Bankable batteries: markets, execution, and trust

Antonio Montoto (00:02)
I try to think that the business must be always focusing in reasonable returns and thinking that the gold mines are only for the people who like it to be the first in something, but a business where people think that it’s going to win tons of money in a very short time is a business with no future.

Adam Sroka (00:39)
Hello and welcome back to the HyperCube podcast. Today I am joined by Antonio Rojo who is head of storage at GreenVault Power. Antonio, thank you so much for joining us today. Please, could you start by introducing yourself, how you got to where you are and what you’re up to at GreenVault?

Antonio Montoto (00:56)
Thanks to you, to EberQ for the invitation to this podcast. I have been watching some of the episodes. I feel that it’s an absolute honor to be here. Thank you. Yes, I am exactly head of storage in Greenvolt Power. Greenvolt Power is a multinational company in the pure sense because it’s a…

distributed between different countries in the decision and in the working task. The company is mainly based in Portugal, but also we have offices in Spain and in Warsaw, and a of smaller offices, commercial offices in all Europe, And the company is not, it’s a young because it’s four year old, but it’s not a

company was born from scratch. It’s not a company from an idea in a garage. it’s how the big companies in Portugal and in other countries focus the funds they have in renewables, focus also some portfolios in a common management team. And that’s the reason that the company has grown very quick because in fact it’s

is catching the fourth of companies who have been in the sector for more than 15 years. And currently, I work for supporting the utility scale projects that we are doing, both in Europe, in the United States, and also in Japan. And from my perspective, what we try to support first of all is business development. And after a project is approved, we support in the procurement, in the construction.

trying to provide the technologies knowledge to the decisions.

Adam Sroka (02:42)
Amazing. it’s such an interesting comparison to a lot of the guests we have on a very GB centric and just hearing about what goes on on the continent and how things are changing. ⁓ Yeah, it’s always nice to kind of contrast and compare and see similar stories differences, especially with asset mixes as well. mean, much windier up here in Scotland than it is down down there. I guess I’d love to know like

at Greenvolt. we get so much these days, there’s so much chat about storage and the way it works over here. What’s your experience at Greenvolt working across manufacturers and the kind of developers you work with? Like what’s the feel for how storage is going in the market from where you sit?

Antonio Montoto (03:27)
is the I changed it from the technologies to developers four years ago, approximately four years ago. And I think that this is a fit also with the transition of the batteries to be, how to say, limited to a set of projects to be more, how to say, fully accessible to a lot of schemes. my transition also is like

in the throughput of the sector. I have been from 2010, approximately, working in storage. And at that moment, StoryPay were very focused on very specific needs, where spending a lot of relative capex in the project was justified for, usually for technical reasons, because the project could access to very good

fees or because it was mandatory for achieving a stable behavior in a critical system. Then for 10 years, I can say that 90 % of the project were more focused in very single operations. But since I can say 2019, 2020, with the first launching process of a big procurement in UK,

here in the United States or in Korea, the battery business shift into a more, how to say, related to the solar wind and distribute renewable energies business. Then, has been very curious how this have been, I think that is multiplied by 10th, the number of people who is engaged from 10 years ago to now, very curious. And in the development,

All I say is that 10 years ago you need ⁓ two, three weeks to explain a team what to do in the storage. And today you only need two, three hours because the supplier are providing to you most of the critical components because the main supplier in the sector have a big maturity in commercial terms. 10 years ago,

some of them never sell nothing out of the factory and for them it was impossible to understand the request of the final customer because they were near to an OEM company. Then I think the sector has evolved drastically in this time and very fortunate to be in both sides in this evolution.

Adam Sroka (05:57)
That’s amazing. I guess like it gives you a unique perspective in your experience because you’ve worked across development, construction, contracting, the handover. Like you’ve seen all the heavy, scary bit of building a site. What in your opinion is the bit that goes wrong most commonly? Like where do teams get into trouble?

Antonio Montoto (06:17)
I think this could have been changing a bit because at the beginning the main problem was always related to understanding the degradation versus what the project needs to do in terms of revenues, in terms of performance. And explaining that you can go to one cycle, to four cycles per day simply because it’s more profitable, but there are physical limitations in the battery or that if you…

try to overcycle, you will reduce the lifetime. I think the most relevant point at the beginning from a global perspective was the fitting the battery real capabilities to the best business case related to these limitations. Nowadays, there are other problems.

