AI transcript
0:00:00 [MUSIC]
0:00:06 Pushkin.
0:00:06 [MUSIC]
0:00:11 >> Hey everybody, I’m Kai Rizdal, the host of Marketplace,
0:00:13 your daily download on the economy.
0:00:16 Money influences so much of what we do and how we live.
0:00:19 That’s why it’s essential to understand how this economy works.
0:00:23 At Marketplace, we break down everything from inflation and
0:00:26 student loans to the future of AI so that you can understand what it all means for you.
0:00:31 Marketplace is your secret weapon for
0:00:34 understanding this economy, listen, wherever you get your podcasts.
0:00:38 America’s power grid is arguably
0:00:44 the largest machine ever built in the history of the world.
0:00:47 Thousands of power plants,
0:00:49 millions of miles of power lines,
0:00:51 all delivering exactly as much power as everybody
0:00:54 wants almost all of the time.
0:00:56 Now, in order to become more efficient and to move away from fossil fuel,
0:01:01 that machine has to be completely rebuilt.
0:01:05 The other day, I talked to one of the people who’s rebuilding it.
0:01:08 You’re wearing a bright yellow,
0:01:11 like a neon yellow work vest,
0:01:13 got a little American flag in the corner.
0:01:16 So where are you right now that you need that vest?
0:01:20 >> Well, I’m in the factory in Wharton, West Virginia.
0:01:23 It’s about 500,000 square feet under roof that we have right now.
0:01:27 The activity under that roof is everything from cell assembly.
0:01:31 So we’re operating that line to finish in construction of the building.
0:01:35 >> So you’re building batteries at the factory and you’re also building more factory at the factory?
0:01:40 >> Exactly, yes, all simultaneously.
0:01:43 [MUSIC]
0:01:48 >> I’m Jacob Goldstein and this is What’s Your Problem,
0:01:51 the show where I talk to people who are trying to make technological progress.
0:01:55 My guest today is Matteo Jaramillo.
0:01:58 He’s the co-founder and CEO of Form Energy.
0:02:01 Matteo started his company because he realized that in order to rebuild the grid,
0:02:06 in order to move off fossil fuels,
0:02:09 the world will very likely need batteries that are profoundly different
0:02:13 than the batteries we have now.
0:02:15 Specifically, Matteo’s problem is this.
0:02:18 How do you build batteries at scale that provide affordable backup power to the grid?
0:02:25 Not for two hours or four hours or six hours, but for 100 hours.
0:02:32 Matteo has been working on batteries for about 20 years.
0:02:35 He’s been doing it since before it was cool.
0:02:37 And back in 2009, he went to work at Tesla.
0:02:40 [MUSIC]
0:02:43 >> So I went there specifically to put batteries on the grid,
0:02:46 to take that technology and the balance of system which Tesla is excellent at,
0:02:50 and take it out of the car and put it on the grid.
0:02:53 And JB Strabo, who is the CTO and my boss at Tesla while I was there,
0:02:58 shared that vision and in fact has always been a leader on this stuff.
0:03:03 And so he gave me the room to run to do that internally at Tesla.
0:03:07 >> And so you basically started the Tesla powerwall business there, is that right?
0:03:13 >> That’s right, more than just the powerwall.
0:03:15 So what we call the power pack, and so it’s going to be a mega pack.
0:03:18 But batteries on the grid, yes, exactly.
0:03:20 >> So what is the limit of lithium ion batteries?
0:03:24 I mean, your company now is not a lithium ion battery company.
0:03:27 Is there sort of a moment when you realize that lithium ion batteries are not
0:03:32 going to solve all of the problems that need to be solved to shift to all
0:03:38 renewable energy all the time?
0:03:40 >> Yeah, lithium ion batteries are a fantastic technology.
0:03:44 But like any battery technology, there is a compromise somewhere.
0:03:48 And in the case of lithium ion, it is cost.
0:03:51 They are phenomenally energy dense.
0:03:53 They cycle wonderfully.
0:03:55 They are produced at massive scale.
0:03:57 They’re very, they are in fact very safe.
0:04:00 But they cost a lot for the kinds of problems that we also want to solve on
0:04:05 the grid, not just single digit duration hours, intermittency challenges, right?
0:04:11 The sun’s going down and then coming back every morning.
0:04:14 But multiple days of duration, or even seasonal imbalances.
0:04:18 And that duration of challenge,
0:04:21 lithium ion simply is not suited purely from a cost perspective to address.
0:04:25 And so that was the challenge that I went after as soon as I left Tesla.
0:04:29 >> So let’s talk about duration cuz that’s obviously central to what you’re doing.
0:04:35 How long are lithium ion batteries sort of techno economically useful for?
0:04:40 Like presumably you could just keep adding them and you could have as much
0:04:43 duration as you want with lithium ion batteries, but
0:04:45 it would be wildly expensive and nobody’s ever gonna do it, right?
0:04:48 >> That’s right.
0:04:49 >> So for how long are they actually economically efficient for
0:04:53 energy storage on the grid?
0:04:54 >> Well, today, most of the lithium ion that’s being put on the grid is
0:04:59 between two and four hour rated power duration.
0:05:02 So at its rated power, you start using the battery and it’s empty in two or four hours.
0:05:07 And what’s been interesting is to see that duration evolve over time.
0:05:10 So when the first lithium ion batteries were put on the grid,
0:05:13 they were rated at 15 minutes of duration.
0:05:17 And then it crept up to 30 minutes, and then it’s an hour, and now it’s two to four hours.
0:05:23 >> And is that just a function of the batteries getting cheaper so
0:05:25 you can put more of them in?
0:05:28 >> Purely a function of cost.
0:05:29 And so you can take that cost and duration pairing and see where it’s gonna go.
0:05:35 As certain costs, there’s a duration that is directly implied as a result.
0:05:41 And so we know where the cost curve for lithium ion is going and
0:05:44 therefore we know where the duration is also going.
0:05:46 >> So let’s talk about that two to four hour duration that lithium ion batteries are at now.
0:05:52 That seems very useful in the context of those moments when it’s a hot day and
0:05:57 everybody gets home from work and turns up their air conditioner.
0:06:00 And traditionally, we’re now still in many places.
0:06:03 Utilities have to turn on these very inefficient gas powered peaker plants, right?
0:06:09 And if we can use lithium ion batteries to solve that, to prevent that from happening,
0:06:14 like that’s great, right?
0:06:16 Like that is a very useful step in the evolution away from fossil fuel.
0:06:21 >> Precisely.
0:06:22 >> But why is that insufficient?
0:06:25 Like what’s the next thing that we need that we don’t have?
0:06:27 >> Well, the next thing that we don’t have is what happens if you have one day
0:06:32 that’s like that and then the next day that’s like that and the next day that’s
0:06:35 like that, stressing the peak multiple days in a row.
0:06:38 And it could be a stress that comes from heat or
0:06:41 it could be a stress that comes from cold or
0:06:43 it could be a stress that comes from cloud cover, storms, right?
0:06:47 Because one premise of course of the four hour battery is that you can recharge it
0:06:51 when you need to.
0:06:53 And all of a sudden, if you’re in a weather event where recharging is highly
0:06:57 non-economic or it’s not even possible, then different solutions are needed.
0:07:02 And different durations are also needed.
0:07:05 So how do you ride through entirely these multi-day duration weather events,
0:07:09 which we see in every market around the world?
0:07:12 >> So if we’re at like four hours, there’s any number of sort of hours.
0:07:19 There’s any amount of duration that you could kind of try and tackle next, right?
0:07:23 It could be 12 or it could be 24.
0:07:26 But you end up going all the way to 100 or 100-ish,
0:07:30 which I assume you didn’t pick just because it’s a satisfying round number.
0:07:33 Although it is a satisfying round number.
0:07:35 >> Yes. >> Like, why do you decide to go all the way from four to 100?
0:07:39 >> It’s a great question before, in fact, we even started the company.
0:07:45 And the question was, well, how do you solve the seasonal challenge, right?
0:07:48 That sort of winter to summer challenge for entry storage.
0:07:51 And it’s, you can sort of have a gut sense for it.
0:07:55 Well, but it covers a very wide range.
0:07:57 Do we need 10 hours or do we need 2,000 hours?
0:08:00 How do we wind that down?
0:08:01 And, well, this is how we framed it up.
0:08:04 What duration energy storage do you need to solve those problems?
0:08:08 And then, what is implied about the cost for that?
0:08:11 And can you build something that actually hits that cost target?
0:08:14 And so the 100 hours falls out of that very deep technical exercise.
0:08:18 If we say, take the state, my home state of California, for example.
0:08:23 100% of the carbon emissions on the electric grid comes from natural gas.
0:08:26 There is no more coal in the state of California.
0:08:29 And if you look at the way that the natural gas fleet participates in that system.
0:08:34 If we want to be able to drive to a deeper decarbonization for
0:08:37 that particular grid, which California does, legislatively it’s bound to.
0:08:42 Then we have to functionally replace at least some of those natural gas plants, right?
0:08:48 And when we look at what the battery needs to do,
0:08:53 technically, it needs to be able to provide that at least four day duration range, right?
0:08:59 So just functionally, that’s what it has to do.
0:09:01 It’s got to cover those cloudy, three, four days in a row.
0:09:04 When the solar is not really contributing to the system.
0:09:06 >> And so in the case of California, you have the law on your side.
0:09:09 >> Exactly.
0:09:10 >> It’s like, well, these utilities are gonna have to buy something.
0:09:13 And so let’s figure out how to be the ones to sell it to them.
