 2: And you know, now, in the past few years, basically
Speaker 2: since solar took off, everybody has been talking about long
Speaker 2: duration storage, right, long duration energy storage. Everybody it was
Speaker 2: not talking about it then what solar power costs? What
Speaker 2: it it costs then ten times what it costs. Now,
Speaker 2: I don't know. It was not at all like it
Speaker 2: is now right. It was not at all obvious that
Speaker 2: solar power is going to be everywhere and the problem
Speaker 2: was going to be storage, Like, what were you thinking
Speaker 2: about at that time?
Speaker 1: In that context, it kind of comes back to the
Speaker 1: nuclear power plant, because we had half of Ontario's grid
Speaker 1: was nuclear that can't turn down and forty percent of
Speaker 1: the rest was hydro that can't turn down.
Speaker 2: Interest.
Speaker 1: So once we added wind and solar, you really started
Speaker 1: to see the swings. And I realized that Ontario's grid
Speaker 1: is very unique. But once once you take away your
Speaker 1: base load, once intermittency is a decent portion of what's left,
Speaker 1: everyone needs storage. And so I realized that Ontario's grid
Speaker 1: was just seeing it first, but that every grid will
Speaker 1: eventually see it when wind and solar penetration rose.
Speaker 2: Interesting, basically you saw it first because nuclear and hydro
Speaker 2: are you uniquely difficult to turn on and off really fast,
Speaker 2: whereas most other places they're using natural gas, they're using coal,
Speaker 2: which you can basically turn on and off. So the
Speaker 2: intermittency was not such an acute problem.
Speaker 1: So early exactly interesting.
Speaker 2: You were right about.
Speaker 1: That, And then once wind and solar started coming on,
Speaker 1: they started saying, well, we need storage, but we only
Speaker 1: need fifteen minutes, and then that turned a half hour,
Speaker 1: than an hour, then two, then four. Now it's eight
Speaker 1: in a lot of markets. Now they're moving to twelve.
Speaker 1: They're even talking forty fifty hours of storage. And it's
Speaker 1: true that as the wind and solar penetration rise, your
Speaker 1: duration of storage keeps growing. And right now I'd say
Speaker 1: roughly a third of the world needs eight hour storage
Speaker 1: and the other two thirds still aren't there yet, but
Speaker 1: it's coming.
Speaker 2: And it's basically, the more wind and solar you have,
Speaker 2: the larger a share of your power, they represent the
Speaker 2: longer duration.
Speaker 1: You need for storage exactly. And you can firm it
Speaker 1: up with natural gas to a point. But then you
Speaker 1: start curtailing so much solar, burning so much natural gas,
Speaker 1: you stop putting solar on, whereas with long duration storage,
Speaker 1: we allow you to keep adding more solar, more wind,
Speaker 1: and you can that's how you get to one hundred
Speaker 1: percent renewable.
Speaker 2: I mean, long duration storage is clearly the problem at
Speaker 2: this point, right at least in places where there's a
Speaker 2: decent amount of solar or wind, or wires going to
Speaker 2: places where there's a decent amount of solar wind it
Speaker 2: does seem like storage in general and long duration storage
Speaker 2: in particular is the bottleneck.
Speaker 1: Yes, and I think the technologies are there now, but
Speaker 1: we don't have the market structures to properly pay for
Speaker 1: it and compensate it, which is holding it up from
Speaker 1: really taking off. So California, Australia they've been pretty innovative.
Speaker 1: The UK is doing some stuff now, Ontario in Canada,
Speaker 1: but it requires you to change market reform.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I want to get to that. I feel like
Speaker 2: there's a fair bit to talk about in terms of policy,
Speaker 2: but first I want to get you from twenty ten
Speaker 2: to twenty twenty five. So you have essentially an idea, right,
Speaker 2: you have intellectual property and a name and two guys
Speaker 2: in a dream like what I don't want to do
Speaker 2: every day of the last fifteen years, obviously, but like,
Speaker 2: what are a few of the key points, like the
Speaker 2: few key marks you had to hit.
Speaker 1: The first one was we worked with a university, University
Speaker 1: of Windsor to validate the engineering that it would work.
