A Lost Sodium Battery Technology Gets Recharged! with LiNa Energy | The Fully Charged Podcast

You know, Bo, who's my oldest son, says stop burning things, but actually I think you know, I asked him what Dad does at work and he just said he made batteries for money, so maybe that's my side. commercial that is sticking to you. wrong, hello and welcome to another episode of the

fully

loaded Show

podcast

. Today we are talking about solid state

sodium

-free batteries. Now

sodium

, which makes up about 40% of salt, is cheap, it's plentiful and, critically, we have a lot of it here in the UK. Unsurprisingly, it's getting a lot of attention from the likes of Byd building sodium gigafactories as we speak, but the question is: could this be where the UK really cements its position as a global leader in this

battery

ecosystem?

Well, I will be joining very soon. by Will Taupe, CEO of Lena Energy here in Lancaster and Arvin Saell, who chairs the board of directors, but before I talk about them, I want to tell you two very quick things, first of all, I imagine Bogle I'm one of the presenters here in the

fully

loaded program. show and the all electric show and although I'm really biased I recommend both channels so go and check them out once you've introduced Fay to the world of salt drums a bit and secondly I have to tell you about our All Things Electric presents live next we will be at the Excel in London at the end of March and it will be a fantastic festival of clean

energy

and Electric, there will be some sensational speakers, there will be all kinds of home

energy

technologies to see, try and talk about with the experts as well as an absolute ton of electric vehicles to try out for yourself and of course we'll be there and it's always wonderful to meet our community of viewers and listeners and find out. what really matters to you and make sure we can do future episodes on the topics that really mean the most to you, but that's enough, all the details are in the show notes, let's get into the salty drums, Will and Arin, it's a Great pleasure.

To be here I have so many questions, many of which I think are really going to expose my ignorance and desperate struggle for my GCS or high school chemistry, so let's see how we go, please bear with me, but with more efficient energy a low cost is obtained. solid state sodium batteries many words in that sentence are deeply attractive, but can you give us an overview of what exactly that means and why it is in any way interesting? I sure think I'll answer that question if we separate the different pieces, then maybe start at the end and work backwards so that the sodium, that's really the fact that we make these batteries with sodium instead of lithium, the solid state refers to the electrolyte we use, whereas a traditional lithium-ion cell will use an aqueous

battery

.

Solvent as chosen, what we use is a solid state ceramic that acts as a separator and as an ionic conductivity medium and there are a lot of benefits as to why we would do it, maybe we can talk about that later and finally low cost and that It's really due to the fact that these are sodium batteries where the raw material is salt, but also the other active materials are things like iron, so we're really making a battery with the cheapest and most abundant raw materials that we have. we can and that's really mission critical here at Lena, could you describe the benefit of the sodium battery versus the lithium battery?

Because we know we've heard all kinds of things like you can completely dump sodium. We hear they might be safer, but could something like that? give us an idea, it's probably best to say why we choose the sodium chemistry that we have in our batteries, because again you know this chemistry was originally developed in the 1980s, why do we love it so much? is that it is made from food grade salt and iron, so it is really very cheap, even on a small scale, second, it is intrinsically safe, which is why we have some really boring videos where at temperature while cycling we spend a nail through the battery cells and instead of the fireworks, well that's the point, instead of the fireworks you want to see, it's just and it just cuts off without smoke, without fire, there's also the Sustainability angle in terms of resources and supply chains are much more. favorable, uh, and they are easier to recycle because you don't have to go through any pyom metalogy with black mass, um, it's actually very simple to separate some metal elements in U and finally, the wide range of operating temperatures that this The chemistry gives you allows us to do all kinds of interesting things by playing with temperature by operating at higher temperatures, which is what we chose to do, so this combination of all those things is why we think this chemistry is perfect for the stationary storage and just at the fundamental level it should also be said that the really exciting part of that chemistry is its stability, so you know that a lot of people when they're building a new battery are going to spend years and years in laboratories chasing side reactions. . trying to make sure they can underline its stability, this chemistry has been shown to have a cycle of 7000 cycles, uh, it has no side reactions, it has a lifespan of over 20 years, so you know you're dealing with something that It's profitable, right?

So, when we talk about sodium, as you mentioned, sodium is super abundant and you know that it is approximately 40% of salt, but is it the reality that, in reality, when you put all these components together it ends up being cheaper? ? than perhaps its iron and lithium counterpart, absolutely. In my opinion, it is an important fact that the cost advantage that we believe we have is a unique part of our proposal here, the abundance of sodium and it does not need to do that either. work so hard to get sodium to a state where you can use it and it's viable unlike lithium and all those other materials and there are other consequences of getting lithium and what's going to be done with it in the future, which we'll get into but that it's the key, really sodium is everywhere and the key, sorry, the sodium we use in our batteries is salt, so we use food grade salt as raw material, uh, it's not elemental sodium, okay, wait a second because that was going to be. my next question: okay, we say sodium, we say salt, but in reality we're probably referring to something deeply complex that we've had to dig really deep into to get food grade salt, it's a food grade sodium chloride, yes it is really quite magical and one of the things. that we're filming this at their facility here in Lancaster, which is not a million miles from Chesa, which is one of the biggest salt mines, something I had no idea about until recently, but we have a huge supply of salt, so is this an area that has determined why you are Bas in this particular area of ​​the forest and B is this a big part of the supply chain that we as the UK should say, okay, let's double ? down on this, this is where we could have real leadership, well, yes, and Ian sodium is everywhere, so Cheser in the past in his story in the Victorian era, they have the mind, it's important for that, but sodium is everywhere, it is abundant but unique.

