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The Hottest Thing In Energy Storage · What's Your Problem?

• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Pushkin. Let's do a classic good news bad news top
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: to the show. Today. Good news, wind and solar power
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: are now cheaper than power from fossil fuels. Bad news,
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: sometimes the sun goes down and the wind does not blow.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: The energy transition, the shift to carbon free energy, may
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: be the most important problem of our time, and the
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: most important problem within that problem may be energy storage.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: How to take that sweet, sweet carbon free energy we
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: generate when the wind is blowing and the sun is shining,
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: and store it for use whenever we want it. We
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: do have some ways to store energy for some uses.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: Lithium ion batteries are good for cars, for example, but
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: they are way too expensive for lots of use cases.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: Think of factories making energy intensive things like steel or aluminum.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: They use tons of energy, they compete over every last cent,
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: and it is nowhere near cost effective for them to
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: use lithium ion batteries. So to bring the energy transition
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: to industry, we're gonna have to figure out new ways
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: to store energy, ways that are not only reliable but
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: also very very cheap. I'm Jacob Goldstein, and this is
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: What's Your Problem? The show where I talk to people
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: who are trying to make technological progress. My guest today
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: is Andrew Panik. He's the co founder and CEO of
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: the energy storage company and Torah Energy. Andrew's problem is this,
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: how can you store renewable energy in a way that
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: is cheap enough and reliable enough to convince giant global
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: industries to abandon fossil fuels. Andrew is really into the
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: techno economics of the energy transition. Basically, find new technologies
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: that move us away from burning fossil fuels and that
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: make economic sense. He dropped out of Stanford to start
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: his first company, and that company helped make big solar
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: installations a little bit cheaper. Then he went back to
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: Stanford to finish college. And he assumed at the time
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: that there was an energy storage solution on the way,
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: that lithium ion batteries would just keep getting cheaper and
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: cheaper until they were so cheap they'd meet all our
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: energy storage needs. Then one day he learned he was wrong.
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: Those are some of the best moments in life when
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: somebody tells you that you're wrong, and you go and
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: you reevaluate and you find out, man, I was wrong
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: and that person was right. And so this particular moment
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: for me was actually speaking with a guy named Matteo Harmio,
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: and he was coming out of Tesla's energy business. And
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: so Tesla, you know, obviously most famous for making electric vehicles,
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: but also has a very strong business putting lithium ion
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: batteries into stationary energy storage to support the grid. And
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: so you know, here I was coming with this hypothesis, Hey,
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: lithium mion's going to do it all. And he had
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: just left Tesla at that point and essentially said lithium
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: he can't, can't do it all. We need something that's
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: going to be far cheaper than lithium mine.
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: And was he saying, not only are they not cheap
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: enough now, but they're not gonna get cheap enough exactly.
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: And that was the key point.
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: What's the floor on the price?
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: The floor in the price really comes from the materials. Eventually,
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: the cost of lithium in batteries is going to be
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: approaching just the cost of the lithium, you know, the copper.
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: So there's a long way it can still come down,
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: and we think it will, but that floor is still
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: above where it needs to be forevery other just.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: The lithium and the copper. I mean, it won't work
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: for a lot of things. It'll be too expensive. Okay,
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: So now you've got a problem to solve. You realize, oh,
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: lithium mine's not going to do it. What do you do?
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: Look at everything under the sun that might be able
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: to do it. So we, you know, we, and we
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: in this case is myself and one of my two
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: co founders that started working together around this time. We
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: started going through every technology that you could imagine that
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: could store energy. We looked at hydrogen, we looked at
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: compressed air, we looked at gravitational energy storage, various types
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: of new electrochemical batteries that are not lithium ion that
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: might be able to store it for cheaper and you know,
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: we made sort of toy models of all of these
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: things to try and figure out, you know, what the
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: cost floors for those technologies would be. And the one
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: that really jumped out at us was thermal energy storage.
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: We're we're gonna spend the whole rest of the time
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: on thermal energy storage. But you rattled off a bunch
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: of other energy storage technologies that are in use in
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: various places or that people are trying, and so can
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: you just talk about the sort of broader landscape of
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: energy storage for a sec I mean, like what is
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: the what's it look like? What seems promising to or
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: not promising?
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: So you know an example, you know, there are lots
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: of other electro chemistries, a lot of other different types
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: of batteries said are not lithium ion that I think
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: are super fascinating, definitely worth people pursuing, and could end
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: up being the solution for a lot of these problems.
