Navigating the Future of Energy Storage with Paul Reed - E137

In this episode, Paul Reed, Founder and CEO of RSunrise Energy, joins host James McWalter to discuss his journey in energy storage and the evolving landscape of renewable power. The conversation explores:

• Paul's background in chemical engineering and his transition into the energy storage sector, spanning nearly 15 years.
• The early days of demand response, behind-the-meter storage, and the technological advancements shaping grid-scale energy solutions.
• Challenges and opportunities in deploying energy storage, from market dynamics to policy shifts that influence large-scale adoption.
• How R Sunrise Energy innovates in space, bridging the gap between renewables and grid resilience.

Tune in for an insightful discussion on the past, present, and future of energy storage!

Paces helps developers find and evaluate the sites most suitable for renewable development. Interested in a call with James, CEO @ Paces?

Transcript

James McWalter 00:01

Welcome to Build Repeat a Basis podcast. Join us every few weeks for deep discussions with the leaders and innovators helping us build our way out of climate change. Hello. Today we're speaking with Paul Reed, founder and CEO at R Sunrise Energy. Welcome to the podcast. Paul James.

Paul Reed 00:15

Thank you. Great to be here.

James McWalter 00:17

Brilliant, I guess to start, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got into energy storage?

Paul Reed 00:22

Yeah, close to about 15 years now in this space, which is kind of neat because I feel like it's been around about 10 to 15 years or so. Background was chemical engineering plus one MBA. You know, knew I did not want to be a full time chem e so fell into the power technology world close to a decade at Verity Ormat and you know, there through early days of demand response and first batteries behind the meter, you name it and then yeah, joined Doral in 2020, switched to the grid scale side of the world, you know, all across the US with Doral. And then yeah about 18 months now I've had my own shop so doing a bit of consulting, keep the lights on and then out raising capital to do big great scale standalone storage in the northeast is the plan.

James McWalter 01:08

And so I guess, you know, when you started seeing the early types of battery storage development, I guess like what were were their programs, like what was the kind of business model in those early development And I guess what attracted, you know, the teams that you're into even exploring that in the first place.

Paul Reed 01:22

It was really an offshoot of some of the early days of demand response. So you know, Converge and Enernoc and folks like that and then post FERC 745 where behind the meter assets the negawatt same value as a megawatt. And the thought is well hey, if we're going to borrow functionality from H Vac, industrial equipment, you name it, what else should we be looking at? And so some of the early days of battery storage going back to 2010, 11, 12, 13, 14 and so really grew in the know, behind the meter CNI world kind of sub megawatt projects was a big deal back then and so it's been exciting to see that sort of transition to you know, the 20s and 40s and 50s and now 100, 200, 300, 400 megawatts, you know, per site as we become more standardized and the tech's getting figured out.

James McWalter 02:15

It's funny, it's like this kind of curve, right, because it started small scale development, right cni then it's shot up to like very, very large utility scale the default mode. And then we're starting to see the rise again of a lot more distribution, battery storage and a lot more programs, I guess before we get on to the kind of status quo and the state of play going forward. When you moved to Doral, I guess what was the biggest difference when you started working on some of these larger projects compared to some of the projects you'd worked on previously?

Paul Reed 02:43

It was more calm, believe it or not. The concept of doing the large grid scale world and even DG to a certain extent. As long as you're grid connected, you'd, you know, your customers are sort of everybody. Now if you're dev and flippers, dev to owner are obviously different. But you know, instead of dealing with the end users, so to speak, when you're just doing development, it's a different pace. You know, you can look, you know, the hours need to be put in, but there's milestones that take time to get to. So that's probably the biggest change is again, it feels calmer, which is a nice change of pace in various ways.

James McWalter 03:20

Yeah. And I guess were you kind of focusing on particular ISOs and RTOs? EToro.

Paul Reed 03:25

Yeah. So ton of growth was in PJM Texas and then, you know, lots of miso spp. And then I was really the only guy in the Northeast, you know, niso, New England, et cetera. I was running storage for Doral and. But they had fantastic solar dev team, you know, 12, 13 devs across the US you know, 10 plus gigawatt pipeline of solar. And either I was doing standalone storage or trying to tack it on to the big PV projects that the team was working on and I guess like.