One of them is that the Procuring batteries continue to be a very difficult thing. You need to have very secure technical requirements. You need to have very clear project schedule because batteries continue to be a sensitive element and you can store in a place for six months or one year if something now I think that the most sensitive point is not more in the business case, but

in the project execution fixing all the elements not to avoid problems in the connection. I think there are some others, but these two for me are the most sensitive.

Adam Sroka (07:35)
That’s interesting. Yeah. And do you think like the engineers, the asset managers, the techies that work with batteries think the same way as like the investors or is there still a disconnect between the kind of stakeholders in a storage project?

Antonio Montoto (07:53)
Well, I think for some years there was a big problem in this transition, especially because of the, and this is something that I understood better in the past years, because most of the projects required for finance, required bankability conditions. And sometimes what you achieve in the project technically,

is not enough to get this finance because you require a warranty, you require a contingency plan in case that the things are not good. Then from finance perspective, from investor perspective, what they want to see is as a more safety project as possible. Also in all the condition of the battery.

while from the engineering perspective, sometimes there are more focuses being covered in, for instance, safety, covering technical and electrical requirements, then it’s difficult. most of the companies today work in, how to say, business started by the business people and finished by the business people. Then I think that in general, the communication channels are very clear. My experience in the company is very good. Everybody is very well aligned on this.

But let’s see. Let’s see.

Adam Sroka (09:07)
Yeah, okay. Yeah, so… Is that the same across all geographies as well? Like, you’ve got such a experience across all of them. No, I was going to say.

Antonio Montoto (09:14)
Of course not, of course not. No,

absolutely not. Depending on the maturity of these sort of projects in every geography, in some places it’s, how to say, more wild. There are less restrictions, for instance, technically, it’s more easy to make amendments, it’s more easy to adapt the project to the technology.

Adam Sroka (09:26)
Yeah. ⁓

Antonio Montoto (09:38)
while other places are absolutely regulated in a very, how to say, procedural mode, very protocolized. And I think in for instance, and this is not bad, okay, this is simply a philosophy, but it’s impossible to compare how to do a project in Australia and how to be a project for instance in some countries in Latin or in Central Europe or in sort of Europe. In every place,

ways to manage for either going to the ready to build are absolutely different and also the difficulties are different.

Adam Sroka (10:11)
you might not be able to answer. Do you have a favourite geography? Do have a least favourite? Something really controversial.

Antonio Montoto (10:16)
⁓ I prefer those geographies who don’t force me to ⁓ awake too early or to sleep too late. Exactly, exactly. If you, for instance, and this happens sometimes, need to talk with people from the United States, for Japan, at the same time, at the end, you can continue doing that for too much time. But no, no, no, no.

Adam Sroka (10:23)
Yeah, GMT plus or minus three.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Antonio Montoto (10:41)
not favorite. I look more project by project. For me it’s more what projects are more interesting or less interesting.

Adam Sroka (10:49)
Is there anything actually that stays consistent across geographies that everyone kind of is aligned on globally?

Antonio Montoto (10:55)
Yes, and I, first of all, I don’t know, I have no calculation on that, but by intuition, can think that 80 % of the project are done by same teams that are doing globally, because most of the projects that being now built are in China or in three or four countries. Then the skills for the big project are very

very very concentrated in not too much people, then I don’t think so by that reason.

Adam Sroka (11:29)
Okay. And like obviously being in the GB market, mainly subsidies and like government influence pays quite a big role in some markets and some asset classes. How do you find subsidy schemes affect storage projects from the design through to performance?

