Latest / Clean Power Hour / Graphene for Battery Energy Storage with John DeMaio, CEO Graphex Technologies; EP138

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Graphene for Battery Energy Storage with John DeMaio, CEO Graphex Technologies; EP138 · Clean Power Hour

• 0:50
  Tim Montague: The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America. The maker of North America's number one three phase string inverter with over six gigawatts shipped in the US. The CPS America product lineup includes three phase string inverters ranging from 25 to 275 kW, their flagship inverter, the CPS, 250 to 75 is designed to work with solar plants ranging from two megawatts to two gigawatts, the 250 to 75 pairs well, with CPS America's exceptional data communication controls and energy storage solutions, go to chin power systems.com. To find out more.
• 1:26
  John DeMaio: What are we trying to do? I mentioned an industry problem. Well, how did the industry problems become created? Well, we're trying to replace over 100 years of the ice infrastructure with electric at the same time domesticate the end to end supply chain, which includes mining, right, which mining has not been that popular in the US, for example, it's more popular up in Canada, where they've been mining for decades, essentially. But there still are, you know, regulatory hurdles, societal, you know, kind of friction that can be created that has to be addressed.
• 2:05
  intro: Are you speeding the energy transition? Here at the Clean Power Hour, our hosts, Tim Montague and John Weaver bring you the best in solar batteries and clean technologies every week, want to go deeper into decarbonisation? We do too.
• 2:20
  intro: We're here to help you understand and command the commercial, residential and utility, solar, wind and storage industries. So let's get to it.
• 2:26
  intro: Together, we can speed the energy transition.
• 2:34
  Tim Montague: Today on the Clean Power Hour, my guest is John de mio. He is the CEO of graphics technologies. Welcome to the show, John. Hey, Tim, it's great to be with you. Again, please check out all of our content at clean power hour.com Give us a rating and a review on Apple and Spotify. And please subscribe to our YouTube channel. So John, it's great to have, you know, this burgeoning ecosystem of storage technologies and storage companies on the scene. Your company is called graphics and you and you make components for lithium ion batteries, among other things. So give our listeners some background on yourself. How did you come to energy storage? And what are you up to add graphics?
• 3:15
  John DeMaio: You bet. Okay, well, I'll, I'll try to be brief on my background, I'll sum it up to say that I've been in the energy transition space long before it was called that began in solar concentrators out in the Mojave Desert years and years ago, worked on a lot of combined cycle and heat recovery, energy recovery, energy efficiency type projects, at various companies spent a fair number of years at Siemens in the smart infrastructure group, where we tackled what I call reduce, produce, procure, protect, meaning reducing energy consumption, produce on site, procure wisely, and then of course, protect the those efficiencies over time, all in an effort to really reduce the human footprint on the planet from an energy perspective. So I've been very proud of the work that I've done over the over the years, and kind of gravitated towards towards this space. You know, I'm running a company, which we'll talk about, I'm sure it would be produced the graphite, that goes into the batteries for energy storage, and electric vehicles, etc. But all part of this, again, is transition away from fossil fuels, and to a more sustainable future. So really pleased with the momentum in the industry.
• 4:41
  John DeMaio: For the first time in my career, where I have seen such a strong alignment, all across the board, meaning, you know, from legislation to funding to industry, animal mentum I think we can all agree that this electrification movement is really going only in one direction, and that is towards electrification and away from internal combustion, in a case of, of transportation. So Never have I seen the stars align so firmly, to really ensure that this actually happens. I've seen some fits and starts over the last several decades, you know, all kind of cumulatively going in the right direction. But but like I said, this is this has been a real across the board kind of push and it's really encouraging to see,
• 5:29
  Tim Montague: yeah, we're we're at the right place at the right time. And that that only happens, you know, maybe once in your lifetime if you're lucky.
