Green Giants – Episode 44

Robert Piconi (01:48)

Sure, well, I guess got drawn in a bit through an interaction I had with Bill Gross, who’s the founder and chairman of Idealab, which is one of the longest running technology incubators, probably the most prominent one, and it’s based out here in Pasadena, California. And he has been very passionate about sustainability renewables, starting with solar, and he always used software in many of his companies through his career to innovate and drive that innovation in ways only software can.

So as I got to know him back in 2007, 2008, when he was recruiting me to actually run one of his solar industrial heat ventures called eSolar at the time, that’s where I basically understood a little better, I think, what was happening with the heating up of the planet, the implications and where things were going to be going unless we really were able to get more renewable energy deployed. And of course, to do that, it requires storage. and interestingly, I started my career with a big oil and gas company, Amoco, you might remember them. They merged with BP back in 1998.

It’s interesting, back then they used to say, there’s no problem that $20 a barrel couldn’t solve it from a company perspective for them in terms of their growth and profitability. And of course, we’ve seen what’s happened with the price of oil and the demand and the energy demand overall, which I guess for me, that evolution in working through then getting the telecommunications network infrastructure as I did with the growth of the internet back in the late 90s and then the 2000s, that also gave me, think, a broader perspective on how you can use innovative technologies to, you know, to break paradigms and be very efficient with how you’re going to solve problems. And that’s, I guess, when Bill Gross called me and we started to look at that in ‘07 and ‘08, we just began a journey together where while that timing didn’t work out for me because I was working in another group, we stayed in touch over the next, you know, seven to eight years on a lot of different sustainability initiatives and ideas he had.

And eventually that led to this idea around energy storage and looking at how best to solve that. And that’s how we started working together in 2017 when we created the company.

Wes Ashworth (04:00)

Yeah, I love that. It’s such a cool story. And the industry obviously sees a lot of industry switchers, which I love, people coming from all different sectors. For you personally, guess, what was the biggest learning curve transitioning into the clean energy sector?

Robert Piconi (04:15)

Yeah, I guess one is a lot of the education around, you know, what’s happening between the regulatory environment, how the economics really are working and driving what’s going to be required to have a sustainable solution be able to replace both in terms of power continuity, but also in economics, our fossil fuel infrastructure, which we’ve relied on and especially given now it’s happening with AI and just the pure raw demand for power and energy. So I think that there was that aspect of it that was a bit new to me.

I’d say generally, I think getting in tune with how customers are looking at it and how they’re making decisions, how a utility makes a decision versus how an independent power player versus a large energy user like desalination plants or mining companies, how they’re thinking about their journey and their green and sustainable transition and strategy. So there was a lot of education there and different, of course, all over the world too, really every country and for sure every region, but definitely even within countries, dynamics work a little bit differently in the energy ecosystem.

I’d say there was there was some of that, but fundamentally what wasn’t different was the use of innovative technology, applying these ideas and taking something from an idea and making it and prioritizing and essentially being able to evaluate what’s gonna be that winning solution that you can sell in volume and with the economics and bringing that and growing a team in and around that and building a company and eventually taking it public like we’ve done and continuing to grow. So those things I’ve also really enjoyed.

Wes Ashworth (05:54)

Yeah, thinking about those innovations, it has been just a cool journey just watching your company grow and seeing those innovations evolve. But gravity storage is something that some have heard about, not everybody’s heard about. I know it is a pivotal part of your strategy and what Energy Vault is doing. Can you tell us a bit about how it works and in layman’s terms, what unique advantage it offers and why it’s become a priority focus for your team?

Robert Piconi (06:23)

Yeah, it really goes back to the beginning and really starting with what today is the basis of most all energy storage which are these pumped hydro electric systems or dams and essentially which people have seen and probably fundamentally understand that you’ve got a mass, in this case a body of water, where you have water that will traverse down and turn and traversing down it’ll using gravity, which isn’t a

an idea, it’s the law, that will turn a motor generator, generate that electricity, and then be pumped back up to the top, the water that traverses down, then gets pumped back up to the top of the reservoir, or the structure. So I think fundamentally that’s about 80%, over 80 % of all energy storage today are those. And we took that same concept of using gravity, but solved for some of the downsides of those big facilities, which is they disrupt wildlife ecosystems, they’re quite expensive, they use a lot of concrete, which just the production of concrete itself is 8 to 9% of greenhouse emission.

