Today I had the opportunity to visit with Tim Kaelin, CEO of Renewable Energy Management about his energy storage company that does not need tax incentives, or subsidies to bring to market. This is a huge win for the grid stabilization that needs to happen for our increased energy demands.
Sustainable to many people does not include fiscal or ecologically responsible in their definition. Our conversation went over their energy storage solution and it hit all of my top requirements. Ecologically sound, not require the massive critical minerals from foreign countries, and fiscally sound. The other key point of our discussion was the battery technology. It could spill out on the ground, and could even be considered fertilizer.
There is a massive need for ending energy poverty, and I am thrilled to have had the opportunity fo visit with Tim, and am looking forward to visiting with his executive team of world experts. George McMilan is one of his team members with whom I have been communicating and planning some fantastic geopolitical discussions around energy.
00:00 – Introduction
02:00 – Tim Kaelin founded a company to create affordable utility-scale batteries for renewable energy, aiming for profitability without subsidies.
04:27 – Explaining their technology’s operation.
06:45 – The significance of kilowatts per megawatt-hour in the discussion.
08:15 – Their batteries for large solar farms in shipping containers, addressing reclamation and recyclability concerns.
11:14 – Upcoming November 9th event with George McMillan, covering energy, geopolitics, market dynamics, and renewable energy challenges.
16:46 – Importance of battery storage in renewable energy, regulatory hurdles, fiscal sustainability, and global energy dynamics, including skepticism around net-zero goals in developing countries and coal demand.
21:31 – Highlighting energy storage as a currency for economic growth and societal advancement.
23:23 – Preview of the November 9th event in New York and the possibility of a live podcast before the event.
24:57 – Outro.
Full Transcript and Show notes will be added shortly.
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Stuart Turley [00:00:03] Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Energy News Beat podcast. My name’s Stu Turley President, CEO of the Sandstone Group. I got us an action packed podcast today. I’ll tell you what. This is kind of cool. I had a LinkedIn contact. Will Reese reach out to me and do an introduction? And I just want to give Will a thank you and a shout out out here. I got Tim Kalan and I mean, we’re going to have a van tastic talk. Tim is the rational energy management CEO. Welcome. I do appreciate you and thanks for stopping by the podcast.
Tim Kaelin [00:00:40] Thanks for as do I really appreciate it.
Stuart Turley [00:00:42] I’ll tell you, I’m going to do a little inside baseball here because if anybody goes to your LinkedIn, I got really tickled. You’ve got former CIA on there and I about threw up and I’m like, is this a joke from Wealth? And I love your response.
Tim Kaelin [00:01:02] Well, yeah, it is not a joke. I was there for 12 years. I. I went overseas a lot, traveled about 30% of the time. 30 different countries. Had a great time. I did not shoot anybody. I promise. I almost got shot at a few times. But that’s. Those are different stories.
Stuart Turley [00:01:21] Oh, yeah.
Tim Kaelin [00:01:22] But yeah, it was a great it was it’s it was a great group of people at that time, which was the late eighties and the early nineties. And, and I thought we had accomplished a lot. So I’m, I’m proud of me the, the currency I know there are some questions there but at that time the greatest group of people.
Stuart Turley [00:01:41] Yeah it’s like people were that’s one of those that people are like, Mm. Okay, but hey, let’s talk about your current gig as the CEO of Rational. We were kind of chit chatting a little earlier today and that’s pretty exciting about what you got going on over there. Tell us what that is.
Tim Kaelin [00:02:00] Yeah, I mean, basically I was actually focused on something else entirely different aspect of renewable energy. And I’m thinking, okay, well, now we need some batteries. Let’s see what we can find. And I did a research on on the on utility scale batteries. There aren’t any. They’re all so expensive that they’re they’re beyond being profitable. So so I focused on that because it’s a huge market cap. I mean, basically the unsubsidized world needs these batteries. So we started this company and we’re and we’re about ready to start building a battery and take it. Actually, we’ve got some of literally some of the best people in the world, some of the best scientists, some of the best in years lined up to work on this and put together a battery that will be that is cheap enough to actually be profitable for renewable energy.
Stuart Turley [00:02:56] Without subsidies, because that’s a hot button.
Tim Kaelin [00:02:59] Without subsidies, the market is is vapor locked at that higher level because if they do anything different there, their profits from subsidies go down. So they’re kind of middle sized companies and they they’re going to stay there. Right. Nobody’s trying. Nobody’s trying to make them cheap. And that’s and that’s what the market needs it.