• 5:36
  Tim Montague: So it is it is great to be part of the energy transition and electrification of transportation. You know, Americans don't quite see it yet, although they certainly saw it in the Superbowl. adds the other day. You know, companies like GM, and Ford are electrifying their fleets. And while EVs are just a couple of percentage points of new car sales in the US, you look to the future look to Northern Europe.
• 6:06
  Tim Montague: And you see very large percentages of new cars are pure EVs in, in Germany in Norway, and the writing's on the wall, that the internal combustion engine is not as good, it's not going to be competitive, it's not a matter of liking batteries or not liking batteries, it's just not going to be cost cost effective to move things around.
• 6:29
  Tim Montague: And so the ice engine is going to disappear. And it's going to be a tipping point phenomenon, Ice Ice, ice water. And, and then poof. So the you know, the good news is we have the technology, we have some of the major companies now, like Tesla that have really seeded the market and got the the industry flowing and proven that consumers really do want EVs and now it's going mainstream. And within, you know, it's the latest predictions, I think I see are like in the 2030 range, when, you know, internal combustion engines will no longer dominate the US car sale market. So we've got a few years to go, but then it's going to be precipitous, and, and ice engines will go extinct. For the vast majority of applications.
• 7:18
  Tim Montague: There'll be, you know, some, some nice applications here and there, but and, you know, the oil companies really shouldn't worry too much, because we were gonna make lots of plastic and stuff from oil still. And, and it is annoying that the oil companies are kind of fighting the electrification of transportation and the energy transition, but it's a it's a lost battle. So let's talk about graphics though. What do you what exactly are you up to? How did the company come to fruition? And what is the market for in the you know, in the next one to five years?
• 7:56
  John DeMaio: Yeah, you bet. So, probably should start with what graphics does right. So, we are referred to as a midstream processor or midstream refiner of graphite into anode material.
• 8:07
  John DeMaio: What that translates to is that we do not do mining, right. So we are in input product is an output from the mind. So we receive what's called flake graphite or graphite concentrate, this is the natural product, right? This is the ore that comes out of the ground, is mined, is concentrated to a purity of about 95% carbon, right, so that's what we acquire as input. We then take that and refine it to a 99.95% purity, but a special coating on it. And that becomes the anode material for a battery storage battery or evey battery. And within the battery, you have four basic components a cathode and anode, which are the two electrodes, positive minus, and then you have electrolyte and separator which are kind of more inert kind of facilitators, if you will, cathode and anode are where the action happens, you know, electrons go from one to the other during discharge and back backwards during charge.
• 9:09
  John DeMaio: So, although a lot of attention over the last decade or so, has been placed on the cathode side of the battery, the positive anode, or the positive electrode, that's your lithium, nickel, cobalt manganese. The anode side is almost always well, it isn't always graphite, up to 99%, graphite, maybe a little bit of silicon. Sometimes there's a combination of synthetic and natural graphite, but the anode is always graphite. So basically half of the battery the money making parts of the battery, if you will be where the action happens is graphite. So in a typical cell, individual cell 48% is graphite, you expand that out to the entire battery, where you may have 800 to 2000 of these individual cells, making up a evey battery pack, that becomes about 25% 28% Is graphite. So people don't realise there's 15 times more graphite in a battery than there is lithium, because there's been so much attention placed on on lithium side, graphite is kind of the unsung you know, kind of the anonymous, if you will call it the working man inside the battery. It does, you know, it does an important role. It performs an important function in that it stores the electrons and then releases them in the dark charge and discharge cycle. So it's a hard working member of the battery ecosystem is natural, it's stable, it's inert, and to a large degree, it's recyclable, meaning that it can be used as you know, loop Kenson coatings after it's served its purpose in a battery.