0:09:16 And in particular, what they’re going to need to buy is order of magnitude days,
0:09:21 not hours, not weeks of energy storage.
0:09:24 >> That’s right, and if you need those days, then the cost falls out of that.
0:09:28 And you have to be somewhere around $20 per kilowatt hour.
0:09:31 Again, one-tenth, maybe the future cost of lithium-ion.
0:09:34 That’s where we started.
0:09:36 And so that’s where the pairing of 100 hours and
0:09:40 roughly $20 per kilowatt hour comes in.
0:09:42 It all falls out of the modeling that is done to really understand
0:09:46 the electric system and how it operates as a portfolio.
0:09:50 >> So now you have this frame and you gotta figure out how to build
0:09:55 a battery that has a sufficient duration at a low enough cost.
0:10:00 And there’s a lot of options, right?
0:10:02 There’s a lot of weird, fun things people are trying to do the thing you’re trying
0:10:07 to do, right?
0:10:07 So how do you get to where you get to?
0:10:10 >> Well, we started doing a bake-off, essentially.
0:10:15 We didn’t pick that technology.
0:10:17 We knew that design space we had to operate inside of.
0:10:20 And that was that $100 hour, $20 per kilowatt hour range.
0:10:24 And we had a couple contending chemistries that we liked.
0:10:28 One was sulfur-based, the other was iron-based.
0:10:31 We had some other ideas as well.
0:10:33 But when we first founded the company and took investment, our promise for
0:10:37 that to those investors for the very first round of funding was,
0:10:41 we will identify the most promising chemistry.
0:10:43 Not that we were gonna solve it or that we could prove that we had a market.
0:10:46 >> So people are giving you money to build batteries and
0:10:49 you didn’t even know what the batteries were gonna be.
0:10:51 >> Exactly, yeah.
0:10:53 But to be clear, that’s because the opportunity is overwhelmingly compelling.
0:10:59 This is a trillion dollar market if you can get it right.
0:11:02 And so that’s why it was worth it to even pursue this experiment from the beginning.
0:11:07 And so we had a couple of different technologies that we evaluated.
0:11:12 And at the end of the first year, it was clear that iron air was
0:11:16 the one that had the greatest chance to succeed.
0:11:18 The entitled cost was there, the entitled embodiment of that cost as
0:11:22 a real device was there, and the performance was there.
0:11:26 And so that’s the one that we picked, and that’s the one that we said,
0:11:29 this is what we’re gonna really devote our company towards.
0:11:32 >> Tell me about iron, why do you land on iron?
0:11:34 >> Well, iron, besides coals, the most mined substance on earth.
0:11:40 A few billion tons of it every year.
0:11:43 >> Not scarce, one country’s not gonna lock down iron reserves for the planet.
0:11:47 >> Definitely not, and if you squint, it’s not too hard to envision the earth is
0:11:51 just a rusty ball, basically.
0:11:53 >> Yeah, feels about right too, like vibes wise, rusty balls.
0:11:58 >> Yeah, exactly, and so you’re never gonna run out of it, of course.
0:12:04 And humans know a lot about iron, frankly.
0:12:07 There was a whole age of humanity where we really played around with iron.
0:12:11 >> It’s like, well, stone, not great as a battery, bronze, too expensive, iron.
0:12:17 Wait a minute.
0:12:19 >> And so we like the idea that there is a substance that a lot is known about,
0:12:26 but had never really been brought into the modern understanding electrochemically.
0:12:30 And other iron batteries are out there.
0:12:33 So for example, Thomas Edison, the battery that he went to market with is
0:12:37 a nickel-iron battery using an iron anode, and that was over 100 years ago now.
0:12:43 And so a lot is known, relatively speaking, about iron anodes.
0:12:46 But it’s not an art that has been really advanced recently.
0:12:50 And so where we started from was the best understanding that was out there
0:12:55 about iron air, which actually comes from the 1970s, roughly.
0:12:58 There was some work that was done recently out of one academic lab, but
0:13:02 not too much, and we saw that the performance metrics that Westinghouse
0:13:08 was able to get at a study that they did at the behest of the US Department of
0:13:12 Energy, that if we could achieve what they had done 50 years ago,
0:13:17 then we had a minimum viable product.
0:13:19 And we thought, we think we could probably do that.
0:13:23 >> I mean, it’s the basic idea like iron is cheap and big and heavy and
0:13:28 not that energy dense.
0:13:29 So of course, nobody’s going to use it for a laptop or a car.
0:13:32 It’s the opposite of what you want for a laptop or a car.
0:13:35 But you don’t actually care in this instance if it’s big and heavy,
0:13:39 because you’re just going to put it out whatever in the desert anyways,
0:13:43 where there’s a ton of space.
0:13:45 >> Exactly, and again, the overriding consideration here for
0:13:49 the selection of a chemistry to pursue is cost, and specifically capex cost.
0:13:54 And back to your earlier question, the things that we can trade off as a result,
0:13:59 I’ll give you one example of cycle life.
0:14:01 Lithium ion batteries cycle phenomenally well, thousands of times.
0:14:04 >> Cycle life meaning charge and discharge and charge.
0:14:07 >> Charge and discharge, that’s right.
0:14:09 But to give you an example for the way that technically we can think about
0:14:13 a trade off in pursuit of very low cost.
0:14:15 If I am building a battery that lets us say discharges over the course of a week
0:14:18 to make this easy, and charges over the course of a week,
0:14:22 so I mean 100% rent or proficiency, then the maximum number of cycles I can get
0:14:27 in a year is 26, theoretical maximum.
0:14:29 And over the course of a 20 year project life, it’s roughly 500.
0:14:33 A far cry from the thousands and thousands of cycles that lithium ion is
0:14:37 pursuing because it needs, right?
0:14:39 I have to be very good at charging and discharging hundreds of times, but
0:14:42 that is a materially different challenge than thousands of times, right?
0:14:46 >> So you’re close now to having real working batteries out in the world.
0:14:54 We’ve been working on it for years.
0:14:57 Are there, is there an example of a thing that you figured out between when you
0:15:01 started and now?
0:15:03 >> Yeah, so to be clear, we have working batteries out there in the grid right now.
0:15:06 So we deployed our first battery connected to the grid charging and
0:15:09 discharging about a year ago.
0:15:11 So it was in summer of last year that our first one went out in the world.
0:15:15 And we learned a lot from that.
0:15:17 But as far as learning that we had along the way,
0:15:23 it’s about iron maybe not surprisingly, iron reacts in two different levels.
0:15:29 So you have different states of oxidation for iron, right?
0:15:33 >> So basically rust in the case of iron, right?
0:15:35 >> That’s right, that’s right.
0:15:36 And the first reaction is iron to iron hydroxide.
0:15:39 So you have FeOH, right, one hydroxide.
0:15:42 And there’s a theoretical limit to the amount of energy you can get out of
0:15:47 that particular reaction.
0:15:49 >> And just to be clear, this is relevant to you because your batteries,
0:15:52 when they’re charging and discharging are sort of rusting and unrusting, right?
0:15:56 That is a version of what is happening, yeah.
0:15:58 >> That’s exactly right, that’s precisely what’s happening.
0:16:01 And what we have found is that, in fact,
0:16:05 the theoretical limit is about 30% higher than what we originally thought it was.
0:16:10 And I can’t tell you why precisely because there’s a lot of trade secret
0:16:14 involved in this, but that’s one learning that we had.
0:16:17 >> That’s like a basic science insight?
0:16:20 >> This is not in the published literature anywhere.
0:16:22 This is a true discovery by the team at Forum Energy.
0:16:25 >> And tell me about deciding to go trade secret instead of patent.
0:16:28 You wanted to try and keep it forever?
0:16:30 Why not patent it and be sure you own it?
0:16:33 >> Well, it’s a combination of things.
0:16:35 Our intellectual property approach utilizes different methods depending on what it is.
0:16:43 >> You figure trade secret worked for Coca-Cola, probably worked for you.
0:16:46 >> That’s right, that’s right, yeah.
0:16:47 >> They patented the secret formula 100 years ago, where would they be today?
0:16:51 >> I don’t know what to say.
0:16:54 >> We’ll be back in just a minute.
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0:17:46 [MUSIC]
0:17:48 >> Hey everybody, I’m Kai Rizdal, the host of Marketplace, your daily download on the economy.
0:17:53 Money influences so much of what we do and how we live.
0:17:57 That’s why it’s essential to understand how this economy works.
0:18:01 At Marketplace, we break down everything from inflation and student loans to the future of AI,
0:18:06 so that you can understand what it all means for you.
0:18:09 Marketplace is your secret weapon for understanding this economy.
0:18:13 Listen wherever you get your podcasts.
0:18:15 [MUSIC]
0:18:19 >> So you’re actually talking to me today from Forms Factory in Weirton, West Virginia.
0:18:25 Tell me about the factory.
0:18:27 Tell me about Weirton.
0:18:28 >> So Weirton is where we’re building this plant and it’s the home of what was Weirton Steel.
0:18:35 And it was the dominant economic driver for this region in the northern,
0:18:40 what’s called the Northern Panhandle of West Virginia.
0:18:43 It’s a stretch of West Virginia that sits between Ohio and Pennsylvania.
0:18:47 And the plant was one of the most productive steel plants in the country for
0:18:53 a very long time, employed about 14,000 people.
0:18:56 And the plant shut in the early 2000s, and so that’s the site that most of the plant has gone.
0:19:02 There’s only one remaining structure from that plant, but we are on that same historic site.
0:19:07 And it’s a huge privilege to be able to build this plant here in Weirton.