The reason we are here in Lancaster actually has to do with the people. We have a unique team, so if I check that out you'll know that the founders came here to Lancaster. And among the founders was the chief scientist, Rich Dawson, who is part of it. from the University here, so they focused on that and for me to get involved in the initial stage in 2019, I looked at the founders and they were a great group of people who came together and had a very good idea, it was a wonderful idea and I wanted to commercialize it so between Rich Jean Mark and Tom they got together and formed this company in a unique location because Rich was a university professor at the University here and they came out of that and then I talk about people why it's unique. you get people like will um and then you have James morish as well who I call close founders and for me to invest in any company or get involved in any company.

I look at the business proposition, what they do and the quality of that. and then you look at the people and the combination of those two things was I have to say it's unique and I'm sorry to use that word. One of my very good friends. Gary Jones from Lazar Adventures always says to never use the word unique in a in a release especially at the beginning, but it was in 2019 so I apologize Gary, it was unique and then the other thing for me is that you take that step and It's a leap of faith to get involved and invest and in the last year or so I've gotten more involved, but it's the people here and the culture and you've taken a walk here and the energy they have and there's a real story here, this It's going to do fantastic things for several people who have been developing it at PACE, that's the key at PACE.

Well, I also want to go back to the type of people and the cultural component of this company because I've taken a little walk and there are definitely some things that I want to ask you about things that I think we need to be fully loaded, like some additions to our office, certainly, but I think you know it's important to mention that this is a reasonably new company and you're either starting a new company or know you're joining a new one. company, I just think it seems 80% exciting, 20% scary and that 20% is fantastic, probably your push to do it, but also if you have fantastic people around you, then it really softens that 20% fear factor, maybe. but we'll talk more about the culture later because I've already heard some pretty good stories.

There are now a few sodium ion companies in and around the UK. We have been Cforadians before. I know there's been some kind of AI thing at MIT recently, where I think they came up with some wonderful sodium ion chemistry, it's getting a lot more attention, but what always seems to come up is that the cathode is very secretive, It's a bit secret. Source, can you tell? us why and everyone is looking at sodium ions with respect to solid state or is it unique and specific to Lena that is unique and specific to Lena and I think more generally, a lot of the recent news about sodium ion batteries Sodium has to do with progress. towards a layered oxide approach for a catheterization of sodium ions on a typically hard carbon and that stream of work focuses largely on the fundamental chemistry set.

Discovery builds a new set of chemistry that they can recycle and ultimately can market in a battery. We've taken a very, very different approach on Lena, which was our chemistry set, something that was originally developed in the '80s in Darby of all places and was almost completely forgotten in the history books, uh, and we had this of how it happened. You never know, but that unique set of circumstances where our founders had a combined knowledge of the ceramics of the fuel cell industry and Rich, our CTO, turned out to be a geek with this old chemistry that everyone forgot and They saw the opportunity to take advantage.

Modern Materials Science Modern ceramics apply it to that ancient chemistry, you get all the wonderful benefits of this chemistry, but in a package you can make it cheaply and deploy it, uh, we're pretty unique in this space and that's reflected as well. in the number of patterns, etc., etc., but on the other hand, yes, those who have found what they want to use in their perfect layer, oxide cathode or polyane cathode, uh, it's a different game than what we are doing, our secrecy will be present. the electrolyte instead of the cathode, okay, this has opened Pandora's box of some questions I want to ask.

I want to move on to what's inside the cell, talk a little bit about that structure, but before we do that, I think we have. an example here now, if you're watching the

podcast

you'll be able to see this, but if you're listening to it, I'll describe it. We have what I can only describe as a fairly heavy metal bar. a bit of a guardrail, maybe this, I guess, was the sodium, no sorry, not the sodium ion, the sodium chemistry of the 60s or 70s that you described, it's known as zebra chemistry, yeah, Zebra chemistry, which is heavy, is certainly not practical. and then we have this little cookie, a very pretty species almost half the size of a floppy disk, a reference that might unfortunately be

lost

on a large portion of our audience, but many others will be familiar, what their version is and what it is. how we've gone from a big metal railing to this neat little cookie and it shows that you know how that

technology

is developed and how it's brought back to life, but what exactly is in here, so I know there's sodium, yeah, and I know there is some kind of ceramic solid electrolyte, could you just paint a picture of what those layers actually look like and how they are constructed?