• 10:54
  John DeMaio: So it's very versatile material, and it just sits there and does its job. And there's really no substitute for it in the foreseeable future. So we refine that, that graphite, we've been doing it for over a decade, primarily, solely in, in Asia in China, because that's where the electric vehicle market is. And that's quite frankly, where 90% of the world's graphite has come from historically. Now, with that said, as electric vehicle proliferation has taken route, as you mentioned, in North America, and now moving into Europe, as well, there is a need, and aside from from the sheer numbers of cars, vehicles, projected, and each vehicle needs a battery, and each battery, as we just talked about needs graphite, there's also a push to domesticate supply chains, you know, particularly in North America, and to move away, you know, from countries of concern, namely, China, and maybe some others. So graph X is basically taking what we've learned and perfected in an established ecosystem, namely the China Evie market. And we're bringing that technology in that know how, to the states to North America, and on into Europe. So it's an important kind of stepping stone, if you will, a foundational play for this electrification movement that we've we are proud to be a part of, and very happy to do it, you know, into areas that are benefiting from the technology bringing brought in from jobs being created, and really from bringing the the auto manufacturing, quote unquote, back home. So that's the role that we play and the product that we provide.
• 13:37
  Tim Montague: Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned onshoring and reshoring. You know, China manufactures, I think 70% of the battery cells that are lithium ion battery cells in the world.
• 13:47
  Tim Montague: And they also make 70% of the solar panels that are consumed in the world. And I have nothing against China, I think they're an amazing country, and and an industrial powerhouse, bar none.
• 14:00
  Tim Montague: But we need to be careful, right? Because it is, there is the potential for conflict between the US and China. And, and so we just need to, you know, do our best to regrow our manufacturing sector, it used to be a huge part of the economy.
• 14:22
  Tim Montague: And now it's a small, small ish part of the economy. But the IRA legislation is incentivizing the reshoring and onshoring of battery manufacturing, and Evie manufacturing, and solar panel manufacturing, and it's working.
• 14:33
  Tim Montague: There have been well over a dozen announcements of major Giga factories, and Evie factories and solar panel factories since since that happened last, I guess, August or September. So if this kind of industrial policy really does work, and it's going to create lots and lots of jobs here in America, these are high wage, manufacturing jobs. And it's going to reduce the supply chain headaches that we've had, in the last 24 months of stuff being shipped all over the globe, that shipping is going to continue.
• 15:08
  Tim Montague: But if it's made closer to home, it's going to be less complicated to get our grubby hands on it and make batteries.
• 15:15
  Tim Montague: So that's that's just a good thing. And it's a common sense thing. Really. It's It's so interesting, you know that that graphite in pencils, like a graphite pencil is something that all American children know what it is. We forget as we as we grow into adulthood, we use pencils less and less, depending on our trade. But but you know, you you take that pencil and you draw a line and then you take a piece of scotch tape on that line, right? And you can pick up a graphene, a single layer of this pure carbon that is a super, it's a super material.
• 15:54
  Tim Montague: And carbon is so fascinating, right? It makes diamonds, it makes carbon black, and then a bunch of stuff in between and
• 16:01
  John DeMaio: beings, right?
• 16:01
  John DeMaio: We're carbon based life forms, right? That's right.
• 16:06
  Tim Montague: We are carbon based life forms. And, and so it has it has some very important properties that I did not know that stat though. That's great.
• 16:12
  Tim Montague: 25% of the battery, by the way, yeah, by weight. And so it is analogous to the silicon in the solar panels, right. You know, there's a lot of other stuff in solar panels, but so it can is kind of the backbone. But let's talk about let's talk about electrification and and who your customers are exactly. You know, how is the company coming to North America. Tell us a little bit about that and who your costs which are gonna be so our
• 16:43
  John DeMaio: customers are the, the cell manufacturers, right.
• 16:47
  John DeMaio: So that includes all the marquee brands, right? Those are our target customers, I should say.
• 16:50
  John DeMaio: So we haven't, we don't have any contracts in place as of now.
• 16:55
  John DeMaio: And that's probably primarily because it's a kind of a long process to go through the qualification of the material to make sure that it's acceptable, and will work in their battery configuration, etc. So there's kind of a long testing process that has to go on. And we're in, in various stages of that process with many of the the automakers and their affiliated battery partners, right. So that's, that's, you know, again, our customer base, what we're trying to do, you know, of course, as a commercial, you know, publicly traded company we're obviously interested in, in commercial success. But what we're really trying to do to achieve that is to solve an industry problem, right to bring an industry solution to a need.