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: Iron I mean the guy, the guy from Tesla who
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: who told you lithium I wasn't going to get there, right,
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: he has like an iron battery company, now right? Is
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: that that's right? That's right?
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you know, very interesting company doing doing iron.
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: Actually there are a few companies doing iron based batteries
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: of any sort.
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: And interestingly, iron is cheaper than lithium. I mean, is
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: that the core proposition there or part of it?
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's a that's a huge, a huge part
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: of it. And so a lot of interesting things going
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: on there.
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: An example that we just decided to kill entirely from
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: our search was gravitational energy storage. This was one where
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: just the energy density was so low that we didn't
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: see a future part. There's there's a wonderful te Just.
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: To be clear, Gravitational energy storage means when you have
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: power from whatever, a wind, turbine, move something up, put
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: pump water up a hill, and then when you need
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: power later, let the water flow down and spin a
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: turbine or something that's gravitation.
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, absolutely yes, And this is actually one of the
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: backbones of our grid today. And this is a great technology,
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: but it's one of those things where most of the
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: good sites to do that, most of the good places
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: where you can put a dam and have two reservoirs
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: that are really different in height over just a few
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: miles away from each other, like most of their sites
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: have already been taken.
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: So like a good idea, but not a lot of
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: room to do new stuff there.
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: Exactly great idea, we kind of tapped out the resource.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: Okay, what seemed like a bad idea. When you're looking
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: at different energy storage ideas.
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: I don't want to speak ill of any particular energy
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: storage but I'll just say there's a wide variety and
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: even within one broad category, there's often companies that you know,
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: in our view are taking really great approaches or some
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: that are taking approaches that we just sort of scratch
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: our head and wonder about.
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: There. I'm curious, but I respect, I respect your civility.
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: I appreciate it. So you look at these different technologies
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: and you arrive at thermal, which basically means heat, right,
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: using energy when you have it to heat something up
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: and store energy in the form of heat. So why
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: do you land there?
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, thermal has a few things going for it that
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: really caught our attention. The first is that it has
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: the potential to have an extremely low cost floor, so
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: you can take some of the cheapest materials, most abundant
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: materials on Earth and get them hot. You don't need
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: a lot of complex processing, you don't need any special
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: metals or fancy materials. It's just stuff getting hot. So
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: it has the ability to get to really really low cost.
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: That was the first thing. The second thing was it
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: had very high energy density, so a relatively small thermal
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: battery could store a lot of energy. And it really
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: became apparent that there's not one energy storage problem, there's
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: really two. The first energy storage problem is the one
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: that everybody thinks about, which is you have excess wind
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: and solar at some times you need to store it
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: some how, and then you need to get it back
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: as electricity for the times that you don't have enough electricity.
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: But the other storage problem is the one of heat,
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: and heat is you know, I would say has been
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: historically an underappreciated part of our energy system. We think
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: a lot about electricity, but we often don't think as
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: much about heat. But it turns out about half of
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: the energy we use globally is in the form of heat.
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: So the kind of heat you're talking about, just to
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: be clear, it's not just like making offices or factories
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: the right temperature for people, right, it's like wildly intense
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: amounts of heat you need to whatever, forge steel or something. Right,
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: it's like great, big hot industrial kind of heat. Absolutely,
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: And fossil fuels are really good at that, right, Like,
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: they store an incredible amount of energy. They give you
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: a lot of heat whatever you want it, Like, it's
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: hard to beat.
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: I mean, if fossil fuels weren't great, we wouldn't be
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: struggling so much to make the energy transition happen on
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: the timeframe that we need it to. And so, yeah,
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: fossil fuels are generally pretty cheap and they have the
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: ability to have that energy on demand.
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: And these are the kind of commodity industries that are
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: fighting over sents. Right. The marginal cost is everything, and
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: so if they're going to use something other than fossil fuel,
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: it absolutely has to be as cheap and as reliable.
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: Exactly, And those two things we always think about as
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: far as what our customers need. They care about two things.
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: They care about the energy being cost effective, and they
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: care about the energy being available when they need it.
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: So you land on heating up blocks of carbon, right
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: of graphite? How do you arrive there?
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, we made a spreadsheet with just every cheap
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: material that we could find on Earth and everything from
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: just like rocks, you know, just like different types of rocks.
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: Let's see, rocks are cheap, rocks.
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: Are cheap, super cheap, you know, rocks, sand, bricks of
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: various sorts. You know, we looked at all sorts of metals. Iron.