If you exploited that and looked at each individual layer, you would have metal casings in theoutside, then you have a cathode which is a mixture of that food grade salt and metals, like iron, and then we have a ceramic electrolyte that also acts as that separator and then on the anode side, we have a sodium metal anode and then we put all of that together and solder it all into an individual cell and then stack the cells together to ultimately form modules and systems and something that the customer can use. I guess maybe I said like a floppy disk, but actually maybe it's 'It would be more accurate to say some kind of stack of BM cookies, yeah, maybe that's more accurate or Jammy Dodgers maybe um, but a couple of questions, first First place, this chemistry was popular in the 70s, but obviously it was abandoned or it was not popular, but yes. discovered maybe yesWhy was it abandoned?

Why wasn't it something we are now familiar with? Yes, both reasons on the technical side, what's inside one of those old metal bars is a thick ceramic tube, so when you think Ceramic, you think traditionally. Well, they could be brittle, easy to break, difficult to manufacture and all of that is true to that traditional electrolyte and made it expensive and then the second part was in the '80s and '90s, there wasn't a huge need for energy storage, which Which is where this chemistry really sings, huh, and that's why chemistry was shoved into markets where it didn't really belong, like transportation, and that ultimately limited the marketing effort, so it was in the wrong format at the time. wrong, wrong format, wrong time, right format. time with this lovely little cookie Lena, um, however, I have to say that we hear the term solid state, it is considered almost a utopia of battery

technology

.

I'm sure people in the lithium ion world would say differently that it's going to be a variety of solutions, but the other thing you hear is they say solid state and you hear about the fragility of ceramic because it's essentially the same material with which you make a piece of ceramic and which are very, very difficult to manufacture. How are you overcoming some of those challenges? I think it comes down to having really brilliant people and I think having someone like Rich Dawson at the helm and that's very much Lena's secret source for getting that combination of material. science, engineering and chemistry do all of those things well and you get a product that can achieve the things that you want it to achieve and I'm going to let us talk about the market segments that we target in a moment, but that's combination works very, very well and it's hard work and there's trial and error and you know this is the stage we were at when we started, it was a lab-based scale-up, so to speak, but a lab-based discovery, now we're at the stage, I should say we're expanding, we're trying to get bigger and bigger, so I think that's almost in the bag now that we've got the roof sorted and you know, get the cans together and all that and expand but in a few words, as an early stage investor, I felt like that box was checked and and you had and you're putting your faith in someone and and and those people, um, those brilliant people are not rich, we had a little walk around the lab and there were all kinds of things that we could see and then there was a room that said this is where the secret things happen and we're not going to talk about it other than to say it's the Secret Fountain, which of course then I meant that I was peeing out the window desperately trying to find out, but are we allowed to talk about the type of steel plate armor?

I guess so, so that people's knowledge really a lot of that came from the fuel cell industry, so yeah. Think about how fuel cells have developed over the years. They also had a tubular base uh format with a big thick ceramic tube in the Westinghouse concept and then a lot of that research that came out of the UK moved towards that, if you think about a fuel cell today or a fuel cell electrolyzer. solid oxide is the stacked concept um so there was a lot of knowledge and practical experience that the rich and Gan learned in that industry where they were really trained and that's what underpins all of ceramics. knowledge and over and over again, so how can you get a ceramic that is thin enough to be flexible and reliable?

While ceramics are traditionally fragile. One of the things we do is we stick it on a very thin sheet of metal with a bunch of little holes in it and that gives it that armor. I know we were looking at some electrolytes and you can bend them and the conductive layer doesn't come off like you would think it would. It's nice and sticky, and to do that I've done Rich and the team a disservice because of how difficult it is by calling it sticky and easy, but, as you say, that's where the secret is. lies, yeah, well, I think we had a phenomenal moment where we were looking at this type of steel sheet that has these little tiny holes that go into this very thin sheet of ceramic so that you get the strength while also retaining the flexibility of the ceramic without losing any of the conductive properties and uh richly there um and I like it oh it's like you know you have an armored shell and in my head I was thinking of a tortoise or a tortoise and once again I haven't done it any favors to the fantastic amount of science that has been done, but it really speaks to the fact that you know this is coming from fuel cells and that there is value in looking at a variety of solutions and identifying the real ones.

The best pieces of technology so you can fast forward, you know, 50 years from this point where we have the old version of zebra chemistry to this really cool piece of technology that brings together all those minds and experience and patents along over the years. It's extraordinary, but I want to ask where it will be used because we haven't talked about it yet and I think this is where it

gets

particularly interesting because sodium and iron are getting a lot of attention from a cost perspective, we know that. that BYD hopes to bring a sodium-ion battery for cars to market.

JC already launched one. Obviously there are companies like fadan here in the UK that are looking at some automotive applications. I think I'll have to check that out, but I think we're looking at automotive applications and of course. You know, when you look at it, it might be a third of the price of lithium, that's a huge blessing, but then the question arises about energy density and the fact that it's not as good as its lithium-ion counterpart at crushing charges. of energy. a specific volume or weight, but that doesn't concern you as much, no, we don't really care given the end markets that we're looking at and I think it's an important point here to talk again about people, when it will arrive. on board three, four years ago.