• 17:44
  John DeMaio: And that need is, is the demand for these critical minerals in our case, particularly, graphite, that far outstrips the current supply. So in an ecosystem, where, you know, the Gigafactory is, as you mentioned, is announcements upon announcements, etc. If you total up the, the demand reflected by those announced Giga factories, in the next few years, we're going to be in deficit or looking for somewhere in the neighbourhood of 300 to 500,000 tonnes of graphite. And the current capacity to commercially produced that at scale in the States is zero, right? So there's a big disconnect between what's going to be needed and what's currently in place to produce that. So graphics is, is a part of that solution, right?
• 18:36
  John DeMaio: We represent again, that midstream what we're doing to help solve that overall problem, which is end to end supply, right meaning from the mine, to the battery anode, is that we are actively partnering with and seeking collaborations with several more than several, but quite a few of the mining operations throughout the world, right. Aside from China, where again, most of the graphite currently comes from, we understand that there's, you know, sovereign risk to some degree, there's logistical challenges that can happen, as we saw with COVID. Right. So in an attempt to diversify our own upstream supply, which in turn diversifies it for the industry, we're in discussions, and you may have seen some announcements recently, for example, with Northern graphite up in Canada, where we're seeking to form potential joint venture to, again, secure supply from the mine to the battery, we're seeking similar kind of arrangements, if you will, collaborations with mines in Brazil, and Australia, and Mozambique, Tanzania, you know, so again, to diversify that upstream supply chain, to offer resiliency and flexibility, as well as being conformance with the with the IRA. So that's where I say, you know, it's, it's in graphics interest to do that. But it's also, again, attempting to solve an industry problem, which has huge demand versus currently not great visibility to how that demand is going to be met with supply. So we're actively engaged in multiple conversations with multiple minors, also bringing in our customer base, right, because we believe that there is a three way conversation to be had here. The paradigm has shifted, it's not like the automakers can just specify what they need. And there's ample supply, it's just a question of, you know, which vendor supplies it now we're seeing more active engagement from the automakers and battery makers, looking into the supply chain for, you know, visibility, to ample supply of quality and quantity that they need to fulfil their projections. So that's where graphics I refer to it as ability with agility, right, so we know how to do you know, our end of the the supply chain, we're very good at that midstream refining. What we're doing now is reaching out on both sides upstream and downstream to bring that that collaboration together in an attempt to really addressing like I said, an industry wide problem. So we're trying to be a good supporter of of the transition to streamline some of these, maybe shift the pie Every time a little bit of how critical minerals are procured and processed, and we're happy with the, you know, the role we can play in,
• 21:51
  Tim Montague: so the raw materials for for graphene or graphite, they're, they're naturally occurring. But there's also something there's there's some engineered products as well, can you differentiate the different sources of, of graphene? And then are you are you propping up manufacturing facilities in the US?
• 22:15
  John DeMaio: Yes, yes, we will be. So we have announced quite a while ago, we announced our intentions to build a facility in Warren, Michigan. And that that is partially completed as far as like the site preparation, a 15 megawatt power substation had been installed on site to support the power needs.
• 22:39
  John DeMaio: And it's a site that was abandoned basically, it had had been a previously integral part of the of the ice ecosystem way back in the day, and had this site had sat vacant for a number of years, a local group started to redevelop it. And we became aware of it and have secured a lease for part of that site so that we can build a plant there.
• 23:05
  John DeMaio: So yes, we're talking about, you know, physical physical plants being built. And now again, we are talking about natural graphite processing and refinement. You mentioned, I think, I think you were referring to synthetic graphite.
• 23:21
  Tim Montague: Yes, that was the word I was hunting for synthetic. Yeah.