Speaker 1: The heat mass balance and all the basic physics were sound,
Speaker 1: so we did that. Then we ran pool tests, so
Speaker 1: using underwater structures, we were able to show it at
Speaker 1: a very small scale to validate the models in real world.
Speaker 1: Then we moved to a bigger pilot out in a
Speaker 1: lake and we built that to further validate. We had
Speaker 1: a truck with a compressor in it, heat exchangers, balloons
Speaker 1: sunk by concrete out in the lake with a hose
Speaker 1: coming back.
Speaker 2: That's cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah. That was enough to get enough data to get
Speaker 1: enough grant money. We secured about eight nine million of
Speaker 1: grant money. Then we were able to attract the venture
Speaker 1: capital investor our turn Ventures, and Toronto Hydro was willing
Speaker 1: to host a pilot plant, so a grid connected one
Speaker 1: megawatt one megwat hour pilot plant. So we took that
Speaker 1: grant money and the venture money and we're now six
Speaker 1: seven people and we built this pilot plant, grid connected
Speaker 1: and it was pretty neat. We sunk giant structures offshore
Speaker 1: in the lake. So instead of digging a cavern and
Speaker 1: filling it with water, we sunk essentially a structure within
Speaker 1: a lake and connected it back with drill pipe.
Speaker 2: Like like a bubble sitting there on the bottom of
Speaker 2: the lake like a caisson.
Speaker 1: It was massive and so that data it proved that
Speaker 1: everything worked. We optimized the heat exchangers the control system
Speaker 1: and filed a lot more intellectual property and then so
Speaker 1: that was a five year temporary pilot. Once we had
Speaker 1: that data, then the an ISSO was running a procurement
Speaker 1: for piloting long duration storage.
Speaker 2: What's an ISO.
Speaker 1: Electricity system operator here in Ontario, So they ran a pilot,
Speaker 1: we submitted a bid, we won the contract to build
Speaker 1: a plant that had a ten year revenue contract.
Speaker 2: A real thing. So that's a real thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And so that was called our Gottarage facility and
Speaker 1: we turned that on in twenty nineteen and have been
Speaker 1: running it ever since. So then we had we call
Speaker 1: that our commercial reference facility, so it references our technology,
Speaker 1: albeit at a fairly small scale. It's two megawats eight
Speaker 1: megawatt hours. But we ran that and then we brought
Speaker 1: insurance companies through and engineering construction companies and said go
Speaker 1: through this and tell us why this wouldn't work at
Speaker 1: a larger scale. And they were able to then give
Speaker 1: us insurance products and different things that would make a
Speaker 1: larger project bankable.
Speaker 2: It's like you're in the infrastructure business basically, right, and
Speaker 2: so you need like tons of capital, tons of insurance,
Speaker 2: like right, You've got to spend a lot of money now,
Speaker 2: and you'll get paid back every year for whatever twenty
Speaker 2: years or something. Whatever is the life of it. It's
Speaker 2: like a big, hard, complicated Ultimately you wanted to be boring,
Speaker 2: although I'm sure it's not boring yet, business right, right.
Speaker 1: So this was setting us up for that. So then
Speaker 1: this plant kind of got us all the financial instruments
Speaker 1: that we would need to do a big one. So
Speaker 1: then we went and started developing big plants. We now
Speaker 1: are about to start construction in Australia for a one
Speaker 1: billion dollar plant and in California for about a one
Speaker 1: point five billion dollar plant. And because we had the
Speaker 1: pilot plant, we have the insurance, the confidence of the constructors,
Speaker 1: and we're able to get debt and project level equity
Speaker 1: and project finance those first two big plants. So now
Speaker 1: we're in the process of constructing those and once they're operational,
Speaker 1: then the technology should be boring and completely de risk,
Speaker 1: which would then allow utilities to start building it on
Speaker 1: their own balance sheet without us having to mobilize all
Speaker 1: the capital. We would say, you know, utility X or
Speaker 1: a Google or Microsoft or a data center, if you
Speaker 1: want one, you can pay for and build it, and
Speaker 1: we'll just take a technology license fee.
Speaker 2: So you you don't want to be in the infrastructure business.
Speaker 2: You want to be in an intellectual property business, and you're
Speaker 2: just in the in the in the infrastructure business to
Speaker 2: prove that it's a good idea.
Speaker 1: Yes, I think we'll always stay in the infrastructure business.