I think we were at a stage where when I was looking at it and investing in talking to other investors, I said okay at the time. I think our website had so many different uses for a battery and as I described it the other day, it was almost like Google, the word battery and then any application, from power tools to flashlights, phones, everything you throw at it, everything you ships, planes, will on board, we decided we're going to focus on one area and What we could see, the best real use for this chemistry and materials science would be energy storage, so we focused on that and then , if we segment out all the different chemistries and types of solid-state batteries, then it works very, very well in that space. because of the duration and then the curve that we have in energy usage and demand and Stu, all of those very, very simple to look at things lend themselves perfectly to that, well, I mean, do you want to talk about that?

Google, yeah, I think I firmly believe that you want to do one thing really, really well and you can define the company by doing that thing really, really well and there's always a long list of things that you'd like to do and then, okay, let's go after them once. . We're making a ton of money, yeah, I think understanding where this chemistry can have the most impact in the shortest amount of time has really driven our commercialization, but also the technology development plan and, just as far as energy density goes. , there is someone we can get really high energy density in these cells, we have a metal anode, so that kind of inherent limit that sodium ion technologies have is not applicable to us, but at the same time we are not worried energy density, the only reason I'm concerned about energy density is that the higher the energy density, the fewer cells we have per system and ultimately we can get it even cheaper, so we'll pursue it , but in the end the end user doesn't really care about the power density.

And so where are we headed? I think it's important to say that we are not doing many things, what are we doing? And it's really about energy storage, but what I would call longer durations of energy storage for the most part. Grid-tied batteries in the UK today last between an hour and an hour and a half, allowing you to know the balance in real time or keep the grid stable, but you zoom out and say what's happening on the grids. from all over the world: there are more and more renewable energies. penetration, uh, what does that mean from a flexibility perspective?

You will need more and longer storage durations as you draw down the maximum capacity of Heritage and your Heritage hydrocarbon capacity, so this trend is coming, there is no doubt about it and what we have done, is said to be fine, to get ahead of ourselves to that trend, let's build the lowest cost 4+ hour battery we can and make it disruptively cheaper than lithium and then where that has taken us is into the markets not just in the UK and that could be interesting. talk also yeah, I wanted to ask you because I've seen several other podcasts where you've also done various things on your website and you talk about the duck curve and how that has particularly meant that this long lasting energy sodium storage solution is lends to India.

I would say, generally speaking, I would just say that war has a warmer climate, you know, the Middle East, I mean, Australia could be a very interesting market and you could also see, you know, solar farms using this type of chemistry, but In warmer climates it works better and again I'm going to describe why you know it's simple. I say my background is chemistry, but you know it's simple physics, heat transfer, and how it all works, but it works, I warn you. Not only do I not want to, I don't want to limit it too much, but as you say, the markets where there is high solar absorption, the massively growing grid requirement for any solution that is implemented, it has to be low cost.

Quick, um, but I know. and hence my question, do you have a pilot currently underway in India, um right, that's right, absolutely yes, and in India it is and I will do it again. I'll talk about that specific driver, but back to you, India is obviously close. and dear, for me, I am of Indian heritage. I should have been born in India and I am very sorry to say that I am based in the UK. I am from the UK. I support the Indian cricket team. He may not be doing very well. Well, in the short term, right now as we record this, let's see how fortunes change in the next few weeks, but India is important to me and I just look at energy usage in India and a couple of things happened over the last five years. or 10 years, every time I visit I see what is happening in energy use in urbanization and you see something as simple as finance and banking, where through technology through mobile technology, people in the Villages suddenly have access to banking, yes, something they didn't have before.

They could put their savings, you know, with a local money lender, which is not ideal and let's not talk about interest and all those dynamics, but they were less favorable, put it that way, but now you have a, you have, you have processes. and implemented applications and institutions that support this, that makes it more accessible to those people, what they need, they need power, they need power and the best way we can get that power is yes, instead of, as my children would say, burning things down , dad, that is. It is not a good thing we can do, we can take advantage of nature.