• 23:25
  John DeMaio: So similar end product, but kind of a whole different means to get there. So synthetic graphite is actually produced from petroleum coke.
• 23:33
  John DeMaio: Right. Metelkova be specific, which is, as you had just heard me say it's a petroleum byproduct. And that is then refined. It's called decarbonization, you know, or a rationalisation process, which is very high energy intensive.
• 23:50
  John DeMaio: And then creates a very similar what we call spherical graphite.
• 23:56
  John DeMaio: The advantage to using synthetic right now is it's swelling characteristic is a little bit better than natural. So swelling is a concern within a battery cell, as you can imagine, right?
• 24:11
  John DeMaio: If you have enough swelling in one cell, you multiply that by 2000, you know, you could have a problem. So, in relative terms, natural graphite, upon charging and discharging can swell somewhere between five and maybe 8%. Whereas synthetic is between three and 5%. So that a difference in swelling characteristics becomes attractive to battery chemistries, right, which is why you'll sometimes see a combination of the two natural and synthetic on the analogue side. In some cases, some carmakers, and certain models use 100%. Synthetic, the, there's somewhat of a while there's a cost differential, because it's very expensive to produce synthetic right now.
• 25:01
  John DeMaio: There's also a philosophical component that can play into it.
• 25:04
  John DeMaio: Given that it comes from a petroleum based product, it's very high and energy intensive to create. So when you're talking about an electrification movement, that's trying to move away from fossil fuel. There is some some, you know, again, some philosophical kind of questions that come up, synthetic graphite, in his production has about a 50% more carbon impact than its natural graphite counterpart. So what we're doing as a company, and we have pretty extensive r&d efforts that we that we take part in, we're looking at ways to reduce the swelling of synthetic graphite in the charge discharge cycle, so that we can bring it more in line with synthetic and hopefully do away with the need for synthetic if that's possible. Again, not to put people out of business, per se, but to really focus on a natural product that is, it really was a lot of graphite on the planet, not a lot of it currently is being extracted. So there is ample supply of natural graphite and as I mentioned, it's first of all, it's natural. It's you know, it's stable, and they're all good things that we know for natural synthetics is different animal. By frankly,
• 26:23
  Tim Montague: the Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America. The maker of North America's number one three phase string inverter with over six gigawatts shipped in the US. The CPS America product lineup includes three phase string inverters ranging from 25 to 275 kW, their flagship inverter, the CPS 250 to 75 hive is designed to work with solar plants ranging from two megawatts to two gigawatts, the 250 to 75 pairs well, with CPS, America's exceptional data communication controls and energy storage solutions, go to chin power systems.com. To find out more.
• 26:57
  Tim Montague: Yeah, I'm looking at a story on visual capitalist, which is a wonderful website for visualising the materials that we use in the built environment.
• 27:10
  Tim Montague: And according to their research, and this is now data, this is a story from the end of 2021, that the graphene industry is headed to be a $3 billion industry. By 2027. I would not be surprised if that's an underestimate. But but, you know, when you think about scaling, you know, you mentioned that today, there are no native manufacturers of this product for the battery industry. And there are battery factories popping up, left and right. And I you know, I just had America's battery factory on the show, they're building a factory in Tucson, Arizona. And, you know, there's factories happening in Georgia, in Michigan, etc, etc. So, clearly, there's a large demand for graphene, because it's a major component. Where are they getting the graphene today? And, and, you know, when you build this factory in Warren, Michigan, how much of the US supply chain is going to be satisfied with your product?
• 28:20
  John DeMaio: Right, great questions all. So rule of thumb, kind of a rough rule of thumb, but for every gigawatt hour, that a giga factory is rated for every gigawatt hour equates to about 800 to 1000 tonnes of graphite required. Right. So a 30 gigawatt factory, by and large will require, you know, 30,000 tonnes of graphite, roughly, right. So, in answer to your question, if you look at the projections into, as these Giga factories come online, we could be looking at 500,000 tonnes of demand by 2028, you know, again, assuming that they're on schedule. So, where's that going to come from, we need to basically recreate the ecosystem that China has already got in place, right, because it's already supporting, you know, a million tonnes of graphite requirement currently or on his way to do so. So we need to, you can't, you mentioned the Michigan plant that's ready to that 15,000 tonnes, so that is going to be a great kind of first move for us.
