We welcome you all today. Just a moment about what the USEA is: non-partisan, non-lobbying, nonprofit organization that does two things. We work throughout the world hand-in-hand with the State Department, USAID, and the Department of Energy to enhance the energy supply to the world and to improve, and educate, in areas of the, of the world where it is needed and requested, all hand-in-hand with the U.S. government. We're a unique organization in that respect. Founded in 1924. We've worked in 104 countries throughout the world. We have another major role, which is to convene on the cutting edge issues of energy, and its associated, factors, on an ongoing basis. It's a tremendous honor to have Representative Curtis with us today.
We are delighted and thrilled to have him here to lead the charge on a very critical, significant issue of our day, which is energy storage, which is going to, God willing, solve a whole lot of problems for this country and the world at large. We're delighted to have you here. Congressman Curtis, please take it away. It's your show, and we welcome our speakers with their tremendous insight and their lives on the line to make this happen. Thank you.
Sheila, thanks so much. It's a delight to be with all of you today. Thank you to USEA for hosting this very important conference, this webinar. I've got to tell you, just personally, I'm kind of excited to host this because I wanna learn. There's a lot I wanna learn about this, and I feel like this is a great opportunity. Thanks for making this happen. Listen, long-duration energy storage has got to be part of the answer. We've got to understand this. We have to make progress on this. No better time, of course, to talk about this than right now with COP going on over in Scotland and everybody turning their attention to answers. We have a lot of the answers right here with us today.
I think it's. It may be a slight overstatement, but if so, it's only slightly that this is perhaps the most critical part of the solution to our long-term energy needs. I'm pleased to be part of this. By the way, I'm co-chair of the Energy Storage Caucus, and I'm pleased to play that role as well and be here with you today. Let me introduce our speakers. I'll introduce them by name and company, and then we're gonna ask them, each in the order that I introduce them, to take two minutes and introduce themselves before we jump into questions. First of all, Eric. Welcome, Eric Dresselhuys, the CEO of ESS. Pleased to have you with us. Joe Mastrangelo, CEO of Eos Energy Enterprises.
Ben Catt, CEO of Pine Gate Renewables. Finally, Geoff Brown, President of Powin. We're pleased to have all of you with us. Eric, would you start? We'll just go in that order. Please take a couple minutes to introduce yourselves.
Sure. Well, thank you, Congressman, and thank you to USEA for hosting this event. My name is Eric Dresselhuys. I've been working in the energy transition for about 30 years. Here at ESS, we are focused, as you say, on long-duration energy storage. The part of that that we worry about is how to create a 24/7 energy system that's decarbonized, so extending renewables, which are inherently intermittent, to last throughout the day. As you say, the challenge in front of us, Congressman, is large. It's not just about decarbonizing our current energy system, but we're also talking about electrifying everything and electrifying the 800 or so million people around the world who don't have power.
We've got to build a lot of energy and a lot of energy storage to make that happen reliably and resiliently.
Thank you. Joe?
Thanks, Congressman. Thanks to the USEA for the opportunity today. I'm Joe Mastrangelo. I'm the CEO of Eos Energy Enterprises. We are also a long-duration energy storage technology. We are fully a product that was invented in the United States and is manufactured outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. We're a product that brings to market highly flexible solutions that are fully recyclable in 20 years at the end of their useful life and also provide safe and flexible operating parameters. You know, I've been in the industry myself for 30 years, everywhere from oil and gas to your traditional fossil fuel power generation. This is the most exciting time I've seen in my career.
I think we have the opportunity as a group to really change the trajectory in how the world powers itself, and not only change the energy mix that we have today, but bring more reliable power to parts of the world that don't have it. I'm very excited to be part of this.
Thank you. Ben? If we don't have.
Hello. Can everyone hear me okay?
Yeah. Welcome.
There you go. Apologies, I was having some technical difficulties getting on there, so just hopped on. Again, really excited to be here. I'm CEO of Pine Gate Renewables. Again, my name is Ben Catt. We are a utility-scale renewable energy developer, finance company and construction company. We were originally focused primarily on solar, but have moved into the storage space, both on a hybrid resource standpoint and from a standalone storage perspective.
We have expanded very rapidly and are really excited to engage in this conversation. As we are, you know, being in the solar space for a very long time and knowing what a critical role that storage is going to play, ultimately, as we move and as more solar penetration gets on the grid, we are really excited about where, you know, the industry is going, renewables as a whole, but really what storage ultimately is going to be able to unlock for us as we go from a, you know, in the solar space, certainly from a 3% penetration rate to potentially up to a 40% penetration rate based on some of the forecasts that are out there now.
It's been a huge initiative for us to partner in the industry, not only on the development side, but also really work with, you know, technology partners of ours to find ways for us to be able to really increase the footprint out there and really be active on the policy side to make sure that we've got, you know, supportive, you know, federal initiatives that ultimately are helping us with the energy transition.
Thank you. Finally, Geoff.
Thanks, Congressman. Hi, everybody. My name is Geoff Brown, CEO of Powin Energy. Joining you from outside beautiful Portland, Oregon. Right down the road, actually, from Eric with ESS. We've got a good energy storage nexus in the Northwest here. I'm incredibly happy to be speaking with everybody today because, you know, we've, part of Powin, have been growing the company for the last five years here because we believe it's necessary technology to revolutionizing the carbon-free grid, as all the other panelists are saying. I believe this conversation is so important because the only way that that's gonna happen is through supporting market viable technology.