James McWalter 03:55

You know, without you getting into much trouble. Right. You know, as you compare these ISOs and these RTOs, like some are definitely easier to work with than others, I guess, like, what's your kind of experience? And I guess, you know, you can name names if you want, but also just like, what are some best practices you've seen where, if they were more applied across the industry would benefit developments like you work on.

Paul Reed 04:14

Yeah. Without getting myself in trouble. You know, there is a certain mindset of kind of getting things done that you see in, in certain regions compared to others. Less, you know, layers of personnel and bureaucracy and whatnot. I won't say which isos are which.

James McWalter 04:31

I'm gonna say Eric thought might be easier, but yeah, sure. Yep.

Paul Reed 04:37

And you know, but what is nice to see is know policy drives. Right. So, you know, FERC came in, realized they needed to fix some things, you know, connection wise. So PJM New York and others are complying with that and hopefully fixing, you know, some of the issues we've been seeing with queues being overloaded. But yeah, it's, it's helpful to understand the nuances of each region and the personalities in those regions. So whether you're speaking to a person from Maine or New York or New Jersey or Texas, you know, there's going to be some qualitative differences. You need to understand both on the land side, the permitting side. Just being good with the locals is a huge, huge concept that really is proud of Doral for how they, they push that and, and understand that and hopefully more of the industry that's understands being, you know, take care of the locals and things will be, I guess.

James McWalter 05:29

What does that mean in like, you know, like some specific examples? Right. I think one of the challenges often is, you know, depending on how de risk the product is, right there are these competing incentives like a product developer doesn't want to potentially put a ton of effort into a community if maybe the product is unlikely to get you into connection. So often it's like trying to figure out when should you de risk, when should you know, how should you start engaging community? Because early is always better if the project is going to make it through, but you don't know which project. So I guess like what was Doral and I guess like best practices that you saw there.

Paul Reed 06:01

Yeah, I think the biggest change is the rise of tech to meet needs to. So the paces of the world, for example, you know, the Neros of the world as well. Shout out Chris. Yeah, people would leverage the ISOs to do a lot of their, you know, feasibility level, you know, studies and look, it was cheap to get in and all refundable and so yeah, folks would might as well go to the ISO and find out how much I can build here. You know, there's been a great rise in the upfront siding tech that helps de risk all sides of it. So guys like ascend on revenue value, stacking all that near is on the POI stuff and then tools like paces on the land, permitting, you name it. So having all that up front has been a bit of a sea change in the industry. And it's coming. Things are evolving and advancing and then we started to touch on it right as we're switching to just as many developers are doing DG scale as they're starting to leverage these tools as well that they didn't need to before back in some of their solar siding only days again, hopefully the queues are getting cleaned out and then people have better tools to know when to proceed and when to hold off.

James McWalter 07:16

And then I guess on the community first piece, what are things that when engaging the community resonates? I think there's folks are a bit more familiar with battery storage in places like New York where we're sitting right now. This is our first everyone, the first recorded podcast ever in the same room with any guess because Paul is a great friend and advisor at places. But you know, one of the things that we have in New York is you have fdny, right? Because of fears of, you know, kind of local, you know, small scooters running around and batteries exploding in buildings. And that has caused like the banning of a lot of lithium ion batteries, et cetera. Before that, you know, people, you have a concept of battery storage, right? They probably understood solar, but the batteries are very new. So you know, through time like how has engaging communities to get the biggest outcome from those communities shifted?

