How to scale a global battery portfolio - from Poland to Japan (Gore Street Capital)

Far too often, battery energy storage systems are discussed as if they were giant phone batteries.

You plug them in, you store some electrons, problem solved.

But the reality is much more interesting. Modern batteries don't just hold power, they shape it. They smooth out the grid's irregular heartbeat. They stabilize voltage.

They inject those precise bursts of electricity that keep everything humming when the weather and renewables get unpredictable. Here's the paradox. As grids take on more wind and solar without supporting technologies, they can become weaker. There's less heavy spinning machinery, the turbines that used to keep frequency stable.

That's where battery systems from cells, inverters, and control systems come in. They act like finely tuned valves managing energy flow in milliseconds. When they're used right, they act more like the brain of a new kind of grid, one that runs on precision as much as power. And that's where Gore Street Capital comes in.

They're one of the funds proving that large scale energy storage isn't a science project anymore. It's global infrastructure. The company now operates across multiple markets and regions, in Great Britain, Ireland, Germany, Texas, California, and Japan. As of mid twenty twenty five, their portfolio totals more than one point two five gigawatts of rated power.

That's around the power of a traditional gas fired power station spread across the globe, where the lessons learned in each of those grids is shaping how they scale. Our guest today is Alicia. She leads Gore Street's engineering and asset management team, taking projects from development through to construction and managing operations day to day. She's an engineer by training and make sure these assets actually work.

Under her watch, Gore Street has grown from being a UK pioneer into being a truly global operator.

In California, they've built Big Rock, a two hundred megawatt four hour system that keeps the grid reliable through long term contracts while still trading short term energy. In Texas, they started small, learning the quirks of the market before scaling up. And in Britain and Ireland, they're now upgrading some of their early shorter duration batteries, adding more energy capacity to stretch out performance. And Gore Street isn't stopping there. They've launched Japan's first dedicated energy storage fund and are expanding across Europe. This is a key element of the energy transition as firms like Gore Street are making that shift bankable, repeatable, and global. So welcome back to Transmission.

Hello, Alicia, and welcome to Transmission.

Thank you. Very good to be here.

And as ever, let's start off with who are you and who are Gore Street Capital?

Sure. So maybe I will start with Gore Street Capital, and then we'll we'll move to me. So, Gore Street Capital started as a fund manager specializing really in renewables.

We, I think, figured out pretty quickly there's a a lot of renewable investors, and we felt we need something, a different vehicle of investment that will provide kind of a more specialized and more, tailored and needed, asset class. And that's how basically Alex and the team arrived at energy storage. We really truly focus only on energy storage. We we're technology agnostic.

And I think we probably are sort of moving more towards IPP now. We have a big technical team with lots of engineers and data scientists. With outsourced balance sheet, we don't own the assets. We we we manage funds.

And my role is really, some engineer by background, and I manage a team that looks after the portfolio. But that's kind of development, construction services, procurement, and, operational. So we really look, after the assets from start of their life. Well, hopefully, not to the grave because we haven't seen any of the assets decommissioned.

But, yeah, we basically take off the whole life cycle, and we, you know, see the good, the bad, and the ugly of decisions that we make.

And I'm I'm really excited to get into some of those details, around some of the nuance of different assets by different locations. You mentioned IPP. What's an IPP?

So independent power producer, obviously, that is someone who holds assets and takes full ownership of the asset. In a way, we, you know, we have a mandate to to manage our, portfolio. The we have two funds at the moment. Gsf funds, it's a listed entity that, IPO ed in two thousand eighteen.

It has assets in five markets. We make commercial decisions for those assets. That's our mandate. But we feel like these are, you know, our assets.

We we feel very responsible for them, and they've been with us since the beginning of of our kind of existence as a as a company. But it also means that we have technical capability in house. We have people who understand construction, trading. We have an in house trading team and people who are really excellent asset management, and they understand how the project, has to function.