0:19:12 >> Is there a practical reason that you’re on the site of a steel plant?
0:19:15 I mean, is iron close by or the rail links good?
0:19:19 >> Yeah, it’s a phenomenal piece of physical infrastructure is what it comes down to.
0:19:22 And that’s how most of the steel sites were picked originally in the country.
0:19:27 Flat places near rivers with great connectivity to the economy, essentially.
0:19:32 And so that’s exactly what this site is.
0:19:35 So it’s right on the Ohio River.
0:19:36 There’s Barge Access, which of course connects into the Mississippi.
0:19:41 There’s two rail lines, one which comes directly into our site and
0:19:44 another which is not very far away.
0:19:47 And then phenomenal highway interconnectivity to the country as well.
0:19:51 >> So now you have a factory, you are at the factory.
0:19:55 You’re making batteries, you’re building more factories so you can make more batteries.
0:19:59 >> Make more batteries, that’s right.
0:19:59 >> What do you have to figure out next?
0:20:03 Like what is sort of the frontier for you at this point?
0:20:06 >> Well, at this point, the things we have to figure out are really the scaled
0:20:10 manufacturing processes.
0:20:12 There’s not a lot more that we can do in the lab.
0:20:15 Even building sort of production intent size scale systems, which we do all the time.
0:20:21 We have to build those devices off of the real volume processes.
0:20:26 So the equipment sets, the operations, that’s where the risk remains in the company.
0:20:32 And the only way to retire that risk is to take that step and to do it.
0:20:35 And so that’s really where the focus is as a company is on that next phase to get
0:20:41 into start of production to produce those batteries and to work through the challenges
0:20:46 that inevitably pop up when you do something for the first time at that scale.
0:20:49 >> So you can make a battery, the hard thing now is to make a thousand batteries or whatever.
0:20:55 >> Yeah, at high quality and low cost.
0:20:57 >> And low cost.
0:20:58 And so tell me when you have like a full scale deployment, what will it look like?
0:21:04 >> Yeah, it’ll look pretty boring is the short answer.
0:21:08 >> And ideally the operation will be super boring, right?
0:21:10 If everything goes well, yeah.
0:21:12 >> Yeah, paint drying in a field, that’s what it will be.
0:21:15 >> Literally iron rusting, it’ll literally be iron rusting in a field.
0:21:18 >> And unrusting, we’ll go both ways, Jake.
0:21:20 >> Yes, that’s the hard part.
0:21:21 >> Yeah, these will be can shipping containers, so 40 foot containers installed in a field.
0:21:27 In other words, it will look like pretty much any other battery that is installed for
0:21:31 utilities today and most people don’t know what that looks like.
0:21:33 But it is just shipping containers installed on pads in arrays in a field.
0:21:39 And so the size of these projects ranges from dozens of
0:21:43 those enclosures to hundreds or even thousands in some cases.
0:21:48 >> Your initial projects are dozens, I imagine?
0:21:51 >> That’s correct.
0:21:52 So the first projects that we’re doing are generally around 10 megawatts each.
0:21:58 So that’s what these utilities, they range from 5 to 15, but let’s just say they’re 10.
0:22:03 And so at 10 megawatts, 100 hours, that’s 1000 megawatt hours.
0:22:08 And that puts these initial batteries that we’re putting in the field,
0:22:11 at least from an energy perspective, as some of the largest batteries ever deployed on the grid.
0:22:17 >> So you talked about having to scale, right?
0:22:20 Having to figure out how to build thousands of batteries that are cheap and reliable.
0:22:27 Is there a particular piece of that that you’re trying to figure out right now?
0:22:32 Or a particular piece of it that seems, frankly, daunting?
0:22:36 >> So the category of challenges that we have in front of us are squarely in the engineering and
0:22:42 specifically manufacturing engineering challenge.
0:22:45 How it can go wrong is inevitably things pop up when you’re
0:22:49 doing manufacturing at scale for the first time.
0:22:54 And so generally these are challenges that involve sort of days to weeks of
0:22:59 technical challenge that you need to solve, but you can inevitably solve them with a good team who knows what it’s doing.
0:23:04 And so that’s what we’ve built.
0:23:06 I think the biggest risk for us now, frankly, is hiring to fully build out that team,
0:23:11 to be able to do that on time and in the way that we need to.
0:23:15 But I’m not worried at all about whether there’s some technical challenge that will pop up that we cannot solve.
0:23:22 We are through that phase of what’s needed and it truly is an execution play from here.
0:23:27 There’s no magic pixie dust required.
0:23:30 We don’t need to say any prayers over a piece of technology to hope that it works.
0:23:35 We know that it works and we know that it works at the scale, but we need to go do it.
0:23:39 And so that’s the main challenge.
0:23:41 >> And then in the medium term, I mean, other people are working on other kinds of batteries,
0:23:49 other kinds of energy storage, long duration energy storage.
0:23:54 I mean, tell me about that sort of competitive landscape.
0:23:56 Like what are the other technologies that you think are compelling in a kind of similar duration?
0:24:03 >> Well, that term, long duration energy storage is an interesting one because it is used very broadly today.
0:24:08 And that’s why we actually prefer the term multi-day duration storage,
0:24:11 because it puts a little bit more precision around what we’re doing specifically.
0:24:15 So long duration energy storage is used today to refer to six hours of lithium ion, for example.
0:24:20 >> And you’re like, “Fat, you call that long?”
0:24:22 That’s like, “I get out of bed in the morning, I do six hours.”
0:24:25 >> Well, you know, for lithium ion, it is long compared to what it used to be, but it’s fairly incremental.
0:24:29 >> Well, who else is going for multi-day?
0:24:31 Like tell me other compelling multi-day storage technology.
0:24:34 >> Well, so it’s not so much that there’s other storage technologies.
0:24:37 It’s that there are other technologies that could act as a substitute for what we’re doing.
0:24:41 So for example, nuclear power, carbon capture on thermal plants, for example.
0:24:46 Hydrogen is also a possibility there.
0:24:49 Or even if you want to, transmission.
0:24:52 If we had a perfectly interconnected globe for transmission,
0:24:55 we would never need to store energy at all, right?
0:24:57 >> Oh, interesting, right, because the sun is always shining somewhere.
0:25:01 >> That’s right, 1/8 of the world is enjoying a summer afternoon at all times, right?
0:25:05 So now that’s a thought experiment.
0:25:07 >> And do you, like, I mean, obviously that’s the sort of limit case that’s not going to happen.
0:25:11 But when you think about reasons you might not win in the long run, for lack of a better word,
0:25:17 I don’t love that word there.
0:25:21 You think more about universes where we don’t actually need 100 hours of storage,
0:25:26 universes where there is great carbon capture on natural gas plants,
0:25:30 or more nuclear power, a better transmission?
0:25:33 >> Yeah, I don’t think about it quite that way.
0:25:37 When we think about competition, we need to make sure it’s in the context of the market
0:25:42 that we’re operating in.
0:25:43 And this is very much right now a non-zero-sum market.
0:25:46 In other words, it is growing incredibly fast and large.
0:25:50 And, you know, the whole industry is just accelerating in a way that it has not,
0:25:55 essentially, since it was built.
0:25:57 So we’re seeing load growth, you know, four or five percent or more in some cases.
0:26:02 It hasn’t been like that for literally 50 or 60 years.
0:26:05 >> Load growth is basically demand for electric.
0:26:07 >> Demand going up, that’s right.
0:26:09 >> And that’s like electrification plus artificial intelligence.
0:26:12 I mean, it’s essentially those two drivers.
0:26:15 >> Exactly, that’s exactly correct.
0:26:17 Electrification of cars for, you know, residential applications and electrification of industrial
0:26:23 processes, you know, very large consumers, you know, transportation industry, very large
0:26:27 consumers of energy overall.
0:26:29 And now a lot of that is becoming electric energy that they’re consuming.
0:26:34 And so our position in the market is very strong because we have a solution that is showing
0:26:39 up in a relevant time frame and it can scale in a way that our customers, these utilities,
0:26:46 need it to scale.
0:26:47 They need all solutions to show up.
0:26:50 We’ve yet to have a conversation with any utility who says, “I’m only going with one
0:26:54 solution.”
0:26:55 Right?
0:26:56 They’re trying to build nuclear.
0:26:58 They’re trying to build more natural gas.
0:27:00 They’re trying to build as much renewables as they possibly can.
0:27:04 And they’re going to need this kind of multi-duration storage.
0:27:07 So it’s such a growth market for us that in some ways, if you can show up with a product
0:27:15 that meets the specification on time and at scale, they will buy it just about as much
0:27:19 of it as you possibly can supply.
0:27:21 >> So if things go the way you hope they will go, what will the world look like in whatever,
0:27:30 the medium term, whatever that is for you, five years maybe?
0:27:33 >> Yeah.
0:27:34 So, in five years in the industry that we’re in, form could be a spectacular commercial
0:27:40 success of an amazing business and still have relatively small impact just because of the
0:27:46 size and scale of the industry overall.
0:27:49 And I’ll give you one point of reference.
0:27:52 The US today has about 1200 gigawatts of installed capacity, generation of capacity in it.
0:28:00 And over the next five years, if we absolutely blow it out of the water, we may make 10 gigawatts
0:28:07 worth of projects.
0:28:09 >> Which is a lot to be clear.
0:28:10 >> Which is a tremendous amount, right?
0:28:12 For one company to produce.
0:28:13 >> Yeah.
0:28:14 Yeah.
0:28:15 It’s a lot of shipping containers of iron batteries.
