Episode 6 – Sustainability Down Under: Accelerating Adoption Through Education

Kevin Sturmer 0:00
Coming up on Leading the Charge.

Sandra Brodie 0:02
Inevitably, it needs to make financial sense. So when we can show that not only are we reducing emissions through this technology compared to alternatives, but that it’s also going to save you money or it’s going to get your project online faster if you’ve got a grid constraint, it’s kind of a no brainer.

Kevin Sturmer 0:19
This is Leading the Charge where we talk innovation and insights in the industry of sustainable energy. Leading the charge is brought to you by POWR2 a global provider of energy storage solutions. Let’s simplify sustainability. And now from the POWR2 and broadcasting everywhere from LeadingTheCharge.io. Here are your hosts, Tim Doling and Kevin Sturmer. Welcome to Leading the Charge where we talk battery energy storage, insights, innovation and the industry of sustainable energy. My name is Kevin and I work in the marketing department of a company called POWR2 with us, as always, is our incredible co host, Tim doling, he is the Director of Innovation here at POWR2, Tim, how are you doing?

Tim Doling 1:03
Doing great, yeah, really excited. It’s always a privilege to have some guests, especially guests from Australia on the phone. So really happy to get into this one.

Kevin Sturmer 1:10
So today we are taking a deep dive into the business side of sustainable energy. And we are lucky enough to be joined by two of the three co founders of a company called Powershift technologies. So Damien Glanville, CEO, and Sandra Brodie, the Chief Operating Officer, welcome to leading the charge. It’s great to have you here.

Sandra Brodie 1:30
Thanks, Kevin. It’s great to be here.

Damien Glanville 1:31
Yeah. Thank you. On a cold Australian morning.

Kevin Sturmer 1:36
Appreciate the time difference. Yeah, let’s see the very warm end of our day here in summer. I believe it’s winter there for you, yeah?

Damien Glanville 1:43
Smack bang in the middle of it really.

Sandra Brodie 1:45
Yep.

Kevin Sturmer 1:45
Yeah. And then for those who may not know, Powershift is an Australian owned a clean tech company supporting industries to decarbonize through emission, free, transportable power solutions. Now, Tim already had met you in both in person. As I was doing some research for this episode, I was fascinated by the both of you, specifically, your unique individual paths that have led you to Powershift. So Damien, let’s start with you. You have this wonderful entrepreneurial drive that started at an early age, you worked in trucking, you were doing solar, as Tim mentioned, you were doing solar before it was cool. And then you started a company called Locality Planning Energy. And most people know that as LPE, leading up to Powershift. Can you just talk a little bit about that experience?

Damien Glanville 2:36
Yeah, so I suppose I call it following the breadcrumbs. When I was young, I just wanted to be in business and be self employed. So always looking for opportunities. And, you know, truck tracking was the exactly, I loved it. Actually, it was quite exciting. I got to drive some fairly big trucks compared to those little ones you have running around in America. But that was good. And it led me down energy through stock feed, well, buying waste feed and turning it into something that in a drought period. So then I thought, oh, maybe I’ll have a crack at solar. And, you know, ofs went into that direction, and then into solar farms, which weren’t trendy at the time, and then became an energy retailer. So in Australia, that’s we buy and sell electricity to mums and dads and I had a crack at that. And, and then from that, it was really, I was always looking for something new, and the grid energy grid in Australia was struggling like most grids around the world. And that’s what led me down the road of, there’s got to be a smarter way to deal with these solutions. And so when Sandra and I came together to investigate, how do we deploy large scale, utility scale batteries throughout Australia, and yeah, we just, again, just slightly naive and, you know, prepared to have a crack. And here we are.

Kevin Sturmer 3:49
It’s so interesting, because you said following the breadcrumbs yet, which sounds like it’s sort of this happenstance going here going there. But it’s very intentional. You’ve actually spent almost a decade and a half in sustainable energy or energy in some some level. So this is, you know, this Powershift seems like a nice next step. And Sandra, you’ve had also just this incredible career now you are the the Chief Operating Officer, but your experience comes with aerospace, and motorsports to mentorship. Something that caught my eye was your work with the mental and physical disabilities as well. Can you talk a little bit about those experiences and how those helped shape your career and perspective?