Antonio Montoto (11:49)
No, it affected drastically. For instance, UK projects were supported by public scheme. That was like a first promotion, simply make people or make big business lose the scare on this sort of project. This was one year.

of promotion with the first innovation project in don’t know, 2018 or something like that. After that, these same companies did the new generation of project without subsidies because UK have very well-defined revenues. I don’t say that they’re very good, but they’re very stable. But there are some countries where, especially those countries who are out of big exchange.

coins whether or not euros dollars or something like that because you need to secure this exchange rate and if you have any sort of subsidy any sort of fixed revenue secured this and make you more easy to manage the the this finance this is one point and the other point of course is that if you have a business case with a number

you will obtain very easily the way to proceed. If you have a reasonable investment return, the business could be good or could be bad, but there will be one company or one type of company will consider attractive for the way to make business. the question is if that a lot of people they do is a,

We want to introduce projects that are dependent on subsidies to survive. People that like industry could depend on subsidies to survive. in that sense, I think that the batteries, think most of the projects under construction now in Europe and the United States or Australia doesn’t have any subsidy. Then I think we change from this first condition to a new one.

where the projects are profitable without any sort of subsidy. But it’s required yet in some places because if not, people want to put the money in the more secure business.

Adam Sroka (13:58)
Yeah, of course. it’s not like wind where there’s no small project. I mean, like with batteries, especially like, yeah, go back eight, nine years and you were getting five megawatt sites and we were learning and even they were subsidized, but they, you could test it and scale it slowly, go to wind or offshore wind and it’s totally different. Okay. Yeah. Small onshore wind. Yeah.

Antonio Montoto (14:18)
Yes, exactly. Offshore wind

is a very sensitive business in terms of this because it’s potentially it’s not needed but by the nature of this business you need to be very close also to government because it’s very complex development. It’s by far I think one of the most complex development business compared to as you mentioned the storage who doesn’t have a land impact, doesn’t have a, it’s very scalable.

is a full different concern.

Adam Sroka (14:49)
Yeah, and so you can see why an industry like Offshore Wind just is always going to need things that are going to support it and help, whereas, yeah, it’s a different story. We can hopefully learn more, more agile in the storage world. We can kind of adapt quicker and reach a mature state of play earlier, but we’re not there yet, I would say, from my experience.

Antonio Montoto (14:57)
So that.

Yes, especially in Germany, Poland and countries in Central and North Europe offshore is very relevant because the wind, in the North Sea or in the Baltics is very constant and you can have 24-hour energy. In the past years, know the sensitive to be as a

self capable of having energy is bigger in those regions especially. Then, but the problem is that you need to fit that 24 hour generation with in the right moment, in the right place and energy like offshore for instance, required to have a storage capability to make their best. If not,

they will waste an important part of the energy moment where it’s not a critical source.

Adam Sroka (16:06)
Good fun, though. mean, it creates lots of good work for us. And from where we sit, so we obviously approach all of these things from a data and AI software perspective. And I’m obsessed with the tooling in the space and how there’s lots of established, like, good to talk about wind. There’s established software, there’s processes. It’s kind of mature and there’s big teams that know what they’re doing. And then you come to the storage space and it’s, again, it’s like the Wild West. It’s like everyone’s scratching their heads looking at like,

tools that maybe work for wind or solar and try to shoehorn best sites into it or build mixed portfolios. What’s your experience of the tooling and the software in the space for storage? Are there any like golden nuggets that you love, love, love? Or do you feel like me, there’s a long way to go actually on that side.

Antonio Montoto (16:57)
No, no, there are very, very interesting tools nowadays, but also a lot of things to do. Last year, a public entity in Europe, I don’t remember the name, published a comparative between software for sizing storage, making a ranking from the most common to the less common. I follow and we try to check all the tools.

From sizing perspective, our opinion, my opinion, but is the one we are following at this moment. From sizing perspective, if the project is standalone, it’s not complex from tool perspective. It’s more from what is the maximum sources available in terms of capacity to share these shared restrictions, etc. But with very

easy tools, you can adjust, I have say, 90, 95 % of the final. If you are working on microgrid or distributed grid with more loads or, of course, hybrids, in that case, having very good tools start to be critical because you start to have a lot of variables and it’s more difficult. And in the next future, the grid

grid forming is starting to be a request in a lot of projects. Also for standalone it will start to be an important issue because you will have to make more dynamic analysis basically where you’re connected then. The complexity will be bigger as the batteries are asked for doing more things and in hybrid critical and in non-hybrid

probably will be the difference in the next future to see the hidden problem that a location could have. in any case, tools can be related to a lot of different aspects because you can go to the pure sizing, you can go into the revenue evaluation, you can be in the potential curtailments and what…