Stuart Turley [00:03:19] You know, anybody that’s listen to the podcast more than 5 minutes knows that I really like the humanitarian aspect. We have to deliver the lowest kilowatt per hour to all citizens of the planet with the least amount of impact on the environment and truly sustainable. Well, truly sustainable, as you and I talked about, is you can’t print money. You just nailed a home run right there. And another CEO that I truly enjoy working with is Deborah Wald over at Green Lily, and she has the same thing. She has energy, but not in storage, but in other ways of sustainable, true renewable energy. And and so this is really exciting. Now, as we also talked, I really enjoyed my time visiting with the Freyr battery folks out of Norway, and they hit my number one gig and that was renewable energy. I mean, the energy storage has to be renewable. I mean, excuse me, recyclable. How’s your technology work there?
Tim Kaelin [00:04:30] Oh, actually, we’re kind of fortunate coming in at this stage of battery production. We were all the way back to the 1980s to pick up a chemistry. It’s actually the ion flow chemistry and and as completely, I mean, environmentally friendly. I mean, you still if you spill some of the fluid on the ground, it kind of makes a good fertilizer but that’s about it.
Stuart Turley [00:04:51] No way.
Tim Kaelin [00:04:52] Yeah. I keep joking with my my CTO that I’m going to as a demonstration, I’m going to give him a cup and have him drink it. But he hasn’t quite warmed up to that. Yeah. So.
Stuart Turley [00:05:02] Oh, that is cool. Now, be careful what you threaten because Chris over. He’s the CEO over at Liberty, Frank. I he really has influenced me on, on getting into the humanitarian aspect. He had all the flat fluid for his oilfield services company, and he lined up his employees and said, Drink.
Tim Kaelin [00:05:28] I’m serious. It should be drinkable.
Stuart Turley [00:05:30] And. And he was the first one.
Tim Kaelin [00:05:33] The first one?
Stuart Turley [00:05:34] Yeah. And I love that. That is so cool.
Tim Kaelin [00:05:37] Okay, so the demonstration will be will be as it is mildly acidic, so. Right. But drop some Tums in there. But it’s actually less acid than your stomach. So Tums should neutralize the acid. And right, right now, it’ll probably taste really bad.
Stuart Turley [00:05:51] Though this may not only be a renewable battery source, it might be the cure for cancer. And I’ll tell you why. Cancer does not like acid. So if you drink a lot of I learned that from one of my other clients, and that is if you drink a lot of tomato juice and acid, they hate cancer, hates an acidic body. So I think this might be something really cool. We’re on.
Tim Kaelin [00:06:16] It now. Don’t know. Don’t be saying I don’t want people lining up, poking holes in my batteries. That’s all. That’s only rumor. Now we go.
Stuart Turley [00:06:26] It’s a rumor. You know.
Tim Kaelin [00:06:28] You on the down low.
Stuart Turley [00:06:29] You first. But I am so excited about this conversation because we have to do that. Now, your numbers. When Jim, when we were talking just a second ago about your numbers, you said the numbers don’t make sense. Can we go through some of those numbers real quick? Because it was how many kilowatts per megawatt hour? I mean, you had those down to a science, and I’d kind of like to see what those are.
Tim Kaelin [00:06:56] And believe me, I’ve analyzed this 50 million ways because, you know, I mean, part of what I did with the agency was build analytical systems. So I’m I’m pretty good at analysis. Nice. The fact that stands out with with this kind of a battery with a lifetime of 30 years and at the cost structure that I’m talking about, it raises the wholesale price of energy from $0.03 to maybe four. Which is well within the normal day to day fluctuations of energy prices. If you want to use a standard lithium battery. And when I priced it, it was $400 a kilowatt hour and a lifetime of, say, eight years. That raises the price of that kilowatt hour from $0.03 to $0.31 and which is obviously not affordable. I mean, nobody can pay. Nobody wants to pay that.
Stuart Turley [00:07:47] No. And when you sit back and you take a look at energy lost and then cycle edge, you know, and the grid sitting there and you lose energy on the way in, you lose energy on the way out. And then how long is that good for? How’s the density on your battery solution? Because, dude, you got to build it big. I mean, is it a kilowatt for foot?