0:28:18 >> That’s right.
0:28:19 And so it will take probably another 10 years past that to see the kind of multi-day storage
0:28:26 that we’re bringing into the market have a real material effect in the industry.
0:28:31 And I think that we can get there for sure.
0:28:33 But it requires scaling very quickly in multiple markets, Europe, Asia, Africa, to be able
0:28:39 to drive the possibilities for what this kind of new type of asset in the electric system
0:28:46 can do.
0:28:48 >> So, should that make me worry about the pace of decarbonization?
0:28:53 I mean, even if you succeed wildly, you will be very small relative to the whatever, to
0:29:02 global demand for energy.
0:29:04 Like I get that that’s good for you and in the long term it’s good for the world.
0:29:09 But is it worrying in the kind of short to medium term?
0:29:12 Is it a reminder of how hard decarbonization is at various margins?
0:29:16 >> Well, it certainly is a reminder of just how hard it is and how large the challenges,
0:29:20 the scale of the challenge.
0:29:22 Another way of thinking about it is to achieve the goals that have been laid out by governments
0:29:28 across the globe, roughly $150 trillion of investment required through 2050.
0:29:35 >> Yeah.
0:29:36 Also good for you but worrying for the world.
0:29:38 >> Also good, worrying.
0:29:39 And the question is how quickly can we go from making the plans and having the technologies
0:29:44 that are nascent and scaling up to actually implementing them at scale.
0:29:48 So what is not so concerned to me is between 2030 and 2040, I see a huge amount of opportunity
0:29:56 to scale exactly what we’re talking about.
0:29:59 And again, it’s an all of the above scenario.
0:30:02 So I see a lot of effort that’s going into just the acceleration broadly speaking and
0:30:07 I do think that what form is bringing to the table can play a meaningful role in that and
0:30:11 it will take 15 years to scale it up and it’s very possible.
0:30:14 And we need a huge diversity of resources to meet the demand.
0:30:19 Our existence in many ways is based on electricity these days and we need all the different kinds
0:30:24 of solutions to show up.
0:30:26 And multi-daterition storage and specifically iron-air batteries can play a meaningful role
0:30:32 in that entire system and not only drive reliability up and cost down but also meet the goals of
0:30:41 load growth, which was a really big challenge and meet the decarbonization goals of the
0:30:47 electric system overall.
0:30:48 And having this kind of asset just makes solving those challenges a lot easier.
0:30:57 We’ll be back in a minute with the lightning round.
0:31:10 Hey everybody, I’m Kai Rizdal, the host of Marketplace, your daily download on the economy.
0:31:15 Money influences so much of what we do and how we live.
0:31:18 That’s why it’s essential to understand how this economy works.
0:31:22 At Marketplace, we break down everything from inflation and student loans to the future
0:31:26 of AI so that you can understand what it all means for you.
0:31:31 Marketplace is your secret weapon for understanding this economy.
0:31:34 Listen wherever you get your podcasts.
0:31:37 That’s the end of the ads.
0:31:41 Now, of course, it’s time for the lightning round.
0:31:45 So tell me about vocational discernment.
0:31:52 Well, I think you’re referring to the fact that I went to Divinity School at one point.
0:32:00 This was, in fact, right before I joined the battery industry.
0:32:04 I went to the Yale Divinity School and Yale is a great place.
0:32:07 I did consider going into the ministry.
0:32:11 And one of the reasons why Yale Divinity School is a great place is because they put you through
0:32:15 the vocational discernment process, a very intentional process to discern if indeed the
0:32:21 ordained ministry is right for you.
0:32:23 And I realized very early on that I was not cut out at all to be an ordained minister,
0:32:29 which is fortunate.
0:32:30 You discerned that it was not your vocation.
0:32:32 That’s right.
0:32:33 And it’s a great thing to learn early on in the process.
0:32:38 And so I quickly realized, if not that, then what?
0:32:41 And so taking those same skills, because they are skills you can apply to a lot of mindsets,
0:32:48 really tried to figure out what did I want to work on.
0:32:50 I do want to work on, have always wanted to work on something that I felt was meaningful
0:32:54 and impactful.
0:32:57 And so for me, I just kept coming back to energy for a lot of reasons as a way to really
0:33:02 make lives better in a lot of ways.
0:33:05 One of the other elements of vocational discernment is you identify key features of yourself,
0:33:11 your personality, if you will.
0:33:13 And one thing that I have come to learn about myself, not just them, but over a lot of time,
0:33:17 is I’m a pretty patient person for the things that I think are worthwhile.
0:33:22 So I was prepared to pursue something that I thought might take a decade or two.
0:33:27 And that’s what has happened.
0:33:28 But I’ve stuck with it since then.
0:33:30 And I’m glad I did.
0:33:31 It’s been a great ride.
0:33:35 Why did you think you might want to be a priest?
0:33:38 Well, why do I think I want to be a priest is because I am attracted to a lot of the
0:33:46 intellectual elements of religion.
0:33:51 And that is not the vocation.
0:33:53 It turns out I’m much more attracted to problem solving than problem listening, which is a
0:33:57 large part of being a minister.
0:34:01 So that’s what I thought.
0:34:02 But I have a huge fascination intellectually with religion and with the notion of God.
0:34:11 And it was something that I wanted to spend time really thinking carefully about.
0:34:15 What’s something you learned in divinity school that’s helpful in running a company?
0:34:23 So many different things.
0:34:26 The study of theology, in many ways, is the study of human nature.
0:34:32 And one thing about batteries that I love, why it continues, as a category, continue
0:34:39 to fascinate me now and have since I started, is that batteries are in some ways like humans.
0:34:46 They’re all flawed in some way.
0:34:48 There is no perfect battery.
0:34:51 And they can always be improved.
0:34:52 That’s the other thing I like about them.
0:34:54 That seems like a particularly Christian reading of batteries, if I might say so.
0:35:02 We don’t know the limits of how batteries can be.
0:35:07 And if you’re curious enough, then the rewards can be fantastic.
0:35:13 And the other thing is, if you find the right fit for the battery, then the flaws don’t
0:35:19 matter so much.
0:35:20 And that’s also sort of the way humans are, right?
0:35:23 So you and John Steinbeck share a hometown, Salinas, California.
0:35:31 What’s one Steinbeck book?
0:35:32 If somebody’s going to read one John Steinbeck book, what should they read?
0:35:36 Well, East of Eden.
0:35:38 But that’s a long one.
0:35:41 So there are shorter ones.
0:35:44 It sounds strange, but endubius battle is one that really stuck with me.
0:35:47 That one, I don’t know.
0:35:49 But it’s about labor relations.
0:35:53 Which was like the family business for you growing up, right?
0:35:56 Yeah.
0:35:57 My father was a lawyer for farm workers, and my mom was a teacher in public schools for
0:36:02 basically kids and farm workers.
0:36:05 What’s one thing that you wish more people understood about energy or power?
0:36:11 Well, back to some of our earlier comments.
0:36:16 Just the scale of the industry and the size of things that happen.
0:36:22 It really boggles the mind to try and appreciate how big of an industry it is and how much
0:36:28 change is happening to such a large industry.
0:36:31 I think it was, maybe lots of people have said it, but I heard Jigar Shah describe the
0:36:35 grid as like the biggest machine ever built in the history of the world.
0:36:40 Which is a kind of rad way to think of it, like it’s this one giant machine, and not
0:36:44 only is it giant, it has to work all the time, right?
0:36:48 That’s the other wild.
0:36:49 You can never, ever turn it off.
0:36:52 That’s right.
0:36:53 Yeah.
0:36:54 And not only that, we’re matching supply and demand instantaneously at all times.
0:36:58 That’s how the machine operates.
0:37:00 So the way it operates is also just phenomenally complex.
0:37:05 And it’s amazing that we’re able to have as much reliability as we do today.
0:37:09 And so, you know, the grid will be reinvented, it will be rebuilt, essentially, and rebuilt
0:37:14 again over the next 30 or 40 years.
0:37:17 And so the scale, which is, again, hard to approximate, but appreciating that is key
0:37:21 to understanding the direction that it will take and what will be involved to affect this
0:37:27 change.
0:37:28 It’s like, is it the ship of Theseus?
0:37:29 Is that the one?
0:37:30 It’s like the giant, like national scale ship of Theseus where it’s like the whole grid
0:37:36 will be different.
0:37:37 And you won’t even notice.
0:37:38 You just flip the switch and the lights will go on.
0:37:41 That is what we’re aiming for, for sure.
0:37:47 Matteo Jaramillo is the co-founder and CEO of Form Energy.
0:37:52 Today’s show was produced by Gabriel Hunter-Chang.
0:37:55 It was edited by Lydia Jean Cotte and engineered by Sarah Bouguere.
0:38:00 You can email us at problem@pushkin.fm.
0:38:03 I’m Jacob Goldstein, and we’ll be back next week with another episode of What’s Your Problem?
0:38:07 Hey, everybody.
0:38:08 I’m Kai Rizdal, the host of Marketplace, your daily download on the economy.
0:38:23 Money influences so much of what we do and how we live.
0:38:27 That’s why it’s essential to understand how this economy works.
0:38:30 At Marketplace, we break down everything from inflation and student loans to the future
0:38:34 of AI so that you can understand what it all means for you.
0:38:39 Marketplace is your secret weapon for understanding this economy.
0:38:42 Listen wherever you get your podcasts.
0:38:44 (upbeat music)
0:00:06 Pushkin.