Paul Reed 08:05

Yeah, there's I guess call it three main points that I've tried to center on when I'm you know, talking to landowners, talking to township folks, you name it. So you know, zoning tech and codes, let's call it so zoning wise, right? Always avoid, you know, residential as much as possible. You don't even want to be near them. Even if you're a budding up to residential, stay away. And the beauty of sort of the lane requirements for storage is you can be directly adjacent to more substations. So typically less desirable, less commercially focused land, you know, industrial zoning, you name it. So that helps you there tech wise. The biggest thing that I can at least push is that it's a different chemistry for what we're doing with stationary storage. So it's all lithium iron phosphate based, right. I'm lfp. And then most of the non stationary storage is nickel, manganese, cobalt and so it's denser but more reactive. You know, even the recent Moss Landing fire, some of my, the folks I work with were sending me the articles on that. Well, that was prior tech. It's an older system. You know, the guys at LG are doing a great job and they've been making that transition, you know, from all things I'm a nickel manganese cobalt to a lithium iron phosphate. So 95ish percent I, I believe is all LFP based. So again, less reactive, less dense, you know, it can, it'll smolder maybe, but no fires and issues like that. So just describing that it's a different chemistry is huge. For again, landowners, township folks, you name it. And then the third part is codes. So I've gone, you know, from Texas to Maine, you name it. You know, sitting in rooms in, you know, small city halls with township folks, you know, town engineer, fire chief, you name it. And they have a large book of codes and they're kind of looking at the solar codes, wind codes that they might have, trying to figure out where storage fits and you know, with some, some great, you know, consultants that I've worked with on environmental and permitting. So, you know, swica, for example, you know, great local offices in the Northeast, we stumbled upon a great idea of, well, look, these are boxes of electrical stuff sitting next to a substation which has boxes of electrical stuff. So if the township has existing utility infrastructure, codes point to that. So, you know, instead of going to the renewables, you know, set of codes or solar, wind, and trying to add in storage there, if you can get into their existing codes as far as all things infrastructure, that's a better fit. And I've seen township folks, you know, they start to smile, they visibly relax when you can point them in that direction because you're going to avoid, you know, certain issues.

James McWalter 10:54

Writing from the beginning, I've also seen some folks who try to leverage, if you lack utility codes, try to leverage solar codes, for example, like some existing framework, even though it's a very, very different development type. But yeah, that makes sense to focus on the utility side and if you can build a substation there, you can build a battery.

Paul Reed 11:14

Right. If there's one thing I'm curious about seeing, it's probably a good Web 2.0, Web 3.0 exercise is I'd wonder if there's certain groups out there that might be anti solar, anti wind that, you know, even on a township meeting agenda, if you're not classifying these battery storage projects under renewables or under solar, wind, et cetera, you just might avoid certain issues popping up or certain folks that might come out of the woodwork. Yeah, just if you, because it is, it's, it's not renewables. It's technically a utility, you know, focus infrastructure. If you're under that framework, it's a little bit more boring and you might avoid some of the emotions that come out from big land grab issues. We're talking a couple acres for a hundred megawatt project instead of thousands of acres for any project of similar size and pv, wind, et cetera.

James McWalter 12:09

What are some of the, I guess unreasonable objections from communities because you hear about the vibrations and I don't know, it's summoning down demons and. Yeah, I don't know. Is there anything you've come across some specific times where you've had to respond to objections and you know, all objections to certain extent are valid. Right. Because you still have to navigate them. But yeah, I guess. Any, any specific examples that may be interesting?

Paul Reed 12:31

Maybe it's a post Covid world thing like folks hate liquids.

James McWalter 12:35

Okay.

Paul Reed 12:36

Right. So you know, PV has the, you know, the random concerns that water that like rainwater off a solar panel is poisonous or what have you. But so on the storage side it's you know, fires and whatnot, but then it's, it's aftermath. Right. What are there fluids leaking into the ground? And I've had folks, well, let's build a one foot concrete kind of pad around the pad, so to speak. Or like a wall, like a moat if you will. So what we have to balance then too with the liquids thing is, you know, most of the kind of denser containers now are liquid cooled instead of air cooled, which is better. And then also the other issue is noise, so decibels, vibration as you mentioned, you know, I gotta think the decibel level is less for liquid cooled. But then you're introducing more fluids into the equation that folks may have issues with. But the whole self contained, purpose built, you know, UL certified, self sealing, monitored, all that. You know, it's nice having national codes and standards so folks can get more comfortable just pointing at those. And does everybody need to know it's liquid cooled versus air cooled? Not necessarily. As long as the folks that have to sign off on it are okay with that, then great. And I have a lot of faith in the engineers that are constructing and doing all the really hard work.

James McWalter 13:57

I guess how does communities respond to the upside of storage? Because obviously there's property taxes, especially in some communities. A lot of the reason for a solar developer will often say, look, we're going to an agricultural community that is losing its tax base as the rural areas depopulate. Battery storage is quite different for the reasons you mentioned, but often looking at maybe areas that would need to undergo substantial urban renewal potentially to kind of reignite those communities. So I guess in terms of potential upside, what kind of resonates with these communities?

Paul Reed 14:30

So some of the best hearts and minds focused approaches to storage is that folks can think, oh, if there's a blackout, then the storage helps you come back from that. Sure, if you're doing black start, then. Okay, what I like to describe it as, we help avoid the blackout you know, it's the finest tuning adjustment that you can have on a grid and help avoid, you know, frequency issues and reserves and energy then capacity. And again, we stop the blackout from happening. I always say, you know, we help keep the grid happy, healthy and stable.