Speaker 1: It's just the opportunity is so huge, and these plants
Speaker 1: are so big, Like we have eighteen we're developing, but
Speaker 1: each one is a billion and a half. Well that's
Speaker 1: you know, twenty five thirty billion dollars and we're only
Speaker 1: in a handful of markets.
Speaker 2: The idea is you're going to finance all of those
Speaker 2: Like in the current model, you're there, they're yours.
Speaker 1: There, ares We're backed by some pension funds, Goldman Sachs
Speaker 1: and so we've got a decent amount of capital. Will
Speaker 1: keep bringing partners in. But like we're not doing anything
Speaker 1: in India, Japan, China, like I can't do that globally,
Speaker 1: and so the model is allow other people to build
Speaker 1: it on their balance sheet and become that IP licensing
Speaker 1: company while we still do the core infrastructure in the
Speaker 1: markets that we choose to offerate.
Speaker 2: Still to come on the show, competing against lithium ion
Speaker 2: batteries making three hundred failed pitches, and also what political
Speaker 2: change in Washington might mean for Hydrostore. I'd heard Curtis
Speaker 2: talking in other interviews about how hard it was to
Speaker 2: build his company, and of course founders always talk about
Speaker 2: how hard it is to build a company. But somehow,
Speaker 2: when Curtis talked about it, I really felt it, really
Speaker 2: believed him, and so I asked him to tell me
Speaker 2: about some of the moments when it got really hard.
Speaker 1: There were quite a few, to be honest. I mean,
Speaker 1: one certainly was when that structure sunk when we were
Speaker 1: building that first pilot plant.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so tell me about that. So this is the
Speaker 2: first time you're actually doing it. What's happening there? Like
Speaker 2: you're towing does what's it look like?
Speaker 1: It's about the size of a basketball court, maybe twenty
Speaker 1: feet high, and it's all concrete. Think of a culvert
Speaker 1: pipe when you under the highways. Oh yeah, A bunch
Speaker 1: of those strapped together, essentially filled with air, so it
Speaker 1: would float itself almost as a barge that was then
Speaker 1: to be lowered down onto the ground, and then that
Speaker 1: would serve as our air cavity with water moving in
Speaker 1: and out, and so we get it out to the
Speaker 1: deep depths of Lake Ontario and we're towing it and
Speaker 1: a kind of a rogue waves hits and something pops
Speaker 1: and it starts filling with water where it's not supposed to,
Speaker 1: and it drops down and smashes on the seafloor.
Speaker 2: Are you are you watching it? Where are you when
Speaker 2: this is happening.
Speaker 1: I'm at home. Our team is on a barge trailing it,
Speaker 1: and they've got drones down there and cameras. But as
Speaker 1: you can imagine, when it hits all the plume of
Speaker 1: sand and stuff comes up. So it's not till the
Speaker 1: next morning where we see how catastrophic it is. But
Speaker 1: we knew when we lost it, you're not gonna be
Speaker 1: able to lift this thing up. It's so deep divers
Speaker 1: can't even go to access it. I was on the phone,
Speaker 1: like speaker phone, two in the morning at sitting in
Speaker 1: my son's bedroom while he was sleeping with my wife,
Speaker 1: because I was pulling an all night or working and yeah,
Speaker 1: and it was so then we all just kind of
Speaker 1: looked at each other and I told people, safely, wrap
Speaker 1: up the work, go home. We had a meeting the
Speaker 1: next day called the board in and it was essentially,
Speaker 1: we're toast. It was good run, but I think we're done.
Speaker 1: And that's when we said, well, we got all risk insurance.
Speaker 1: Surely this counts. And to the insurance company's credit, they said, yeah,
Speaker 1: you had all risk. Here's four million dollars. Try again
Speaker 1: however you want, but we're not ensuring the second time.
Speaker 2: Oh huh.
Speaker 1: And we pulled it off. The second time. We changed
Speaker 1: design and we got it built and so we had
Speaker 1: our plant operational, which was a great, great milestone for
Speaker 1: the team. There was another time when we realized we
Speaker 1: had it to be a developer. We couldn't just jump
Speaker 1: to that licensing model that we would have to build
Speaker 1: a first big plant.