0:00:06 [MUSIC]
0:00:11 >> Hey everybody, I’m Kai Rizdal, the host of Marketplace,
0:00:13 your daily download on the economy.
0:00:16 Money influences so much of what we do and how we live.
0:00:19 That’s why it’s essential to understand how this economy works.
0:00:23 At Marketplace, we break down everything from inflation and
0:00:26 student loans to the future of AI so that you can understand what it all means for you.
0:00:31 Marketplace is your secret weapon for
0:00:34 understanding this economy, listen, wherever you get your podcasts.
0:00:38 America’s power grid is arguably
0:00:44 the largest machine ever built in the history of the world.
0:00:47 Thousands of power plants,
0:00:49 millions of miles of power lines,
0:00:51 all delivering exactly as much power as everybody
0:00:54 wants almost all of the time.
0:00:56 Now, in order to become more efficient and to move away from fossil fuel,
0:01:01 that machine has to be completely rebuilt.
0:01:05 The other day, I talked to one of the people who’s rebuilding it.
0:01:08 You’re wearing a bright yellow,
0:01:11 like a neon yellow work vest,
0:01:13 got a little American flag in the corner.
0:01:16 So where are you right now that you need that vest?
0:01:20 >> Well, I’m in the factory in Wharton, West Virginia.
0:01:23 It’s about 500,000 square feet under roof that we have right now.
0:01:27 The activity under that roof is everything from cell assembly.
0:01:31 So we’re operating that line to finish in construction of the building.
0:01:35 >> So you’re building batteries at the factory and you’re also building more factory at the factory?
0:01:40 >> Exactly, yes, all simultaneously.
0:01:43 [MUSIC]
0:01:48 >> I’m Jacob Goldstein and this is What’s Your Problem,
0:01:51 the show where I talk to people who are trying to make technological progress.
0:01:55 My guest today is Matteo Jaramillo.
0:01:58 He’s the co-founder and CEO of Form Energy.
0:02:01 Matteo started his company because he realized that in order to rebuild the grid,
0:02:06 in order to move off fossil fuels,
0:02:09 the world will very likely need batteries that are profoundly different
0:02:13 than the batteries we have now.
0:02:15 Specifically, Matteo’s problem is this.
0:02:18 How do you build batteries at scale that provide affordable backup power to the grid?
0:02:25 Not for two hours or four hours or six hours, but for 100 hours.
0:02:32 Matteo has been working on batteries for about 20 years.
0:02:35 He’s been doing it since before it was cool.
0:02:37 And back in 2009, he went to work at Tesla.
0:02:40 [MUSIC]
0:02:43 >> So I went there specifically to put batteries on the grid,
0:02:46 to take that technology and the balance of system which Tesla is excellent at,
0:02:50 and take it out of the car and put it on the grid.
0:02:53 And JB Strabo, who is the CTO and my boss at Tesla while I was there,
0:02:58 shared that vision and in fact has always been a leader on this stuff.
0:03:03 And so he gave me the room to run to do that internally at Tesla.
0:03:07 >> And so you basically started the Tesla powerwall business there, is that right?
0:03:13 >> That’s right, more than just the powerwall.
0:03:15 So what we call the power pack, and so it’s going to be a mega pack.
0:03:18 But batteries on the grid, yes, exactly.
0:03:20 >> So what is the limit of lithium ion batteries?
0:03:24 I mean, your company now is not a lithium ion battery company.
0:03:27 Is there sort of a moment when you realize that lithium ion batteries are not
0:03:32 going to solve all of the problems that need to be solved to shift to all
0:03:38 renewable energy all the time?
0:03:40 >> Yeah, lithium ion batteries are a fantastic technology.
0:03:44 But like any battery technology, there is a compromise somewhere.
0:03:48 And in the case of lithium ion, it is cost.
0:03:51 They are phenomenally energy dense.
0:03:53 They cycle wonderfully.
0:03:55 They are produced at massive scale.
0:03:57 They’re very, they are in fact very safe.
0:04:00 But they cost a lot for the kinds of problems that we also want to solve on
0:04:05 the grid, not just single digit duration hours, intermittency challenges, right?
0:04:11 The sun’s going down and then coming back every morning.
0:04:14 But multiple days of duration, or even seasonal imbalances.
0:04:18 And that duration of challenge,
0:04:21 lithium ion simply is not suited purely from a cost perspective to address.
0:04:25 And so that was the challenge that I went after as soon as I left Tesla.
0:04:29 >> So let’s talk about duration cuz that’s obviously central to what you’re doing.
0:04:35 How long are lithium ion batteries sort of techno economically useful for?
0:04:40 Like presumably you could just keep adding them and you could have as much
0:04:43 duration as you want with lithium ion batteries, but
0:04:45 it would be wildly expensive and nobody’s ever gonna do it, right?
0:04:48 >> That’s right.
0:04:49 >> So for how long are they actually economically efficient for
0:04:53 energy storage on the grid?
0:04:54 >> Well, today, most of the lithium ion that’s being put on the grid is
0:04:59 between two and four hour rated power duration.
0:05:02 So at its rated power, you start using the battery and it’s empty in two or four hours.
0:05:07 And what’s been interesting is to see that duration evolve over time.
0:05:10 So when the first lithium ion batteries were put on the grid,
0:05:13 they were rated at 15 minutes of duration.
0:05:17 And then it crept up to 30 minutes, and then it’s an hour, and now it’s two to four hours.
0:05:23 >> And is that just a function of the batteries getting cheaper so
0:05:25 you can put more of them in?
0:05:28 >> Purely a function of cost.
0:05:29 And so you can take that cost and duration pairing and see where it’s gonna go.
0:05:35 As certain costs, there’s a duration that is directly implied as a result.
0:05:41 And so we know where the cost curve for lithium ion is going and
0:05:44 therefore we know where the duration is also going.
0:05:46 >> So let’s talk about that two to four hour duration that lithium ion batteries are at now.
0:05:52 That seems very useful in the context of those moments when it’s a hot day and
0:05:57 everybody gets home from work and turns up their air conditioner.
0:06:00 And traditionally, we’re now still in many places.
0:06:03 Utilities have to turn on these very inefficient gas powered peaker plants, right?
0:06:09 And if we can use lithium ion batteries to solve that, to prevent that from happening,
0:06:14 like that’s great, right?
0:06:16 Like that is a very useful step in the evolution away from fossil fuel.
0:06:21 >> Precisely.
0:06:22 >> But why is that insufficient?
0:06:25 Like what’s the next thing that we need that we don’t have?
0:06:27 >> Well, the next thing that we don’t have is what happens if you have one day
0:06:32 that’s like that and then the next day that’s like that and the next day that’s
0:06:35 like that, stressing the peak multiple days in a row.
0:06:38 And it could be a stress that comes from heat or
0:06:41 it could be a stress that comes from cold or
0:06:43 it could be a stress that comes from cloud cover, storms, right?
0:06:47 Because one premise of course of the four hour battery is that you can recharge it
0:06:51 when you need to.
0:06:53 And all of a sudden, if you’re in a weather event where recharging is highly
0:06:57 non-economic or it’s not even possible, then different solutions are needed.
0:07:02 And different durations are also needed.
0:07:05 So how do you ride through entirely these multi-day duration weather events,
0:07:09 which we see in every market around the world?
0:07:12 >> So if we’re at like four hours, there’s any number of sort of hours.
0:07:19 There’s any amount of duration that you could kind of try and tackle next, right?
0:07:23 It could be 12 or it could be 24.
0:07:26 But you end up going all the way to 100 or 100-ish,
0:07:30 which I assume you didn’t pick just because it’s a satisfying round number.
0:07:33 Although it is a satisfying round number.
0:07:35 >> Yes. >> Like, why do you decide to go all the way from four to 100?
0:07:39 >> It’s a great question before, in fact, we even started the company.
0:07:45 And the question was, well, how do you solve the seasonal challenge, right?
0:07:48 That sort of winter to summer challenge for entry storage.
0:07:51 And it’s, you can sort of have a gut sense for it.
0:07:55 Well, but it covers a very wide range.
0:07:57 Do we need 10 hours or do we need 2,000 hours?
0:08:00 How do we wind that down?
0:08:01 And, well, this is how we framed it up.
0:08:04 What duration energy storage do you need to solve those problems?
0:08:08 And then, what is implied about the cost for that?
0:08:11 And can you build something that actually hits that cost target?
0:08:14 And so the 100 hours falls out of that very deep technical exercise.
0:08:18 If we say, take the state, my home state of California, for example.
0:08:23 100% of the carbon emissions on the electric grid comes from natural gas.
0:08:26 There is no more coal in the state of California.
0:08:29 And if you look at the way that the natural gas fleet participates in that system.
0:08:34 If we want to be able to drive to a deeper decarbonization for
0:08:37 that particular grid, which California does, legislatively it’s bound to.
0:08:42 Then we have to functionally replace at least some of those natural gas plants, right?
0:08:48 And when we look at what the battery needs to do,
0:08:53 technically, it needs to be able to provide that at least four day duration range, right?
0:08:59 So just functionally, that’s what it has to do.
0:09:01 It’s got to cover those cloudy, three, four days in a row.
0:09:04 When the solar is not really contributing to the system.
0:09:06 >> And so in the case of California, you have the law on your side.
0:09:09 >> Exactly.
0:09:10 >> It’s like, well, these utilities are gonna have to buy something.
0:09:13 And so let’s figure out how to be the ones to sell it to them.
0:09:16 And in particular, what they’re going to need to buy is order of magnitude days,
0:09:21 not hours, not weeks of energy storage.
