Watt It Takes: A Tesla Veteran’s Mission to Build Long-Duration Batteries

<p>This week on <em>Watt It Takes</em>: how a would-be priest made it his mission to spread the gospel of battery storage.</p><p>In this episode, Powerhouse CEO Emily Kirsch sits down with Mateo Jaramillo, the CEO and co-founder of Form Energy.</p><p>Form is working on a new kind of long-duration battery. And Mateo has one of the longer-duration careers in the storage industry.&nbsp;</p><p>In the early 2000s, he deployed the first behind-the-meter systems in New York for demand response — seeing the grid services potential well before anyone else.</p><p>Mateo went on to start the stationary energy storage unit at Tesla, launching and building the powerwall business. He also helped launch the supercharger business.</p><p>Today, he’s working on a new electrochemical battery that could provide storage services for days, not just hours. The idea is to unlock baseload renewables.</p><p>The chemistry was spun out of work from MIT researchers. It’s being scaled by a group of engineers and entrepreneurs with deep technical experience — and like Mateo, the bumps and bruises that come from scaling an early market.</p><p>In this interview, Mateo talks about what it took to power through the early days of battery storage, when everything sale and installation was a battle. And he’ll talk about what it will take to create Form’s new storage tech to unlock even more renewable energy.</p><p>To learn more about future speakers and attending a live event, go to <a href="https://powerhouse.fund/" target="_blank">Powerhouse.fund</a> and click on the events tab.&nbsp;</p><p>Listen to all of the episodes of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/tag/watt-it-takes" target="_blank"><em>Watt It Takes</em>&nbsp;here</a>.</p><p><em>Support for this podcast is brought to you by&nbsp;</em><a href="https://en.sungrowpower.com/" target="_blank"><em>Sungrow</em></a><em>. With the world’s most powerful 250-kilowatt, 1,500-volt string inverter, Sungrow is providing disruptive technology for utility-scale projects.</em></p