You need a proper regulatory framework that levels the playing field for all technologies, and it's gonna be something that's gonna be consistent and last for a long time. These fundamentally the storage technology, the platforms take years to develop, and we need to understand the market and regulatory framework we're going to be growing ourselves into. At Powin, we've been developing our lithium-ion battery-based systems from our Tualatin headquarters here for over a decade now. Got over 2 GWh in operation and construction around the world and another 5 GWh coming shortly along the way. It's been, like, incredibly exciting time for all of us.
We've grown over 100 people just in the last year, nearly tripling our workforce, and we expect to close out 2023 with another 150, for a total of over 300 U.S. employees and 500 around the world. I think that last point is just incredibly important as the stakeholders, people sort of consider why storage is so important to invest in and support for a strong domestic storage market. It's because we will be building the technology that we can then export around the world. Most of our projects right now are based in North America, but we see a massive growing international market. It's been incredibly rewarding to see our ideas and products serve the grids of our friends in Taiwan and Australia, Israel and Greece.
I think that's just the beginning. It's important for me to be able to say to everybody that's listening here today to understand that setting a strong national framework helps to change our local grid, decarbonize our grid, helps to create a strong local storage industry. That can be the foundation for America leading the way to and exporting these technologies around.
Thank you, Geoff. Maybe just a quick note to our guests. I'm getting a little bit of an echo. Let's try unmuting unless we're speaking and see if that helps at all. I'm gonna start now with some questions that really are aimed at all of you. We'll start in our reverse order. Geoff, I'll let you start. We don't need to all answer every question, but I wanna hear if it's important to you. I wanna make sure you speak up. Geoff, let's start with you, and then we'll let the other guests speak as well. This is pretty simple. Why are standalone energy systems so important to our nation's grid? I mean, why are we having this conversation?
Yeah, it boils down to a couple, few key things here. It increases reliability and resiliency. It's absolutely essential. A properly designed, low cost, reliable energy storage is the best way to deliver a flexible grid, particularly as you start to get more and more renewable penetration. We need in order to move to a renewable grid, as it's very transparent. There will occasionally not be, the sun won't shine and the wind won't blow. You absolutely must have some level of storage to be able to transition past 10%-15% renewable penetration. It's just the only way you can manage it. The only other way you manage it is by massively over installing your renewables, resulting in curtailment.
Storage is by far the most cost-efficient way of managing that. Which leads to the last question is it's the lowest cost solution. Right now, solar plus storage, as I know Ben knows, that when you're building these projects, they are much in a high radiance environment, high solar environment, the lowest cost form of capacity is solar plus storage today. That's just the beginning. We are just starting to go up the elbow and we're seeing 100%-200% market growth, dramatic cost and reduction in energy. I am 100% convinced that the power plants of the future, capacity of the future is going to be a renewable and storage technology.
Excellent. Ben, he called you out, so I'm gonna call on you. I remember I was actually the chair of Utah Municipal Power Agency, many years ago, and we talked about doing solar, and we kinda had to go up and say, "Well, it's the right thing to do, but it's not the cheapest alternative.
Yeah.
Boy, things sure have changed, haven't they?
Yeah.
One of the reasons I think that's so important is, look, one of the best ways to move and change our energy reliance is to be the low-cost leader. So I don't want to get too far off this track, but jump in and tell us a little bit from your perspective why standalone energy systems are so important to our grid.
Yeah. I think really echoing what Geoff says is that really, you know, kind of getting to the original point, which is we are seeing across the country that solar and wind and kind of all renewable resources are the lowest cost energy that we're producing. On top of that, obviously, all of the environmental benefits by, you know, replacing fossil resources with, you know, renewable resources beyond even just the, kind of the economics and the cost component that comes with it. There is just the very kind of the facts of the matter are those are intermittent resources to some degree, and they are complementary, and certainly whenever we bring hydro and everything else into the mix, we're able to kind of have a little bit more of a well-rounded generation profile.
Being able to have standalone energy storage and hybrid energy storage is incredibly important for that build-out to continue to occur. When we look at that and when we look at kind of the cost profile of being able to add, you know, the costs on storage are. We're getting much more efficient on that side. We are seeing the cost curve drop there, very similar to how we saw the cost curve drop for solar. Whenever you were looking at it back in Utah and saying, "This is not the lowest cost energy, but ultimately we think that it's good for what we're doing here," you know, storage is in somewhat of a similar profile right now, where those costs are dropping, where we're getting much more efficient on the production side, and we're just scaling that up.
As that continues to happen, you're gonna see a similar profile happen on kind of that hybrid resource and the standalone storage component. What's gonna come with that is the shifts that are happening, what that impact is ultimately gonna do to the transmission grid, everything else. It's not just how we're going to be able to generate power at an economic, you know, profile with wind and solar and how we're gonna be able to see that cost curve drop with energy storage, that then allows those intermittent resources to be more robust, to be more like a base load profile. It's also really going to be how much we're going to be able to save in transmission and distribution upgrades by being able to be smart about how we're siting standalone storage facilities.
It's really like there are multiple ways to look at this and say it is the cost savings are not just in the energy generation, but it's ultimately what it means for the grid whenever we're really looking at being able to be smart about how we site these and how we ultimately are able to defray some of those costs, which are substantial, and ultimately are gonna be something that, you know, depending on where you're going to be, those costs are borne by ratepayers or in some instances, you know, depending on how the structure is. That's something that we're really, like, looking to say, "How are we doing this in an efficient way?" Because the transition of the energy grid is an expensive proposition, and we wanna make sure that there's really a both an economic and obviously, kind of a, all of the other benefits that come with it.