Tim Kaelin [00:08:15] Well, this is this is a battery that’s made for utility scale stuff to with solar farms. And solar farms are generally on a thousand acres or whatever. Right. Either. These are the the container will be a shipping container, a standard shipping container. And we may need a thousand of these in a stack just to back up a good sized farm. Right. I mean, a solar farm isn’t very space efficient, efficient to begin with. These are not space efficient batteries. They’re not going to go in your car. They’re not going to be you’re not even going to pull a behind a truck. They’re very heavy. They what? They’re going to weigh probably £30 or 30 tons. All right. But but we don’t care about that because we’ve got lots of space. If we if we’re putting them next to a solar farm, I mean, we’re taking up maybe 1% of their space. So spaces is about it. Not really a problem.
Stuart Turley [00:09:10] You know, reclamation is something that is now just hit the oil and gas industry. Sure. And, you know, trying to go take care of the orphan wells. And with the running away from wind farms, reclamation is is really becoming. There was an article in I think it was Bloomberg last week where the farmers are not really dig in the wind farms because after the 25 year contract, who’s going to take these beasts down?
Tim Kaelin [00:09:41] Right.
Stuart Turley [00:09:42] And it’s about $350,000 just to take one now. And I mean, you look at the concrete footprint and everything else. So I’m assuming that based on this recyclable type structure, your reclamation costs are going to be a lot less.
Tim Kaelin [00:10:02] Yeah. So, I mean, yeah, I mean, thinking about the ingredients to this, I mean, it’s basically iron and and chlorine. I mean, if you if you happen to dump it out on the ground, it would just kind of go away. And, you know, you’ve got a steel structure for the shipping container which you could researching. Yeah. The electrode is primarily carbon, I mean graphite based. So you can certainly recycle that. I mean, bring it up and and but if you want, I mean there’s not a lot else to it and there’s some it’s not PVC but in a more advanced form of PVC is all the plumbing in it. Wow. Really? I mean, probably 99% of this could be recycled just in bulk. Right. And the rest of it, I don’t know. Well, I mean, some electronics in there and some.
Stuart Turley [00:10:56] Oh, sure. But, you know, it’s not like recycling of of the solar farm itself.
Tim Kaelin [00:11:04] Right. Yeah. It’s not nearly that big a problem.
Stuart Turley [00:11:06] No, but.
Tim Kaelin [00:11:07] They’re in containers you can just haul. Yeah. Recycling place.
Stuart Turley [00:11:12] Right. And so when you take a look, you hit the big one on the thing because you got to love ERCOT in Texas, you know, And all those people died, and then they had the grid fail, and they got to use more storage as long as it was sustainable. You didn’t print money. I mean, you go through that checklist again, but that’s pretty darn cool. Now, you got also George McClellan and you and tell us what your event is coming up in November 9th, is that right?
Tim Kaelin [00:11:52] Yeah, November 9th. Thursday, November 9th. It’s at the Pen Club in New York City that starts at 6:00. And all you mentioned will race who’s are shall exact nice covering the oil and gas. George McMillan is a researcher energy book geopolitical frameworks. And I mean he’s he knows he he sees things other people don’t see and in the maneuverings between Russia and China and how energy is going to be redirected in all kinds of different directions.
Stuart Turley [00:12:25] Oh, isn’t that fun? I can’t wait to talk to him.
Tim Kaelin [00:12:27] Yeah, he’s yeah, he he’s a brilliant guy. If he will say something that you will completely not understand. But if you can ask a tiny question out of all of them and pull out a thread, then he becomes perfectly understandable and fascinating because he knows I mean, he’s been to all these countries, He’s seen things firsthand, and he just he just knows what’s happening. Wow. Well, like, for example, I mean, not not too many people are talking about it yet, But I mean, we’re what we’re seeing is Russia redirecting pipelines into China and and that’ll go to India and and from Iran to India, that’s going to be a separate market. The market is going to bifurcate. Right. And and the petrodollar is not going to be allowed in that market. And yeah, we’re actually waiting writing a white paper on this as well to accompany the panel of that.
Stuart Turley [00:13:20] And what then?
Tim Kaelin [00:13:21] Tastic Yeah, what we’re speculating is the place to be in energy will be in India because it will have a foot in both worlds and you’ll be able to do arbitrage and energy between, I mean between the markets if got it. But, but I mean lots of lots of opportunity there, lots of turmoil and lots of chaos. But if you’re if you’re energy minded, you can make a lot of a lot of money out of that.