So we’ve solved for some of those things, even on round trip efficiency and having something that in that process of the traversing down and getting the energy out and pumping it back up, you lose, you have losses of about 30% of that electricity, of that storage capability. I think that we looked at that and said, boy, wouldn’t it be great if we could solve for those, the negatives of pumped hydro because generally you love it because it’s always there, it’s predictable. It’s one of the lower costs over time on a levelized cost basis because they can be around 50, 100 years over time, the numbers get interesting obviously with the longer the time.

So we took that concept and came up with different ways and different applications to use gravity, in some cases, instead of water building a structure that will lift and lower blocks. And blocks not made out of concrete, but made out of the soil, for example. And we worked with CEMEX, which is a big material science global company, on special technology. So we could not only use soil and no concrete, but we could use waste materials like coal ash or debris materials that otherwise would go to a landfill.

So even tailings from the mining process that have to be trucked out in landfills, if you can avoid all that, even the transportation, you can see that the circular economic aspect of how that can work. So we came up with different methodologies of essentially lifting and lowering masses without having to go build a dam and impact the environment, to do it at much lower cost, to have flexibility to build it anywhere, and to try to be much more sustainable and even with better round trip efficiency. So that’s how we came up with that system.

Now, gravity is a technology that’s focused on longer duration storage needs. So back in ‘17 and ‘18 Wes, if you would ask anybody, they thought in the next five years, long duration technologies were going to be much more prominent. And I would say, and you probably don’t hear this if you talk to people in the industry or someone in the energy storage industry, but we’re behind as an industry in terms of getting that innovation, using the innovation to get technology to the market that’s sustainable, economical, and can be here soon, and not something in five years. I say that because I’m the biggest fan of all the energy storage players that are doing something that’s economical and sustainable because we need it if we’re going to solve that problem for intermittency. I’d say with the gravity, just to close on your question, we started with that premise and even built a very large system, not a small scale first demonstration plant, a larger one that we’ll talk about later.

But we brought these solutions to market and are looking at different ways to apply them on existing slopes within standalone buildings. We announced a big partnership with SOM, which is one of the largest engineering architect firms that built the Burj Khalifa, the largest building in the world, for example. And so we’ve innovated to essentially look at ways to leverage gravity and domestic, meaning local production. It doesn’t rely on rare earth metals. So a lot of ways and the science around using materials to make those blocks or use materials that don’t harm the environment and do it in a cost-effective way and in a very efficient way. And the gravity systems that we’ve designed and are trialing in Texas right now, for example, we built a very large one in China with a large license deal with a large waste-for-mediation player there. they’re all different incarnations of essentially lifting and lowering masses.

It can be water, can be blocks, things that then create energy and then allow us to restore it and no degradation that are typically in any of our solutions, they don’t degrade over time like lithium ion and other technologies that degrade.

Wes Ashworth (11:11)

Yeah, it’s such a cool solution. I’ll probably say that about 10 more times, but, and I’m a visual person. I had to like watch a video and kind of see it in real life and you’re like, man, this is so interesting. So I’ll try to link some of those videos too in the show notes as well just for anybody else who wants to take a peek at that, but it’s really, really cool stuff. Digging into a little bit of what you shared, you know, Energy Vault is one of the only companies, the only company that offers tailored solutions for short, long, and ultra long duration storage. I guess why is it critical to have such a broad approach? How does each solution type support different sectors like utilities and industrials?

Robert Piconi (11:39)

By the way, it’s a great question and it ties to our vision of not only broadly decarbonization and playing a part, focus on energy storage, but we, fundamentally, we want to create and bring to market technologies that solve problems. And one thing everyone will universally agree is there’s no silver bullet in energy storage. There’s different use cases, customer use cases, different applications that are going to make sense to solve specific problems.

So I’d say number one, sometimes even the same customer will have various needs, like the large utilities that are making a transition out of coal into renewable, yet they still have to operate and have this hybrid environment between fossil fuel and renewable. So they have intermittent, they have to solve for, they’re gonna need energy storage technologies. That’s a classic utility. Then you have independent power players that are typically building out whether hybrid, meaning combination wind, solar and storage, they wanna store that intermittent power to be able to sign contracts to help the utilities deal with those demand surges and spikes in the early mornings and so that in the evening. there’s use cases there.