Sandra Brodie 4:34
Yeah, I’ve had a really interesting and varied career path, you could say. None of it really makes sense or fits together. But you end up finding yourselves yourself in these positions where all of the things you’ve learned along the way I support you with the current journey. So for me it has always been about following a new challenge, and really jumping into things where I could help myself to grow more as a person, both personally and professionally. So I’ve tended to follow opportunities similar to Damien in the sense of follow the breadcrumbs, whether that’s been professional opportunities that have arisen, or people that have inspired me, I’m very, very driven to work with people who can push me to become better or who I want to learn something from. So I’ve often sort of jumped to different industries, because I’ve met somebody who I thought was incredible and I wanted to work with or a cause that I felt was incredible and wanted to work with. So I’ve kind of reinvented myself many times over, through all the different industries that I’ve been in, they’ve all got a common thread of, I guess, pushing the boundaries through each of those industries, really focusing on growth and on innovation, which is really what excites me most about this opportunity in Powershift. So I had the opportunity to meet Damien, again, Damien was a person that inspired me through his own career journey. And as he says, just having a crack at something a little bit, naively bite off more than you can chew. And when we came together and looked at this particular opportunity, the thing that excited us both was the opportunity to innovate in this sector, and do something that others are doing differently. And that’s really what what has inspired me to start Powershift with Damien and our other co founder, Justin. And yeah, here we are trying to bring this technology into Australia and and do it differently here. And it’s such

Kevin Sturmer 6:31
a wonderful theme, it’s really comes down to the people you mentioned, it was you know, people connected, you hear people connected you their success in business is really about the people. Tim you were, we were doing an interview last week, and they said, “What makes your company unique?” and the first thing out of your mouth was our people. And that’s so important to have these people that you can rely on as you grow a business at any stage. I’m curious what what kind of brought you together specifically? And then what led to the idea of Powershift, like what was the state of the energy beyond sort of the declining energy grid, what was the state of the market there in the gaps that you specifically saw?

Damien Glanville 7:11
Look, most energy networks around the world, but not necessarily the physical, but even the energy markets like coming out of the COVID era, everything was starting to fail. And we we, Australian energy market had cooked itself and actually physically financially failed. So when we came through that, and at the end of that it was really about I needed a challenge, I needed to do something completely different. Not that I felt like I completely mastered the art of being an energy retailer. But I’ve felt after 10 years, it was time to look for challenge. And I met Sandra and a few years back, and she was looking for a challenge. And I said to her, Hey, I’ve got this, I’ve got this idea. We’ve got two two opportunities on the table. One of them is plastic bins to replace Bulka Bags. And the second one was utility scale, batteries transportable.

Tim Doling 8:03
Completely different ideas, then.

Damien Glanville 8:06
Completely different. I’m obsessed obsessed with trucks still too. So I was thinking, how can I get a truck involved in my next business venture? And so we went down this journey, and we looked at both. And I said to Sandra, hey, let’s just research this. And you know, suppose Sandra, that’s we you dived in the deep end and had a look at it.

Sandra Brodie 8:26
Yeah. So we spent well, with the options of bins or batteries, we chose batteries. more compelling Yeah. And then we spent a good 12 months doing a deep dive into this opportunity before we started the company. So we flew all around the world to Europe, and America, obviously met you guys over there as well. And we spoke to many, many people across the industry in Australia to understand where the gaps were and where the opportunity was before we decided to launch the company. And I guess what we realized through that process is that there is a huge opportunity to make an impact here in Australia, what we were seeing in the European market in particular was almost like looking ahead to you know what is to come in the next five or six years because the European market is ahead of us here. So we took a lot of lesson lessons from what they were doing there and brought them back to Australia. And then part of our search was in finding the right partners from a technology perspective, because we didn’t want to, you know, reinvent the wheel and manufacture our own batteries or bring those components together. So I guess that’s obviously where power two came in. After looking at many different suppliers across the world, we chose you guys both in terms of the strength of the technology and capability you bring, but also your people, as you mentioned previously, so when we came out and met the team, we were really impressed by the capability there by the leadership team, by all the staff that we We met and we vetted the project the the technology really deeply, and decided to bring all of those elements together to bring the POWR2 product into Australia. So yeah, we did a lot of legwork in finding the gaps and figuring out where our sweet spot was and chose the POWR2 POWRBANK MAX is our first product that we’re bringing into the Australian market.