Excellent. Joe or Eric, any comments, or should we move on? Good. Joe, let me target you with this next question, and then we'll ask Eric to follow you. Let's talk about American jobs and the domestic manufacturing sector, and what is the impact that investing in energy storage technologies will have on jobs and our whole manufacturing sector?
Great question. You know, when you look at Eos and where we are right now, we have a factory that can manufacture 250 MWh of energy storage, not even a drop in the bucket where we are today. In doing that, we've created 100 jobs in Turtle Creek, Pennsylvania, which is, you know, old steel country, and created green jobs, turned an empty old Westinghouse factory into a factory that's producing and shipping daily out of this.
Now, as we scale that up, you know, the jobs scale, you know, when we get to where we wanna be with this factory is to have it at a gigawatt-hour, you'll wind up creating between 300 and 400 jobs, depending on how we scale up the different parts of the manufacturing. Not to mention that, but when you look at our product, there's the knock-on effect of this, where every one of our suppliers is within a three hour drive, except for one part that we have in the battery right now. We've also created jobs with other industries that supply to us.
I think this is critical for us 'cause what I've watched in my time in the industry, you know, when you look at what's happened in solar, when solar came on, and a lot of the product coming in was imported. We have an opportunity with companies like Eos and Eric's company to create a technology leadership position and to build off what Geoff said. It's a great technology in the United States, but also something that we've got. We actually have a system installed in Nigeria, we have a system installed in Greece, and we're installing a couple more in Europe. This is our opportunity to continue to be a leader in the value chain of this transition in the energy industry.
I also think, since it's so critical for us from a national security standpoint, I think it's important that we have these national champions that are manufactured right here in the United States, because as it grows, we wanna grow with it.
Excellent. Eric, I'm gonna ask you to weigh in. Before you do, just an idea for our guests. If you unmute, I'll take that as the cue that you have something to say. Does that make sense? Then I'll call on you. Eric, go ahead.
Perfect. Yeah, I would echo a little bit about what Joe said. At ESS, we've had that same kind of growth curve. We've more than doubled our staff in the last year. We'll do that again plus in the coming year. I think it's and the supply chain is largely domestic. The installation of these, of course, can't be outsourced, so that's domestic. I'd put it in a little bit of perspective. If we look back to the last major, you know, industrial revolution we had, which we'll call the Internet revolution, U.S. companies really dominated that. We were first, second, and third place in about every subcategory of the Internet. You know, the number one router company, the number one search engine, the number one, you know, and you name it down the line.
If this energy transition is the next major industrial revolution, and we look at who's winning that fight, it's not U.S. companies. This is amazing case for storage. The three companies on the call today are U.S. companies building U.S.-originated technologies with a U.S. supply chain that are the leaders on a global basis in these technologies. I think that's important because if you look at solar panels, if you look at wind turbines, a lot of that is not manufactured in the U.S. If we don't have that U.S. manufacturing base, we're gonna really end up offshoring a lot of our investment in these to jobs that are gonna be created in Asia or other parts of the world.
I think it's something that we should all be conscious of. As Joe said, there's a national security implication on this as well. Our product uses iron, salt, and water as its key ingredients. It can all be sourced domestically. We think that's important when you look at, you know, the next click down of the supply chain behind a lot of renewables, because these are minerals that are coming from Latin America and from Africa, in some cases, largely dominated by Chinese companies. We should be very thoughtful of that as we're driving the energy transition.
Eric, you've just hit on something. I'm gonna detour all of us for a minute to bore down in on this. I wish every member of Congress was listening right now because what I'm gonna ask you all to do is take a few minutes or a minute at this each and look at me as if I'm 435 members of Congress and 100 senators and say, "If we're not careful, we will wave this over to China, right? We will cede this over to China. And these jobs that you all are talking about, these businesses that you have established, will not be the world leaders, right? And China will be." Eric, you start and tell Congress what you need, right, in order to be a dominant.
What, not just you, but what the United States needs to be the dominant player on this, to let this be the next industrial revolution as you have described. I totally agree with it, so that we're creating U.S. jobs and not buying all this technology and materials overseas.
Simple. I just need a level playing field. We have the world-leading technology. We just need a fair marketplace to go and compete against all of these other interests. Unfortunately, that's not the case today. There's subsidies and subsidization that happens broadly in some of these offshore markets. Those products then come to the U.S. I'm competing against an unlevel playing field against foreign competition. I'm also playing against an unfair playing field, an unlevel playing field when it comes to some of the historic carbon-based alternative generation, non-alternative, but traditional generation technologies. I think people don't appreciate that we do quite a bit to subsidize traditional carbon generation today. There were reasons for that, and I'm not gonna argue it.
If we're coming in with something that's new, that's on the early part of its learning curve, we just need a level playing field to go off and establish these in the marketplace. Once that happens, then economies of scale and the volumes will all kick in. Just as you saw in that experience with your solar municipal activity in Utah, as we get the flywheel going, then the cost will come down, the efficiencies will rise, and this will be by far the preferred technology going forward.
I love it. Joe?