We have large energy users that maybe want a 12-hour solution to power their desalination water process overnight where they can use solar during the day but they want to store the excess and have that drive four to six megawatts of power continuously. So I mentioned a few. You’ve got a lot of other mission critical applications now, hospitals in areas that really need to, that can’t afford to be without power. So I’d say with that as a premise that different, there’s different customer sets and segments, you know, utilities, independent power players and large energy users. And then you’ve got, you know, different technologies that are going to meet the different use cases they have. And so because of that fundamentally, we focused always from the beginning on a software platform.

We innovated with gravity technology, of course, because we had initially thought long duration might be here a little more quickly. But we also built up our software team and hired people that were some of the most experienced in integration of batteries through, let’s say, 2011, 2012 through the current day, so those folks helped us build and are helping us build a very innovative energy management system platform so we can be technology-agnostic and be able to essentially identify the best solutions to a customer’s problem, not necessarily that we have to make it.

So it’s, we don’t approach a customer ever with a premise of, here’s what we make and let’s try to find a way to shove it down their throat just to be very candid, right? We approach a customer first with what problem are you trying to solve? Meaning what’s the use case and how can we best meet that need? And I think a very good example of that, if I can give one is the backup system for the whole city of Calistoga in Napa, California, where their problem was, look, we have fires that come in every year. They had loss of life. They had to shut down the power grid.

So all the businesses that needed power to preserve food, for example, or have other needs where they needed power even to operate, of course, they were shut down and resulted in fortunately some loss of life because of the length of time. And the only solution they had was bringing in diesel generators, which not only are loud but they obviously pollute the environment. And to deal with this unpredictable fire seasons. So they, PG&E, Pacific Gas and Electric said, hey, we need to do something different, we need a backup system. They thought they were going to have to rely on natural gas. We were the only company, Wes, to propose to them a sustainable solution. And to do it, we had our experts design something that involved, you know, other people’s technology.

I mean, for example, a hydrogen, green hydrogen tank to store the green hydrogen. The fuel cells we bought from a provider, the hydrogen fuel cells would essentially electrify that hydrogen to power the grid. And then a little bit of lithium ion, which hosts our software platform that orchestrates this backup grid that will support the city of Calistoga for two full days of power. So it’s a great example of bringing together different technologies. Some of them we make. We have, obviously the energy management system platform, we have our own battery architecture that we make. And then we brought in some individual components that are in the industry in hydrogen fuel cells, the tanks that you have to host the green hydrogen, and then used our software to orchestrate a solution that enables them to get an immediate response when they need it and then have something that would power the city two days or more.

So that’s a, I think it’s a very interesting example that brings together what we’re about in terms of solving a problem sustainably economically. We were somewhere between 20 to 30 percent cheaper than their next alternative solution. We probably charged a little too little in that case. But in any event, I think it sort of encompasses the solution approach and how we think about problem solving and our innovation in bringing something, you know, to the market and that system it’s not something in the future was it’s two three four years We’re commissioning it right now. So a first of a kind largest of a kind up in Calistoga.

Wes Ashworth (17:02)

Wow, you think about just the other cities and areas that could also use that. You have that one successful project and how cool that is. And that’s one of the things I love most about this industry is just the, how many people come together and you mentioned some other partners and things like that, getting some other pieces to that from other companies that are in the space as well too. And I love that. We’re all in it together moving forward.

Something you hit on a little bit earlier is just this rising demand. We hear a lot about that. Storage is going to be a big part of that in helping solve some of those issues. thinking about the next five years, from your perspective, how do see that demand for long duration storage or any storage evolving over this next five years?

Robert Piconi (17:50)

I’ll tell you, we are facing right now as we look over that time frame a rising power demand that is going to be difficult to meet. And of course, we have a lot of other dynamics globally that are going on that we’re having to deal with in not only what’s happening with, of course, AI and the data center and just the impact and that weight of just pure power demand is placing on the grid. And it has to be critically backed up as well. I’d say that’s one aspect of what we’re dealing with, of how are we going to meet that power demand and how do we meet it sustainably?