Tim Doling 10:23
That’s fantastic. So in your travels, Sandra, around the world, did you see any country that was you mentioned Europe, but any country as a clear leader in this type of technology?

Sandra Brodie 10:33
Yeah, from our perspective, we spent quite a lot of time in the Netherlands. Through through my research, we uncovered a few companies over there that had been in the space for five or six years, which, as you guys would know, in the MBESS space is, is old. So we’d seen a lot of companies over there that had been deploying mobile battery technology of the size and scale that we were interested in and across sort of similar industries, and took a lot of lessons from from those guys over there. And I think the Netherlands is well ahead. They’ve obviously now even got marketplaces where, you know, people that are looking for battery solutions can find can be connected with battery technology that’s available. So from our perspective, that’s where we would see the Australian market eventually maturing, too. But we’ve got a long way to go to get there.

Tim Doling 11:29
Do you think they’ll be quicker though the Australian market because it’s now proven technology, other countries have forged that path. So the technology is proven the products fit and ready for the market? So you’d think adoption could be quicker?

Sandra Brodie 11:43
Yeah, absolutely. And I think obviously, that’s our part of our mission is that’s what we want to lead here. And I think through finding the right technology, so yes, the technology has matured, and through companies like yours. However, in Australia, there’s there’s not a large penetration of that sort of size, scale quality of technology. But also in the applications that we’re looking at. There are some fairly, I guess, new areas that we’re delving into here. But what we’re aiming to achieve is to do it differently, to innovate and to bring that technology into new kind of market segments over here so that we can lead the way in maturing the market in Australia.

Damien Glanville 12:24
it’s a funny, Australia’s a funny place. Like, it stems back from colonialism I suppose, where we don’t like doing what other people do. So we don’t like copying or benchmarking. We like to reinvent the wheel. And it’s a bit of that stupidity that Australians have attracted over time. So we love a smartphone, we’ll adopt as quick as smartphone that’s available when it comes to other technology, we lag a bit. So it’s a bit of force feeding at the moment. But yeah, look, I think this will come a lot quicker. You know, this decarbonisation race is pretty well much a motivator to do it. But we talk about this all the time. And as much as we all love, sustainability, and, and we, as I say we’re not tree huggers. But what we do believe in is smart technology and innovation. And if smart technology and innovation can actually achieve an outcome and stack up on its own without government subsidies or government grants, that’s really where you want to be. Because you know you can force change and it makes sense. Now, this isn’t about always being cheaper. This is all about you can reduce carbon and not actually cost you any more money. So there are angles that we’re pushing. So

Tim Doling 13:31
Yes, good. So it’s the solution to make sense is reliable, and it could potentially save money. You mentioned government subsidies. Is there not any subsidies in Australia? Or you’re just not relying on that in your business modeling?

Sandra Brodie 13:45
Yeah, we’re not I mean, there’s definitely funding in Australia from a broader perspective, both nationally and state based in battery technology, and actually Australia’s kind of one of the leaders in that space. They’ve invested billions of dollars in it. However, from our perspective, it’s not a commercially viable business model, if you’re reliant on that technology. And I think what we’ve seen, as Damien said, in being in this technology being practical, smart, cost effective, it actually doesn’t matter what the government policy of the day is, because there’s always going to be an opportunity. So the grid will always have constraints for as you know, as far as as the near future holds. And there will always be, you know, a large number, at least for the near term future, a large number of diesel generators operating out there, whether you have, you know, policy that supports that or not. So, I think from our point of view, it’s great to have policy and funding initiatives that support it because everyone in industry gets behind it, but we’re certainly not reliant on that at all.

Tim Doling 14:50
Yeah, no, that makes perfect sense. We’re exactly the same boat because you can have a change of government and they can roll back all the regulations or incentives that we’ve put in place by the previous government. So it’s just not a good business strategy, it’s much more about making it make sense identifying opportunities where the customer is gonna see some real benefit from it.