I don’t see very clearly that there are not too much to integrate all in the same decision tool. Then you need to have a lot of differences at the same time, but it’s very good. And I’m talking simply in the project development. If you go to project execution and project monitoring, of course, in that part, software is the different, ⁓ absolutely. Is the different also…

to demonstrate that your project is reliable and it’s different to make manageable a number of projects. If you start to have, we have now, I don’t know, in general, in Greenvolt, I don’t know the number of projects we have, not several gigawatts, but in storage, we could have now in Europe next year, 10 projects that are in the 500 megawatts or more in storage per project.

then it’s impossible to manage all together without very, very powerful tools who make very good analysis. It’s not critical because it never was critical, but we will be a good difference to make this 5%, 10 % improvement.

Adam Sroka (20:21)
Are you building those tools in-house yourself? Is that your secret sauce? Or are you stitching together tools and software that you’re buying in?

Antonio Montoto (20:32)
Well, first, one tool that I use a lot for making quick calculations and it’s free is the SAM from NREL. I love this tool. It’s very easy to use, make very good initial assessment for a lot of configuration. And because it’s full free, you can distribute inside and outside that you can share all the elements and it’s offline. You don’t need…

to have an incredible cloud structure, etc. Then this, I advise that because it’s for free, it’s not compete with nobody, it’s good. It’s in dollars, it’s for United States, but for making calculations, it’s okay. But from that point, where we did have to say a very quick insight, we have our own tools. We have developed our own tools. And we especially, because for energy market, for continuous market, is a…

more or less easy but we used that to mix with frequency markets, with secondary markets and we thought there is more complex and ⁓ that exactly that’s the point. For preparing the battery system to catch the most of the battery of the revenue stack is where we use our own tools.

Adam Sroka (21:35)
Very smart.

Well, if you need any help, or remiss of me not to say as someone that’s built capacity and secondary market tools for probably six years now, seven years, happy to take a peek and share some horror stories about the fun of developing software in that space. I guess, like it’s obvious then, right? But what’s your read on how data and AI can impact the…

Antonio Montoto (21:55)
Well.

Adam Sroka (22:10)
output of a story project.

Antonio Montoto (22:12)
Well, on past year in Greenvolt we created a specific position only for managing all the potential tools and all the potential improvement in energy control from the construction and operation locally to the trading optimization from this position that is growing because we have now three people there.

Yeah, we are of course, we are full focus on that. I think that for companies who want to retain assets for some time is at this moment. Apart from that, it’s very relevant and mandatory because I think that this will not only make the project win money, but the companies will save also money because I think that the potentiality of these tools with very few resources applied is a Samsung.

And at the same time, the number of tours are multiplying. It’s impossible to monitorize all that is in the market and what is more or less suitable than this. we mentioned we started on that just on probably one year and a bit more. And this area is only focused on operational and development software for the best.

Adam Sroka (23:29)
Yeah, that’s interesting.

A space obviously we know well and I think about all the time. And do you feel that that’s because of your scale, you can do that? Like, whereas that is an advantage you have as Greenvolt, you’ve got the scale to be able to invest in internal teams and internal tours that’s really going to give you that edge over much smaller asset management and storage teams.

Antonio Montoto (23:51)
Well, first is achieving a good capability on those tools. It’s so important like having power converters or batteries. At the end, it represents an element. I say that the element in a system are like the part of a chain. It doesn’t matter if one is more expensive or expensive, if any part of the chain broke or broke.

Adam Sroka (24:02)
Yeah.

Antonio Montoto (24:16)
then it’s so sensitive in terms of safety like any other part. Then first, what we have this is simply because it’s critical to have expert to decide when we choose a solution. But apart from that, of course, because for instance, are analyzing not only, Greenvolt have different divisions and companies inside the group. We are not only

developing projects in utility. We’re developing projects in all the scales. I think this is something that is singular for us compared to others because we work from one kilowatt to, for instance, the project we are going to construct now in Poland is three gigawatt hours in storage in a single project. And all is in the same company. And one of the businesses making a platform of projects from lot of scale.

into a single platform and making the optimization of all the systems in the same structure. Then yes, it’s absolutely a thing. Companies need to have these skills. I don’t say how to apply at the end, but this is something that needs to be fresh inside the company and to be understanding at any moment what the company can do with the asset we are working on.