And hence, there’s been a lot of newer companies that are coming out with the SMR, the small modular reactors. The more, let’s say, module solutions using nuclear and even a big focus in some countries on energy independence and maybe moving away, in some cases, from an aggressive strategy to be more sustainable and clean and just using whatever power that you have whatever fundamental fuel you can use to meet power demands. And I think we’re seeing a little bit of that here in the United States, for example, with the new administration. So I’d say that the biggest thing, if you look for the next five years, is just the raw demand that’s being driven by not only AI, they’re the buzzword, but it’s all applications that are being developed natively for the cloud.

So, meaning in a hosted infrastructure and all of that power, you know, everybody wants it 24-7. They ideally would like a solution sustainably, I think generally, but I think they’re going to, I think a lot of the players are going to err on the side of just ensuring continuity and therefore you’re going to get these hybrid architectures. I mean, I’ll share an example of how it’s working well. We delivered a project for Wellhead Electric in California, a 275 megawatt hour battery system to complement their peaker plant. So they have a gas peaker plant. They operate a few of them, California and they’re one of the larger players in the state and just by pairing that battery system with the peaker enables them not only to run it less but more efficiently and use the batteries to meet the spikes most of them and so it not only reduces the emissions from just the time but also it allows them to optimize and run that plant more efficiently and so they can save versus how they were operating you know five to ten years ago, they’re saving between 70 to 90 percent of what used to be the emissions from a peaker plant that, again, is designed to meet, its name, these spikes in demand.

So I think that’s I’d say over the next five years given the demand that needs to be served, think thinking about ways to hybridize that provide the ability to meet the peaks that can complement technologies together so we can meet that demand and try to meet as much of it sustainably as you can, I think is going to be a tremendous challenge, but therein lies the opportunity.

Wes Ashworth (20:46)

And why very smart people like you exist. It’s good. I want to circle back to something you shared earlier, just to dig into this a little more. Your partnership with SOM, Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, for those that don’t know, one of the biggest architecture firms in the world, aims to incorporate gravity storage into sustainable building designs. You touched on that for a second. Can you tell us a bit more about that, how the collaboration came about? What impact do you hope it’ll have on urban energy use and building sustainability?

Robert Piconi (21:18)

Sure, yeah, it’s just been a tremendous partnership. And I’d say that from the beginning, and we’ve been with them over 18 months, now probably almost two years when we started the dialogue. First of all, it’s a great group of people. And it always starts there. Wes, as you know, I know you speak to a lot of companies.

I think most people, they are, I think, good leaders understand that it really starts there. And also, they have a passion there at Skidmore of wanting to evolve and innovate around not only cool building design and safe building design, but sustainable. Because in the past, and folks from the team there, they’ve always felt like they should try to find a way to be more sustainable because buildings basically don’t have a carbon payback meaning in fact the opposite, they’re just between the building of them and the running of them, you’re talking about 30 to 40% of our greenhouse gas emissions. I mean, it’s massive, right?

So what if you could design a building and incorporate an energy storage and in this case, gravity, because they build superstructures. In larger buildings generally, not all of them are the Burj Khalifa, the 820 meters, but they do build some massive structures. Do taller than that and it’s real exciting but what if you could design a technology into a building and have it complement the building and actually be a net energy outputter if I could call it that. So it could be actually delivering energy through both innovative storage that we build in and in that case by the way in these buildings we’re looking at a modular pumped hydro so actually using water within, in a special fabric. That is our IP, is Energy Vaults IP, but with the design team from Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.

What’s fantastic about our partnership is the combination of technology innovation like that comes from Energy Vault, but they’re the experts in how to engineer and architect buildings and not only safely, but beautifully. And that fit or fit for purpose for the environment. think about for the first time, for the first time having buildings that have a carbon payback. And I’m not talking about 10 years because of the size of the structures and therefore the amount of storage you can get a gigawatt hour, in some cases more dependent on the height, if it’s taller.