Sandra Brodie 15:08
Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, all the business cases that we’ve done for customers that we’re working with at the moment, they all make financial sense. So it’s obviously as Damien said, ticks the decarbonisation box, and sometimes that’s the topic that opens the door to a conversation. But of course, inevitably, it needs to make financial sense. So when we can show that not only are we reducing emissions through this technology compared to alternatives, but that it’s also going to save you money, or it’s going to get your project online faster. If you’ve got a grid constraint, it’s kind of a no brainer.

Tim Doling 15:45
So speaking into that. Do you have some modeling tools that you use with your clients to prove out to them ahead of time that it’s going to make sense? Or how do you handle that type of thing?

Damien Glanville 15:56
Well, outside the two models you got on screen now?

Tim Doling 16:00
Well, those are the most important ones, of course.

Sandra Brodie 16:04
Yeah, yes.

Damien Glanville 16:06
Pete’s done a great job of that, hasn’t he?

Sandra Brodie 16:08
Yeah. So we we do we’ve got a quite a comprehensive tool that our electrical engineer has built for us. So Pete, that we brought into the team, again, going back to unique people, he’s actually from an aerospace, background, and avionics, so very intelligent human. And, obviously leveraging off some of the the information from you guys on the product. But we’ve built our own kind of custom tool. And our process is that every time we speak to a customer, we gather an amount of data from them, we plug it into the tool, and then we do some modeling to show them what the expected results are. So how the battery will support them in their particular application, and then what the cost savings, CO2 emission savings are going to be through that process. So I think again, that means that they’ve got something concrete in front of them that will show them what the potential benefits are.

Tim Doling 17:05
That’s awesome.

Damien Glanville 17:06
When it comes to grid support, or you know, in Australia, we call them Distribution Network Service Providers DNSPs, you can’t quantify the value, you’re going to save those particular organizations, because they might be trying to put in a bigger pipe, for example, to move more energy, whereas this battery could actually save them on their capital infrastructure costs by, or delay it a period of time that enables them to shuffle where they spend their money. So you can’t really go to them and quantify what their value is. But they know themselves that by putting a few few of your batteries on the grid, they can, you know, save millions of dollars in just pushing out some capital works or a substation upgrade or something like that. So from that perspective, it’s hard to quantify the value to them, but they see and understand the value to them. And I think what’s become quite evident is having the flexibility to move assets like this around to support their grid is really going to be a big part of that transition to all renewable energy in the Australian market.

Kevin Sturmer 18:06
Yeah, it’s, it’s about the temporary, scalable, reliable power that people can count on. There’s a lot of different use cases, everything from construction to mining, to even backing up large scale data centers if need be. And it sounds like there are some partnership approaches that you have, we have a partnership approach here, because it is so new to a lot of customers, and maybe they really want to take that transition to sustainable energy, they have some sustainable energy goals, but they’re not quite sure where to start. And they really do need that that partnership. And again, it comes back to the people. Is that what you’re finding over there as well?

Sandra Brodie 18:45
Do you mean in terms of partnership with industry,

Kevin Sturmer 18:48
Partnership with industries, people, you know, regardless of what company they’re in, they’re looking for a guide?

Sandra Brodie 18:55
Yes, yes. Yeah, absolutely. And I think one of our kind of key pillars is to provide service excellence through what we do. So we’ve chosen to go to market in Australia, and we also have the New Zealand and Pacific islands territories, via we call it a leasing model, but it’s rental, hire whatever you want to whatever term you want to use for it. Part of the reason we’ve chosen to do that is because we really believe in supporting customers through the process of deploying this technology. It is still quite new for some people to wrap their heads around what water not necessarily what a battery is, but a mobile battery and through the applications that were you know, suggesting that it’s used in where it can be most useful. So what we found is that in Australia, in particular, a lot of our customer base, the only options they have is to purchase even a mobile battery technology, there aren’t a lot of options to to hire them particularly from a long term basis. So we aim to support the customer or all the way through the process of, as we mentioned before analyzing their data, proposing the right solution, deploying it on site for them, and then training their team and supporting them all the way through the rental process so that they get the best out of that technology. So I guess that’s the way that we’re partnering with our customers through that process, because the last thing we want to do is deploy technology that they have to learn how to use on their own, or that they don’t know how to use properly to get the outcome that they’re expecting to get. So that’s something that’s really, really important to us to help our customers succeed.

