Thank you so much for coming.
We so appreciate it. Backstage, Ben Geman and Amy were just talking about how many people listen to you as a pioneering energy engineer. So we're honored to have you on our stage. I wonder if you could just talk a little bit about your foundational story and how Redwood Materials is meeting this moment.
Well, I spent a lot of my career building batteries and scaling the products that use them and had kind of a front row seat to some of the challenges there. So, at Redwood, we really started as a battery ecosystem, recycling, battery materials company and still do that. So, that to me was a passionate, you know, problem I wanted to solve. And you know over the years we've expanded that scope into battery remanufacturing, repurposing and now energy systems where we're deploying, you know, full grid-scale energy systems largely leveraging our power electronics and remanufactured EV batteries.
And I'd be interested in your, our audience would be interested in your personal story and how that's helping Redwood Materials meet the moment.
Well, I'm an engineer by training. I love building things. That's kind of where, what I do for, it's my happy space. You know, and I mean my story really, you know, started building solar cars in college and building conversion EVs. That was kind of my pathway in to what became Tesla. And, you know, in the early days, it was very unlikely. It was not, you know, a sexy industry by any means to start a new car company. But yeah, it was incredible the journey that we went on there. It's just hard to believe it's even real. And you know now, coming forward to today, this energy moment we're in is the most exciting I've felt in my whole career. I've been working on energy since I can remember. And never has there been quite so much, you know, growth, excitement, innovation, all colliding together.
That's the passion that brings together our audience here at Axios House on I think five floors and our audience virtually around the world. So let's zoom out a little bit and talk about this energy moment and why you find it so exciting, energizing.
Well particularly in electricity, you know, electricity has been, you know, on a very slow, like, you know, predictable growth curve for decades and decades, you know, before now in the last year or two. And you know, that sort of set the tone I would say for how innovation was moved into the electric energy sector. You know, electric power engineering was probably like, I mean, I think at Stanford it was one of the least done majors of anywhere. You know, I even, I had to design my own major to study electrical systems engineering. There was nothing. And you know, that moment has totally changed today. And the growth, the pressure to add more capacity much more quickly and often do it even in different commercial constructs that aren't just through the investor-owned utilities. You know, all of that to me is so exciting and it kind of is pulling in a different set of industry and a different set of companies that weren't even really engaged before and making space for innovation, for trying new things that would have been historically way too risky, not proven enough or, you know, would have taken much longer.
My nephews who are early career entrepreneurs are watching and they're going to want me to ask you about that solar car and how the solar car, your Stanford experience led to what Redwood Materials is doing today and your dreams for Redwood Materials today.
Well, geez, back in those days, it was really just doing what I loved. You know, it wasn't with quite the same aspirations of seeing what Tesla has become today. But, you know, the advice I frequently give to young entrepreneurs is just follow what you're passionate about. You know, don't try and chase a trend of the moment because you'll be out of cycle at least one or two cycles with what's actually really relevant. And if you're not following your passion, it's almost impossible to work hard enough and enjoy doing the hard work for long enough, you know, to really succeed. But yeah, I was doing this for free. It was a hobby, you know, it wasn't commercial. And that was really what led us to innovate and build and create the team and the collection of people that helped launch Tesla.
We helped start two media companies. What I always tell aspiring entrepreneurs is, and I feel like it's congruent with what you just said, that by the time something is obviously a good idea, it's too late.
Someone will have done it right. And I feel like that's a little bit where Tesla was in the early days.
Yeah. It was obviously a bad idea actually in the beginning.
So it was, that was kind of the wrong time entirely to start. We had to educate every customer on what the product was and then how to use it. And you know, but we were way ahead of the curve and we had a runway of a decade almost, you know, to mature the technology, to make mistakes and to, you know, build a product ecosystem. You know, if a company tries to launch into building an EV company today, you know, they run headlong into, you know, every OEM on the planet and China and trillion dollar companies. So yeah, now it's really too late.
So now let's zoom in and talk a little bit about the grids and the grid and loads that are now migrating outside the grid to unconventional solutions.
Well, part of what we focus on at Redwood today are deploying these battery systems in very large scale arrays, long durations where we can power loads for eight, nine, even 12 hours. And you know, this was kind of a crazy idea. Even just a year ago, not many people were open to considering micro grids or doing off-grid large industrial loads or data centers. But today, given so many pressures, the delays to connect to the grid that might span three, four, five years. This is actually becoming much more mainstream and reasonable. So that I think is another part of this interesting moment we're in where, you know, loads are not just being added to the grid. That's happening too, but there's whole new sectors that are going into, you know, either totally off-grid or largely behind the meter type of generation. This is new. This wasn't a thing a couple years ago. And there's a lot of technologies needed to make that happen. How do you control it? How do you build these miniature utilities effectively that can run on their own?
And so, what does that mean for the future of the grid?