But even if you’re getting 500 or 700 megawatt hours, that’s a lot and you’re not only powering the building, but you’re a net exporter of power out to the surrounding, you know, buildings or whatever the structure. So it’s that combination between our innovation and storage and their ability to first of all improve upon that as it relates to and then, you know, applying it to building structures and having carbon paybacks that can be three years. It’s just never been done. And you think about, I think, the social impact and the environmental impact of something like that. We’re real excited about what that future is going to be in the future of architecture for buildings, and in particular, larger buildings.

Wes Ashworth (24:14)

Yeah, it is so cool. And I was going to ask if you saw that future of just gravity storage, not just functional, but also an integrated architectural feature in cities. You you could really see that you fast forward and you’re like, gosh, that just makes so much sense. And it’s all, you know, kind of built in there. And I just had sort of a building now that’s making a positive impact is just absolutely incredible to see that work and everybody that doesn’t know, you should go check that out and look more into that, it’s so cool.

Robert Piconi (24:39)

Yeah, there’s some content out there and I know there’s been some presentations that SOM has put out there. So there’s some public stuff out there to look at. And it is, for me as a public company CEO, there is a balance of what we need to serve the next quarter or this year because of the pressure that’s on you and for an emerging growth company like ourselves that are building projects that can move. There’s one aspect of the near term, but this work is going to be fundamental for, I think, the intermediate to longer term in impacting building design and I’m excited about making that impact in partnership with them.

Wes Ashworth (25:18)

Yeah, it’s super cool. And you mentioned this earlier, I want to make sure you didn’t miss anything or if you wanted to touch on this a bit more. So you’ve launched some significant projects such as the hybrid hydrogen battery system in California with PG &E that you touched on and the modular gravity system in Sardinia. Which aspects of those projects are most exciting? Anything else we should know about them and how do they set new benchmarks for clean energy storage?

Robert Piconi (25:37)

Sure, I think we’re doing things around the world in some unique and interesting ways. And as I mentioned at the outset, when we talked about the unique part of our solution being a solutions provider across multiple durations. I’ll mention Australia is another country that’s really up and coming and exciting, a lot of growth. And they’re doing a lot with hybrid architectures to pair storage with solar, absolutely, but now wind, which wind has, for some local reasons, is pretty well thought of as a sustainable technology there and has a large investment behind it.

I’d say just across the world, a lot of these projects have some unique challenges with the local grid. I think Australia is an example where the grid has some level of complexity as you’re building projects and interconnecting into it, but a lot of opportunity to hybridize on pairing of renewables with storage there. We’re doing a lot there. I was just there in Australia and we broke ground on our first projects. We’ve announced almost three gigawatt hour projects there, some already underway and some that are in the development phases and part of our strategy operating assets.

So I’d say, I think that the projects in the US where we delivered over gigawatt hour within 12 months in our first year of revenue in 2022 and then getting into 2023 to deploy those projects, those were all, you know, projects that had very quick timeframes and our software platform played a super critical role in being able to commission those systems very, very quickly. And we create digital twins, for example, so we don’t have any surprises when we get to the site and start to build that up. And we’re very keen and have an unblemished safety record. And that comes through investments in a heavy, almost a data center-like architecture that will monitor systems, not at a module level, but an actual cell level in the case of lithium ions.

So the actual cells themselves, that data that if you think about that, you know, the terabits of data to do that, you have to make that investment. So I said, we think generally we’re, while we’re a global company, we think local always. as I mentioned, we think starting with the customer and the problem they’re solving, and that’s what drives our innovation and the priorities we set for what we decide to do internally what we develop because we do invest in R&D quite a bit, but also what we do to bring and look at other technologies that we don’t have to make, but we bring to the table and design something and use our software platform to deliver those things.

And the last thing, I guess, Wes, on that point of, is we’re looking in the next five years and what we’re doing as a part of that. And again, it’s another unique aspect as a storage company, but we’re also owning and operating assets for the first time. In fact, in the next three to four months, we’re going to be bringing online the Calistoga system. That’s the largest green hydrogen one in the world that we’re owning and operating. And we have a long-term tolling agreement with Pacific Gas and Electric. So that’s one. And we have another project in Texas, sort of center of the fairway, ERCOT Market. They’re the largest storage market there that we’re going to be owning and operating.