I would just build off what Eric said. You know, look, the standalone ITC, standalone energy storage investment tax credit that's now in front of FERC for approval, I think is critical to accelerate the marketplace. I think having an advantage where you have incentives to buy from Made in America is gonna be critical for us to be able to launch our technologies out in the marketplace. The other thing I would say, you know, from my career standpoint, you know, I spent 26 years at GE and the last four years in a startup at Eos. It's very easy to get funding for a new idea. The jumping from idea to industrialization at scale is where companies need help.
I think, you know, Secretary Granholm and the team at the Department of Energy are certainly working to be able to do that. Coming up with backstops around new technology to get the bankability that you need as a startup, I think is critical for us and a key thing that we've been working with them on. As you scale manufacturing, how do you continue and come up with programs to allow companies that are manufacturing to get low-cost financing to scale their operations and create the jobs that we're talking about? I think that will level the playing field where companies like Eos can grow in the future.
Excellent. Good. Geoff?
Yeah, thanks. I mean, I totally agree with everything that Eric and Joe were just saying. I think the one thing that I would add to it, and the thing that I'm incredibly encouraged by about the bill that's coming out of Congress right now, is its duration. Before storage, I was doing renewable projects, and there is this constant sawtooth to the market 'cause everything was extended by two years or three years. I think it's incredibly important that the initiatives that we see, the tax credits that are being considered, the domestic content consideration, those are all great. The fact that we're talking about it for 10 years makes it completely different. I can talk to our investors, I can talk to our counterparts, I can talk to our customers, say, "Look, start working with us.
Here's how we're building our team. Here's our business plan," and we can plan on the duration of a decade. I mean, storage takes years to put in place. Platforms take a long time to build, and it's really important that we see this. I think when the Congress stands up and they say, "This is a 10 year plan," that is the long-term planning, the long-term leadership that we need to see on in the Capitol, and I'm incredibly encouraged by that. So just keep doing that. That's what I want. Pass the bill. That's what we want.
Good. Ben.
I would really echo what Geoff's saying too. It really is. I mean, from our side, we start our development projects from greenfield assets, which take four and five and sometimes six years to really start from concept to execution. To Geoff's point, kind of when we live in this world of one and two year policy extensions and not a lot of transparency beyond that, it's incredibly difficult for us to make the investment into the activities that we need to do today for what ultimately are going to be kind of the projects and advancements that are gonna happen in four or five years. Really what I see that is, you know, those policy initiatives really come in two different ways.
There is one on how are we incentivizing the ability to what, you know, what Eric and Joe were emphasizing, the ability to scale that domestic supply chain, which is incredibly important. I can tell you as a purchaser of a whole lot of solar modules, the more that we can bring stability to the supply chain, the better, because that is a, you know, that is a constant challenge that we're always managing on our side. It really is, I mean, without making the investments right now as the industry is really starting to expand in that domestic supply chain, we are going to be playing catch up later if we don't do those things right now and really incentivize that domestic supply chain today. We can't wait three years, four years, whenever the industry matures beyond where it is now.
Those investments have to be made right now. Then on the other side of it, and this is kind of the point that Geoff was making, is, it's scalability on the business model side too. Because right now, a standalone storage project doesn't have a really consistent execution as we look at them today. We're working and we're looking at how we're gonna make that, you know, a viable commercial execution in the future. There are several kind of territories and states throughout the U.S. right now where I can't look at a, you know, projected financial model and say, "This standalone storage project is going to work based on the current structure of the market as we sit here today." A huge part of that's gonna be standalone storage ITC.
The standalone storage ITC allows us to have a policy mechanism and basically kind of a foundation to that business model that then is going to be something that you can scale across multiple regions. It's really saying two things. It's how are we putting in the support mechanisms? How are we incentivizing that domestic supply chain that ultimately is gonna lead to jobs and growth and kind of that, you know, that next, you know, industrial revolution being right here in the U.S. and not something that people are importing from somewhere else.
It's how are we looking at the business model for how those standalone storage assets actually come to life and how they get built and how they get financed, and having kind of smart policy initiatives that allow us to plan, you know, five, six, seven years in the future to be able to do that. Those are the two things that we look at. Those are kind of the two barbells that really are gonna drive the growth that we think is necessary.
Well, I'm only one of 435, but you've all convinced me.
In Congress, if I can just add one thing to what Ben said because.
Sure, please.
I think it's important. I was around, involved in building smart grids, during the Obama administration when the Recovery Act had a thing called the SGIP, and it was a bit of money. It was one of the most successful government programs that I'm aware of, certainly in the world of energy. Something that happened that was really interesting because we, you know, we have a state regulatory system for electricity in most cases. That's what drives our business on a daily basis.
Once the federal funds were available, and in this case, the tax credit, it created a little bit of a rush on the part of the regulatory agencies to figure out the thing that Ben was talking about, which was what are those market mechanisms that are gonna allow storage to take place?
My prediction is gonna be that if we pass the bill, what will happen is 50 states plus the District of Columbia will be leading at the staff level, at the commissioner level, saying, "How do we make sure that we get some of this money flowing into our jurisdiction?" Whether that's in Utah or Iowa or New York or wherever, people will see this as an opportunity to leverage the tax credits to accelerate the investment in this renewable transition in their geographies, and that will drive some of the market mechanisms to be put in place at the local level. I think that's really exciting. It doesn't take a lot.