Adam Sroka (25:15)
to make.

Or find some friendly consultants that could maybe come along and…

Antonio Montoto (25:35)
Yes, I don’t say with this I don’t say that need to be in factory skills, of course not. It does in my opinion and I come from very big companies with a of resources. This is not healthy because I to say it’s important to have core skills, those especially regarding to TI, you need to be very open to understand what is doing another people because he’s

impossible to be the best in all the things at the same time. And it’s more, fact, from money perspective, it’s more cheap to let others to do the work and you simply hire the system, the services when needed. Then, of course, of course, but the idea is having good driver inside the company and we see a nice car, we catch, but we can understand what is the best car we need to catch.

Adam Sroka (26:25)
100%. So we used to have a slide in one of our decks that was like, we’ll build the car, you race it. Because there’s so much of the tooling that you’re talking about, there’s so much commodity plumbing stuff that like a market integration is a market integration is a market integration. They’re like you, they’re all the same, really, it’s not adding, you have to do it. It’s not competitive edge that you’ve got it, you just have to do it. You do you want to be investing in your internal

secret source team doing that? Or do you want them actually thinking about the stuff that’s going to give you advantage? So no, I wholly agree. To shift gears a bit from the kind of the software side, what about the hardware changes that have gone on in the last five, 10 years that have got you most excited or any hot takes or things that you think about the way the hardware, lithium and so on and so forth is moving?

Antonio Montoto (27:15)
Well, in hardware, we divide it into different elements. In power converters, of course, there are new new demands. I think that there will be a new jump in the conversion technology with the new. instance, some very big companies are moving from EGBTs to MOSFET, to different semiconductor.

technology with bigger cycling and but most of the most of the of the functionalities in the power conversion that we are using has been invented in the past 20 years and the big difference in hardware today compared to 10 years ago I think is more that there are more and more companies with with a product installing in

gigabit scale. Ten years ago, we can say only five companies in the world could be considered big scale. And now there are some cent, some dozen, and then the maturity there. Of course, there are technological innovations a lot and adaptations. Everybody is now moving to new cooling system. Everybody is now moving to also the, for instance, the PCS.

At the beginning was a power inverter for PV adapted to the battery in most of the cases in utility. And they have personalized it more and more and differentiated more and more the machines depending on its solar or its bells. And now there start to be a big divergence between the both tools. But core functionalities I think remain similar. Where there is a…

Well, software also is evolving a lot. Like anything related to software is evolving a lot. I think there is a bit of hype with the artificial intelligence. Only a few companies, and could be yours also, are really integrated and catching real advantage of the AI. For most of them, it’s simply a level not to be out of the conversation.

But in general, ENS has evolved a lot. Also 10 years ago, non-companies had PPCs, sorry, the power control of the only the inverter supplier can provide. And now it’s a public. The the big of the big change in my opinion is the battery. It’s change in all levels. When I procure for the first time batteries,

Adam Sroka (29:51)
Yeah.

Antonio Montoto (29:58)
the supplier only provide cells and you need to make the modules and then the racks and integration and all the cooling system and you were not provided, the only thing they provide to you was the voltage status and the current but with no degradation, no cure, no limitation, warranty one year, then from scratch. And the project of course maximum warranty.

was seven years in the best of the best cases, no? Warranties plus lifetime because the warranty lifetime was in that case the same line. And from that, having evolved, start to be to module level. After that, rack level, especially Korean companies start to move into utility seriously. After that, the other companies in the world and the Chinese boom. And today,

you can procure an integrated system with a lot of capability, a lot of, how to say, final business focus elements to the cell producer or to very mature companies. I’m thinking in Europe for instance, companies like SAS or Fluence, and also in some Chinese companies. And it’s incredible how these have evolved. And from the cell perspective, the core,

is like comparing with mobiles or with, I don’t know, with computers. Simply what you can see in the past 10 years is every two years the technology achieved. This is the Moore Law, something like Moore Law in a lot of the elements of the battery in the past 10 years. And Making it more easy, more reliable, lifetime.