We just announced a very large one in Australia of what’s called an ALTESA, a long-term energy service agreement awarded by the government for a large project there that we worked with a developer on and were awarded that it’s a 14-year agreement. So you think about that, you know, owning these assets while it’s obviously more capital intensive and project financing, you can imagine the confidence we have in not only our expertise to design and build these and do it cost-effectively and also have them run cost-effectively and safely, but to own them and operate them over time, you know, there’s really good economics, especially as a public company, you know, some of the lumpiness in things that are related to customer decisions and project work. It’s just the nature of the business.

You know, as a public company, investors want to see predictable, profitable and ongoing revenue streams and cash flows. And so as a part of that, there’s a really interesting aspect of that to our strategy of owning and operating and that to a double digit percentage of our revenue over time that will drive, I think, a very interesting business model and something that investors would really like to be part of.

Wes Ashworth (30:09)

Absolutely. I want to touch on a couple of different topics here as we get closer. So you mentioned this throughout and just the future will involve a diversified energy grid. It’s something I think is a key message we hear a lot. And I think we need a lot of different technologies and a lot of different solutions. It could be like gravity-based systems, batteries, green hydrogen. In your view, what are the most pressing challenges to building this kind of resilient grid? And how is Energy Vault helping to overcome them?

Robert Piconi (30:37)

Well, I think part of it in designing a resilient grid means that you have to take account of the type of generation sources that are feeding that grid.

We have some in the, you know, a lot of the fossil fuel driven generation, of course, is much more predictable. Our grids have to deal with intermittency as well with when we’re introducing wind and solar that may produce at times when there’s not the demand for the power. So you have to deal with that and hence storage. And also, you know, there’s power demands and things that are driving and really being driven by that raw demand in the data center world now that has a lot of focus and drive behind just getting reliable power and including backup power. And because there is power that can be delivered on what’s called an interruptible basis. So how do you fill in those gaps?

So I think it’s a, you know, I go back to what I said at the beginning, there’s no silver bullet there because the needs are gonna be different, but to build a more resilient grid it really starts with, it’s a multi-pronged technology approach to be able to make that resilient based on those generation sources. And of course software, and having very innovative ways the software can help manage that intermittency and orchestration so that you’ve got, I think, a consistent delivery of power and also an ability to meet the surges in power and deal with the things that happened out in California here. For example, the fires that created what’s called the, they’re called PSPS events or public safety power shutdowns. So think about that, introducing an ability to better deal with when there are either safety or maintenance issues or things that come up where you have to shut them down, how can you still design a system that can deal with that, you know, multi-technology, multi-faceted approach to dealing with it.

And the good news is there’s a lot of innovative companies out there that are looking to help and a lot of willing partners that, on the customer side, are looking for that help and want to be part of the solution, given I do have visibility into some of the newer technologies coming because of the association with Idealab or because of the nature of our team, I’m optimistic that we’re going to be able to innovate things in a way that will help us deal with that better.

Wes Ashworth (32:51)

Yeah, absolutely. I’ll take you back to the early days a little bit. So some insights from early testing. Can you share a story from the early days of testing gravity storage in Switzerland? And what did those initial trials reveal about the technology’s potential and scalability?

Robert Piconi (33:05)

By the way, it’s great to go back there because we had at the time a lot of focus on ensuring we could learn as much as we could through the phases of the product development. And a lot of that means you really have to go big, meaning, you know, think building something that’s 250 kilowatt versus something that’s five megawatts is a, it’s a whole different game and to grid interconnected.

We, just to share, we, in our first prototype system, built a full five megawatt system and had it grid interconnected there in Switzerland. And that was the model of the, used a rotating crane at that time the six arm, looked really, it looks really cool. I never looked at cranes the same way again. And it’s on the website. And a lot of people, even when we announce a battery project, they always use those pictures because I think people really appreciate them.

But I think when you look at the problems that we were solving as we did something at large scale and what you learn and, and, and also even in our software development, the things you have to deal with in a, in a system like that, where you’re dealing not only with just lifting in lowering masses or weights. But you have to deal with wind, for example. So any deflection in the crane that may happen, the software has to compensate for that, has to predict it and compensate for elongation of the cables that happens over time.