Speaker 2: So is that your initial So your initial idea was like,
Speaker 2: let's just do a pilot and show that it works
Speaker 2: and then license the technology, because who are we. We're
Speaker 2: not going to get billions of dollars to build a
Speaker 2: gigantic hole in the ground that's got to last for
Speaker 2: twenty years. That's not us exactly.
Speaker 1: And so then we realized that after talking to dozens
Speaker 1: of utilities and developers and everyone said, there's no way
Speaker 1: I'm building the first one on my ballogie.
Speaker 2: Well that's the nature, right, I mean, it's a famously
Speaker 2: conservative in right, it's highly regulated. They're not going to
Speaker 2: take a billion dollar risk on a thing that plausibly
Speaker 2: might not work.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: It wouldn't be crazy if it didn't work.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. And so then I had to call my
Speaker 1: board at the time in and say we have to
Speaker 1: be a developer, and they're like, whoa. That means we
Speaker 1: got to park letters of credit, we need tens of
Speaker 1: millions of dollars, and we got to staff up a
Speaker 1: team that looks completely different than the team of engineers
Speaker 1: we have. So then I got on my bike and
Speaker 1: tried to find an investor that would back that new model,
Speaker 1: and it took me six months.
Speaker 2: Got on your bike, what do you do? You are
Speaker 2: you speaking metaphorically or literally?
Speaker 1: Yeah, speaking metaphorically.
Speaker 2: I was hoping you went on some crazy ride.
Speaker 1: Well it was three hundred investors and I think it
Speaker 1: was three hundred and sixteenth said yes, So it was.
Speaker 1: It was a long road. We ran out of capital.
Speaker 1: I had to mortgage my house. My wife was saying,
Speaker 1: you're not drawing a salary. You've put in our savings.
Speaker 1: Now you've mortgaged our house. How do you know the
Speaker 1: investor going to come? You've already been rejected a couple
Speaker 1: hundred times. And then we eventually found an investor that
Speaker 1: saw the vision and was willing to put that risk
Speaker 1: capital in to become a developer. I then got a
Speaker 1: team that was working at Brookfield Renewable.
Speaker 2: All right, before you keep going, what did you say
Speaker 2: when your wife said, why are you doing this? You
Speaker 2: spent all of our money and more and hundreds of
Speaker 2: people have said no, Like she I mean, in retrospect,
Speaker 2: I guess you were right, But like in any kind
Speaker 2: of expected value rational universe, she's right at that point.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what I said was I believe in it. When
Speaker 1: I look at first principles, the technology makes perfect sense
Speaker 1: and the world's going to need it like and so
Speaker 1: I said, there's no fundamental reason. The whole the reason
Speaker 1: the investors were saying no was I'm not the right one.
Speaker 1: It's too much risk for me, it's too much capital,
Speaker 1: the timeline's too long. No one said I don't think
Speaker 1: it'll work, or I don't think long duration storages needed.
Speaker 1: So to me, I just had to find the right
Speaker 1: fit more so than there was a fundamental problem with
Speaker 1: what I was doing, and I wasn't willing to give
Speaker 1: up because I felt so passionate about climate change. But
Speaker 1: also it was so many people had invested money already
Speaker 1: at that point and the team members that had joined me.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to let everyone down. So I was
Speaker 1: wanting to turn over every stone until there was absolutely
Speaker 1: no possible other option. And luckily an investor that had
Speaker 1: said no before, I picked up the phone and called
Speaker 1: them back and said, you're sure you don't want to
Speaker 1: take a harder look, And he had just received a
Speaker 1: big payday from another investment. I caught him while he
Speaker 1: was in a good mood. He said, you know what, Sure,
Speaker 1: let's be kindled these conversations, and that resulted in an investment,
Speaker 1: really our Series B from Warum Partners, and that allowed
Speaker 1: us to staff up a development team, gave us the
Speaker 1: capital to start investing in our Australian project in California.
Speaker 1: That's really when the ball started rolling. We had that
Speaker 1: Goddarich facility done, and then we started winning contracts and
Speaker 1: getting interconnect and now you know, the team's close to
Speaker 1: one hundred and forty people and in multiple countries and
Speaker 1: going going really well.