James McWalter 15:01

Yep.

Paul Reed 15:01

Maybe as we switch more CNI focused approaches in the next five plus years. And that might be a great trademark or tagline, but yeah, that's the truth is again, it's a fine tuning adjustment to avoid the blackout to begin with.

James McWalter 15:14

Yeah.

Paul Reed 15:15

And I think that resonates. You know, it's going to resonate because, you know, no matter what side of the aisle or you're on, you know, whether we get a ton of data centers or not, or a ton of wind or not, or thermal retirements or not, there's always going to be a need for battery storage to help balance it.

James McWalter 15:29

Yep.

Paul Reed 15:29

And again we, we help avoid the blackout from occurring to begin with is people can understand that and really get behind it.

James McWalter 15:36

Yeah. I love like the fear of batteries from some folks. I'm like, you have a mobile phone in your pocket. You literally have battery like touching your legs 99% of the day or you're like 6 inches, your face is 6 inches away from like a large battery. So it's like, yes, like the battery that's like half a mile from your home. I think it's going to be in okay shape. Yeah.

Paul Reed 15:55

It's something I say a lot is we walk around with them like attached to our Persians now and like, you.

James McWalter 16:01

Know, it's been okay.

Paul Reed 16:02

We have, you know, two year olds with iPads and then that's great. And then hey, also this is a different chemistry that's safer and less reactive and all that. So it's kind of a double bonus.

James McWalter 16:15

This is very kind of far field from the kind of developments you do. But I'm kind of interested in the Impulse Labs. Right. And I've heard of a few startups who are adding batteries to home appliances from both resiliency and performance point of view. So I don't know if you've ever seen the demo Impulse Labs. It's like this stovetop and it can boil a pot of water in like 17 seconds because it can, you know, instead of going like a 12 volt like connection, it can just like ramp up the power dramatically. And so I think like as more of those type of appliances which are better than the average, you know, fancy appliance that people today have more batteries. I think again you'll see like hopefully potentially a greater Acceptance of like, well.

Paul Reed 16:51

I mean, let's scale it up too, right? You're talking, you know, up systems and whatnot. You know, all types of sensitive equipment, whether it's industrial, medical, you name it. You know, it's. You can have, you know, onboard storage within, you know, you know, server farms, you name it. But there is a market to be had for kind of sensitive equipment that at least can have a momentary blip, but nothing longer than, you know, a couple microseconds, you name it. So if you have a 5, 10 megawatt system attached at a, you know, some type of industrial plant, or again, you know, some type of lab, you name it, we can help equipment tripping offline and having to reset and restart and all that, as long as you can have some type of carryover so you can use grid, grid ish scale storage and again, help avoid those, those blips. The other thing that's getting interesting is on vehicle charging, right. So there's equipment coming out and where it's also getting intriguing as far as vehicle charging. You have the, the tiered chargers for speed and capacity and all that. You know, I think I heard like a tier 5 where it's essentially you have a battery on board within the charger, so you're charging that battery, avoiding grid upgrades. And then you can, you know, fast charge, discharge a lot quicker, you know, even something with my friends at SEPTA in Philadelphia, right. There's this battle as far as, like the bus depots. So usually it's a one to two megawatt garage with all the buses, you know, fueling, repairs, you name it. There's this issue, though. Well, hey, the buses are parked here. We need to make this a 10 to 15 megawatt feeder and circuit. So we're talking upgrades, millions of dollars, all that good stuff. Well, is there a middle ground of, well, hey, let's upgrade it to a certain extent. Let's have batteries on site that you charge that battery and then it can, you know, charge the buses when they're parked overnight and then the rest of the time play in the markets, earn revenue. Some conversations like that are really intriguing. And yes, policy drives, you got to figure it out. But at the very least, now the tech's been figured out, thanks to all the growth in California and Texas. And so now we can have comfort in it working and then figure out how to apply it from a policy perspective.