The software has to understand the behavior and then predict how it can best optimize or change the existing protocol. All that should sound familiar. That’s sort of how AI functions generally where it’s a learning, but you’re architecting that into the software. I’d say in addition to going to large scale early, because if you’re going to fail, you should fail quickly and then learn and redo. So we had a few of those things as we built and went to large scale. And I think it’s just part of any product realization process where you’re doing something innovative.

So I’d say some of those decisions early on we made helped us learn a lot early and see some of the issues in the early part of the technology that led to moving away from the six arm design to a more modular, normal sort of building structure of lifting and lowering weights. And we’ve evolved to now doing those structures and using water instead of blocks, for example, and looking at leveraging slopes. So it’s just that first period there in ‘19 and ‘20, of course, we had COVID that got thrown out the world. We weren’t unique in having to deal with that, so that created other, you know, externalities and challenges that we had to deal with.

You know, again, we just have a fantastic team at Energy Vault across the board as we built it and getting through things like that and those environments and even what we did in developing our software platform very quickly and proved out immediately on the first three or four projects over Gigawatt hour that came up online with quality, safely, and delivering at the highest proficiency now in the market in terms of uptime. It’s just a tribute to the people and the innovation and their talent, and it’s really an honor for me to work with and learn from and support those people.

Wes Ashworth (36:17)

Yeah, it’s so great and kind of leading into that thinking about the people side of equation and you know, built this cool company with a really innovative culture which has been required, you know, I think to go to the levels you have and continue to push forward building such advanced customer specific technologies really requires that innovation at every level. I’m curious just what strategies have been effective for you in promoting that innovative culture at Energy Vault like help us, I guess a little look on the inside.

Robert Piconi (36:43)

Yeah, look, I think there’s foundational elements that’s important that we, you know, after the first few years when we started, you know, we were three people and started to go quickly to the 50 to the 100. We purposely made some investments in areas of, in our human resource and talent, both attraction and leadership and development areas. We wanted to really define what our culture would be about. And if you, you know, the benefit you have in my position in this case with this company, in any company that starts new, is you have the opportunity to craft something from the grounds up.

So with all your experience in my network, you know, almost 35 years across a few different industries, now, you you learn and see a lot through that time and you want to, you know, I always thought about this as an opportunity to craft something that had all the things I liked or that I thought and our leadership team felt like, also from their learnings, that would produce the best atmosphere here and in the best environment for people to innovate, to be successful, to learn, to have an environment where it’s safe, safe to fail, for example, or not to be afraid to really put some of the tough things, even internal criticisms, on the table.

Having an open environment to do that and a respect for those around you that may have a different view, for example. So I think just some facets of that are really a part of this culture you create and how we define it. And we even have on our website there’s a neat video there called the Energy Vault Way and it’s worth for your listeners for those that really want to understand what are those sort four to five pillars that that we use to enforce, reinforce our cultures. It’s there and really a part of a lot of why people join us. I mean, it’s not, people don’t come here for a paycheck; you can get that anywhere.

There’s obviously a purpose and a mission that we have as a company that is part of the attraction but also we have a lot of people that do not come from renewables or sustainability but came from like aerospace for example or came from other other areas and and part of that’s because they’re attracted to the environment that we’ve created here and and of course we’ve learned along the way we have, I’m very candid, it was the employee base on areas we need to prove and learn it’s a continuous process and you know some of the best companies that have performed in the world like a Danaher that Larry Culp led for years and grew that company tremendously and did it with a one of the parameters was a focus on continuous improvement or Kaizen that he applied to manufacturing initially and now in a lot of businesses.

Of course, he went on to GE, is doing amazing things, I think, across from when he started and what now the GE and the businesses are doing across across the board so I think that aspect of continuing to learn and improve employees look at that they they see this aspect of humility in the company and that’s a core value of ours. Because you, you know, when you’re humble, it doesn’t mean you’re somehow weak or meek. When you’re humble, you understand that there’s a recognition of those around you of also where you fit in and how you interact with others, but it also allows you to step back and really critically look at yourself and therefore be able to look around the corner or down the future or look at the landscape of what’s happening with customers, with competitors, and understand that there’s always things that you can work on and you own it, and you can do things better, and not pointing always at other things that are the reason for any shortcomings, but really starting with yourself.