Damien Glanville 20:36
And I suppose adding to that, another key part to that is that we can say a succession plan for these assets as they age. We know that we can find subtree markets, you know, we might downgrade the asset, as it gets a bit long in the tooth to an egg or arbitrage on the energy market types of things we’re full capacities and required. So whereas they, you know, we can keep to move fresh refresh this asset, you’ll have a brand new battery every three to five years. And we can just push the battery down the food chain into a job that doesn’t demand that capacity.

Kevin Sturmer 21:07
To kind of get what you were seeing it before Damien, where do you see this going? Maybe in the next, you know, three, five or even 10 years.

Damien Glanville 21:14
You know, it’s an interesting conversation about where the energy transition comes from. But I think combustible engine is going to be around for a long time yet. I don’t think before we’re in the grave that they will be this though, have disappeared. So I think there’s a long journey for that smart technology. I honestly think we, we struggle with the transition to being smarter sometimes. And I think this product will just become a natural fit, I often use the analogy of it’s a car, when it comes to the set of traffic lights, the car turns off, because of that free spinning engine, it’s just wasting power. So I think the transition in that batch in supporting diesel generators, and that will always be a part of the world’s energy needs. And then I think the grid, you know, the more renewables you put into the grid, the more unstable that grid becomes. So the batteries will naturally play a part in that mechanism as well, because they can be seasonally moved around, and we look at agriculture in this country, and no different to yours. You know, it’s a big part of our, you know, I suppose revenue or government coffers, and there’s massive amounts of water, we move around the country. So I think that, again, will become smarter and how we farm and this technology, you look at the electrifying of machinery, you know, Volvo did an amazing job pulling out some, some technology to support that movement, you know, you’ve got John Deere that have got, you know, they’ll have driverless electric heaters running around in 2025, down under. So all of that requires an ability to charge. So I working in agriculture for a long, large part of my life, before I transitioned to energy, you know, instead of having a ute with a bit of diesel in the back that runs out of the header to fill it up, you’re gonna have a little truck with a battery in the back, that’s gonna run out to the, to the paddock to recharge the header. So I think, eventually, my goal is I hope we see that, you know, energy is you can move energy around as well, like at the moment, the assumption is energy’s through poles and wires. Whereas I think the evolution will be energy is in a battery, and you just take the battery to where the energy is required. So it’s a bit of a shift in how in over 100 years that we’ve consumed energy. So it’s a bit of a shift, but I feel like it’s, it’ll happen. We’re a bit a bit slow to the market, sometimes down under, but I think we’ll get it.

Sandra Brodie 23:33
Yeah, absolutely. And I think one of the beauties about a product, like the POWRBANK MAX that we’ve partnered with you guys on is is just how versatile that product is. We’re finding so many new applications for it on a daily basis. And I believe that’s just going to continue to grow over the next five or 10 years. And again, we’re also we have a range of other opportunities opening up outside of Australia, including in some remote islands in the Pacific Islands. Like there’s just so many different applications for this technology. And as Damien said, as people start to become more familiar with a bit more comfortable with that technology. It’ll just become the norm and it will support us through the decarbonisation journey and beyond.

Tim Doling 24:22
Is there any exciting of cool applications you’ve come across that you’re able to share or I don’t want you to obviously speak to anything that’s confidential here, but just be interested to hear?

Damien Glanville 24:34
Everything’s exciting and cool.