Where was it in India? Where did you grow up or were born? Delhi, so my entire family is in Delhi. For my immediate family, they are all in northwest India. So, this is it. totally off topic and I'm totally the podcast my husband's family um are from the Punjab region okay so yeah so I'm Punjabi um by background and then I was born in a small place uh my father was moving with a workplace called derad Doom, which is now part of harana, which is, uh, you wouldn't know it, but there are some very beautiful mountains there, you can see the Himalayas from there, but then we moved and I've been in the United Kingdom for most of my life now I'm totally veering away from this but can I ask you about let's go back let's doA health check on our pilot has been active for almost a month now, so let's take a look at that, but going back to what brought us to India, I think it's that focus on where this technology can have the most impact in the shortest amount of time and I know I'm repeating myself, it's kind of like I wake up and make sure that we stay true to um and there was a combination of factors that brought us to India, one is just the abundance of energy. solar. how cheap it is and how quickly it's being implemented, which leads to a steeper pipeline curve, as you mentioned, which is really phenomenal, where there's a lot of peak demand in the morning and in the evening that doesn't can be filled. with renewable energy and that's really getting bigger and bigger as a result of more and more people using air conditioning and using it when the sun sets properly, so you have this amazing set of macros, a set of amazing macros and then the technological side the lithium ion can can store for hours 6 hours 8 hours, that's not a technical challenge most of the time most of the time it's just economical, but in a place like India where you're trying to install Lithium coupled with rooftop solar, summers are 50° becomes a real technical challenge and that's why this incredible opportunity was created to say okay, people, big industrialists, are actively trying to find a storage solution of low-cost power to connect to your only that works in your climates and the global South is being largely ignored in battery development. and that's what got me really excited and I said we have to get this done as quickly as we can and the last touch on that cake is where our batteries can have the biggest impact not just for the business but as a medium. of climate um, climate change uh I guess against climate change I didn't put it that eloquently, but if you look at the global South, what is very common is that when the sun is not shining, the backup capacity is still cold, they have not done it. been through gas transitions, so when you just look at the carbon math, it's very compelling to implement energy storage because for every megawatt that you're switching from solar in the middle of the day, you're taking away a megawatt of coal that's completely undercutting the transition to renewable energy in India, so you can say I'm excited about this because it's like, wow, you couldn't have asked for a better launch pad for this technology and when you look at I think it's the national electricity plan in the India, like they're saying, yeah, storage, come on, we love you, yeah, um, but you've reminded me, so we're talking about operating at 50°C temperatures which sometimes aren't necessarily suitable for lithium, but the solution leader runs at 250° SE, which I totally have to believe you because when I touch the top of the battery pack over there, I mean, it's not even a little bit hot, it's not even warm, but inside it's running at 250° .

°C Why is it like this? You might think we're crazy, but this is where you hear science, math, and thermodynamics. The fundamental challenge with many electrochemical devices is that every time you cycle them, they create heat and heat. It is the enemy of most electrochemical devices and therefore to counteract that heat you usually need to spend a lot of money and energy to remove the heat with a liquid cooling system, so that is the current status quo. Our approach was good, this chemistry can operate in a very wide range of temperatures, what if we designed it in a way that we could use heat to our advantage and get rid of the complex thermal management system with something very, very simple and cheap, so we choose to operate at 250° because every time we cycle the battery, it generates enough heat to stay at 250° and we do it with vacuum insulation, which is exactly the same technology as a thermos, so that approach is quite radical, it's counterintuitive and the first time Rich explained this to me before I joined the company I had my doubts, but as you say, once you touch a battery pack, once you hold a battery pack, once you you put your hand on it, you realize okay, isolation is very easy here and We shouldn't take credit for being Lena, because you know, look, we can use isolation because it really is that simple and as I listen to your talk, I'm thinking about you, you know, we have the ceramic electrolyte.

I'm thinking about putting a plate in the oven instead of a very cold plate, which is more fragile, the cold one, yes, interesting? Again, I've been completely reductionist according to the science, but I can, that's how it stings. To think about it, there is clearly a huge long duration energy storage market within the global South here in the UK, it's a bit different. We were chatting before the podcast about things like we have the interconnector options, we have several others. parties involved where we can import energy instead of just having to store it, so what does the market look like for L?

I know here in the UK, maybe I think if you look at the UK and Europe in general, there is still that requirement, there is definitely that. The requirements and the infrastructure don't exist at the moment, but I think what we are trying to do would make it more viable to use this chemistry set. Suddenly the economy changes for you even here. And then just from a resources perspective and Recycling and you. I know we can continue with things like Black Mass etc, this is inherently clean, so yes, you are clean because you get energy from nature, but the other side is at the end, it's sodium and it's all you.

I know it's hugely recyclable in every part of it. I'm looking at the cookie like you describe and I like the BM cookie, yes, and I'm just getting to that point where I normally have my coffee and a cookie, so that's okay. that's my head, but anyway, but but that's the most important thing and if you're one of them, you know a more, let's say, progressive individual about energy storage and use as a government or even as a local authority, this it really needs to be They looked at it and the UK just published a couple of weeks ago their consultancy consultation on long duration energy storage and they recognize that there is a recognition that this is coming and again the reason why we are going to need it It's because the UK is really leading the way in terms of the amount of renewables we've been able to deploy, we're 40% off last year which is incredible how quickly it happened and as we continue to ramp up there will be more and more pressure to put in the long term. long duration energy storage and it's been 40 years since the UK installed a long duration energy storage system, right?

And you mean a hydroelectric dam pump, hydraulic pump, hydro, yeah yeah that's great technology but you need a place to put a lake um that's the only problem with a place to put a rod in the lake , you can't put it on a rooftop with your solar panels, but um, but it's a really good technology, so I think the UK has recognized that there needs to be a means to incentivize this, they recognize that no, it doesn't just have to be a long duration energy storage, as you said, we have interconnectors, we have other means of energy for there and ultimately know that yes, we have that big technical advantage in high temperatures at the end of the day, this is just a cleaner, cheaper, safer. battery abely in the UK and it's interesting because here in the UK I think we're absolutely sensational at generating really wonderful science, really fantastic intellectual property, it's a challenge to scale it up.