0:09:24 >> That’s right, and if you need those days, then the cost falls out of that.
0:09:28 And you have to be somewhere around $20 per kilowatt hour.
0:09:31 Again, one-tenth, maybe the future cost of lithium-ion.
0:09:34 That’s where we started.
0:09:36 And so that’s where the pairing of 100 hours and
0:09:40 roughly $20 per kilowatt hour comes in.
0:09:42 It all falls out of the modeling that is done to really understand
0:09:46 the electric system and how it operates as a portfolio.
0:09:50 >> So now you have this frame and you gotta figure out how to build
0:09:55 a battery that has a sufficient duration at a low enough cost.
0:10:00 And there’s a lot of options, right?
0:10:02 There’s a lot of weird, fun things people are trying to do the thing you’re trying
0:10:07 to do, right?
0:10:07 So how do you get to where you get to?
0:10:10 >> Well, we started doing a bake-off, essentially.
0:10:15 We didn’t pick that technology.
0:10:17 We knew that design space we had to operate inside of.
0:10:20 And that was that $100 hour, $20 per kilowatt hour range.
0:10:24 And we had a couple contending chemistries that we liked.
0:10:28 One was sulfur-based, the other was iron-based.
0:10:31 We had some other ideas as well.
0:10:33 But when we first founded the company and took investment, our promise for
0:10:37 that to those investors for the very first round of funding was,
0:10:41 we will identify the most promising chemistry.
0:10:43 Not that we were gonna solve it or that we could prove that we had a market.
0:10:46 >> So people are giving you money to build batteries and
0:10:49 you didn’t even know what the batteries were gonna be.
0:10:51 >> Exactly, yeah.
0:10:53 But to be clear, that’s because the opportunity is overwhelmingly compelling.
0:10:59 This is a trillion dollar market if you can get it right.
0:11:02 And so that’s why it was worth it to even pursue this experiment from the beginning.
0:11:07 And so we had a couple of different technologies that we evaluated.
0:11:12 And at the end of the first year, it was clear that iron air was
0:11:16 the one that had the greatest chance to succeed.
0:11:18 The entitled cost was there, the entitled embodiment of that cost as
0:11:22 a real device was there, and the performance was there.
0:11:26 And so that’s the one that we picked, and that’s the one that we said,
0:11:29 this is what we’re gonna really devote our company towards.
0:11:32 >> Tell me about iron, why do you land on iron?
0:11:34 >> Well, iron, besides coals, the most mined substance on earth.
0:11:40 A few billion tons of it every year.
0:11:43 >> Not scarce, one country’s not gonna lock down iron reserves for the planet.
0:11:47 >> Definitely not, and if you squint, it’s not too hard to envision the earth is
0:11:51 just a rusty ball, basically.
0:11:53 >> Yeah, feels about right too, like vibes wise, rusty balls.
0:11:58 >> Yeah, exactly, and so you’re never gonna run out of it, of course.
0:12:04 And humans know a lot about iron, frankly.
0:12:07 There was a whole age of humanity where we really played around with iron.
0:12:11 >> It’s like, well, stone, not great as a battery, bronze, too expensive, iron.
0:12:17 Wait a minute.
0:12:19 >> And so we like the idea that there is a substance that a lot is known about,
0:12:26 but had never really been brought into the modern understanding electrochemically.
0:12:30 And other iron batteries are out there.
0:12:33 So for example, Thomas Edison, the battery that he went to market with is
0:12:37 a nickel-iron battery using an iron anode, and that was over 100 years ago now.
0:12:43 And so a lot is known, relatively speaking, about iron anodes.
0:12:46 But it’s not an art that has been really advanced recently.
0:12:50 And so where we started from was the best understanding that was out there
0:12:55 about iron air, which actually comes from the 1970s, roughly.
0:12:58 There was some work that was done recently out of one academic lab, but
0:13:02 not too much, and we saw that the performance metrics that Westinghouse
0:13:08 was able to get at a study that they did at the behest of the US Department of
0:13:12 Energy, that if we could achieve what they had done 50 years ago,
0:13:17 then we had a minimum viable product.
0:13:19 And we thought, we think we could probably do that.
0:13:23 >> I mean, it’s the basic idea like iron is cheap and big and heavy and
0:13:28 not that energy dense.
0:13:29 So of course, nobody’s going to use it for a laptop or a car.
0:13:32 It’s the opposite of what you want for a laptop or a car.
0:13:35 But you don’t actually care in this instance if it’s big and heavy,
0:13:39 because you’re just going to put it out whatever in the desert anyways,
0:13:43 where there’s a ton of space.
0:13:45 >> Exactly, and again, the overriding consideration here for
0:13:49 the selection of a chemistry to pursue is cost, and specifically capex cost.
0:13:54 And back to your earlier question, the things that we can trade off as a result,
0:13:59 I’ll give you one example of cycle life.
0:14:01 Lithium ion batteries cycle phenomenally well, thousands of times.
0:14:04 >> Cycle life meaning charge and discharge and charge.
0:14:07 >> Charge and discharge, that’s right.
0:14:09 But to give you an example for the way that technically we can think about
0:14:13 a trade off in pursuit of very low cost.
0:14:15 If I am building a battery that lets us say discharges over the course of a week
0:14:18 to make this easy, and charges over the course of a week,
0:14:22 so I mean 100% rent or proficiency, then the maximum number of cycles I can get
0:14:27 in a year is 26, theoretical maximum.
0:14:29 And over the course of a 20 year project life, it’s roughly 500.
0:14:33 A far cry from the thousands and thousands of cycles that lithium ion is
0:14:37 pursuing because it needs, right?
0:14:39 I have to be very good at charging and discharging hundreds of times, but
0:14:42 that is a materially different challenge than thousands of times, right?
0:14:46 >> So you’re close now to having real working batteries out in the world.
0:14:54 We’ve been working on it for years.
0:14:57 Are there, is there an example of a thing that you figured out between when you
0:15:01 started and now?
0:15:03 >> Yeah, so to be clear, we have working batteries out there in the grid right now.
0:15:06 So we deployed our first battery connected to the grid charging and
0:15:09 discharging about a year ago.
0:15:11 So it was in summer of last year that our first one went out in the world.
0:15:15 And we learned a lot from that.
0:15:17 But as far as learning that we had along the way,
0:15:23 it’s about iron maybe not surprisingly, iron reacts in two different levels.
0:15:29 So you have different states of oxidation for iron, right?
0:15:33 >> So basically rust in the case of iron, right?
0:15:35 >> That’s right, that’s right.
0:15:36 And the first reaction is iron to iron hydroxide.
0:15:39 So you have FeOH, right, one hydroxide.
0:15:42 And there’s a theoretical limit to the amount of energy you can get out of
0:15:47 that particular reaction.
0:15:49 >> And just to be clear, this is relevant to you because your batteries,
0:15:52 when they’re charging and discharging are sort of rusting and unrusting, right?
0:15:56 That is a version of what is happening, yeah.
0:15:58 >> That’s exactly right, that’s precisely what’s happening.
0:16:01 And what we have found is that, in fact,
0:16:05 the theoretical limit is about 30% higher than what we originally thought it was.
0:16:10 And I can’t tell you why precisely because there’s a lot of trade secret
0:16:14 involved in this, but that’s one learning that we had.
0:16:17 >> That’s like a basic science insight?
0:16:20 >> This is not in the published literature anywhere.
0:16:22 This is a true discovery by the team at Forum Energy.
0:16:25 >> And tell me about deciding to go trade secret instead of patent.
0:16:28 You wanted to try and keep it forever?
0:16:30 Why not patent it and be sure you own it?
0:16:33 >> Well, it’s a combination of things.
0:16:35 Our intellectual property approach utilizes different methods depending on what it is.
0:16:43 >> You figure trade secret worked for Coca-Cola, probably worked for you.
0:16:46 >> That’s right, that’s right, yeah.
0:16:47 >> They patented the secret formula 100 years ago, where would they be today?
0:16:51 >> I don’t know what to say.
0:16:54 >> We’ll be back in just a minute.
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0:17:46 [MUSIC]
0:17:48 >> Hey everybody, I’m Kai Rizdal, the host of Marketplace, your daily download on the economy.
0:17:53 Money influences so much of what we do and how we live.
0:17:57 That’s why it’s essential to understand how this economy works.
0:18:01 At Marketplace, we break down everything from inflation and student loans to the future of AI,
0:18:06 so that you can understand what it all means for you.
0:18:09 Marketplace is your secret weapon for understanding this economy.
0:18:13 Listen wherever you get your podcasts.
0:18:15 [MUSIC]
0:18:19 >> So you’re actually talking to me today from Forms Factory in Weirton, West Virginia.
0:18:25 Tell me about the factory.
0:18:27 Tell me about Weirton.
0:18:28 >> So Weirton is where we’re building this plant and it’s the home of what was Weirton Steel.
0:18:35 And it was the dominant economic driver for this region in the northern,
0:18:40 what’s called the Northern Panhandle of West Virginia.
0:18:43 It’s a stretch of West Virginia that sits between Ohio and Pennsylvania.
0:18:47 And the plant was one of the most productive steel plants in the country for
0:18:53 a very long time, employed about 14,000 people.
0:18:56 And the plant shut in the early 2000s, and so that’s the site that most of the plant has gone.
0:19:02 There’s only one remaining structure from that plant, but we are on that same historic site.
0:19:07 And it’s a huge privilege to be able to build this plant here in Weirton.
0:19:12 >> Is there a practical reason that you’re on the site of a steel plant?
0:19:15 I mean, is iron close by or the rail links good?
