ESS director Alan Greenshields is a man on a mission. His goal? To implement the latest and best-suited technology to solve some of the world’s energy problems. Here, in the first of a series of expert profiles delving deeper into issues affecting the battery industry, he talks to Shona Sibary about how achieving decarbonization will come down to safer, bulk storage of long duration energy.
Alan Greenshields is crystal clear on how energy sustainability for Europe can be achieved. “We need huge amounts of stationary storage now. When we started generating wind and solar energy, we could just feed it into the grid,’ he says.
“Then we went through a phase where stability of voltage and frequency could be trickier, and that’s where lithium-ion batteries were first deployed in the grid for relatively short duration periods — initially for 15-minute, half-hour grid services — their primary function was to keep the grid stable.
“But the issues surrounding battery safety are one of the things that are potentially going to come back and bite us. The thing with lithium-ion batteries is that, from a physics and chemical point of view, they want to explode, and you’ve got to do lots of things to stop them doing that. I’ve believed for years now that non-flammability is the missing piece of the jigsaw when it comes to the role of storage.”
Bulk shifting energy
On the issue of decarbonization, Alan is unequivocal. “We need storage systems that allow you to move energy around within a 24-hour cycle,” he says. “You have to bulk shift energy. So, you have over-generation during lunchtime, because all the solar is on, but you’re going to need the energy at night when the sun’s down.
“We’re at a point now where the aim is not to control the stability of the grid from a regulation point of view, like before. But to have storage systems that allow energy to be moved around as and when it’s needed.”
It is this tipping point in terms of energy provision where Alan believes batteries need to step up.
“If we fast forward to 2040 and what a decarbonized grid might look like, what comes out of that is you need short duration batteries for these stability functions.
“You then need storage systems that allow you to move energy around within a 24-hour cycle. And that’s the bulk of what needs to be done. It’s logical because you have a daily cycle of energy production, and you have a daily cycle of human activity.
“So, the fact that you have to move energy around within 24 hours, that’s a very big part of, probably THE biggest single part of decarbonization.
“You also need to store energy for a few days. Then finally, there’s a category where, in most geographies, you typically have two-week periods of low sun and low wind, and you need some kind of backup solution for that. And if you’re storing these massive amounts of electricity, then it’s got to be cheap and it’s got to be safe.”
Alan has dedicated much of his career to working on non-flammable electrolytes for lithium batteries and has specialized in the energy storage transition since 2005 but he attributes two years spent at Harvard Business School in the early 1990s for teaching him something he’s never forgotten.
“People often ask me, what’s the most important thing you learnt there? Because it’s obviously quite a well-known establishment. And my normal answer, which I heartily believe, is that I learned not how much I know, but how little!
“It’s crucial at an institution like that when you’re surrounded by all these fantastic professors and other smart people to realize you know very little about most things. I left there feeling very humble.”
He cites, in particular, the ‘inspiring’ experience of being involved in a think-tank day in 2010, where the HBS got a group of people together — former students, industry professionals and regulators — for a multi discussion on what needed to happen to decarbonize.
“I was already involved in energy storage and developing new energy storage technology,” he recalls. “And we’re all there to talk about how realistic was it, that wind and solar could become cheaper than coal fired generation?
“There were obviously the optimists in the room and the pessimists. Most people were gulping a bit and saying ‘that’s a really tough goal.’
“Everyone started with, ‘if only wind power were very cheap,’ followed by, ‘if only solar power were really cheap.’ Looking back, the interesting thing is, that the rate at which the cost of wind generation and then the cost of solar generation went down has been way faster and way deeper than the most optimistic optimists ever dared to dream!”
Of course, the same thing happened with EV batteries.
“Back then lithium-ion batteries cost 1000s of dollars a kilowatt hour. Now they’re heading for 100 dollars and below. Oddly that number isn’t a new one,” Alan says.
“It was calculated in the US decades ago as being the breakpoint number at which electric vehicles become cost competitive without subsidy with conventional vehicles. It’s just that, back then, people used to say, ‘well, you know, we’ll need new technology, and we’ll think of something.’ But, in fact, the price went down so much faster than anyone really dared to believe.
“And, to be fair, we have to thank the Chinese for a lot of that. It’s a pity that the geopolitical situation has become tense, because 10 years ago it was a different situation. There was a much greater spirit of common goal and they have really shown us that scale with scale, you can drive the cost down to very low values. So that’s what led to low-cost grid batteries — they were a byproduct of the push to make electric cars competitive.”
Alan believes that being an entrepreneur means feeling excited and worried about the future in equal measure.
“There’s still all kinds of obstacles to be overcome and all kinds of horrible things going on in the world that could derail everything,” he says. “You’ve either got to assume that we’ll figure out collectively how to get past those, like we always have in the past — or nearly always have in the past — or it’s over. And I have faith that we will figure out how to get past these things. Because, you know, crises tend to focus the gray matter.
“There’s also this really worrying, but interesting phenomena that life is actually too good for most people and they don’t have to worry about stuff anymore. Objectively, for most people in Europe, life has never been better but the population perceives this isn’t the case.
“Perhaps it will take a real crisis for everyone to realise that, actually, life wasn’t as bad as we thought it was. And maybe then we’ll really pull ourselves together to fix the problem.”
Alan is the director of EMEA at ESS Inc, the iron flow battery firm. He brings over 15 years of experience in the rechargeable battery space. He is a serial entrepreneur, focusing on new technology and has successfully founded and run several technology ventures in the UK, Germany and Switzerland. Alan has also held senior board-level positions at battery companies. He has been deeply involved in several initiatives relating to renewable energy, including the Think Tank on Energy Environment and Business initiated by Harvard Business School in 2010.
He started his career in high-volume manufacture of computer electronics with IBM, Scotland and later worked as a senior manager in the Instrumentation Division of VDO Adolf Schindling, Germany, a leader in automotive instrumentation and now part of Continental.