What we saw in the SGIP program is that that didn't really amount to much more than 15%-20% of the total economics. That little bit just tipped everything over the side, and the deployment of smart grids accelerated by about 400% during that period of time. It was a great payback for the country, and great for the energy transition.
Thank you. By the way, I took notes on all of your comments, and I'm gonna go tell my colleagues. This isn't everything, but above everything else, level playing field, predictability and stability. It's interesting because you could go to almost any industry, just your industry, and say, "What do you need from government?" And if we could deliver as government those things, I think, you know, we could accomplish anything if we could just keep those things. Congress, unfortunately, particularly with that predictability and stability thing, I think we're our own worst enemies, sometimes. Let me shift gears a little bit. I'm gonna go to Ben. Let you start on this one, but I'll give you all the chance to comment.
What would you tell the general public about the state of energy storage technology right now? Then couple that with this thought, how scalable is this, right? Not only where are you guys at, but like how scalable is this? There are some who would say, "Look, we're just gonna solve all of our problems with wind and solar." The reality of it is we can't do that because of storage right now, right? If we get you all off the ground and running, right, do you see a world where, you know, renewables in the narrow sense of, let's say, wind and solar and storage can really take care of all of our energy needs?
do we still need to be working on parallel paths with other technology, whether it's hydrogen or new nuclear and things like that? Give me a sense, Ben, I'll start with you, of the state of things and scalability.
I think it's a great question, Congressman, and I think that, you know, you know, I think that innovation in this industry has always led the way and has been something that's been incredibly important. When we look at new technologies like hydrogen and other things out there that could continue to kind of help the transition, I think it's important for us to continue to make investments in those to understand how those technologies can help where we're going. I think largely we really have the belief that we have the technology today to do all of the heavy lifting or very much of the heavy lifting to get where we need to ultimately go with the energy transition.
Wind, solar, and energy storage are, you know, with where we are today, with where we need to go and where we need to make those improvements, are going to be able to get us the vast majority of getting into a place where we can ultimately start to really make that energy transition. While we're always gonna be encouraging of new R&D and new technologies, we can't wait for those to ultimately come along, and we don't necessarily need them to either. Because we think that as we're sitting here today, you know, we need to continue to scale the manufacturing capacity when it comes to energy storage, and that's a huge piece of this entire puzzle.
Really, like, the technology's there, and we think that we have the tools available to really, you know, tackle the decarbonization goals of states and municipalities and the country at large. We just need to make sure that we are putting proper, you know, structures behind them to the point that we've been making all along, to have that stability from a market's perspective, so that everyone who is really going out and trying to deploy all those technologies at scale can continue to do that and have the transparency and clarity to make it happen.
Excellent. Joe, your body language is so clear that you wanna jump through that camera and tell us something, so I'm gonna call on you next.
Thank you. Look, I think, you know, energy is always gonna be a mix, so you're gonna need multiple technologies to serve the needs and the use cases that are out there. There are very scalable technologies. You know, you look at, you know, the way that we tried to design our product was we use only earth-abundant raw materials, only things used in other industries, so we can scale it up to grow. You know, our technology will not be the only technology that's gonna serve the need. You know, you're gonna need as this evolves, you're gonna have use cases where you need energy storage for minutes, for a couple of hours or for longer duration than that, and you're gonna need multiple technologies to be able to meet that.
Now, on your question of multiple paths, I think the thing that I see right now in the industry is that we've muddied up everything into one big discussion. There is a place for hydrogen in this energy mix that allows you to more effectively use natural gas assets that are producing power and could be a great transportation fuel. We're gonna need those different bets to be able to start to decarbonize the entire value chain. I do personally believe that energy storage can scale just like every other technology that we've had in the energy industry.
I agree with Ben that innovation is the hallmark of this industry, and if you look at where we are from energy storage and think about traditional fossil fuel, gas turbine powered, power generation, we're 40 years ago when you think about where we are in developing these technologies. We have to accelerate that innovation curve and that cost curve so that this will scale and become a technology of choice as we decarbonize the entire value chain. It's an exciting time, and I think we can do it.
Good. Geoff and then Eric, and then we're gonna transition, and we know I've got some reporters waiting for us.
Yeah.
This question, we'll transition.
Sure. I mean, I think the important thing to say is, I don't think there is a more scalable technology out there than storage. When people say, "It's this is years away. We've got a decade or so before to see if batteries work." I mean, we've been using battery technologies for over a decade. When we started this, Powin's first project was 8 MWh, and we were high-fiving and back-clapping, and that is an incredibly small project right now. We've got multiple projects that are over gigawatt-hour. I mean, the largest projects going forward that are announced are multiple gigawatt hours. All of those are being supported by manufacturing and supply chains that are being built up at scale. This market is growing at multiple hundreds of a percent a year.
It's happening both inside the United States. It's happening internationally. This is happening because we have been able to develop a market that's gonna demand it. But I don't think there's any limit on how quickly and how rapidly we can transform the grid. The technologies are proven, we just need to make sure that the policies stay in place.
Thank you. Eric?
Yeah, I would just say two things. The first is, as I said in my introduction, if we look on a global basis, and we combine the decarbonization of the current energy system with, you know, giving power to people who don't have electricity and changing cooking fuels. Just to put it in perspective, we need a global electricity system that's two and a half times the size of the current system, and it all has to be carbon-free, right? Let's just kind of baseline to the scale of what we're talking about here and kind of echoing what Geoff said. This is a massive transformation. Will storage plus solar and wind solve every problem out to the last 5% of the edge cases? It probably not.