• 29:37
  John DeMaio: But what we're looking at simultaneously, are potential locations where we can locate much larger facilities, those that can get up to 100,000 tonnes per year, or maybe even 200,000. And to look at having several of those located strategically within North America to support those Giga factories, you know, that require, so there's, you know, there's a lot of groundwork being done around that right now, as far as site suitability, all kinds of, you know, the typical decision making, you would expect, right site, the suitability, power availability, how much of that power could possibly be renewable, right, to decrease the environmental impact of building these plants?
• 30:21
  John DeMaio: And, of course, you know, the logistics, etc. You know, a lot of that, though, is driven and not just for us, right, but the decision making that goes into, you know, expending this amount of CapEx is definitely related to the security that's felt on from the customer side, as for, you know, specifically for offtake agreements, you know, supply agreements, etc. And I say it doesn't apply just to graphics, right? So, the domestication effort to bring, again, from mind to battery for a lot of these critical minerals, there are some large capex expenditures that have to be made. And the industry is basically, you know, looking for some level of commitment from from the customer side, before, you know, moving forward with with those large expenditures. I think that's an area where the industry, again, a lot of the proper elements are in place, things like the IRA, the bipartisan infrastructure law, the DOE grant programmes, etc.
• 31:30
  John DeMaio: Those are helpful. But you know, the industry has to respond as well with more collaboration I feel that was quoted as saying in an article somewhere that we need aggress have a more aggressive collaboration. And I believe that's true. I think car companies, midstream processes, like us and graphite and others and other minerals. And mining operations have to come together and really work through, you know, how do we how do we match this demand with the with the current supply, and bringing online or more assets of raw materials, and having some commitment to procure those on the customer side?
• 32:15
  Tim Montague: Yeah, I mean, according to PV magazine, my co host, John Weaver, wrote an article back in January of 2022, saying, We need six terawatt hours of energy storage by 2050 to electrify the two green the grid and electrify the grid, so to speak, to go to net zero by 2050. Okay, six terawatt hours, if you're looking at that, just That's That's 6000 gigawatt hours, right. And so what your factory is going to produce I just did some quick math is, is a quarter of a percent of what we're going to need in gigawatt hours of battery storage. So the opportunity, but also the challenge, of course, is that this is a big problem. And you know, you can, you can only scale things so fast, especially if it's cumbersome from a permitting perspective. And that's the thing that we in the clean energy transition we energy professionals are really keen to see change in the US is, is the process of permitting projects is very cumbersome and slow, and easy to derail. And we need to streamline that and make it much easier and faster to bring projects online. Because otherwise, it's not a matter of the technology, it's the amount, it's the matter of our ability to deploy the technology fast enough to go to go net zero. And going net zero is just the beginning. Right, we also have to then decarbonize the atmosphere, which is 800 gigatons of carbon pollution in the atmosphere, which is a big, big, big problem. So I guess I don't want to rub salt in your wound here, John. But what keeps you up at night when you think about scaling the the graphite and graphene industries here in the US?
• 34:11
  John DeMaio: Yeah, that's fair question. And I appreciate you recognising that the regulatory environment has to become more streamlined. And that's that's an industry wide sentiment, right? And particularly applies to the mining folks. Right. So again, when you think about, what are we trying to do, I mentioned an industry problem.
• 34:31
  John DeMaio: Well, how did the industry problems become created? Well, we're trying to replace over 100 years of ice infrastructure with electric, at the same time, domesticate the end to end supply chain, which includes mining, right, which mining has not been that popular in the US, for example, is more popular up in Canada, where they've been mining for decades, if not over a century. But there still are, you know, regulatory hurdles, society societal kind of friction that can be created, that has to be addressed. Right.