James McWalter 19:00

Yep. And we had Quincy from Electric Era on the podcast maybe a year ago, and that's exactly their model where they build ev Charging plants. But they put a massive battery in there, it's sipping power all day long and then they can fully fill up a, you know, level three charger equivalent in a handful of minutes. I guess I'm pulling it forward. So you were very successful. We met when you were still at your previous company. You were one of the early folks who were giving Governor Charles and I a lot of insights in terms of what we should build when we started building paces and then you went and started your own thing. I guess. What was the initial set of considerations you had to say, okay, I want to take that jump because it's obviously something that's near and dear to my heart, making the jump and trying to build your own thing. And I think it's also helpful for folks who are a lot of development shops. You see this, a lot of folks will spend some time at a large developer and then spin off, start their own thing and have a specific strategy in mind and then are often able to execute on that very quickly with a lot of focus. But yeah, I guess what was the kind of lead up to making you want to make the jump?

Paul Reed 20:03

Yeah, just a blend of an timing necessity. You know, it's, it's a wild west out here, especially if you're in Wen Texas. Right. You know me as a northeast based person, you know, I had a lot of early success in the Northeast. Things paused with career for you, name it, you know, with where I was and timing career where I'm located. It seemed to make sense that okay, I want to be able to focus on these regions by me kind of looking ahead, skate to where the puck is going to be instead of where the, you know, the rest of the folks are. And where the puck's been has sort of been the reasoning why, you know, and look, part of startup company is just, you know, if you're going to do consulting and do your own thing a little bit, it's great to have your own corp to do so. But I've had this dream now and it's, it was close about a year ago. It's very close again of just look, there's a lot of amazing companies in this space and you know, this stuff's hard enough. You're, you're battling five or six different lines of progress at the same time and balancing all those, spinning a lot of plates. So it's really that much harder if you're spending that much more time with internal battles of getting folks to believe in it. And there's something to be said for just having that inherent, you know, kind of in your blood and your veins comfort of how this stuff works, does it make sense? Is there a viable business to be had here? And instead of refighting that battle all the time internally, you know, I'd rather be able to focus on kind of getting these projects developed and built and then, you know, as we march on, it's, you know, I'd rather just be able to focus on getting this stuff done instead of refighting the same battles internally over and over and over.

James McWalter 21:51

Yeah, I think one of the things we say a lot here is speed is often you have people say you can move faster when you're small, but they often don't talk through the imet is. And the reason you can move faster or small is because you just have fewer decision makers involved in every decision. And so we actually have this framework where it's like when you have one person, like a solo founder, the first day, every decision is a second. Right. Because you've been thinking about it and then once you've decided to do it, just do it and you start executing. If you've got a couple small teams, a couple founders, or a small two to four person team now it's like every decision might take 15 minutes to an hour because you kind of have to explain it to one or two other people, get a little bit of buy in and so on. We are now at the stage of paces where like 30, 40 people and like, you know, you gotta spend a, gotta spend a couple of weeks getting ready alignment before you can roll out a big change. I think like, you know, and it's exciting, right? You can have more folks like work on more things, but there's always this trade off, right. And like there's a lot of benefit in being able to be fast and nimble from the beginning.

Paul Reed 22:51

Yeah, I guess two points there. I mean one is just from a. And this is all, you know, whether it's energy or tech or, you know, no matter what, there's kind of the, like 20 to 60, you know, there's kind of below that is one thing, 20 to 60 is another. And above 60 people, things slow down quite a bit. Even from 20 to 60 is a tough spot to kind of figure out. And I figured, you know, it's kind of where you guys are. The other thing on the fundraising sides of things is, look, there's amazing people in this world and they know their stuff, but it's like I don't want that many advisors per se. I'm more than happy to Take input and what have you. But I'm very keen on as I, you know, raise funds and look to proceed on just, again it's just 15 years of living and breathing this every single day. And so there's a balance of, you know, who you listen to, who you learn from. And you know, while I'm happy to take advice from as many people as possible, I, I, I appreciate, love I've had been so lucky with the mentors in my career. But at the same time if folks think like, oh, I'll come on as an advisor, as like an offering, I'm like, well I didn't necessarily want you as like I'm happy to talk, you know, I love everybody, especially in this space. But it's like, you know, when you're taking advisors as a startup situation, it's know you gotta be careful both ways how that comes in.