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: Can you just store it in enough iron or steel.
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: Just to heat up iron, to just heat.
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: Up iron exactly, maybe even to the point that it's
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: molten and it's liquid, you know, can you just heat
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: up liquid iron? So lots and lots of different things there,
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: and you know, we tried to look at you know,
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: what's the cost, what's the energy density? How much energy
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: do you store per amount of material? We looked at,
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: are there any you know, safety challenges, corrosion challenges, toxicity,
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: all of those sorts of things went into it.
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: Andrew and his colleagues eventually decide to use graphite, just
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: like what's in a pencil. In a minute, Andrew explains
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: why they tried very hard to convince themselves not to
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: keep going, and then kept going. Anywhay, that's the end
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: of the ads. Now we're going back to the show.
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: So now you've got Now you've got your thing, You've
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: got your big idea. Let's heat up graphite. Let's store
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: in by heating up graphite. Is this the moment when
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: you try and knock yourself down where you're like, let's
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: let's prove that we're wrong. Which I like that as
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: just a way of life. I like that philosophically, I
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: like it intellectually.
• 11:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we went through and we said, before we actually
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: start this company, we're going to spend one solid month
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: looking for every problem that we can find. Is there
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: any way we can kill this idea? Before we invest
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: the next decade of our lives into trying to commercialize that.
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: And what were some of the most compelling Devil's Advocate
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: cases against this company?
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so the first one is just can we get
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: enough of this stuff and can we do it, you know,
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: at a reasonable costs. And what we found really quickly
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: there was that the graphite and carbon supply chain is enormous.
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: So whatever we were doing for the next decade, even
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: if we were getting to tear what our scale, was
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: going to be a rounding error on the size of
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: that industry. So that was really important to us.
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: Was there anything that almost made you not do it?
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: Anything where that was uncertain but you decided on balance
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: it was worth trying anyway.
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: The hardest part was how to move the heat? And
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: so with this there are two ways you can imagine it.
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: You could try to move the graphite, and we actually
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: looked at some crazy concepts early on, like could you
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: move this hot graphite in some way?
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: It was like a hot block of carbon exactly, seems
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: hard to move, seems like you don't want to be
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: moving that.
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: We decided we really didn't want to move around these
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: hot blocks of carbon or even like carbon, you know, gravel,
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: or you know, some other thing that maybe would be
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: would be easier. It all just ended up being really cluegy.
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: The other way that you might do it is find
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: a different material that's a liquid that can withstand those
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: temperatures and that is compatible with graphite, and then pump
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: that around. And so that was maybe a little bit
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: easier to imagine than moving the hot graphite itself, but
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: it ended up having a whole host of other problems.
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: And the solution that we had that we weren't sure
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: was going to work at all those light bulb moments
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: was when you get stuff really hot, it starts to glow,
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: it's emitting light, it's incandescing, and that light itself is
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: actually carrying a tremendous amount of energy with it. It
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: turns out that most heat transfer at high temperatures is
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: actually mediated by light, by thermal radiation.
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: That is not at all intuitive, Right when you think
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: of the hot thing, you don't think that it's the
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: light that is actually carrying the heat, right, That is
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: not the way it feels.
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So what that meant was that we could try
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: to have a system that didn't use a heat transfer
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: fluid that didn't use some liquid we were pumping around.
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: If we were able to come up with the right
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: geometries and systems to use light to move heat around
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: in the system, we could theoretically have this really really simple, reliable,
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: nice system. But we weren't sure if there were going
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: to be any geometries or system designs that would work
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: well enough to solve that problem. But we at least
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: had a shot with this using light to move the heat.
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: So that part seems quite hard still right in this
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: universe when you're thinking like will this work? Thinking like, well,
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: maybe we could use light as the sort of vector
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: to get the heat from the block of graphite to
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: where we need it to be. Right like, that sounds
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: complicated and hard. It's wildly hot. It's just the idea
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: of light as the sort of pipe that sounds hard.
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was very hard to know if
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: it would work. So we had to take a little
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: bit of a leap of faith at that time that
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: we would be able to solve that problem.
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: You take the leap of faith, you start the company,
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: and where are you now? Have you solved that problem?
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: Yes, we are very very very happy to say that
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: it worked out as well or maybe even better than
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: we were hoping at the start. The ability to use
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: light to move the heat within the system, and it
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: really is just you know, clever use of void space
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: within the system is the answer. You just need to
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: have spots where there isn't carbon so that the light
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: from certain areas of the system can travel to another
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: area of the system because it's going through that that
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: empty space.