Okay. And we last had Gore Street, on transmission back in May twenty twenty four. We had Alex on, and he was talking about building this global energy storage fund. What's changed since then?

So I think lots has changed. We are actively now managing two funds. So at the time, we already had, Japan funds, and we are looking kind of towards new directions as well. We're looking towards, EU as a next step.

But, definitely, we spent the last sort of three years, roughly from twenty twenty three, really focusing on deployment. So we did a number of very successful capital raises before twenty twenty three, and then we focused really on deploying capital. And that construction deployment campaign has been immense in effort because it involved building assets in California, building assets in Texas.

And that was complex, but also, you know, resource, intensive, but also, you know, the time difference. So, you know, it's been something that definitely changed us as a company. We became a kind of deploying machine, and we also had to find the right resources of people, partners on the ground so that we can deliver something that is on a different continent eight hours behind us.

Well, let let's talk in a second about some of that approach to finding partners and making sure you have the right partners for the right locations. But first, just to give people a kind of concept of sizes and locations. So what were the typical sizes that you looked at for those regions? And was that all kind of all in one go, or is that across multiple sites?

Sure. So I think every market is different. So we never have a kind of a completely cookie cutter approach to finding, markets and then finding assets in those markets. I guess what is maybe always true for every market when we when we look for new, places to deploy is the fundamentals have to be there.

So renewables have to be there. There has to be a strong, conviction that renewables are going to be in the mix, and they're there to stay. And, also, the policy is the people who decide on the policy. They understand the need for flexibility.

And, obviously, California, Texas were places where it was clear that this is true. Both have you know, Texas is maybe counterintuitive because it's such an oil and gas place, but it has huge amount of renewables. It has solar. It has wind.

It's constrained, and, it has basically the need for for flexibility. And it has also quite an aging asset class and aging, network, which sort of very much demonstrated itself in twenty twenty three with very high revenues there. California, similar different model because they they sort of think about market a bit differently. They have sort of equivalent of capacity market.

California is, you know, a typical example of a place where, flexibility is used well and required, and supported by policy. So, yeah, it was no brainer. Okay. Finding us assets was definitely a process and, you know, investment team is very well placed through our partners through kind of relationship from banking space.

We we have partners to help us find the right deals.

Okay. And how did you pick the sizes? So did you go for sort of five megawatts, fifty megawatts, five hundred megawatts? What's how did you find how did you end up at the sizes that you have for those assets?

So I think, again, kind of market by market, I think in California, generally, you have a dominantly large assets. It's economy of scale. Of course, economy of scale means that if you build a two hundred megawatt asset, inherently, it will be cheaper per megawatt. It will be cheaper per megawatt hour.

And California allows for that, so that's how we landed at Big Rock. In Texas, it was a state staged approach. It was the first, geography in US we went to. So we entered with smaller to be able to kind of learn and understand US and and generally kind of get TIFF TIFF into the market.

So we started with nine point nine megawatt assets, which were operational, and then we acquired, Dogfish. And Dogfish, with its very, special name, is a seventy five megawatt asset.

And Okay.

It's, again, kind of the right, balance between kind of risk allocation in that market, but also economy of scale.

And, Big Rock, did you say how big that is?

Big Rock is two hundred megawatts. Okay. It's basically two hour system. California has the specificity that they, require geographically, load serving entities, so people who sell electricity to people, to have a certain amount of generation, to procure a certain amount of generation to basically serve the security of the system.

And we have secured sort of half of our battery to be able to supply that, service. It's called, resource adequacy. So it requires four hours. Therefore, our battery is basically half of it is serving that resource adequacy contract.

Okay. Makes sense. And I think I need to get my sort of helmet on in a second because I'm gonna say something that is almost certainly a a red rag to a ball.

Would you say that batteries in new markets just plug and play?

No. I've I've heard it many times from people, and and it's one of those things that makes me laugh and also gets me a little bit, I guess, you know, a little bit grumpy. No. Batteries do appear like they're plug and play because of how they look like. Obviously, they you know, when you look at them, they don't look like a complex machine like, you know, wind turbines or pumped hydro, but they are complex because of how you monetize them. They're complex how you integrate them into the grid.