James McWalter 24:10

People, people need to deliver. I mean like when I think about the best folks that we've worked with who are on their cap table and you know, who have invested over the years, you know, I think like the best folks are like, you know, they'll send me the odd text and it's, it's often, they're very rarely asking about like the very specific ins and outs of the business because like they don't have it. You know, folks from the outside, even if they're somewhat on the inside, they can never know the, the very, very fine room details of how the company or the different products are going. But generally it's more, I think folks who can be like, either pull you out and be like, hey, I'm sure you're already considering this, but how are you thinking about X? And it's like, okay, yeah, sometimes you're so in the nitty gritty, ready? And one of the things that I try to make sure I do is like, okay, take a step back. How are these larger kind of macro situations affecting potential Future for basis 6 12, 18 months down the road? But I often think of or it's folks who are just all about the interpersonal and be like, hey, how you doing? Right. It seems like it's been a great quarter. Like how are you feeling with that? Or it's been a tough quarter, how are you feeling about that? And I think that combination of super macro, nearly kind of bloodless or super deep emotional, how are you doing? I found generally those relationships are best. And then also folks who have a very specific value proposal. I'm an expert in bringing a company from a revenue organization from X million to Y million. Like, we have one advisor for us who's like, who's on that. And like, you know, I don't go to him about product questions. Right. You know, I go to him about, oh, hey, you know, how do we hire a sales leadership team? And like all those kind of things. So I think a lot, a lot of time and you know, I talk to other founders, getting the balance right is understanding that folks on the cap table, investors, advisors, all these kind of things, like, those are folks who want you to do well, but in the end you're, you know, like, you got to like make the decision. Yeah, yeah.

Paul Reed 26:00

No, I mean it's. And we're kind of at different points now to where you've, you know, you've got your office here, you got, you know, 20, 30 plus people. And I'm still kind of lone man with the home office, which is kind of by design. It's how I like it for now. But, you know, we'll see how that evolves. But you know, even back in the Doral days, it was like, hey, we'll, we'll stick around 20 people next, you know, really close to 40.

James McWalter 26:20

Yeah.

Paul Reed 26:20

And just things continue to evolve and change. So, yeah, I'm balancing as I think ahead to how to keep staffing at a certain level. It's part of my pitch too. It's just with the 15 plus years I've seen a lot close to a decade seeing batteries operate. That's part of my pitch is it's a cheaper way to develop and do X, Y and Z. And then again, thankfully for the admin, while the great tools that are here on siting and modeling, you name it, leveraging the good tech stack and then great consultants that can scale up and down as necessary. It's a cheaper way to develop and.

James McWalter 26:55

Grow and not need the big back office necessarily anymore. I guess you touched a little bit upon this, but I guess how is the industry evolving? Obviously everyone's just talking about load groups. It's like if I don't hear the word Data center every 90 seconds, am I even awake? And obviously there's a very large batteries are competing with load capacity with, you know, like they're a generation and a better withdrawal and injection assets. Right. You know, they're this very kind of unique assets in the power mix. I guess. How are you thinking about this evolving like over the next few years? Right. What do you think? Like some potential opportunities are.

Paul Reed 27:36

So yeah, as far as my career now, it's nice to see it going mainstream when the first five years is very hard to explain. What I did, I probably didn't totally understand it then. 2016ish. You know, Musk gets up there, does the Powerwall keynote speech and I sent that to everybody I knew. Like, look here, here, this house, this helps explain. Yeah, exactly. And then, you know, now it's neat to see my parents then send me articles, you know, when, hey, we're seeing this, you know, 200 megawatt battery and solar project being built. They live out in Las Vegas and there's a ton of growth right whack in the surrounding area. So it's, it's easy to see it gone mainstream. So it's been, you know, the biggest advancement because the best part is the tech is in good shape, it's been squared away and you know, it's about everything else now. You're mainstream, you want mainstream money, you got to deal with the mainstream rules. So it's about insurance, warranties, guarantees, finance, you name it. But again, if you can get all the big dollars that are out there coming into the space, you know, it's great for the industry. Yeah, again, we've gone mainstream. It's great for the grid and you know, enables renewables, you name it. But at the same time it's big business too. So, you know, folks were concerned about, you know, Trump coming in, but at the same time there's something he doesn't like. It's, it's taxes and he loves to maneuver the tax code. Well, if there's the last thing that will be touched out of the ira, it's the storage itc. Because also who's running Doge and who's in his ear is Elon. So I think we're quite safe from this being a now a mainstream asset that look, you know, when you got the Goldmans of the world standing up, a storage developer, it's, it's mainstream. We're here to stay.

James McWalter 29:18

Yeah.