• 35:08
  John DeMaio: So I sense in the industry, that there's a willingness from industry side to be responsible stewards of the environment at the same time of bringing, you know, the needed technologies home, so to speak, so that we can have that domestication. But there is, you know, and you and I talked about this prior, I was in solar as well. And, you know, you do see there's some amount of NIMBY, right, that comes into play, particularly in solar when you're talking about large, you know, large fields of solar panels, etc. But, you know, that that needs to change. I don't think we're going to steamroll over that. But there has to be a balance that gets struck with the benefits of electrification, you know, and what's going to be required to make that happen. To your other point about, you know, a drop in the bucket, basically, yes, the one plant in Michigan is really about, again, you know, that there's a lot of factors going into that we really want to bring that technology back to Warren, you know, the focus of Warren watched the automotive industry kind of leave. And now that it's coming back, it's coming back to places like Georgia and the South and other places and not back to the Detroit area. So we're happy to be playing apart bringing jobs to a disadvantaged kind of location. And, you know, we feel like that's a really, you know, positive thing to do, but it's 15,000 arms versus 500,000. So that's where I said, the real effort, or a parallel effort or graphics is to investigate places where we can build much larger facilities to address that. So we're talking maybe 100,000 tonnes, you know, per, per year in multiple locations, will really start making a dent in that demand.
• 37:04
  John DeMaio: And that's where, again, selfishly speaking, we feel that if you're trying to do that transition from internal combustion to electrification to domesticate it all at once, the fastest way to do that is to get experienced players like us to come in and plug and play, right, so that we can, we've already proven that we can do commercial scale, right? We do 10,000 tonnes per year now, we're expanding that to 20, over the next 12 months, and then to 40. This is over in China now.
• 37:37
  John DeMaio: So we already know how to do how to produce at commercial scale, and we're talking 10,000 tonnes 220,000 pounds of microscopic particles that meet exacting specifications, not something that everybody can do. And I say it's part art and part science.
• 37:56
  John DeMaio: So we don't have that ramp up.
• 38:00
  John DeMaio: That goes along, we did that we already paid our dues, so to speak, before we went commercial spent several years perfecting, you know, again, that part art part science thing. So we can plug and play here and get up to commercial scale. Real fast, because we all we're doing is replicating what we know how to do. Yeah, and bringing it just bringing it here. So, you know, we feel like we can help to address the demand in a timely fashion. And the last part of your question was where they were the car makers getting their, their product now? Well, they've been buying completed cells and battery packs, you know, from Asia, heretofore, right? So it's only when they build a giga factories, where they've got to make their own cells that they will need the raw materials. So we're looking at probably 2025 and beyond as to when those Giga factories will actually need, you know, the the graphite powder to go into their animals. So right now, they've gotten enough, you know, buffer in their current supply chain to get them through the next couple of years. So we have some time to catch up. But, you know, the clock is ticking, as you rightfully pointed out.
• 39:21
  Tim Montague: Yeah. Well, I love it that, you know, we're seeing, we're seeing Chinese companies, we're seeing Korean companies, we're seeing Asian companies writ large, you know, invest in factories in the, in the United States now. And it's, it's high time. We, you know, one of the things that really frustrates me is that we are, are busy educating some of the best engineers from all over the world at our universities, which, which are still some of the best universities in the world from a technical perspective. And then our, our immigration policy, a policy is such that we send all those engineers back home, and very few of them end up remaining and becoming American citizens. And that brain drain is really not good for our future. So we need to really reconsider our immigration policy in this country, big time. So what else John? John, should our listeners know about? Graphics technologies and, and electrification of everything?
• 40:26
  Tim Montague: I, you know, I'm really pleased to have you on the show. And I wish you the best in in scaling, clearly, right? There's a ginormous opportunity here and need to to onshore graphene graphite production?