Construction itself can be challenging for sure, but the complexity really comes through. These are not machines or, you know, these are not technologies that you pluck, and they just export energy. They do, as you know, lots of clever things. And You know, it's a portfolio of services. So to be able to integrate that asset into the grid is so much more than plug and play.

And that complexity is kind of increasing. So in the in the sort of first instance of batteries coming into a grid, maybe you looked at, say, frequency response, and then you sort of move into energy trading, energy arbitrage. Yep. Then you've gone and got this new suite of services coming through. Maybe there's voltage control, maybe from a grid forming inverter, and so you sort of have this, additional challenge coming through. So how have you been finding that process in terms of bringing on some of these more complicated sites?

Sure. So I think that's a really interesting point that, you know, as the market and the sector matures, system operators learn about the value that assets bring. So they start to procure more and more complex, they become more adventurous with services that they're getting from batteries. I, you know, remember all the way back in two thousand nineteen when we started deploying in Ireland, a system operator truly didn't know how batteries work.

They didn't fully kind of and it's fair because they didn't have batteries on their system, so they didn't fully get the state of charge, the ramping, the speed of response, all the characteristics that the batteries exhibit. And now in this space where it's been proven, it's proven to work, it has stabilized a number of events both in GB, in Ireland, in other more mature markets. So, yes, we're moving into a space where, you know, you're procuring, or selling as a battery owner. You're selling inertia.

You're selling reactive power.

But, also, you are selling into increasingly renewable grid, which means that those grids are weaker by nature. And I'm I'm not going to profess to be an electrical, engineer, but it's it's well understood that, basically, if you increase number of or amount of renewable generation, you're create creating a weaker grid.

And, therefore, your ability to control your asset and be able to provide a compliant response becomes so much harder. Harder because you need to really understand default levels that you will be connecting to. So you need to really get the right data from network operator or system operator to model it well. You need to prove that your system will be compliant and not co causing vol voltage oscillations or deviations of from the compliant response.

And then on top of that, you probably want to be doing more than just grid compliance. You probably want to be selling services, which means that your battery has to be really, really well understood from control perspective. It's I think we probably maybe don't appreciate how much this will be a challenge going forward to build assets, you know, tertiary connections, collocated batteries With grids like in Scotland. You know, it's not just plug and play.

Use the typical settings for inverters. It's now about, like, really tailoring your response and having a very good integration and good control.

Yes. I I totally agree. I think maybe one one thing I would add is that sometimes when we talk about these markets, we talk about that battery providing some of those sort of system services when, in reality, quite often that comes from the inverter. We seem to forget about the inverter that's kind of the forgotten middleman of this whole Yeah.

The the sort of least expensive, no one gets excited, but the the brain of the operation.

Actually, it's a lot of yeah. How how this all works. And so sometimes when I have a sort of conversation, start talking about, say, like, just for example, voltage control. People say, oh, batteries can do this. Batteries actually, it's not really the battery that's doing that. The battery's providing some energy, but in reality, this is actually the inverter tech Yeah. Which is the fun part.

I mean, it's it's it's it's a funny one because the the water analogy always is used actually when you teach electrical that, you know, water is basically the the battery is the water in the bucket, while the inverter is the valve, and the valve is what controls the flow. And we see much more complicated than a simple valve. But, yeah, that's how you can think about.

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Enjoy the conversation.

You just touched on it there. So you talked about Ireland a little bit, and then you also talked about GB. So we've talked about new sites and and how you're sort of looking across those. Let's talk about the old sites.

So how are you thinking about all of the that you already have, and how do you want to change those sites to improve them?

Yeah. We made a very conscious decision, probably kind of, around twenty twenty two, maybe twenty twenty one, that we're not going to follow the there was kind of a massive push at the time to do two hours, and everyone was saying, let's do two hours. Let's do two hours because it's the right time. And we were kind of very, I think, kind of more cautious, and we held back, and we didn't.