If you wanna know what's gonna drive the bulk of that transition, these are technologies that are proven available today. They're safe, they're scalable. I think we should keep the R&D train running. The only thing I would caution the group is I think we should be careful to not always hope that the next thing coming over the horizon might be the silver bullet that solves all the problems. Because that gets really distracting in our industry. There's always a hope or a promise or a wish or a dream that people think are gonna make it all easy. I would just encourage us all to get on and do the work. This is a good old tough American, you know, roll up your sleeves and start building, and that's what we're doing.
I love it. I love it. Okay, we're gonna transition a little bit. We've got some reporters that are joining us, and I'll introduce them. Sheila, you coach me here if I've got the format wrong.
I think you've got it down cold by now.
Well, I regret I won't be invited back because I didn't even make it through a fraction of the questions that we had, so.
There are hundreds of them, yeah.
Yeah. We're gonna start. We've got Lisa Martine Jenkins, Senior Reporter, Morning Consult. K. Kaufmann, Mid-Atlantic Bureau Chief, RTO Insider. Darrell Proctor, Senior Associate Editor, Power magazine. Laura, and Laura, if I do this, if I don't say this correctly, please correct me. Sanicola, energy and renewables reporter at Reuters. Listen, so good to have you with us. Lisa, we're gonna start with you. I'll moderate, and I may cut in because I wanna make sure that all four of you have a chance to ask a question. Lisa, we'll start with you if you wanna jump in and direct it at someone specifically or at the group.
Great. Hi, everyone. So this is actually pretty connected with what we were just speaking about, and is inspired by a question in the chat. Can you speak a little bit about specifically about the cost of scaling up these technologies? Ideally to the point where they could replace or be integrated into large, fossil fuel plants as part of the grid. Is this something that utilities have expressed interest in? Are you in conversation with some of these utilities?
Lisa, are you directing that at anyone or?
Anyone who would like to answer.
Okay. I might just mention, I don't think we've got a chance for everybody to run through, so we'll use that same drill, if you want to. Geoff, you have unmuted.
Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think just to quickly go, I mean, this is. I mean, we are already at a cost point and a price point to the utilities where they are providing accretive market value. There's massive interest from utilities. They're seeing that this is the way that they want to be able to modernize their grid and control their grid going forward. I mean, we can. I'm happy to speak specifically to sort of price points and and where we think the direction is gonna go. I think the really important thing that we want people to take away that these aren't pipe dreams, as Eric said. We are in the process of building the platforms that are currently installing projects that are operating and running and changing the grid.
We want that to continue.
Thank you. All right, Eric, go ahead, quickly.
I'm just gonna say, Lisa, there's a research analyst named Colin Rusch from Oppenheimer, who's done some great work on this, and, you know, looks across all of the spectrum of ways you can generate electricity. He's come out and declared it's kind of game over. Solar plus storage beats natural gas-fired peaker plants, period, hands down. Now, of course, we have a lot of peaker plants, gas-fired peaker plants in use today, and they have useful life left. So as the transition happens, they're not gonna all go away overnight. If you think about where you're going to invest the new money going forward, there's a straight up economic story.
Even if you don't care about climate change, even if you don't care about the energy transition, if you're just playing for economics, this is now the most cost-effective thing to do.
Thank you, K. Kaufmann.
Yes, good morning. Thank you all for a great panel. All right, I'm gonna ask about transmission planning. As I'm sure you all know, FERC has its advanced notice on proposed rulemaking on transmission planning and cost allocation going on. The grid operators have been trying, you know, working on how they will integrate storage. Can one or all of you talk about, you know, how that's going? Particularly, Eric and Joe, on longer duration stuff, because I know utilities and grid operators tend to be a little wary of any new technology. They always want to check it out and say, "Well, we have to see how it works on our system." That's, you know, what do you need?
Yeah, Joe, I'll take. I'm happy to take a first crack and then chime in. First off, I think that certainly we're gonna need some more transmission, and we're gonna need infrastructure investment in the distribution grid on a more localized basis as well. There's no doubt about that. I think one of the things that long-duration storage can do is create the buffers in the system that are more cost-effective than building new transmission. New transmission's tough to site. Everybody wants it to exist. Nobody wants it in their backyard. One of the things you can do with long-duration storage at scale, and we're talking hundreds of megawatts up to gigawatts of scale, is it can create buffers more locally.
I think one of the big things that we're talking about when we talk about the transition to renewables is a more distributed and more localized energy system. What you can imagine is, if we can generate more of our electricity using wind and solar locally and store it more effectively, that obviates the need for some of that transmission to get built. I think if you just look at the economics behind it, the economics of long-duration storage versus the economics of transmission are quite appealing in most cases. It's of course all things are local. Then in terms of the proven-ness, I hear you.
I've been working with utilities for a long time, and everybody's from Missouri in the utility world, as we like to say, but that's a problem that's getting solved already. Geoff talked about a lot of the demonstrated projects. I think that there is broad acceptance at this point that storage technology works, it works effectively, it can work safely. It's ultimately gonna come down to just ensuring that the economic incentives are fair and balanced as people go through what's called their Integrated Resource Planning processes. We've got great reasons to believe that. California, just to throw out one data point, has come out and called for more than a gigawatt of long-duration storage to be on the system by 2026. That's lightning fast in utilitydom, right?