I would say, oh, certainly, that seems to be our perception when we have this helicopter view. the various developments happening in the battery landscape, you're at that kind of critical juncture where you're coming out of R&D mode scaling operations, you've got fantastic things in the field getting that kind of feedback, but are you experiencing those challenges? challenging and I guess if you could know a real wish list of things to make your life easier, what would it be like? I think at this stage it's all about partnering and finding individual organizations and it's not as simple as pounds or dollars through the door and on the balance sheet, there are people who can help us with that scaling up and, you know, Despite having expanded on some of the work I did at University, it is very challenging and there is a lot we can do and and Rich would agree that we can do a lot, but if we are going to do this at the pace we need to, we need a partnership and , as recently as you know, I would say the last 3 4 days where we've had great conversations with people and organizations will really help us get there and get us through it at the pace that we need to do it.

Lancaster is the hub and all that good stuff, but really this. It's a global company and it makes this the hub, but you know our radios go everywhere, really Europe, the Middle East, India, Australia, we can go anywhere, so we're looking for partnerships and it's simple, simple chemistry. , and you know we might have PhD degrees in chemical engineering or chemistry, but you know, it's simple enough to understand and the math and the numbers work, that's the key. I think one of the biggest barriers to scaling and I think we're very focused on batteries and automotive and they both have a common trait is getting their first really significant factory.

Oh, it's only going to cost three billion rights and it needs one gig right out of the box and that's pretty unique, in fact, we assume that's what every company experiences, but it's not quite right. In most companies, you get a factory or something like that and you can get up and running and then it's your profits that fund the next expansion, um, that's something that most of the industry deals with, but again, one One of the differences and the strategy we have is our cost. The advantage comes from the raw materials and, for example, a ton of salt is cheaper than a ton of lithium carbonate, but so is a kilogram, and that cost.

The advantage really increases. I just need to check that I heard that correctly, so a ton of salt is cheaper than a ton of lithium, that makes sense, yes, but a ton of salt is cheaper than a kilogram. No, I just meant on a kilogram scale. Hopefully. Not right now, lithium is taking a bit of a nosedive, but the point is that we still have a cost advantage even at a very, very small scale, so when we brought in help, we did so with preferential feeding. studies with komal, which is part of the stellantis group, recognizing that we are not going to go through self-discovery ourselves, we want to bring in the experts at So So Cal for those who don't know that the big robotics company helped with this, more or less um automate assembly production lines that kind of stuff and you've absolutely been working with them quite a recent partnership.

It's been behind the scenes for quite some time. It's recently public, uh, on the basis that we've completed our prior work and that leads to a cost model that we then bring to other experts to make sure they're providing their independent due diligence perspective. You know, Halberton, we're part of Halberton Labs, they're investors in us and they have enormous scale, um, Automation and Manufacturing teams came in and cleaned it up and made sure we're doing things the right way and all of that takes to the fact that we can believe that we can profitably manufacture these batteries at a megawatt hour scale. on a gwatt hour scale, which means we have a very different approach where we're not just waiting forever until the point where we can build a gigafactory, we can go set up a plan at a much lower cost anywhere in the world and validate. technology and doing that over and over again and scaling much more organically, so let me check if I've understood this correctly because of the cost of raw materials and obviously assuming you get the right level of In reality, automation doesn't You need to do this at gwatt hour scales or gigafactory scale for the economics to make sense and be profitable, so deployment in theory should be simpler, more organic, right?

We don't need to do that. raise a billion dollars before you start making profits, which as a business person is a big relief for me, but if someone wants to give you a billion dollars, I'll use it, we could use it, but you know, as an investor I came into this, all of that made sense to me, that the scale of investment required to be able to grow was feasible,It wasn't crazy, you didn't need something, you know, you didn't need a The national state behind you puts it that way, but it's that point and you know we have the knowledge in the association, so yeah, Cal and I know that fully loaded. it's, uh, you have your cars, and the background of the cars and a lot of people, but that's Part of it, I mean they know what they're doing, they almost know what they're doing and having them with us.

Halberton again, big win, but Halberton is a huge organization, an all-service company in the US, one of the largest and they've backed us like Well, we got to their accelerator program, so we're in that phase where we have the right partners and then we'll see where we can go pretty quickly, but I think it's going to be an exciting space over the next six 12. For months we'll be doing different things and we'll get back to people. I think it's a recognition from the beginning that, while we work with people who know what they're doing, what we know when we know what we're doing best is R&D. law and Innovation and there was a conscious effort to recognize instead of going through that self-discovery of learning to be manufacturers as well, let's try to accelerate that as quickly as possible and let's not waste money teaching ourselves, but rather inject that knowledge. from the outside as fast as we can, that's a perfect way to sec because I want to talk to you about the people and the culture of working here because we walked in today, you know, it's 9 in the morning in Quast and the people have huge smiles on their faces. it's like you're here on a Friday afternoon and it's absolutely none of those things, and it's clear that there's a really wonderful culture that I'm sure is totally intentional and that's so important when this is hard to do.