So most of our portfolio in GB is around one hour. In Ireland, actually, one of the most successful geographies, you would not believe, but it's a twenty one minute systems. I don't think anyone manufactures those those sea rates anymore, and most of our portfolio is kind of on the shorter duration apart from, obviously, US, projects. We're definitely saying that this is shifting, and it's the right time to shift because of the prices, because of the learning curve of batteries.

And it's the right time to deploy now. I think if you compare the time when people build to our systems, a lot of people build in GB around twenty twenty two is when the battery prices were at its highest. And probably the the spread between one hour, two hours wasn't as prominent now. Clearly, we're moving to more renewable grids where, you know, the times prices are increasing.

So you have longer durations of low prices, and you have this bigger grab. You just need longer duration batteries. So we are actively looking now to augment some of our sites. We knew that this period will come when we will want to increase duration, and we designed the systems to be able to do it.

So we're actually actively augmenting two sites, preparing for augmentation of two sites in, in GB, Estonia and Fermur, eighty megawatts and fifty megawatts. And it's a DC augmentation. It's the easiest augmentation to do because you're just adding energy. You're not changing inverters.

You're not adding anything, that changes your grid behavior, which means that you are avoiding any, either retesting of your grid code compliance. It's risk Okay.

Augment So the inverter stays the same.

I had a really stupid question, but things like the the foundations, are are you able to say swap one twenty foot container for another twenty foot container?

Yeah. So basically, you we've already kind of predesigned this with with NEDEX so that the foundations are effect there's a space for foundations, and, we'll move some of the cells, around so that, obviously, you're kind of not mixing old and old and new cells. So we'll move cells around behind the same lineup, behind the same inverter, free up inverters, bring new cells.

Okay.

It's, yeah, it's kind of very low risk kind of campaign.

And I suppose one of the other things that's changed is also the energy density. Right? So instead of having, yeah, less energy dense systems, you can now kind of fit more energy onto the same footprint. Do you find that you need more footprint with the augmentation, or are you able to sort of shift around the space that you've got and then be able to get in the augmented energy into the same size footprint?

I think it's actually probably more efficient in the size that, you know, a twenty foot container now can fit around seven, megawatt hours. So you definitely can fit more within the space that you have now. So you can augment sites now probably beyond what you could think of even in twenty twenty two. It's been a step change definitely in the product.

And I think one one of the really interesting things from our side, and we look a lot at augmentation, we look a lot at forecasting and, like, what is the right duration for a battery?

That question comes up a million times. And and the interesting answer in GB is that it it it kinda depends a little bit. So the the revenue numbers can be quite not flat, but the the choice between, say, a two hour and a six hour system really depends on what the sort of CapEx comes through. And so this is something where, like, the supply chain really matters, and and I think there's such a it's really interesting to see sort of how different groups with different supply chains can make different decisions.

There's not a perfect perfect answer No. Which is, oh, it has to be, you know, two point seven hours. It really does depend on kind of what comes through from your CapEx side. Okay.

And so we've done new sites. We've done, augmentation. And you mentioned very briefly, you, looked at Japan.

We did. Yeah.

Would you would you like to just give me a quick overview of of the the sort of Japanese business model?

So just just as a background, so, Core Street, paired and basically kind of created a JV with Hitochu. It's a it's a large, trading, trading house in Japan, and we were selected by Tokyo government around twenty twenty three to start the first, pure play energy fund in Japan, which was, amazing. The rationale why Japan is looking into batteries, they're quite behind the curve, to be honest, when you compare them to other markets, that's why I think the growth will be, will be significant.