0:19:19 >> Yeah, it’s a phenomenal piece of physical infrastructure is what it comes down to.
0:19:22 And that’s how most of the steel sites were picked originally in the country.
0:19:27 Flat places near rivers with great connectivity to the economy, essentially.
0:19:32 And so that’s exactly what this site is.
0:19:35 So it’s right on the Ohio River.
0:19:36 There’s Barge Access, which of course connects into the Mississippi.
0:19:41 There’s two rail lines, one which comes directly into our site and
0:19:44 another which is not very far away.
0:19:47 And then phenomenal highway interconnectivity to the country as well.
0:19:51 >> So now you have a factory, you are at the factory.
0:19:55 You’re making batteries, you’re building more factories so you can make more batteries.
0:19:59 >> Make more batteries, that’s right.
0:19:59 >> What do you have to figure out next?
0:20:03 Like what is sort of the frontier for you at this point?
0:20:06 >> Well, at this point, the things we have to figure out are really the scaled
0:20:10 manufacturing processes.
0:20:12 There’s not a lot more that we can do in the lab.
0:20:15 Even building sort of production intent size scale systems, which we do all the time.
0:20:21 We have to build those devices off of the real volume processes.
0:20:26 So the equipment sets, the operations, that’s where the risk remains in the company.
0:20:32 And the only way to retire that risk is to take that step and to do it.
0:20:35 And so that’s really where the focus is as a company is on that next phase to get
0:20:41 into start of production to produce those batteries and to work through the challenges
0:20:46 that inevitably pop up when you do something for the first time at that scale.
0:20:49 >> So you can make a battery, the hard thing now is to make a thousand batteries or whatever.
0:20:55 >> Yeah, at high quality and low cost.
0:20:57 >> And low cost.
0:20:58 And so tell me when you have like a full scale deployment, what will it look like?
0:21:04 >> Yeah, it’ll look pretty boring is the short answer.
0:21:08 >> And ideally the operation will be super boring, right?
0:21:10 If everything goes well, yeah.
0:21:12 >> Yeah, paint drying in a field, that’s what it will be.
0:21:15 >> Literally iron rusting, it’ll literally be iron rusting in a field.
0:21:18 >> And unrusting, we’ll go both ways, Jake.
0:21:20 >> Yes, that’s the hard part.
0:21:21 >> Yeah, these will be can shipping containers, so 40 foot containers installed in a field.
0:21:27 In other words, it will look like pretty much any other battery that is installed for
0:21:31 utilities today and most people don’t know what that looks like.
0:21:33 But it is just shipping containers installed on pads in arrays in a field.
0:21:39 And so the size of these projects ranges from dozens of
0:21:43 those enclosures to hundreds or even thousands in some cases.
0:21:48 >> Your initial projects are dozens, I imagine?
0:21:51 >> That’s correct.
0:21:52 So the first projects that we’re doing are generally around 10 megawatts each.
0:21:58 So that’s what these utilities, they range from 5 to 15, but let’s just say they’re 10.
0:22:03 And so at 10 megawatts, 100 hours, that’s 1000 megawatt hours.
0:22:08 And that puts these initial batteries that we’re putting in the field,
0:22:11 at least from an energy perspective, as some of the largest batteries ever deployed on the grid.
0:22:17 >> So you talked about having to scale, right?
0:22:20 Having to figure out how to build thousands of batteries that are cheap and reliable.
0:22:27 Is there a particular piece of that that you’re trying to figure out right now?
0:22:32 Or a particular piece of it that seems, frankly, daunting?
0:22:36 >> So the category of challenges that we have in front of us are squarely in the engineering and
0:22:42 specifically manufacturing engineering challenge.
0:22:45 How it can go wrong is inevitably things pop up when you’re
0:22:49 doing manufacturing at scale for the first time.
0:22:54 And so generally these are challenges that involve sort of days to weeks of
0:22:59 technical challenge that you need to solve, but you can inevitably solve them with a good team who knows what it’s doing.
0:23:04 And so that’s what we’ve built.
0:23:06 I think the biggest risk for us now, frankly, is hiring to fully build out that team,
0:23:11 to be able to do that on time and in the way that we need to.
0:23:15 But I’m not worried at all about whether there’s some technical challenge that will pop up that we cannot solve.
0:23:22 We are through that phase of what’s needed and it truly is an execution play from here.
0:23:27 There’s no magic pixie dust required.
0:23:30 We don’t need to say any prayers over a piece of technology to hope that it works.
0:23:35 We know that it works and we know that it works at the scale, but we need to go do it.
0:23:39 And so that’s the main challenge.
0:23:41 >> And then in the medium term, I mean, other people are working on other kinds of batteries,
0:23:49 other kinds of energy storage, long duration energy storage.
0:23:54 I mean, tell me about that sort of competitive landscape.
0:23:56 Like what are the other technologies that you think are compelling in a kind of similar duration?
0:24:03 >> Well, that term, long duration energy storage is an interesting one because it is used very broadly today.
0:24:08 And that’s why we actually prefer the term multi-day duration storage,
0:24:11 because it puts a little bit more precision around what we’re doing specifically.
0:24:15 So long duration energy storage is used today to refer to six hours of lithium ion, for example.
0:24:20 >> And you’re like, “Fat, you call that long?”
0:24:22 That’s like, “I get out of bed in the morning, I do six hours.”
0:24:25 >> Well, you know, for lithium ion, it is long compared to what it used to be, but it’s fairly incremental.
0:24:29 >> Well, who else is going for multi-day?
0:24:31 Like tell me other compelling multi-day storage technology.
0:24:34 >> Well, so it’s not so much that there’s other storage technologies.
0:24:37 It’s that there are other technologies that could act as a substitute for what we’re doing.
0:24:41 So for example, nuclear power, carbon capture on thermal plants, for example.
0:24:46 Hydrogen is also a possibility there.
0:24:49 Or even if you want to, transmission.
0:24:52 If we had a perfectly interconnected globe for transmission,
0:24:55 we would never need to store energy at all, right?
0:24:57 >> Oh, interesting, right, because the sun is always shining somewhere.
0:25:01 >> That’s right, 1/8 of the world is enjoying a summer afternoon at all times, right?
0:25:05 So now that’s a thought experiment.
0:25:07 >> And do you, like, I mean, obviously that’s the sort of limit case that’s not going to happen.
0:25:11 But when you think about reasons you might not win in the long run, for lack of a better word,
0:25:17 I don’t love that word there.
0:25:21 You think more about universes where we don’t actually need 100 hours of storage,
0:25:26 universes where there is great carbon capture on natural gas plants,
0:25:30 or more nuclear power, a better transmission?
0:25:33 >> Yeah, I don’t think about it quite that way.
0:25:37 When we think about competition, we need to make sure it’s in the context of the market
0:25:42 that we’re operating in.
0:25:43 And this is very much right now a non-zero-sum market.
0:25:46 In other words, it is growing incredibly fast and large.
0:25:50 And, you know, the whole industry is just accelerating in a way that it has not,
0:25:55 essentially, since it was built.
0:25:57 So we’re seeing load growth, you know, four or five percent or more in some cases.
0:26:02 It hasn’t been like that for literally 50 or 60 years.
0:26:05 >> Load growth is basically demand for electric.
0:26:07 >> Demand going up, that’s right.
0:26:09 >> And that’s like electrification plus artificial intelligence.
0:26:12 I mean, it’s essentially those two drivers.
0:26:15 >> Exactly, that’s exactly correct.
0:26:17 Electrification of cars for, you know, residential applications and electrification of industrial
0:26:23 processes, you know, very large consumers, you know, transportation industry, very large
0:26:27 consumers of energy overall.
0:26:29 And now a lot of that is becoming electric energy that they’re consuming.
0:26:34 And so our position in the market is very strong because we have a solution that is showing
0:26:39 up in a relevant time frame and it can scale in a way that our customers, these utilities,
0:26:46 need it to scale.
0:26:47 They need all solutions to show up.
0:26:50 We’ve yet to have a conversation with any utility who says, “I’m only going with one
0:26:54 solution.”
0:26:55 Right?
0:26:56 They’re trying to build nuclear.
0:26:58 They’re trying to build more natural gas.
0:27:00 They’re trying to build as much renewables as they possibly can.
0:27:04 And they’re going to need this kind of multi-duration storage.
0:27:07 So it’s such a growth market for us that in some ways, if you can show up with a product
0:27:15 that meets the specification on time and at scale, they will buy it just about as much
0:27:19 of it as you possibly can supply.
0:27:21 >> So if things go the way you hope they will go, what will the world look like in whatever,
0:27:30 the medium term, whatever that is for you, five years maybe?
0:27:33 >> Yeah.
0:27:34 So, in five years in the industry that we’re in, form could be a spectacular commercial
0:27:40 success of an amazing business and still have relatively small impact just because of the
0:27:46 size and scale of the industry overall.
0:27:49 And I’ll give you one point of reference.
0:27:52 The US today has about 1200 gigawatts of installed capacity, generation of capacity in it.
0:28:00 And over the next five years, if we absolutely blow it out of the water, we may make 10 gigawatts
0:28:07 worth of projects.
0:28:09 >> Which is a lot to be clear.
0:28:10 >> Which is a tremendous amount, right?
0:28:12 For one company to produce.
0:28:13 >> Yeah.
0:28:14 Yeah.
0:28:15 It’s a lot of shipping containers of iron batteries.
0:28:18 >> That’s right.
0:28:19 And so it will take probably another 10 years past that to see the kind of multi-day storage
0:28:26 that we’re bringing into the market have a real material effect in the industry.