And that’s a, you know, in my career and in my learning, that’s been such an important part of cultures that can do well and adapt in different environments. I’ll go back to when we started here. Wes, you asked about how to start and the high gravity and you know, it’s really cool technology. The market didn’t go to long duration so quickly. And the reality is look at what’s happening with lithium ion pricing in the last year, it’s down, think 70%, 50 to 70%. That changes the economics on storage. Before people thought about lithium ion in the two to four hours, a short duration tech. Well, when you have prices that low, you’re looking at the application now. by the way, what we just announced, Australia for the long term, it’s called the LTESA, the long term energy service agreement with the New South Wales government.

It’s for an eight hour system, 125 megawatt over eight hours. So a full gigawatt hour using lithium ion. It’s a, you know, you have to be able to adapt and change, and I think, based on what you see in the market environment, that’s, you know, it’s fundamental. And as I said, these core values, just coming back to your question, the culture you create, the core values that you build in the company and try to attract people and, and a recognition that we’re a learning organization, the leadership team is.

It’s not about any one person that has the answers, it’s about all of us and promoting an environment where people can share and also look to provide constructive criticism where we need to improve in that realization. And I think we’ve tried to do a pretty good job of that here and it’s led to think a very loyal employee base.

Wes Ashworth (41:30)

Yeah, without a doubt. I love every bit of that. And I love asking questions like that because it’s evident. You really hear it in the answers of what the company is about and what you’ve created and the culture and the humility and those sort of things as well too. And I’ll find that video and link it in the show notes as well for anybody who wants to check that out. But it’s so cool. These are some of the coolest best companies in the world. And I think it’s the reason it’s attracting, I think, some of the brightest minds from other industries are coming in because you’ve created cultures like this.

Closing question, we’re getting close to the time here. So final thoughts, what would you like our audience to take away about the importance of energy storage, especially in ensuring the reliability and resilience of renewable energy? And if not that, what’s the key message behind energy storage you wish everybody knew?

Robert Piconi (42:37)

Yeah, I think just a realization, I would say, for your listeners that as we’re going to make this transition in energy over time, that I would say is much more widely accepted that there is a need for it. Some of the more severe weather events and things sort of speak for themselves of what we’re trying to manage. So I would say I, as you think about storage, I wouldn’t just paint it as it’s some green initiative. It is a necessary component of how to operate a resilient and efficient grid, regardless of the technology.

And that’s where the examples I’ve used of some of the backup systems and how you make sure that’s there. In this case, you know, the grid isn’t infallible and it will fail at times. How do you architect it in the way that it can provide what it needs to all end users, business, residential, know, big energy users? So as you think about energy storage, I think it’s important to think about it more broadly in the context of that need, that the grid has to become more resilient. And that has, as we’ve discussed, so many different applications which require different types of technology to most economically and safely serve it. And I think if you’re thinking that way about storage, it’s not about a battery, lithium ion or gravity or flow batteries or you name the different technology.

The reality is storage is fundamental and important for the grid and for, I think, for all of us that rely on, of course, power and not only for mission-critical applications, but just for our own living and livelihoods. So I think that would be the one main thing for those that are just new to energy storage or new to understanding, you know, all of this debate that’s globally around, is it required, is it not? Is there a real problem with the planet heating up, or is that just, you know, someone’s not understanding the data right? Or there’s an agenda.

So I think to get beyond that, I think really getting to the fundamentals of that and how it gets provided and what technology the market will decide because the market’s very efficient at deciding in terms of looking at the best economics, safety, and sustainability. And I think those things driven by the demand we’re seeing is going to drive to the right results in the end.

Wes Ashworth (44:29)

Yeah, I agree completely and such a great way to wrap it up. That’ll wrap up our conversation with Rob Piconi, CEO of Energy Vault. Rob really has been fascinating to hear about Energy Vault’s groundbreaking work and gravity storage, its role in shaping the future of energy resilience, and the critical innovations making renewable energy more reliable and scalable than ever.

To our listeners, as always, if you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe to Green Giants, Titans of Renewable Energy. Share it with your network and stay tuned for more in-depth conversations with the leaders driving the clean energy revolution. If you want to learn more about Energy Vault, I did mention I will link some links in the show notes and you can go to their website as well too, And with that, we will see you next time.