Well, one of the first things is that they exports, sorry. They import seventy percent of their, electricity in terms of fossil fuels from outside, and that creates a security risk for them. And that was something that definitely drove the decision to bring renewables and, and and, obviously, kind of become independent. I'm sure they see the Chinese dominance in lithium ion a bit as a risk as well, and they have a huge industrial background in terms of the companies like Panasonic and Sony That could benefit from from the battery growth. So I think there are fundamentals that make complete sense that Japan is actively supporting battery growth and not just batteries in terms of deployment, but also being able to scale the industrial sector off the back of the growth.

And just on that, Japan is, like, one of the surprising growth stories of the last few years. It's forever been seen to be to be slow and steady. Yeah. Absolutely. And now we're starting to see movement in Japan. So, yeah. No.

Definitely an interesting sort of Yep.

Story that's running alongside the the power market.

Definitely. And, it's it's one where I I would acknowledge that, having a Japanese partner is a must.

There is a language barrier for sure, but there's also just an inherent knowledge of the market that I think it's harder to break into as an outsider. So being partnered with Hitoshi was was critical for us. And it's not without challenges that, you know, market has got different frequencies. You know, one side is fifty hertz. The other one is sixty hertz. The licensing, the policy is still being, shaped, so there are risks. But, again, early movers.

Yeah. And we don't have time for the, two islands in Japan having different frequencies to worry. Yeah. But definitely but definitely take a look at it. That's that's a really fun, quirky part of power markets. Okay. So you're you're sort of juggling Japan, California, Texas, UK, Ireland, all at the same time.

Yeah. The time differences are not, merciful.

They're not merciful. Well, why not? Let's let's throw in a new market. Let's look at the EU.

At least it's in the middle.

At least it's in the middle. Okay. Average is out.

So so for the EU Yeah. How much are looking at EU and which markets stand out to you?

We definitely are looking at EU. This is the next, massive focus for us. We we hope to close fund, by the end of the year that will be dedicated to EU twenty seven. I'm personally very excited about it because it makes the time difference easier.

Honestly, I'm just so happy that we wouldn't have to spend eight hours, you know, waiting for people to come online. But, also, generally, I think Europe is overdue with batteries. I think they woke up a bit late. But at least when they woke up, it was clear that EU was going to put, you know, all the sort of effort and policy and just rally everyone behind.

Okay. We need energy storage. You can take your different flavors nationally, but, you know, deploy, and we'll create Picasso. We'll create Mari, so the ancillary services platform so you can trade across, geographies.

One of the we will look at the markets that we know somewhat from GSF, but we'll also look at new markets and one which is obviously very close to my heart, Poland. We will definitely still look at Ireland. This will be our core market, and I think Ireland is still very much an exciting market for batteries. They just launched a consultation for LDES for long duration storage.

I had a a privilege to speak to CEO of, Ergred a few weeks ago, and I asked him all the difficult questions I like him to I asked him if he believes in storage, if he thinks that, you know, short duration storage has a place along long duration. All the answers were very positive. He generally is very convinced about storage, so that's also positive. Germany is definitely one we will look into.

I think, you know, Germany, again, huge growth area. It has its challenges. I think the grid is a big challenge in Germany, figuring out the curtailment, the, big b k zed costs is is tricky, but we have an asset in Germany, and it's been a very, very steady state, performing asset from from revenue perspective, and the fundamentals are there. Germany has a very deep intraday market.

Imbalance is penalized, so there's lots of basically trading happening there.

And then last but not least for now, we're definitely looking actively in Poland, and Polish. So, I'm very happy about this. Also, the burden of translating all all the Polish documents or at least, helping AI, you know, kind of to to to get the full granularity of what those documents mean, falls on me, but that's fine. And the rationale why this is happening in Poland is kind of the same as everyone else. Poland is, again, behind the curve in the renewable integration. There starts to be a significant amount of solar and and wind on Polish markets, about thirty gigs, which is about thirty to forty percent, and it's meant to grow much more because we will have offshore wind in the north of Poland.

What is great is that it's clear that the national system operator recognizes again the value of, batteries. And I was listening to the CEO of, Polish, SO about a month ago at a conference in Warsaw, and he was speaking about batteries in a way that makes my heart grow. Okay.