0:28:31 And I think that we can get there for sure.
0:28:33 But it requires scaling very quickly in multiple markets, Europe, Asia, Africa, to be able
0:28:39 to drive the possibilities for what this kind of new type of asset in the electric system
0:28:46 can do.
0:28:48 >> So, should that make me worry about the pace of decarbonization?
0:28:53 I mean, even if you succeed wildly, you will be very small relative to the whatever, to
0:29:02 global demand for energy.
0:29:04 Like I get that that’s good for you and in the long term it’s good for the world.
0:29:09 But is it worrying in the kind of short to medium term?
0:29:12 Is it a reminder of how hard decarbonization is at various margins?
0:29:16 >> Well, it certainly is a reminder of just how hard it is and how large the challenges,
0:29:20 the scale of the challenge.
0:29:22 Another way of thinking about it is to achieve the goals that have been laid out by governments
0:29:28 across the globe, roughly $150 trillion of investment required through 2050.
0:29:35 >> Yeah.
0:29:36 Also good for you but worrying for the world.
0:29:38 >> Also good, worrying.
0:29:39 And the question is how quickly can we go from making the plans and having the technologies
0:29:44 that are nascent and scaling up to actually implementing them at scale.
0:29:48 So what is not so concerned to me is between 2030 and 2040, I see a huge amount of opportunity
0:29:56 to scale exactly what we’re talking about.
0:29:59 And again, it’s an all of the above scenario.
0:30:02 So I see a lot of effort that’s going into just the acceleration broadly speaking and
0:30:07 I do think that what form is bringing to the table can play a meaningful role in that and
0:30:11 it will take 15 years to scale it up and it’s very possible.
0:30:14 And we need a huge diversity of resources to meet the demand.
0:30:19 Our existence in many ways is based on electricity these days and we need all the different kinds
0:30:24 of solutions to show up.
0:30:26 And multi-daterition storage and specifically iron-air batteries can play a meaningful role
0:30:32 in that entire system and not only drive reliability up and cost down but also meet the goals of
0:30:41 load growth, which was a really big challenge and meet the decarbonization goals of the
0:30:47 electric system overall.
0:30:48 And having this kind of asset just makes solving those challenges a lot easier.
0:30:57 We’ll be back in a minute with the lightning round.
0:31:10 Hey everybody, I’m Kai Rizdal, the host of Marketplace, your daily download on the economy.
0:31:15 Money influences so much of what we do and how we live.
0:31:18 That’s why it’s essential to understand how this economy works.
0:31:22 At Marketplace, we break down everything from inflation and student loans to the future
0:31:26 of AI so that you can understand what it all means for you.
0:31:31 Marketplace is your secret weapon for understanding this economy.
0:31:34 Listen wherever you get your podcasts.
0:31:37 That’s the end of the ads.
0:31:41 Now, of course, it’s time for the lightning round.
0:31:45 So tell me about vocational discernment.
0:31:52 Well, I think you’re referring to the fact that I went to Divinity School at one point.
0:32:00 This was, in fact, right before I joined the battery industry.
0:32:04 I went to the Yale Divinity School and Yale is a great place.
0:32:07 I did consider going into the ministry.
0:32:11 And one of the reasons why Yale Divinity School is a great place is because they put you through
0:32:15 the vocational discernment process, a very intentional process to discern if indeed the
0:32:21 ordained ministry is right for you.
0:32:23 And I realized very early on that I was not cut out at all to be an ordained minister,
0:32:29 which is fortunate.
0:32:30 You discerned that it was not your vocation.
0:32:32 That’s right.
0:32:33 And it’s a great thing to learn early on in the process.
0:32:38 And so I quickly realized, if not that, then what?
0:32:41 And so taking those same skills, because they are skills you can apply to a lot of mindsets,
0:32:48 really tried to figure out what did I want to work on.
0:32:50 I do want to work on, have always wanted to work on something that I felt was meaningful
0:32:54 and impactful.
0:32:57 And so for me, I just kept coming back to energy for a lot of reasons as a way to really
0:33:02 make lives better in a lot of ways.
0:33:05 One of the other elements of vocational discernment is you identify key features of yourself,
0:33:11 your personality, if you will.
0:33:13 And one thing that I have come to learn about myself, not just them, but over a lot of time,
0:33:17 is I’m a pretty patient person for the things that I think are worthwhile.
0:33:22 So I was prepared to pursue something that I thought might take a decade or two.
0:33:27 And that’s what has happened.
0:33:28 But I’ve stuck with it since then.
0:33:30 And I’m glad I did.
0:33:31 It’s been a great ride.
0:33:35 Why did you think you might want to be a priest?
0:33:38 Well, why do I think I want to be a priest is because I am attracted to a lot of the
0:33:46 intellectual elements of religion.
0:33:51 And that is not the vocation.
0:33:53 It turns out I’m much more attracted to problem solving than problem listening, which is a
0:33:57 large part of being a minister.
0:34:01 So that’s what I thought.
0:34:02 But I have a huge fascination intellectually with religion and with the notion of God.
0:34:11 And it was something that I wanted to spend time really thinking carefully about.
0:34:15 What’s something you learned in divinity school that’s helpful in running a company?
0:34:23 So many different things.
0:34:26 The study of theology, in many ways, is the study of human nature.
0:34:32 And one thing about batteries that I love, why it continues, as a category, continue
0:34:39 to fascinate me now and have since I started, is that batteries are in some ways like humans.
0:34:46 They’re all flawed in some way.
0:34:48 There is no perfect battery.
0:34:51 And they can always be improved.
0:34:52 That’s the other thing I like about them.
0:34:54 That seems like a particularly Christian reading of batteries, if I might say so.
0:35:02 We don’t know the limits of how batteries can be.
0:35:07 And if you’re curious enough, then the rewards can be fantastic.
0:35:13 And the other thing is, if you find the right fit for the battery, then the flaws don’t
0:35:19 matter so much.
0:35:20 And that’s also sort of the way humans are, right?
0:35:23 So you and John Steinbeck share a hometown, Salinas, California.
0:35:31 What’s one Steinbeck book?
0:35:32 If somebody’s going to read one John Steinbeck book, what should they read?
0:35:36 Well, East of Eden.
0:35:38 But that’s a long one.
0:35:41 So there are shorter ones.
0:35:44 It sounds strange, but endubius battle is one that really stuck with me.
0:35:47 That one, I don’t know.
0:35:49 But it’s about labor relations.
0:35:53 Which was like the family business for you growing up, right?
0:35:56 Yeah.
0:35:57 My father was a lawyer for farm workers, and my mom was a teacher in public schools for
0:36:02 basically kids and farm workers.
0:36:05 What’s one thing that you wish more people understood about energy or power?
0:36:11 Well, back to some of our earlier comments.
0:36:16 Just the scale of the industry and the size of things that happen.
0:36:22 It really boggles the mind to try and appreciate how big of an industry it is and how much
0:36:28 change is happening to such a large industry.
0:36:31 I think it was, maybe lots of people have said it, but I heard Jigar Shah describe the
0:36:35 grid as like the biggest machine ever built in the history of the world.
0:36:40 Which is a kind of rad way to think of it, like it’s this one giant machine, and not
0:36:44 only is it giant, it has to work all the time, right?
0:36:48 That’s the other wild.
0:36:49 You can never, ever turn it off.
0:36:52 That’s right.
0:36:53 Yeah.
0:36:54 And not only that, we’re matching supply and demand instantaneously at all times.
0:36:58 That’s how the machine operates.
0:37:00 So the way it operates is also just phenomenally complex.
0:37:05 And it’s amazing that we’re able to have as much reliability as we do today.
0:37:09 And so, you know, the grid will be reinvented, it will be rebuilt, essentially, and rebuilt
0:37:14 again over the next 30 or 40 years.
0:37:17 And so the scale, which is, again, hard to approximate, but appreciating that is key
0:37:21 to understanding the direction that it will take and what will be involved to affect this
0:37:27 change.
0:37:28 It’s like, is it the ship of Theseus?
0:37:29 Is that the one?
0:37:30 It’s like the giant, like national scale ship of Theseus where it’s like the whole grid
0:37:36 will be different.
0:37:37 And you won’t even notice.
0:37:38 You just flip the switch and the lights will go on.
0:37:41 That is what we’re aiming for, for sure.
0:37:47 Matteo Jaramillo is the co-founder and CEO of Form Energy.
0:37:52 Today’s show was produced by Gabriel Hunter-Chang.
0:37:55 It was edited by Lydia Jean Cotte and engineered by Sarah Bouguere.
0:38:00 You can email us at problem@pushkin.fm.
0:38:03 I’m Jacob Goldstein, and we’ll be back next week with another episode of What’s Your Problem?
0:38:07 Hey, everybody.
0:38:08 I’m Kai Rizdal, the host of Marketplace, your daily download on the economy.
0:38:23 Money influences so much of what we do and how we live.
0:38:27 That’s why it’s essential to understand how this economy works.
0:38:30 At Marketplace, we break down everything from inflation and student loans to the future
0:38:34 of AI so that you can understand what it all means for you.
0:38:39 Marketplace is your secret weapon for understanding this economy.
0:38:42 Listen wherever you get your podcasts.
0:38:44 (upbeat music)
Mateo Jaramillo is the co-founder and CEO of Form Energy. Mateo’s problem is this: How do you build batteries that can provide affordable backup power to the grid for days at a time? As it turns out, the basic technology was developed – and then mostly ignored – over 50 years ago.
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