Stuart Turley [00:13:50] Well, I’ve already just thought of about 15 different things for our conversation, you know, And we sit back and take a look at all of the geopolitical stuff that I’ve been doing on there. I, I cannot wait to visit with him on a podcast. You know, it’s like last week nobody was talking about the Leviathan field in the Mediterranean for natural gas. And I started bringing it up on my podcast during the week and sure enough, they just shut it down, you know, And there’s no gas coming out of the gas coming out of that is Israel’s that goes to Egypt, and that’s about 20% of the power that’s in Egypt’s energy market. And it’s the only way that and I got that from Dr. Robert Briggs, who turned me on to that. And then I’ve been talking about the Mediterranean, that area for about three years. So, yeah, we we as a group and I can’t wait to talk to Jordan because people think of oil and that’s all there is to the market. It’s oil, it’s gas, it’s renewables, is solar. It’s what you’re trying to do is storage. You cannot mention energy without talking about it.
Tim Kaelin [00:15:10] All right. And that’s true. And and a natural market would be all of those competing with each other, right? Not subsidies doing this and subsidies doing that and and everybody pulling in different directions. The energy is energy. Energy like wealth. And the more wealth you can produce, the better. Now, renewable energy is a renewable wealth. Obviously it would be nice if we could actually make a UNrun disrupted market disrupted by subsidies. In this case, that makes renewable energy the cheapest that it can possibly be, which is not happening just yet. Now, solar and solar cells have gone for like $20 or down to $0.15. But yet still the the insulation still costs. Ten times that or 20 times that or 30 times that. It’s like, Well, yeah. I mean, why hasn’t anybody invest in that? Well, that’s because the subsidies make it more more profitable to build more expensive systems. Right.
Stuart Turley [00:16:14] We’re not going right now. We have 24,000 permits waiting for solar and wind that are that are bogged down. And last year, we had 8000. So the Biden administration’s not doing the renewable sector any good. So, you know, getting the regulatory it’s really legislation through regulation is. Be careful who you vote for.
Tim Kaelin [00:16:45] Yeah, very true.
Stuart Turley [00:16:46] And so when you take a look at that, the you know, Dan Bongino is a nut in and so, you know, he calls the Inflation Reduction Act a porkulus bill. Yeah. And so I’m sure your ear solution with the battery storage would fit for that funding.
Tim Kaelin [00:17:08] Yeah. You know, I mean, our goal is to do things without subsidies. But if there’s money on the table, I mean, we’re going to scrape it off. I mean, what businessmen wouldn’t free money is free money. I mean, that’s not my goal. But if it’s if it’s a windfall, it’s a windfall. But going back to what you said a minute ago, I read in The New York Times that 8000 solar projects waiting to be connected to the grid, and they may very well be 24,000 this year. But the problem is that connecting those to the grid is a nightmare because they fluctuate so much during the day, which is why you need the batteries. Right. So we think that when we get our battery ready to go and it is profitable and it is cheap, that we can start connecting those guys. I mean, that’s a that’s a hypergrowth strategy right there. Right.
Stuart Turley [00:17:59] If I if I was Elon and I think I’m better looking than Elon, so case is better. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I’m a legend in my own mind. But, you know, if we sit back and kind of go, if we had the money, you and I could just pull the trigger, it would still take you a while because of the regulatory process in building the plants. Correct.
Tim Kaelin [00:18:24] Yes. Fortunately, we have on our board of advisors the best attorney in the country, in my opinion. Nice. Yes, she is. She was involved in every solar energy or solar farm in Nevada over the past few years. And she’s an expert on the regulatory environment and the interface to California. And she’s going to be our guide in that. So what we’re hoping is that the regulatory rules that apply to solar farms will accommodate a battery solution on the same premises because it really is kind of the same thing. Yeah.
Stuart Turley [00:19:02] It is. And you know, why have the renewable energy if it’s not fiscally sustainable or in Texas, you know, Texas is the number one wind producer in and also oil and gas. Our energy is half of California and half of New York. And yeah, let’s use everything We got nuclear coal, we got natural gas. Doesn’t matter to me. I’m I am energy agnostic as long as it has that little box.
Tim Kaelin [00:19:37] Yeah. And you should be. I mean, there’s there’s no reason not to be. You know, one of the things that we’re we’ve been looking at in the in our white paper are the projections. And there’s a radical shift between projections in 2013 and 2021 because 20 2013, the projections are a much higher level of worldwide consumption of energy and a much higher concern assumption of coal. The 2021 projections, which I consider to be wishful thinking, shows. Well, first of all, the world’s total world consumption is less for some reason, and it shows coal decreasing until 2050. It’s like, well, there’s nothing in the world that is indicating that coal will decrease. Battery China just announced that they’re putting in 100, 100 gigawatts of new coal energy or new coal fired plants.