Very good.

He was definitely acknowledging, you know, that this is a system. This is an asset class they need. They want to create products that will enable investment. He was talking about accelerating grid connections for batteries. You know, it it's it's what you wanna hear.

I think there's an element you said that Europe was somehow sort of second to this or just, like, slow and waking up. I think it's maybe not the worst thing in the world, actually. In in some senses, if you bought all of your batteries back in twenty twenty one, twenty twenty two, you might have, like, locked in some very high prices.

Actually, if you're slightly slow to wake up, but when you wake up, you're in a world where you can get a system for a a hundred dollars per kilowatt hour, then actually, you may have been sort of sleeping at the wheel, so to speak, but actually, you might have actually jumped up in being able to you don't have to think about a five megawatt site.

There's a a two gigawatt blueprint if you want to go and get it. And so you can actually sort of refurb some of your old coal sites and move very quickly. Absolutely. In in a sort of hosting capacity, it just you went very quickly through, Picasso, Mari, and BKZ.

Yeah. That's probably a lot.

Would you like to just give one line on each of them?

So, again, so Picasso and Mari, those are, you know, platforms that allow people to basically trade ancillary services across markets, across Europe. I think they're only starting in some places. I think Poland just literally integrated with Picasso a few months ago. I don't think it's super well established, but it also allows you to take a view that you're not trading in a kind of smaller market, which is just Polish market. You're kind of accessing the whole requirement in other geographies, but also you're competing with more batteries. But, generally, it allows for a more efficient use of energy across the continent, and I think it's great. Makes sense.

Never underestimate the EU's ability to make an acronym that spells something they wanted to spell. Yeah.

Yeah. Picasso, that is a serious effort. I don't even know what it stands for.

BKZ less less exciting. Yeah. But what is BKZ, frankly?

I mean, BKZ, basically, I think it's trying to explain the costs that you as a battery owner will be will be kind of charged by the network operator to build out your grid connection. And what I understood and we are still kind of figuring out is that those costs can make and break a battery, and they are meant to be changing. They're looking at reforming it. But definitely one that if you're looking at Germany, understand what it is because it it can make and break the business case.

Yeah. And we have a, there's a Moto Energy free explainer on BKZ if anyone, is, keen to find out more and see sort of map of what the charges are. That's, on the Moto terminal, which is a fun thing to go and take a look at. Let's come back to Poland.

You mentioned offshore wind is coming. You mentioned sort of solar as well. When I think of Poland, think of coal. Yes.

And so would you like to just kind of quickly describe what the demand looks like, what the traditional generation looks like, and perhaps why that that makes it so appealing?

Yep. So, basically, majority of generation in Poland was historically coal based. I mean, this is just historical reasons we used to have coal production of our own. Now it's immensely expensive, non, economical. We actually, used to import, coal shockingly from Russia, which obviously comes with its own, you know, geopolitical, challenges. There is a very strong realization that, a, this is nonviable, and, the carbon cost of this is is is completely not, you know, fit for for the future.

Most of wind generation and solar is located, in the north, so it creates cause of kind of transmission challenges for system operator. Also, kind of major kind of industrial push is coming from the effort to build offshore wind off the coast of Baltic, which I think is a great idea because it's a shallow water with good wind resource, so kind of perfect to build offshore. And I think the first sites are coming online pretty quick pretty quickly in the next sort of three three, four years. So there's a challenge.

There's a transmission challenge, and there is a a challenge around, the growth of demand because all the heating system is CHP, so central combined heat and power. When you go to Poland, you can see everywhere those big stacks, basically chimneys, provide heat and they provide power. That has to go because, again, it's it's it's mostly, it's mostly coal. So there will be a transition in heating to electrification.

There will be electrification of transport and also, metal works. We produce a lot of metal in in some parts of Poland that will be electrified. So, therefore, you have a huge push for demand electrification and and that, you know, with renewables just creates, you know, the typical challenges that batteries can solve.