This at scale is going to be tough and you need amazing gear to make it worth it and get you through those dark days that inevitably come, so give us a taste of the flavor here and maybe the specific shape I'm in. I'll ask thisThe question is to give us an idea of ​​the more specific type of jokes and, you know, for example, on a fully loaded side, our specific jokes are that, oh, we've been hosted at a premiere at the m6 Jack's in a luxury five truly charming. star hotel with a stellantis or whoever um or you know arguing about frame rates and things on cameras so give us an idea of ​​what's going on in Lena again so I'm not today everyone They understand that you know.

I'm, I'm, I'm not an executive in the Lena family, but what I see is that it's unique because the job is very, very difficult, but you have to keep it in a friendly colleague, but it's academic in the back, you know, ultimately Instance, you know a lot of people come from academia, but there's this trading Edge that has that combination of James Morish to the CFO along with these people, it's unique and then just indulge me for a moment when I've been investing in the past in public markets. in stocks and, you know, we look for companies that have the right culture, culture is very important and when I make a mistake in investing and I know you're wrong, it's usually there's not enough work on management and culture or Chang is very, very quickly what I've seen in my journey with Leno at that time has been pretty consistent and the people, a lot of the individual employees 1 2 3 4 ex-f Founders and are still around and they're happy and they have smiles on their faces and They come back during maternity leave coming with the Bas seeing them all those good things, the bant will bite because I'm not here today, I'm leaving I'll let him take it, but the little things I see, I come back for more, it's really every time I do my visits, how is that going?

What happened? Can I see some photos? We, we, protect as much as we can from you and um, yeah, there's a lot. I could understand that sounds absolutely crazy, so one thing is that we take costumes very seriously, so there were times when we had Western Wear Friday where all the labs had cowboy hats and stuff like that, we had Eurovision of course . That was very serious, salute to Service Day, where obviously you know I came in full camouflage and I never underestimate an engineer's ability to build a good disguise. Another thing we had last week was Lena's bingo, so someone set up a bingo board. of all our tropes and uh Rich, we've talked a lot about um, bless him, bless him, the worst thing he'll curse is that he says oh crumbs, you know things when he says oh crumbs, but that was one of the things that I had to check off with Lena.

Bingo and then had a moment like oh crumbs all over the bingo room. I don't know if she realized what happened, but there's a little snippet, but I do when you think about our progress toward climate change and I was in policing. Recently there was a global assessment saying that we are nowhere near the 1.5°C ambition that we all set for ourselves and I knew that a lot of people are saying why don't we do this. There is clearly a lot of desire and everyone listening to this has become inherently, is inherently driven towards this Mission and the reason is that it is really difficult to build new climate technology to actually deploy in the world and make a difference, it is difficult , creates it, requires it.

The great minds like you that you have met today in the laboratory work day and day and it is not a journey in which you go from 0 Z to 01 it is nothing more than smiles, it is a setback, a setback, then you have a great day and you do a lot of progress and you go backwards and then you burn out and then you go backwards again and then you do another great thing and then you burn out again and it's only when you really step back and start measuring the right progress and having a culture where people Supporting each other during those setbacks, rather than running away, is key.

Because deep tech is hard and you need to be outside, you need to be there enjoying your workplace to get through it. I think it's very inspiring when you see the work that they do and I mean, that's where the things you know Lena Bingo sound silly but they're not, they're so important when this journey is hard, so those kind of Hard Days Days What Do you remind yourself why you are here? Why do you do this work? What I've seen is that you know in the past when there have been setbacks or disappointments, whether it's deadlines or just not things. working or breaking, um, you, you look at the overall reason why we're here and we're trying to help you build a better energy future for everyone and that helps, I mean, that really helps and if that keeps you going, you know it really doesn't.

I can think of nothing better than that, because if there are things that break, you are going to fix them, you have someone like Will in charge, really the guys will fix them, you know, we will do it in PACE, we will work longer. We'll work harder, we'll look smarter and all that stuff, but if you look at that and see that this is a better way to do these things and then you combine it with that, everything is in our favor too, if you think about it, you know the macro . In fact, people want to do this, the weather is also there on our side in theory and the markets were watching, plus people combining all those things, everything will work out, you know, you just have to hang in there. perhaps on a more personal note rather than a holistic approach.

I think in that journey of rewind, regress, exhaustion, there's always a big right and, frankly, it's just addictive. You know, I used to work in big corporations. Um and I enjoyed it, but it was nothing like that feeling when you made that breakthrough, you turned on the system for the first time in India and you broadcast the results to an office full of people anticipating and seeing what's happening. I mean, it's addictive. So it should show the audience that there is obviously a long duration energy storage pilot underway in India. You can see all the results on a giant screen in the office.