Speaker 2: At the moment. I've heard you mentioned this moment in
Speaker 2: was it twenty twenty, like in the intense COVID era
Speaker 2: of COVID when you got a contract in Australia, which
Speaker 2: was that your first like big contract? That's right, tell
Speaker 2: me about that moment.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So we started investing in Australia. It was a
Speaker 1: really creative solution. My commercial team came up, so we
Speaker 1: offered the utility something they weren't really asking for, but
Speaker 1: they saw the benefit of it using storage instead of
Speaker 1: transmission to essentially connect this remote community, and they won
Speaker 1: that by the regulatory rules wasn't allowed. So then we
Speaker 1: had to change the regulatory environment. So it was a
Speaker 1: long road, but their light came on and said, wow,
Speaker 1: this is a dramatically cheaper no emissions. So then they
Speaker 1: became an ally for US Transgrid to help change the
Speaker 1: rules in Australia to allow projects like this to go ahead.
Speaker 1: And so we're going through the rules and then then
Speaker 1: they say here's the contract. And so it's a forty
Speaker 1: year contract, like I say, a billion dollar plant, and
Speaker 1: we're starting the permitting work and engaging the stakeholders and
Speaker 1: then COVID hits and Australia shuts their borders, so then
Speaker 1: we had to strike a deal with a local team
Speaker 1: so that they would be our boots on the ground
Speaker 1: until all the border restrictions lifted, and then we ultimately
Speaker 1: bought that partner back out, So it was a bit
Speaker 1: of an expensive foray, but allowed the project to keep moving.
Speaker 2: Did you think it was there a minute where you
Speaker 2: thought COVID was gonna mean it wouldn't work.
Speaker 1: COVID was another time that had to mortgage the house
Speaker 1: because we needed some bridge financing. No investors were investing.
Speaker 2: Had you paid back the other mortgage or you're just
Speaker 2: the value going off? How do you keep mortgaging your
Speaker 2: house in this story.
Speaker 1: No, I got paid back that one, and then we
Speaker 1: were running out of capital again and we had a
Speaker 1: bunch of interested investors, but then when COVID hit, they said,
Speaker 1: look until I figure out where the world goes, I'm
Speaker 1: not putting new money to work. So we had to
Speaker 1: find a way of bridging ourselves for a year, which
Speaker 1: essentially me and some board members loaned the company money
Speaker 1: from our personal balance sheets to get us through, and
Speaker 1: then we ultimately struck a new investor came in, and
Speaker 1: then ultimately Goldman Sacks in the Canadian pension Plan gave
Speaker 1: us a very large check at the end of twenty one.
Speaker 2: Just so I'm not missing any how many times have
Speaker 2: you mortgaged your house to keep the company going?
Speaker 1: That would be three or four?
Speaker 2: Three or four, Okay, I mean the bigger the company,
Speaker 2: the bigger the company gets, the less helpful it's going
Speaker 2: to be unless you keep buying bigger houses.
Speaker 1: Right, I'm still in the same mouth, So it ain't
Speaker 1: getting any bigger. It's not good.
Speaker 2: It's not gonna do much if you got a hundred
Speaker 2: forty people working for you and you're building billion dollar plants,
Speaker 2: unless it's an amazing house, in which case congratulations. So
Speaker 2: I found out about your company when I read that
Speaker 2: you had been awarded a provisional loan of I think
Speaker 2: it was one point seven billion dollars from the US
Speaker 2: Department of Energy. That was I don't know, a month
Speaker 2: ago or something, which congratulations. But also, the federal government's
Speaker 2: a lot different now than it was a month ago,
Speaker 2: and I'm curious what that means for you. I mean,
Speaker 2: what the what political change in the US in particular,
Speaker 2: means for you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think there's still a bit of uncertainty out there,
Speaker 1: but you know, we started working with the Loan Program
Speaker 1: Office three plus years ago, so they've done a tremendous
Speaker 1: amount of diligence. And this is exactly what this program
Speaker 1: is set up for, is newer technology. G's that we
Speaker 1: have a ton of domestic content and are going to
Speaker 1: show a new technology adding to grid resiliency in the US.