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: I mean, what this might be a bad sort of analogy,
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: but what it makes me think of as fiber optics,
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: where you have basically an empty pipe, right and you're
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: flashing light through it and you're sending data as light.
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not a terrible analogy. I mean, we don't
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: have to have any material to kind of carry the
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: light in where it's just void space. But it is.
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: There are parts of our system that very much look
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: like light pipes. It's you know, kind of a long
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: void space that allows heat from deep within the system
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: to be brought all the way to the surface of
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: the system just by light kind of radiating through a cavity.
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: Through empty space, through empty space. So where are you now?
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: So you have this thing it works, like, does it
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: exist in the world for real.
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: We started small, We built smaller prototypes, things that were
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: kind of bench scale. We moved up to stuff that
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: you would you know, put in a ware house, and
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: now we're actually nearing the completion of construction of our
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: first pilot project. And so this is i think something
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: that's a little bit bigger than a half shipping container,
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: so kind of a big steel box that's filled with
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: graphite blocks and then insulation, and that's storing megawatt hours
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: of energy in the form of that stored heat. And
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: this is going at a customer site in the Central
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: Valley of California. The customers well Head Electric, and their
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: business is largely to generate both electricity and heat for
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: customers in California, and so they're providing us a spot
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: to do this deployment. They have a very interesting location
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: with a natural gas power plant with lithium ion batteries,
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: with a solar farm kind of all co located. So
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: it's a very interesting energy playground where you can see,
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: you how are these things going to have to work
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: together in the future. And that's where our deployment is today.
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: And is it running. Is it super hot right now
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: in Fresno or wherever it is.
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: It is not running yet but will be in the
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: next few weeks. It's it's just about finished construction and
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: the team we are all so excited to be flipping
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: the switch on that a few weeks from now because
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: it's been an incredible amount of work and a very
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: fun project for all of us.
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: So tell me if it works. What's going to happen
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: when you flip the switch?
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: Hopefully not a lot. Yeah, it's always good when there
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: aren't too many surprises when you turn things on, So
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: you know, largely what's going to happen is you're going
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: to be sending electricity into the box that's going to
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: be heating up relatively slowly, heating up this graphite because
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: the graphite can store so much energy. Even when we're
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: putting in lots and lots of energy, you know, the
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: temperature will slowly rise over ten twenty hours.
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: And at some point it gets so hot that it's
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: glowing right like it's so like orange. I mean, is
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: it like like you know what a fire is really hot?
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: Does it? What does it look like?
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: It will be hotter than that?
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: Well, sure it'll be, yeah, but what is it? What's
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: it look like?
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: It really looks white hot. If you've ever seen a
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: picture of like a steel mill or something like that
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: with the steel ribbon being poured out of something, it's
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: that sort of like almost blinding, you know, white, like
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: very very bright.
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: And then so you'll have that stored energy in the
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: form of heat, and then what will happen to it.
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: In the future we'll be selling that heat, But right
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: now we're just going to be taking that heat out
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: and making sure that we can hit all of the
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: specs that our customers care about in the future. Can
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: we provide heat consistently? Can we provide it at the
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: right temperature? Are there any sorts of fluctuations or variability
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: of this? Those are the sorts of metrics we're going
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: to be looking for so that when we talk to
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: future customers we can show them this is going to
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: do the exact same thing that your fossil fuel burner
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: or boiler does for you today, which is provide consistent
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: heat twenty four to seven regardless of what's going on
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: with the weather.
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: So when do you think you'll be doing it for real?
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: When do you think you'll have a real, non pilot
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: paying customer using your heat?
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: What we're looking at for the first like really large
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: projects is likely twenty twenty five deployments, and these are
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: the earliest. Plants we're looking at are ones that are
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: located in the wind belts. So this is places like Kansas, Texas,
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: Iowa that have a huge amount of wind power. The
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: best economics in the world really for turning variable renewable
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: electricity into industrial heat is in the Midwest US, and
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: that's because there's so much wind that's been built out
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: there over the last decade that you actually have wind
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: that's being curtailed or sold at negative prices a decent
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: chunk of the time. So you think about you know,
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: maybe it's at nighttime, the wind's blowing really hard, there
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: isn't that much electricity demand, There isn't enough transmission capacity
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: to send that electricity to.
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: You can get for free basically, you just got to
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: be able to store.