It's like being in a space station. It's like, oh no. You're going to go, you're making there a huge space in uh, my gift to myself this Christmas was a little bit of the spacecraft, uh, external thermal, you know, the heat shield that had fallen off the rocket and someone recovered it in, Uh, in Texas. Sorry no one asked me, I just had to say how cool it is, but it's space, yeah, it feels like that and you're seeing the results, everything you know, thousands of miles away, watching a mission control watching all. that and that's actually very exciting, but I think you already made it clear that you know when you get into something, you know your stomach turns, this is the right thing to do and you can feel this way and that brings me back to investing. side that you can, there is often when you want to invest in something like this, there is a leap of faith that you say, does it make sense?, is it going to work? and I understand it, I completely understand it and I remember in 2019 when I came in. with a couple of friends and we looked at it very, very carefully, there was a stage where I wasn't sure and that brought me back to another person, in just a minute, one of the biggest macro investors that I had the great pleasure of working with It was Dave.

Dave Fishwick um on m&g and that's something he taught us all is you're going to have doubts and sometimes it's okay to feel and need to say that you know you feel a little bad about it in that moment and I did. I remember leaving in September. 2019, I think so, these are great guys, but we're writing a big check here. This is going to be right, but being there as early stage investors and now I look at it and now we have people like Will here, it feels good. I still have moments like that, but you have to do the right thing and Dave is absolutely right, always, unless if you don't have that, sometimes maybe it's too good.

I kind of imagine it as that kind of, you know, backing up a catapult and you're like, oh God, it goes and then it pings and you get a beautiful, ideally, you get a beautiful trajectory into the future. I have one more question to ask you now, something that we found to be quite typical of people who The interview is that many people know that they have worked in the oil and gas industry or have worked intensively on some type of fuel-powered vehicles. combustion and I don't want to demonize that at all. I think you know we've gone through a big cultural change apart from anything else, but what tends to happen is that these people we interview, they're six or seven years old, they turn to them and say, what are you doing in the job?

Is it a sensible thing to do? that has prompted a career change to something that perhaps focuses more on the broader clean energy space and you have a background in oil and gas so you totally fit that mold. I wonder what that journey must have been like for you and what perhaps prompted your departure, so I was a chemical engineer at University and then I joined Exon Mobile as a process engineer, so I spent a year at the refinery in Fley and then quickly I moved into the commercial side of the business doing a variety of things. able to travel all over the world, fantastic stuff, great group of people, and then in 2019 I started working in energy storage, those were the early days for energy storage, we were building a business group at EX in mobile devices and you know, looking at how How do you invest in the right assets to monetize the volatility that will come with the transition and work in that space at that time where it was quite raw, you know, energy storage through batteries in Was that moment literally exact?

The same battery cells that would go into a roadster in a shipping container connecting it to the grid and I guess my Eureka moment was there has to be a better solution, there has to be a right way to run the right size of technology for the problem at hand and then I started looking for who are those people you know I'm not a core scientist so I can't be there for the first few days. I often think that would be really fun, but, um, you I know who got to the point where they demonstrated a proof of concept, that's something I'm looking for and then I found Lena and as Arvin mentions, she came on board as a late founder and He then progressed to take on the role of CEO.

I've never looked back because I think, uh, but I recognize that one thing I will do since I've been in a big company is it's sure it's very slow to get to the point of making a decision and it feels restricted, but once you're there. In a big corporate year, there's a lot of momentum behind you and resources behind you, and that's why I think it's so important to maintain that collaboration between innovation, on the one hand, and established industry, on the other hand. and part of the reason I'm really proud to work with Halberton is that you're going to have to bring in partnerships that allow us to bring these first projects of their kind into the real world on a large scale and they're going to have to take some risk on that and to do that they need to be on board, right, so ultimately that's how I got here in the kids stuff.

I'd love to say I came home and had one of those moments. and you know, Bo, who's my oldest son, is saying stop burning things, um, but actually I think you know I asked him what dad does at work and he just said he made batteries for money, so maybe That's my commercial side that rubs off on him. everything is wrong,but bless him, that's a pretty good way to sum it up. I think it's perfect. I mean, most of my career has been in capital markets, yeah, you know, Running Money, putting together portfolios for large institutions, um government and and and helping their money grow, helping them scale and then scale smaller, you know, investing in pensions for that has been in larger organizations started, Goldman Sachs then moved and LLY was at MG Investment now when my kids asked me what are you doing trying to describe how to put together a multi-asset portfolio it wasn't really attractive, it wasn't really attractive, however, they did know that I was involved in Lena as a personal investor and they were excited about it and they met and you know, they know Jee, one of the founders they know James quite well and they can just describe what the battery does when you get your package from Amazon and it says it has lithium it has all the warnings that this won't have and that this is different so they understand that and they're old enough to understand it and they like science and engineering and you also the business side, it's cheaper and it makes money at the end of the day, so that's pretty compelling and yes, as I keep saying I'm an investor, I enjoy investing and I see this investment, but there's more to it than that, too.

There are people and passion behind this, which really excites me like everything electric. Your love is full of fun, everything electric is exposed all over the world. Next we will be in London. Remember, energy and transportation professionals. Go free on the first day, which unfortunately is all we have time for today. Many thanks to Will and Armen for taking the time to talk to us this morning. My mind is totally blown by the fact that we're talking about really remarkable food grade salt, uh, but thank you so much for listening, be sure to like, comment and subscribe.

It really helps us and ensures that we can continue to share the important things in this transition to clean energy, so if you have, thank you for listening.