• 40:40
  John DeMaio: Yeah, I guess another thing you because you touched on on the immigration, so people, you know, should recognise graphics is not a Chinese company, right, we are considered a foreign entity in China. So, you know, most of our ownership is US, Canadian, UK, etc. I bring that up because it makes it mmm, we spent, you know, a fair amount of effort to maintain that Wholly Foreign Owned Enterprise status, because it gives us that flexibility to bring technology, the technology is our own. So we can bring that over to the states without any kind of impairment or an impediment as well as the talent that's required to, to burn in these new these new plants. So it's another element of it's actually one of the things we're we're very pleased with that we are bringing, we're not bringing technology back to the US because this technology is not here right now. We're actually bringing technology from Asia from China. to the US. And that's against the trend that a lot of folks have been kind of frustrated with over the last several decades. So we're happy to share that technology with with North America and with the rest of the world, the lessons that we've learned the expertise that we've developed, and bring that here for the benefit of really of mankind, if you really think about it, right, because the electrification effort is, is good for all of us. So we really want to play a foundational role in this in this movement, right? And we're willing to look beyond just straight, you know, profit and loss and Centre for graphics, and really be a player, a good player, right? A good teammate, in this transition with our customer counterparts in our supplying counterparts, and the regulatory bodies, the states, local governments, etc. This is a win win for everybody to make this to make this happen. And we're absolutely, you know, not only willing, but trying to be proactive in making this happen.
• 42:44
  John DeMaio: So it's more than just making graphite and selling it to automakers. It's really about being a part of this transition, which I've been after my whole career, my whole life, really, I think, you know, not to wax too philosophical. But there's a finite number of amount of resources on the planet. And I want to leave, you know, something behind for the for my kids that's going to be sustainable. And this has been, you know, this is a an effort.
• 43:14
  John DeMaio: That's very, very much in that right direction.
• 43:17
  Tim Montague: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's very hard for humanity to figure out sustainability. It's not in our DNA, per se, right, we evolved in a world that was empty, and now the world is full. And we need to change our ways and become much more enlightened actually, about how we're doing business on Earth, because we are currently shooting ourselves in the foot and creating a very uncertain future for future generations, humans will survive climate change, but it's a question whether or not we will survive it with the grace and well being that we've come for the last couple of 100 years, right riding the the boom in, in fossil fuels, that that source of energy is, is very, very large and dense. Right. And it's hard to replace fossil fuels, with other technologies. And but we clearly have to do that we have the technology, we have to make the transition to question of, can we do it fast enough? So well, I will let you go. John, I really appreciate your time. And what you guys are up to at graphics technologies, how can our listeners reach out to John
• 44:25
  John DeMaio: directly, you know, I can give you my my contact info, we have a phone number that's published on our website that will usually find its way to me. You know, I'm on LinkedIn. And my emails out there, John, that the Maya graphics group.com. So I'm readily available, you know, I try to publish as much as I can just status updates about graphics. But I also have been asked for a number of by lines and whatnot, about the industry itself. So I like to be considered an industry resource, not just a graphite guy, so to speak. So LinkedIn is probably a good place to go. Again, the the website needs a little bit of a refresh, but people can reach me through that as well. But I would say LinkedIn is probably the most direct way. And of course, like I said, my email is available on that.
• 45:19
  Tim Montague: Great, well check out all of our content at Clean Power hour.com. Please give us a rating and a review on Apple and Spotify, so that others can find this content and subscribe to our YouTube channel. We have all of our interviews on YouTube as well as a Weekly News RoundUp that I do with PV magazine journalist John Weaver without I want to thank John de mio for coming on the show today. Let's grow solar and storage on Tim Montague. The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America. The maker of North America's number one three phase string inverter with over six gigawatts shipped in the US. The CPS America product lineup includes three phase string inverters ranging from 25 to 275 kW, their flagship inverter, the CPS 250 to 75 is designed to work with solar plants ranging from two megawatts to two gigawatts, the 250 to 75 pairs well, with CPS America's exceptional data communication controls and energy storage solutions go to cin power systems.com To find out more