That's pretty quick. As they look down the line to 2030 and beyond, it gets into the hundreds and hundreds of megawatts of long duration. Hundreds and hundreds of gigawatts, excuse me, of long-duration storage that are gonna be required.
Go ahead, Joe.
The only thing I would add, K., on top of what Eric said is, you know, when I look at the opportunities that we're out pursuing in the marketplace, we do see a shift to longer duration discharge. Discharge is discharge time of above four hours. You know, our median now is around six hours when we think about what we're looking at as a company. Inside of that, I think what's very important here is that you need technologies that are dynamic and non-static. What we try to bring to the market is the ability to go down to as little as two hours of discharge and as long as 12-15 hours of discharge time, with the same size system by managing the technology through software and just the way that we've designed the product.
I think when we think about this, duration's gonna be important, and talking long/short, I think is gonna become less important as we talk about flexibility. Because what we're trying to do is give the grid more flexibility, and we need to bring storage solutions that are flexible to allow this to happen. From the standpoint of, I fully agree with Eric's point around, you know, the energy industry wanting you to prove out what you're doing. We've been around for 13 years. We've got 2 million cycles on our technology, and that's how we start off with every customer that we talk to. From there, go through and you know, run the process. Now, I do think that to hit the goals that we're talking about, that process is going to have to change.
I go back to what I said earlier here, is that somehow we have to enable people to keep the grid safe, but take the risk on introducing these new technologies so that we can get to scale.
Excellent. Thank you, K. Darrell.
Here's a announcement that came out today, Alliant Energy up in Iowa, taking the decommissioned Duane Arnold nuclear plant and putting solar plus storage at that site. The infrastructure for transmission is already there. We're seeing this, I know, in Europe, in Germany, where they're repurposing old batteries from EVs into closed coal plants. Is this something that could help mitigate the T&D problem by taking brownfield sites of closed coal, nuclear, natural gas, any type of thermal plant and putting solar plus storage arrays there?
Go ahead, Joe.
Well, I'd start off, Darrell, and say it certainly improves the economics of your project by doing that. By being able to plug into existing infrastructure that you already have from getting onto the grid takes down the cost of being able to make your project successful. I also think it's a way that we have to plan as an industry to do things like this because it just allows for better land use. You know, when you start talking about the size and the density that renewables, you know, the amount of land that renewables requires to scale, using land that's already been used for power generation or other industrial applications is a great solution to be able to allow the overall system to be more effective and allow it to be greener.
I think we're going to see more of this as we move forward just from an economic standpoint, and not just on power plants, coal and nuclear retirements being converted over. You can also use you know on our product, we're working on a couple projects in Europe where we're taking closed down warehouses and putting batteries inside the warehouses and solar on the roof to turn it into a renewable power plant without having to lose any green space. It's something that we all have to work on, and I think will be a trend as we move forward.
Darrell, I would just kind of say, I think that that is certainly something that, you know, we're looking at because, you know, obviously using existing transmission infrastructure as opposed to building new is a much more. You know, that is a huge piece of the cost profile when we're looking at building hybrid assets or anything else. What I would say is it's an exercise in collaboration because when you're really looking at it, we're working with siting and developing brownfield, you know, any projects are complicated. It's working with, you know, the local communities where those power plants are being retired. It's working with the utilities and the RTOs and everyone else to help understand that planning process and being able to kind of put all of those things together to get those projects online.
We think there's a huge opportunity to do similar projects like that and be able to utilize that transmission infrastructure. Again, but it is, it takes a really collaborative effort across multiple stakeholders to make something like that happen.
Darrell, you didn't ask me, but if you wouldn't mind, let me just share a thought with you. I represent some coal country in Utah, and so I've seen this problem firsthand. There's a coal power plant in one of my counties, the schedule's been moved up for closure. As you have alluded to kind of in your question, that causes a lot of trauma in some of these communities. In my opinion, in many cases, makes them want to push back against this movement. It's not so much that they're fighting for coal as they're fighting for jobs, right? For a way of life.
One of the comments I hear, maybe we'll see if any of our guests want to respond to this, is, look, if you bring in a renewable, whether it's a wind farm or solar, you're giving me some jobs initially up front that for installation and things, but you're really giving me, you know, two or three people to run these facilities where we used to have 100 run a coal plant or probably more like several hundred run a coal plant. I guess one of the things that I think would be nice to couple with this is not just using these transmission lines, but actually going to these communities and doing some of your manufacturing in these communities, right?
Doing more than just the few jobs that it would take to maintain a solar plant once it's up and running on this grid. Is that feasible? How can we, you know, help these communities beyond that, just that initial, yeah, we're gonna install this, and it's gonna take a couple employees to run it. Joe, go ahead. Eric, I'm sorry. You've unmuted. You go ahead.
Yeah, I'll take it. The short answer is yes, it is practical. It's probably not practical to build an energy storage factory in every community, right? That's not probably gonna happen. At least in our case, the combination of having a supply chain of broadly available kind of earth abundant materials and a comparatively low cost manufacturing setup, it does make it practical to build on a more localized basis. Somebody joked when they looked at our facility, it looks more like a Maytag washing machine assembly facility than it does a silicon plant, which is where you know, lithium batteries, which are a different technology than ours, you know, is a much more sophisticated, kind of, very expensive infrastructure to build.
I do think you're gonna see that where jobs are gonna be more localized. The one thing about large scale, long duration energy storage that you'll find is that these are pretty big batteries. There is some economic advantage to building closer to where it's gonna get deployed because shipping things is, you know, big and it's bulky and you've got some incentive to go more closely.