Speaker 1: So that's what the loan is for. It's to provide
Speaker 1: the debt for our project in California. And if you know,
Speaker 1: we're putting in a lot of equity into the project,
Speaker 1: and the debt covers obviously the debt to construct and
Speaker 1: the interest during the construction period. So we're really excited
Speaker 1: about the loan. It's a you know, illegally binding loan,
Speaker 1: but you know, with the new administration, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of things moving around, but I think it's aligned with
Speaker 1: their agenda. It's actually in a Republican county, but it
Speaker 1: drives grid resiliency and lowers energy costs for you know,
Speaker 1: the energy dominance that is required for all the data
Speaker 1: centers and load growth out there. So I think it
Speaker 1: and like I said, it's virtually one hundred percent domestic
Speaker 1: uh labor and content that goes into the project. So
Speaker 1: I think it's it's consistent with the newest administration goals,
Speaker 1: and it's a like I say, a binding loan commitment.
Speaker 1: So we've got a couple conditioned precedents we got to
Speaker 1: get through before it we can start drawing on the loan.
Speaker 1: But really excited and it's been great working with the
Speaker 1: Department of Energy and their tremendous staff.
Speaker 2: I want to note that you said energy dominance. That's good, right,
Speaker 2: you got that one. And Republican district is interesting.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: My sense is with the Inflation Reduction Act, you know,
Speaker 2: a ton of money for the energy transition, basically a
Speaker 2: lot of it has been going to projects in Republican districts. So,
Speaker 2: I mean, it'll be interesting to see how that plays
Speaker 2: out politically. Right, what you mentioned there's a couple conditions.
Speaker 2: I mean, is it basically if you do certain things,
Speaker 2: you get the money. Is that what that means?
Speaker 1: That's right?
Speaker 2: What are the things? What are the conditions?
Speaker 1: If I had to bubble it down to two, was
Speaker 1: we've got one more revenue contract that we've got to
Speaker 1: sign and then our permits. Our permits are working through
Speaker 1: the California Energy Commission. We expecte Q three Q four
Speaker 1: we would have that permit, so we need those. We
Speaker 1: need a permit to construct, and then the last revenue
Speaker 1: contract to be signed.
Speaker 2: So let's talk a little bit about long duration storage
Speaker 2: kind of more broadly, right, Like it's a huge problem,
Speaker 2: as you said, it's a bigger problem the more there
Speaker 2: there is a wind and solar power. Lots of people
Speaker 2: are trying lots of different ways to solve it. Like
Speaker 2: give me a sense of the landscape more broadly, and
Speaker 2: where you fit, Like what are other people doing? And
Speaker 2: then what are you particularly good at, what's the one
Speaker 2: thing that you can do more reliably, more cheaply, whatever.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you almost have to look at it in a
Speaker 1: kind of a two by two quadrant. On the one
Speaker 1: axis is like scale, is it really big like city
Speaker 1: size or is it for the home? Okay, you know?
Speaker 1: And then on the y axis, if you would, is duration.
Speaker 1: So do you need an hour or two of storage
Speaker 1: or do you need many days or a season of storage?
Speaker 1: We kind of fit in the really large scale, so
Speaker 1: we are hundreds of megawatts to give you a sense
Speaker 1: it's like a quarter of a city load. That's the
Speaker 1: sort of scale much bigger than any individual wind farm
Speaker 1: or solar farm. So we're pretty big scale.
Speaker 2: Quarter of a city, meaning like one hundred thousand homes like.
Speaker 1: Something like that, hundreds of thousands if not a million,
Speaker 1: so quite large. And then we tend to do eight
Speaker 1: hours to twenty four hours, so we'll cover you for
Speaker 1: through the night if you're a solar dominant region, if
Speaker 1: you've got a day or two with low winds, that's
Speaker 1: where we fit in. We're not seasonal, like we won't
Speaker 1: do your spring shoulder season, and we're definitely not an
Speaker 1: hour or two. So lithium ion at both large scale
Speaker 1: and home for like six hours and less is dominated
Speaker 1: by lithium ion, so they own shorter durations six hours
Speaker 1: and less. And then in large scale, really long duration
Speaker 1: that's really been the pumped hydro but they're quite limited
Speaker 1: in what other solutions are out there. And then people
Speaker 1: are talking hydrogen for seasonal. I'm not sure if that's
Speaker 1: going to make sense or not, but we kind of
Speaker 1: have a clear where we play. Now there's four or
Speaker 1: five different technologies going at the other pockets of that
Speaker 1: grid that I haven't mentioned.