And so when, if I was to say, what year would we expect to see Gorsh Street in Poland with an asset live?

What's I'm hoping to well, asset live.

Okay. I'm hoping that we will start deploying twenty twenty six, and those assets will be live in twenty twenty seven. If I can take what the CEO of the system operator is saying that he will enable people to connect sooner, then I'm hoping in twenty twenty seven those assets will be live.

Yeah. And this is just broadly, it's just a really exciting thing to see in terms of the expertise that's coming from the GB power sector and battery sector coming through, going to Texas, going to California, going to Japan, going to Poland. I I think this is one of the things that maybe people don't appreciate that there is sort of being a big export of knowledge and know how from the UK as a system that I think we should be very proud of as a sector.

Absolutely. When you go to conference in Poland, it's almost like you feel you go to energy storage summit in in London. That's just the same, you know, the same faces. It's it's it's quite surprising.

Very good. And, so one more topic. So you mentioned Elders earlier, so long duration energy storage.

You mentioned it in the context of Ireland, but, obviously, it's been a very topical conversation in GB for a while now. How does Gore Street see the long duration storage cap and floor scheme?

Sure. So we have an asset, in cap and floor scheme. It it has kind of prequalified. We're in this next stage of of submitting. I think it's eighteenth of November. I think it's something that we see as a natural progression of the asset class. The fact that Ofgem realized that there needs to be support to roll out longer duration, I think it's the right thing.

I agreed that I would very much like not to see that elders with contracted, you know, floor cannibalizes ancillary services and therefore penalizes the shorter duration batteries on which the industry was built. I know that furnace is not always the thing in the market, but I think, you you know, you have to recognize that on the basis of those one hour, two hour batteries, build a cost curve and you build learning curve. So you have to protect those early investments as well, and I'm going to leave it to policymakers to decide how to make sure that you do not cannibalize and suffocate those that cannot be eight hour systems.

But I also think that there needs to be a growth curve for longer duration, and I also support the fact that we should be building other asset classes alongside lithium. That lithium is the right choice for quick deployment now. It's very mature, very cost efficient, very de risked as as much as a technology can be. You can deploy it in twelve months. So big group in California, we built in twelve months, two hundred megawatt asset. And that's a stepping change to have LDES on the system, but I also think that we need other technologies to to come behind it because you need longer duration, more than ten, twelve hours. So I think it's the right thing, but, yes, there are challenges with, obviously, how this is going to create an uneven playing field.

Yes. Just as a side note, the the industry has a history in terms of if a change is made in one part of the sector and that means there's a negative impact on another asset that's kind of already deployed, you kind of get this concept of missing money. So an existing investment is now missing money effectively. And when we've made changes in the past that people have thought, okay, well, great, we can make this change, but also we need to recognize that we're having a negative impact on this other part of the sector. And so they kind of go through this process of saying, well, look, how much money is that? And in the spirit of fairness, as you were saying, can you kind of make people whole and make sure that there's kind of, a good environment for investors to come and keep deploying capital.

Exactly. Because it can happen in five years to. Yeah. Exactly.

You can't keep on repeating the same sort of The one thing you don't want to have happen is investors to lose confidence in in in the space and not want to come and, invest in in in storage and GB.

Okay. Really interesting. I think the the point as as well around kinda lithium is that that technology of the moment, but let's keep the markets open, keep the markets fair so that if the next thing that comes through isn't lithium or is a different form of lithium, whatever it might be, we're in a position to take advantage of it rather than kind of locking down for particular text. I think that would be it'd be madness.

Okay. So one final question then before I move on to the the two questions that we always come to at the end. The last question is with the funds over the last year or so, we've seen some, interesting new stories coming through. I suppose one of them that stands out is Harmony Energy Income Trust was picked up by Foresight.

So how do you think about that as a as a sort of development?

Sure. I think it was, you know, overall a positive story. The actual, I guess, transaction happened on the back of some of the troubles that, obviously, Harmony have had. But, overall, obviously, what it delivered, it delivered validation of of value Those assets sold at what basically the the underwriting was, which which is very positive.