Paul Reed 29:19

And the biggest advancement is just growth outside of California and Texas. So yeah, I'm very excited to be here in the Northeast. You know, thankfully Q reform came in and PJM and ISO, well, they've gotten their act together and hopefully they maintain it is key. And again, you want long term stable revenue. You've got 250 gigawatts plus of demand up here and you know, 10, 20, 30% of that could become battery storage backed. You know, we're talking 50 gigawatts plus, you know, give or take $50 billion to deploy in the next five, six years in this area and most of it's within a day's drive of where I live. So what excites me is, yeah, again, it's been figured out. A lot of trails have been blazed in Texas and California, and now we get to kind of rinse and repeat up here in the Northeast, I guess.

James McWalter 30:12

What would a hot take about the industry be? You're a shy man. I'm sure you've got a few controversial takes.

Paul Reed 30:17

No, I'm not shy at all. I'm passionate and honest. What would I say? I'm stern but fair or no. Sorry, I was too. Sorry. So, yeah, I do say I'm polite but honest. How it takes to be the couple. So one, the tech's figured out two people over fixate the revenue streams, the value stacking, you name it. That's about one fifth of the role solution. You got to care about the environmental, the permitting, the locals. Really, really good things. I learned from. I'm a. Nick Cohen, founder of Doral. You know, he's amazing. You know, one of his things that he says is you gotta be good from the, like the farm room to the boardroom is one of his things. You know, one day you're on the 50th floor in Manhattan, another day your boots on the ground. Right. So you gotta be able to do both. And then a third take is, you know, keep all the smarts in the same four walls. When it comes to operations, I love the EMS platforms, optimizers, you name it. Having spent close to a decade with a, in a company that had a knock, mock 247 operations desk, you want as much control and the smarts in the same four walls. So you want your brain connected to your hands. To put it very simply. And as we move beyond these single state ISOs and in multi state regional ISOs, you know, PJM, New England, etc, miso, you name it. You're gonna need to be able to have again, you know, as few hands in the handshake as possible.

James McWalter 31:50

Yeah.

Paul Reed 31:50

And you know, so, so you can.

James McWalter 31:52

Like tighten that decision, that decision cycle. Right.

Paul Reed 31:55

Well, and as you get in certain markets to where you know, your, your clearance, certain markets are based on your, you know, performance score. Right. How well you're tracking signals from pjm, for example. You know, even the polling intervals on down to the microsecond level need to be aligned to make sure that you're clearing, you know, hour by hour. So to the extent that more and more folks who get comfortable with how this stuff actually operates, I think way better for the market overall and then you can get creative on top of that. And that's what I really am dreaming about is okay, let me make sure I've got fantastic, you know, physical market ops. What can I do virtually on top, you know, virtual trading and things of that nature. You know, better toll in agreements, better offtake agreements and just that, revenue certainty or taking just parts of the value stack that you guarantee. Use a minimum, cover your debt, be good there, but save some upside. This stuff is only going up in a lot of ways.

James McWalter 32:51

Yeah. Really enjoyed the conversation, Paul. It's been absolutely fantastic. I guess before we finish off, is there anything I should have asked you about but did not. There's an opportunity for you to if you're any pitch you want to make, if you're interested in talking to me about hiring or fundraising or ever, you can just say no, it's all fine. It can be up to you.

Paul Reed 33:08

Yeah, I guess the one thing to think about is you know, right now with where we are in, in our dev cycle and where I'm at corporately, you know, it's projects and capital so always looking for projects, you know, mid to late stage focus on the Northeast. You know, I know a lot of great folks especially from the solar world have you know, filed storage projects early on, may not know what to do with them. I'm here happy to help discuss it, help out with folks than otherwise, folks looking to get into the space, you know, dev capital, you name it. Again, there's a, you know, $50 billion market that's here in the Northeast and I'm up here lived it. I live half hour from pjm so you know, looking forward to growth here and yeah so you know as we keep growing and happy to keep talking and help folks out and you've been.

James McWalter 33:56

A dremel help to faces as I mentioned. You know a lot of what I've been able to understand and learn about battery is down to early and often conversations that we've had and so it's very appreciated and yeah enjoy the first in person podcast we've ever done. First of many I'm sure. Thank you both.

Paul Reed 34:12

James. Thank you. Appreciate it. Cheers.

James McWalter 34:16

Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed the episode, please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or Google Play. Your support means the world to us. We'll return in the next few weeks with another episode. See you then.