Speaker 2: So lithium ion batteries are getting cheaper fast, which is
Speaker 2: good news for the world. What does it mean for you?
Speaker 2: I mean, is it the case that the cheaper lithium
Speaker 2: ion batteries get, the longer the duration they can economically provide.
Speaker 1: Yes, they used to. We used to think it was
Speaker 1: two to four hours. Now they've pushed to six. If
Speaker 1: the cost keep coming down and tariffs don't kind of
Speaker 1: reverse the declines, that could could move to eight. I
Speaker 1: can't really see them moving too much farther beyond that.
Speaker 1: To give you a sense when today's cost, if you
Speaker 1: install the lithium ion battery, it's about three hundred dollars
Speaker 1: per kill awalk hour of storage capacity and it lasts
Speaker 1: maybe ten years with degradation and everything in there. To
Speaker 1: add one hour of our system is fifty dollars a
Speaker 1: killo what hour, and it lasts fifty years with no degradation.
Speaker 1: So it's a pretty you know, on the marginal basis,
Speaker 1: it's a pretty high bar. They would have to drop
Speaker 1: by an order of magnitude, and then they still would
Speaker 1: have to extend their life by five x to kind
Speaker 1: of get into the same.
Speaker 2: Rom that's compelling. So what's next, Like, what are you
Speaker 2: working on now?
Speaker 1: Construct those two plants so in Australia and California, construct
Speaker 1: them on time, on budget, show the world what they
Speaker 1: can do at scale, while we take those other eighteen
Speaker 1: that we're developing and stack them up ready for construction.
Speaker 1: That'll then allow us to start licensing to utilities. And
Speaker 1: we'd like to partner with groups in Japan and China
Speaker 1: and India and Europe to start offering the solution in
Speaker 1: those markets. As opposed to us standing up development teams
Speaker 1: all around the world. We're predominantly focused in North America
Speaker 1: and Australia and the UK as a development platform.
Speaker 2: What are you worried about at this point, Like what
Speaker 2: might go wrong?
Speaker 1: No, I think it's just general team building, culture, project management.
Speaker 1: You know, There's nothing fundamental with our technology supply chain
Speaker 1: policy environment that I'm really worried about. It's really just
Speaker 1: execution from our team. I guess there is a bit
Speaker 1: of the pace for long duration storage will be set
Speaker 1: by policy makers. Do they fix the rules of the
Speaker 1: road for the grids? Do they allow q reform so
Speaker 1: you can get interconnection spots? Will they properly pay for
Speaker 1: long duration storage. How long do permits take? That sort
Speaker 1: of thing will dictate the pace of the build out.
Speaker 1: But I'm confident it's coming. It's just a matter of
Speaker 1: the pace that it accelerates at.
Speaker 2: We'll be back in a minute with the lightning round.
Speaker 2: Let's finish with the lightning round. It'll just be sort
Speaker 2: of random questions, is basically what it's going to be.
Speaker 2: So I read that you spent many years as an
Speaker 2: energy consultant, living in different parts of the world, and
Speaker 2: I'm curious of all of the places you lived, what
Speaker 2: was the most like underrated? So the places like great
Speaker 2: that nobody knows is great.
Speaker 1: Soul? South Korea?
Speaker 2: Oh interesting? Tell me?
Speaker 1: Yeah. I got to spend five months in South Korea
Speaker 1: and just it was for a guy that grew up
Speaker 1: in Northern Ontario in a rural background, being in a
Speaker 1: city that dnse and that intense. From just a stimulation perspective,
Speaker 1: I found very compelling and just a very unique culture,
Speaker 1: unique food, and just a great experience.
Speaker 2: What's one thing I should do if I go to Seoul?
Speaker 1: Karaoke?
Speaker 2: Of course? What's your go to karaoke song?
Speaker 1: Oh? It was the Beatles. I can't remember which one,
Speaker 1: Hey Jude, I think it's a winner.
Speaker 2: I bet you killed with Hey Jude and Seoul. What's
Speaker 2: one thing I should do if I go to Canora, Ontario.
Speaker 1: MS Canora, a little cruise ship around Lake of the Woods. Beautiful.
Speaker 1: I cooked there growing up, helping them to pay pay
Speaker 1: for my fun on the weekends.