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: It, exactly. You can get energy for free, importantly, for
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: only a small number of hours of the year. Yeah,
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: so you can't get it for free all the time.
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: But if you have something that can absorb that energy
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: really quickly, you can just shove that energy into a
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: box turn it into heat. Then that energy can be nearly.
• 20:23
  Speaker 3: Free in a minute, the Lightning Round, including one essential
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: lesson about engineering and why Andrew went back to college
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: after first dropping out, starting a company and selling.
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's get back to the show. We're gonna close
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: with the lightning round. I want to do a lightning round.
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: I want to ask you just a bunch of weird questions.
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: I love it. I've heard you talk about this one
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: class you took, I believe with Bill Day who's now
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: at Nvidia. I've heard you talk about it as really
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: influential on the way you think sort of broadly about
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: really about engineering, right about the sort of discipline of engineering.
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: What was the essential thing you learned from him?
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: Bill Ally was an incredible mentor incredible teacher. The thing
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: that I really learned from him was how to boil
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: problems down to their essence. And this is you know,
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: in every field. Engineering is not unique this way. It's
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: so easy to get sort of confused or you know,
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: flustered by all of the complexity and a problem. But
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: in most cases, a huge portion that complexity can be
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: ignored because it isn't going to be important to the outcome.
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: With the weather, you prefer too hot or too cold.
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: I love too cold over too hot.
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: Same. I'll take a New York winter over in New
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: York summer all day. Agreed. So you, if I understand
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: it right, dropped out of college, started a company, sold it,
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: and then went back to college. Why did you go back?
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: The funny answer is because I promised my parents I
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: would go back to college.
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: Also true, that's true.
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: Also funny and true. But I absolutely loved my time
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: at Stanford. I think it was one of the best
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: experiences of my life.
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: Then the question is, so why did you drop out? Yeah?
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: So I was working with a team of incredible people
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: and on this project that became my first company, Dragonfly,
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: and it was it was not a choice. It felt
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: so important to us to make sure that the technology
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: we were working on got out in the world and
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: made a difference that there is almost no question in
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: our minds that that was the right thing for us
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: to do. And that is what I advise people. When
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: I've had people ask, you know, who are thinking about,
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: you know, dropping out to start a company, I say,
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: if you're questioning whether you should do it or not,
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: probably just just stay in school.
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: If everything goes well, what problem will you be trying
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: to solve in say, five years.
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: Ooh, probably in five years. International expansion is going to
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: be one of the biggest parts of what we're doing.
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: We see a pretty clear path within the US market
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: and to some extent, the North American market, but we're
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: not going to be satisfied unless we're making global impact.
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: And so five years from now, that's what we're going
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: to be doing. And that's hard. That's hard for any company,
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: and it will certainly be hard for us as well.
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: I mean, the US market is very big. Like, if
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: that's where you are, right, that's good. That's a happy story.
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: It might be a happy story from a business perspective,
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: but it's not a happy enough story from a climate perspective.
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: The US is less than ten percent of emissions.
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: I mean, I guess the related question is can other
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: people just do what you're doing? Like how much YP
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: do you have? If it works well, could a lot
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: of people do it? And there's different ways to play that, right,
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: That could be a happy story if what you want
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: is for everybody in the world to do it, or
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: it could be a sad story if you're like, oh,
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: everybody's stealing ourp.
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: I love that framing.
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: How would you feel if lots of other people did
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: versions of what you did and it worked.
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: I would feel great about that personally, and I think
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: our team would as well, a lot of confidence in
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: our ability to not just because we have IP, but
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: also because we're going to execute well be the leader
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: in this area. But if you told me that fifteen
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: years from now, almost every industrial site around the world
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: either has a thermal energy storage box with graphite in
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: it or is planning to get one, and that somehow
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: and Tora wasn't the supplier of those, I would still say,
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: you know, we've accomplished our mission as a company.
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: Thank you for being so generous with your time. This
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: is oh thank you was This was really a joy.
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: I loved all the good pressure and you know, making
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: me say things that are not just you know, platitudes.
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: And I think we got into some very real but
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: interesting things as well.
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I love learning, so me to thank you for
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: telling me things I didn't know. Yeah. Absolutely. Andrew Ponnick
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: is co founder and CEO of and Torah Energy. Today's
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: show was produced by David Jaw, edited by Sarah Nicks,
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: and engineer by Amanda k. Wong. You can email us
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: at problem at Pushkin dot FM. I'm Jacob Goldstein, and
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: we'll be back next week with another episode of What's
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: Your Problem.