Of course, the batteries more safety every time It’s amazing. and the big jump could be in the 2016, 2018 when they start to be procured first of all by Saft or Fluence and some other companies. But now, I received by LinkedIn every day a catalog from a new company who is trying to sell

the 5 megawatt hour blocks or something like that, then it’s thanks to the reliability in all the levels.

Adam Sroka (32:11)
No.

Yeah, that’s funny. Yeah, there’s another shipping container with another thing like different color.

Antonio Montoto (32:20)
Exactly, A new Tiger,

new Tiger One, a new Tiger One every day.

Adam Sroka (32:24)
Yeah. Okay, kind of last one for me, guess. Where do you think the biggest untapped opportunities are in Europe today, if you’re allowed to share?

Antonio Montoto (32:34)
Well, no, it’s not a secret because it’s something that I say and people go immediately because I think it’s simply that the business need to catch more maturity. But there are different untaped opportunities per segment because it’s not the same case in less than, I don’t say one megawatt hour than in the biggest one. In the level where we move.

Of course, another hype, the data center business will correlate a lot of storage demand. You see that only a few days was approved and confirmed the law in Ireland regarding how the data center need to behave. And in a practical ways, will be mandatory that the data center need to have batteries.

This is not an untapet business, but it’s a business within the 5 % yet of the or less of the final capability. And another untapet business, that this complex is those related to the interconnection between countries. Because at this it’s very clear that the energy which is produced in the south of Europe is not yet well used in the north. There are a lot of

restrictions, with limitations, also their interests, but also between countries. For instance, from Czech surrounding countries, to Poland or to Germany, or at the end, there is a lot of potential of energy transition between them. And at this moment, this interconnection is done based simply in energy

from production to consumption in the same time. I can imagine some countries who are able to achieve a lot of energy they are not using because there not enough industry to demand in sun hours or similar to that. With storage, you can create very interesting buffers between countries and reducing a lot, also the grid investment. think ⁓ this could be a very, very interesting business for the future in storage.

Adam Sroka (34:33)
Thank you.

Heard it here first. Very exciting. It’s just if anyone’s got to spend a billion dollars and a team of about 15 people, then yeah, they can jump on that hot take.

Antonio Montoto (34:50)
Yes,

I try to think that the business must be always focusing reasonable returns and thinking that the gold mines are only for the people who like it to be the first in something, but a business where people think that it’s going to win tons of money in a very short time is a business with no future. not the end. But in a regular basis, there are a lot of business to be done yet with the matter.

Adam Sroka (35:19)
Well, Antonio, thank you so much for today. Before we let anyone leave, I always just like to ask one question. If people in our audience would like to hear more from what you’ve got to say, learn more about GreenVol, or if there’s anything you would like to promote or plug, where should we send them?

Antonio Montoto (35:40)
Well, ⁓ first of all, I’m in LinkedIn My name is common, but it’s not the most common. If you look for LinkedIn you will find to me. I’m very happy to talk with anybody who wants. But for talking with Greenvolt in a general way, we have our web page with the contact form. And also we have big offices in Lisbon, in Madrid, and in Warsaw.

where we have a different division for all the scales, then we will be very happy to receive any requests for making any sort of business or to attend any potential leads, know, full open. It’s very easy to contact us. are in, usually we have presence in the big shows also in the InterSolar and all of this. I think we are very accessible, no problem on that.

Adam Sroka (36:30)
Well, Antonio, thank you so much for everything today. It’s been an incredible conversation. I wish you all the best conquering Europe at Greenvolt and I look forward to watching your journey over the year to come.

Antonio Montoto (36:43)
No, thank you again. Thank you. I think that the this program is very good and very, very, very, very useful when you are trying to understand a lot of the things that we don’t understand every day in the market. Privilege to be invited. Thank you. And I will wait to see myself as soon as you publish.

Adam Sroka (37:03)
Yeah, you get used to it I would say. Thank you and all the best.

Antonio Montoto (37:07)
Thank you. Thank you very much.

Adam Sroka (37:10)
Thank you once again for listening to the Hypercube Energy podcast. As always, if you have any feedback or comments or you want to get involved, please get in touch. And if you want to find out more about what’s happening in data and AI across the energy sector, please join the Beyond Energy community and I look forward to speaking to you soon.