Yeah. I'll just comment quickly, and then we'll need to move on. Ironically, these same communities, at least in the case of Utah, are the very ones that have some of these minerals below the earth surfaces, that they would love, right, to mine. Too often we're kind of turning a blind eye and saying, "Well, it's okay to go mine these in China, but not here in the United States." These communities would actually really benefit from that.
Yeah. Congressman, if you don't mind, sorry.
Sure.
I'd just like to add one point to that. I mean, I think one of the things why we're such large supporters of this bill that we've got in front of Congress right now is the domestic ITC requirement that will help to bring manufacturing local here. I think, you know, so there are certain types of products that are challenging to manufacture in the United States. One thing that, I mean, there is, and I should say of all the representatives on the panel, we have slightly different technologies, different type of inputs, different sort of, you know, ratio between raw material and labor costs.
I can, speaking just for our product, we can quite cost effectively manufacture and assemble our products over here with the proper incentives and with sort of a more rational tariff structure. There's a few things that need to be changed on the regulatory side, but it can bring a substantial amount of manufacturing facilities over here. We've been attempting to do this for over four years. Supply chain and shipping challenges that Eric spoke to recently, this is incredibly difficult, expensive stuff to move around. I would love to be able to build this stuff closer to the project locations. With the right type of support, we should be able to do that.
I vote for a whole hour on that topic, Sheila. Laura, take us home. You've got the last question.
Thanks so much. Can you hear me?
Yes.
Okay, great. I was just hoping, and this is for anyone, if you could elaborate the real world implications from a price point perspective on the expansion of the investment tax credit to energy storage technology and particularly standalone batteries. I know that's kind of like a wide-ranging question, but curious about that as the bill continues to take form.
Who's gonna jump in on that one? Ben, go ahead.
I can jump in on that one. You know, so Laura, I think that as far as kind of, you know, if I'm interpreting your question correctly, kind of the price point implications of what that ITC ultimately means and kind of how that allows us to kind of build scalable business models across multiple regions. Really what it does is really when we look at two different things. We're looking at a project, if it's a solar project or wind project or, you know, a storage project under a couple of different frameworks. There's one, what does the revenue profile of the asset look like? That is something that it's very regional specific, but there are a lot of different ways that we're gonna be able to go out and deploy these.
We are working actively with utilities now, where we're kind of entering into tolling agreements, where they're able to utilize the battery, we're able to locate it and kind of develop it on the grid and be a partner with them in doing that. There are opportunities that you're able to go out and do energy arbitrage and more of a kind of a, an open market, type of framework where you're able to go out and optimize revenue profiles there. Ancillary services are available. There are many different things that are revenue profiles that are available to energy storage assets. Those are all available as we sit here today in the market structures as we're currently doing them. The other side of that equation, that was really kind of the capital stack and how you're actually getting that asset built.
While we can secure the revenue streams, the ITC really speaks more to that capital stack side of the business, where we're looking and saying, "How do we source the capital to actually build these?" These are large facilities, and they're expensive. When you're out there and you're looking at revenue profiles that are in some instances variable, if you're doing things like energy arbitrage or more of a kind of a merchant, a market asset, those are the things where you're able to—the more you're able to kind of have fixed ways that you can secure pieces of the capital stack, which you do through a standalone storage ITC, it makes it that much easier to then, you know, optimize and monetize the, you know, the revenue streams that come off of this. It's really saying it gives you kind of the...
It's not necessarily as much of a pricing support because the markets are ultimately gonna dictate kind of where that energy is going to trade and how it's gonna work or, you know, what tolling agreements utilities are willing to pay. It really comes down to, is there a way to finance these assets at scale? That ITC is a huge component of that. It allows us to go out and to be able to secure the capital to invest, you know, $10s if not $100s of millions of dollars into these infrastructure assets that ultimately are gonna be able to allow the, you know, the industry to scale the way we need to.
Eric, quickly, and then we'll wrap it up.
Just very quickly, Ben, you can agree or disagree with me, but I think one of the things that doesn't get a lot of publicity that's included in the bill is a direct pay option. I think that's actually gonna make this a lot easier to implement. To date, where there are ITCs, you know, there's a lot of very complex banking that goes on in the background to how to monetize those credits. A direct pay option is just a little thing, sounds like a little thing, but I think will really help it go a lot faster.
Yeah. Couldn't agree more.
Excellent. Listen, I regret that we're out of time. I would love to explore so many topics with you. Our listeners have put a number of good questions in. Sheila, I'm gonna hand it off to you. One of those questions I'll let you answer, and that is: Is this recording gonna be available, and how can people access that? Thanks to each one of you, and those who have tuned in to listen and to our reporters. Sheila, it's handed back to you.
Thank you so much. Congressman Curtis, it's been a great honor to have you join us today. Your precise questions and active participation really enlivened the entire discussion and brought incredible vibrance to it. We're deeply appreciative and hope to have you back when we have more time. I know you're under a little bit of pressure, too, time-wise. This will be available on the USEA website. It is obviously a topic that deserves a lot more conversation, and I think this qualifies just the warm-up act. We have many more. We have miles to go before we sleep on this one. Thank you so much, everyone, for a tremendous, tremendously interesting, relevant, timely group of presentations.
We march forward and very proud to be associated with the presentations today. Thank you.