Stuart Turley [00:20:30] 303 300 plants. It is already permitted. That is already permitted, and they’re putting in more.
Tim Kaelin [00:20:39] And more to come. Exactly. So so they’re not going to make their net zero promises and probably nobody else is. And now think about what happens if we try to impose net zero on the developing world. They’re going to look at us kind of funny and they’re going to say, well, you’ve had the opportunity to build your economy based on cheap energy and you want us to put up with this crap? No, we’re going to go out and buy coal. We don’t care what you say. And by the way, if you try and impose this on us, we’re going to go to the other market between Russia and China and we’re going to do business with them. And screw you. You know, what are the what are the words energy apartheid?
Stuart Turley [00:21:20] Oh, I love it.
Tim Kaelin [00:21:21] I mean I mean, there are this is already happening. They’re going to rebel. They’re not going to hit. They’re not going to try to hit net zero unless renewable energy happens to be the cheapest source.
Stuart Turley [00:21:32] If you’ve been listening to my podcast, have you been listening to my blog? Yes. And just.
Tim Kaelin [00:21:37] Yes, yes, yes. Every day.
Stuart Turley [00:21:39] Oh, yeah. Well, I just I just releasing the stamp is getting ready to release my interview with the secretary general of the African Petroleum Producers Organization. It’s the OPEC of Africa. There are 18 different countries in it, and they’re fed up. And they are fed up. And I mean, it just be and they should be. I am I want our platform to really go after this and let people know that Africans deserve to use their resources. And and this should be something that we’d be fantastic to spin up and then get over to Africa on this kind of a thing. But, you know, you know.
Tim Kaelin [00:22:28] I was sitting in one of the Financial Policy Council’s council’s events a few years ago when this actually hit me and the event was about storage and it was talking about storage of energy storage, data storage of other things. And I think and it occurred to me at that point, you always store things that are valuable if your story energy, that is a form of currency, that is well, that is something that’s valuable and that applies across the table and, and it’s very, very inflation resistant. This energy.
Stuart Turley [00:23:03] There is no GDP growth without a growth in energy just doesn’t happen.
Tim Kaelin [00:23:09] Yeah, and George commented on that all the time. I mean, there’s a very direct correlation between economic growth and and energy use and now wants to go backwards. And why would you want to know and.
Stuart Turley [00:23:23] It is fairly disgusting that we take energy for granted. I mean, people run over to the wall and they think it’s going to work all the time. Right. It’s not so. Okay. I’m getting really excited about getting to watch your ear event coming around the corner in New York. What day is it?
Tim Kaelin [00:23:46] It is November the ninth. That is a Thursday.
Stuart Turley [00:23:49] Okay. And in person or on online?
Tim Kaelin [00:23:52] It is in person.
Stuart Turley [00:23:54] In person. Great.
Tim Kaelin [00:23:55] It’s at the pen Club. Okay. And. And in Midtown New York. In the charter room.
Stuart Turley [00:24:05] And what time does it start?
Tim Kaelin [00:24:07] It starts at 6:00 for networking, and 7:00 is the actual panel of that.
Stuart Turley [00:24:13] You know what? We ought to do a live podcast right beforehand. Tee it up.
Tim Kaelin [00:24:18] Yeah. Oh, we could do that.
Stuart Turley [00:24:21] Yeah, that’d be kind of a.
Tim Kaelin [00:24:22] Problem doing that. We could do that from on site. Oh, the. The pen club has, like, nice, really nice conference room. So we could. We’ve done that before. I actually did a podcast a couple of events ago and one of the, one of the conference rooms we can get in there and mark the hell out of it.
Stuart Turley [00:24:42] Oh, I think it’d be volunteers. Let’s get that on the books. And if anybody is going to register, I’ll have the link that you sent me to hop into that. Is that.
Tim Kaelin [00:24:53] Okay? Yes. Yes, that should be fine. All right. That is it.
Stuart Turley [00:24:57] Okay, Van. Well, thank you so much. And I cannot wait to get this. I’m going to have the staff run this out as soon as we can and see if we can get that in there. And I just can’t wait to visit with you and George and and everybody else again, because quite honestly, you’re hitting all the hot buttons and, you know, give well a shout out and I’m going to give him a shout out and I can’t wait to have him on the podcast as well, too. So.
Tim Kaelin [00:25:25] Sounds great.
Stuart Turley [00:25:26] Okay, thanks. We’ll talk to you soon.
Tim Kaelin [00:25:28] All right. Thanks a lot. My pleasure.A