Speaker 2: You played hockey at the University of Toronto, and I'm curious.
Speaker 2: I have a friend who's into hockey, and I said,
Speaker 2: I'm talking to a guy who who played hockey. What
Speaker 2: should I ask him? And he said, ask him what
Speaker 2: his view is on fighting in hockey. What's your view
Speaker 2: on fighting in hockey.
Speaker 1: It's a bit complicated, but it keeps everyone honest. So
Speaker 1: I'm a supporter, and you know, there's a code. If
Speaker 1: someone doesn't want to fight, you don't fight. But it
Speaker 1: is a way of keeping things honest.
Speaker 2: What does that mean? That is in fact really interesting
Speaker 2: to me. What does it mean that it keeps everyone honest?
Speaker 1: You know, it can be a very dangerous sport. You know,
Speaker 1: you think of the stick and you can wind up
Speaker 1: and smash someone in the ankle and smash their ankle
Speaker 1: and blow out their career. Someone does that, you know,
Speaker 1: the ref just throwing them in a penalty box, Isn't
Speaker 1: isn't fair retribution for something like that. So no one
Speaker 1: runs around swinging their sticks because they know what would
Speaker 1: happen if they did such a thing.
Speaker 2: That's really interesting. What's one thing you tell somebody who's
Speaker 2: becoming a CEO for the first time.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't know that I'm at the stage
Speaker 1: where I'm giving advice. Yeah, I'm still hearing a long
Speaker 1: time man. Yeah, I guess so, I still feel like
Speaker 1: I'm learning as I'm going. But I guess I would
Speaker 1: say it's about the team more than anything is. You
Speaker 1: can only do so much. In the early days, you're
Speaker 1: doing a lot, but then it's about the team. Team, team.
Speaker 1: Surround yourself with the best possible people, and it's amazing.
Speaker 1: I wake up every day just amazed with what the
Speaker 1: team does and gets accomplished, and you just start realizing
Speaker 1: the power of other people and how much strength there
Speaker 1: is and in the numbers and in the team. So
Speaker 1: I'd just be focus on getting the right team.
Speaker 2: I heard you say that if you had known when
Speaker 2: you started the company how hard it was going to
Speaker 2: be what you know now, you wouldn't have done it,
Speaker 2: And so I'm curious, like, do you think fifteen years
Speaker 2: from now, if you look back at twenty twenty five,
Speaker 2: you would say, Man, if I'd have known how hard
Speaker 2: that fifteen years would be, I would have got out
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1: No, I think I've made it through the you know,
Speaker 1: the J curve. If you will, like your pipe, you
Speaker 1: on your way up to the surface, that's right. Yeah, No,
Speaker 1: it's it now because I think if it would have failed,
Speaker 1: call it four or five years ago, yeah, everyone, you know,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have had much pride in it, Like there's
Speaker 1: some pride, but we didn't accomplish much. We didn't it
Speaker 1: wasn't that big of a team. We didn't accomplish many milestones.
Speaker 1: We didn't raise that much money. So I basically just
Speaker 1: burned my personal capital and years of my life. And
Speaker 1: I think people would have scoffed because a lot of
Speaker 1: people were scoffing at us, saying, what are you guys doing?
Speaker 1: This doesn't make any sense, And it just would have
Speaker 1: fulfilled those and I think I would have been pretty embarrassed,
Speaker 1: to be honest, Whereas now I think we've accomplished a lot.
Speaker 1: I would be proud, and I'd look back and say,
Speaker 1: you know, we made a really good go at it,
Speaker 1: and but I think moving forward, it's just uh, it's
Speaker 1: just up from here. So I'm excited for the next
Speaker 1: fifteen years.
Speaker 2: Great, thank you for your time. It was great to
Speaker 2: talk with you.
Speaker 1: Thanks, Jacob has been pleasure.
Speaker 2: Turnis Van Wallingham is the co founder and CEO of
Speaker 2: hygro Store. Today's show was produced by Gabriel Hunter Cheng.
Speaker 2: It was edited by Lyddy jeen Kott and engineered by
Speaker 2: Sarah Bruguier. You can email us at problem at Pushkin
Speaker 2: dot FM. I'm Jacob Goldstein and we'll be back next
Speaker 2: week with another episode of What's Your Problem.