Whether we saw a translation to us directly immediately off the back of it, no. We did we didn't. We didn't see our share price kind of come to to NAV. But I think there are more, you know, factors to play in the reason why there's such a persistent discount.

And I think a lot of people, people, have been scratching their heads why that persistent discount is there. There are macroeconomic factors, which we can explain, but different trusts have different flavors, and I think that discount is kind of, not behaving always very rationally. But we're you know, we have our plan. We're we're we're doing the things that we always said to the market, and we follow through.

And we hope that, you know, the market will kind of recover off the back of the consistency and the, rational thinking that we're trying to put out there so that it becomes less emotional decision and more about, you know, what is the cash flow? What is the dividend cover?

What's the, you know, promises that have been made around augmentation and, delivery of, certain transactions that the investors want to see?

But, you know, we'll we'll see what the future is.

Space. And if you were after fund analytics, I'm afraid this wasn't gonna be the podcast for you. But we I think just when you take a step back from it, both for the the other funds, but also for sort of other valuations in the space, I think that that Harmony transaction was was a pretty notable one Yes.

For the for the for the wide space and definitely in in terms of reinforcing those those valuations.

Yep. So, yeah, a pretty interesting transaction. Okay. Then on to the final two questions. So is there anything, firstly, that you would like to plug?

Anything else I want to plug? No. I think I you know, it's been tough couple of years, I would think. You know, we've seen a lot of, not the first saturation in GB, but we've seen kind of, you know, a saturation in around twenty twenty of the back of twenty twenty three, twenty four. I think we're riding through this now, and I think we're seeing a more consistent value that is not driven by saturation of ancillary services.

We're seeing a massive sophistication of, products that will be acquired. So I'm very positive about the space, and I'm happy that GB is leading that front that, you know, we are setting the standards for others. Definitely, Poland, for example, is doing lots of things looking into GB. So, I'm very positive. And I look forward to other sort of, technologies coming into play. I think sodium is the one to to watch. So, yeah, definitely, yeah, more exciting time for for for for the for the sector.

Okay. Very exciting. And then, on the final part, is there a contrarian view you hold?

I don't know if it's a contrarian view, but I potenti kind of touched upon it, a bit earlier when we spoke about some of the challenges. I think I do see that I think we are slightly underappreciating the complexity of the network that we will be we're we're trying to solve renewable energy. I don't wanna say it's not a problem. The the the nature of renewable energy grid by having flexible, fast acting, clever, assets.

But I think we really have to appreciate how complex that network will be, and this is, both on the side of generation, so people who actually own assets, so they understand how to run the process early in time to really identify what kind of grid they're dealing with. And, also, on the side of integrators, control controllers, people who really, build those assets, they I think that that sort of sophistication has to come in. But, also, I see a massive challenge from NISA perspective and people who actually connect the batteries to have resources and time to truly, I think, model what what's getting connected and, you know, speeding up that process.

I I I don't think it should take two years or two and a half years to connect a battery from the moment you start design to the moment it's energized. I think it should be more like twelve. Nice. And I think at the moment, it's more multiple years.

And so I suppose the to kind of wrap that view up, it's almost that the the connections process and the uniformity of the grid is is something that you would almost you'd almost do away with the concept that the grid is totally uniform. Actually, each individual connection is going to be, special or bespoke. And even though that does exist, you still think we could actually be doing a lot of this connection much faster?

I think so. And I think, you know, someone once said to me, and I think it's very true, we build the easy connections. I think the ones that are coming in into play now will be harder. That's why there is such a massive push for you know, we have scarcity of grid connections, and that the ones we're now looking to deploy will be harder. So I think just much more sophistication will will will be needed.

Yeah. Fascinating. Alicia, thank you very much for coming on transmission. You've been a wonderful guest, and, I hope that listeners have learned as much as I have from that conversation.

Thank you very much.