Sandra Brodie 24:35
Yeah, yeah, it is. Probably one of the customers that we’re working with on an island. That is a really interesting application, partially because of the remoteness of it, but also the pathway that opens up through this technology. So this particular island is operating completely from a diesel generator, they don’t have any other mechanism for generation of energy. So it’s supporting accommodation, a wastewater treatment facility, a whole bunch of things on the island. And through introducing a mobile battery, we’re able to, you know, cut down the amount of runtime and fuel on the on the generator, which sort of gives a cost neutral effect for the battery. But then importantly, their whole goal is to become a sustainable island. So it will enable them to also then install solar on their roofs out there and use the battery to, you know, store that energy and deploy it. So that’s really exciting, because that opportunity is never been something that’s open to that particular island, and what it presents as a pathway and then opening up other opportunities for whether they’re remote islands, or it’s accommodation facilities, you know, in tropical north Queensland or wherever it is, it’s a new, you know, a new opportunity for those particular applications that I think will open up a lot.

Damien Glanville 26:02
I think the key there is, you know, we’re enabling them to be smarter. So there’s two key things for me from that particular opportunity. Firstly, how they get fuel to that island is just a cake. And you know, we are in 2024, but they actually throw the drums or diesel off a barge into the ocean, then push them from the ocean onto the sand and roll them up the beach. Like, that’s amazing. Like, I just go, how can you not be worried about spills or damages, and this is in a very sensitive environmental area. And then secondly, the most important thing is, at the moment, they’re trying to create loads to run these diesel generators. So instead of being smart on how they consume their energy, they’re actually forcing energy load onto these generators to make sure they don’t glaze over or they don’t have issues with them. Because obviously energy has a, as a cycle throughout a day, or you know, it’s not consistent. So this technology gives them the ability to, to turn energy off. So go around and turn off the aircon. Yeah, be smarter with how they can use their energy. So not only does it reduce fuel and carbon from from running a generator, less, it actually reduces fuel and carbon because it’s enabling the island to become smarter and how they consume energy. And I think that’s exciting, because

Sandra Brodie 27:17
It’s exciting to us. And it’s exciting to them, because this is part of their goal of of how they’ve wanted to operate as a more sustainable islands. So being able to open up that opportunities. Were definitely achieving our mission through that. Yeah. 100%.

Tim Doling 27:31
That is exciting.

Damien Glanville 27:32
It is, it is. And I think that’s what this technology brings it brings you know, once upon a time this wasn’t accessible, it would have been too difficult to achieve that outcome. Yeah, arguably, it’s an in situ outcome. But, you know, your technologies enable, it’s gonna enable change, and it just takes someone to get out there and, you know, plant the seed and harvest that opportunity.

Tim Doling 27:55
Exactly.

Kevin Sturmer 27:56
The perfect people are in the right spot for this island, you know, you’ve got all that experience with solar, also all the experience with energy, and you’re handing over the right tools. And as solar becomes probably quicker in charging, that that will be definitely a solution. What’s coming up next for you at Powershift. I mean, what is it? Is it more, is it education than anything else?

Damien Glanville 28:19
Yeah, I think education is just a natural part of this journey, because people still look at you. It’s always when you tell them, It’s transportable, and you can move it around. So there is a journey for that. But for us, it’s like, you want to be everywhere at once. And it’s quite, it’s quite when you try to communicate to people, they look at you weirdly, or you know what I mean, trying to get people engaged. So education is really the key part of success, I think, and, you know, trying to drive that message out there. And you know, batteries have been around for a long time. So it’s not like, this is new technology. But the fact that you can move it is really where people look at you sideways. And you know, we’ve been slow to the markdown at some time. So it’s gonna be late to the party, occasionally.

Sandra Brodie 29:02
And I think, again, taking inspiration from what we’ve seen evolve over the last five or six years in Europe, in countries like the Netherlands, and seeing all of that sort of diversity of applications across different industries that we’ve not even imagined as yet. That’s really exciting. So we’re kind of starting, and we’re not even starting slow, I would say we’re kind of, you know, off the mark as quick as we can to have conversations across all parts of industry to find the best possible applications for this and that’ll only continue to grow. So we’re pretty excited to get the tech out in the market. And we’re sure that in a couple of years time you’ll be talking to us and hopefully we’ll have hundreds of batteries out there operating with different people.

Damien Glanville 29:51
We have a saying called “Activity equals outcome” and anyone that’s worked with me the more you’re active and at the moment You sometimes you feel like you come and go, What did you know that was a bit of a, you know, a bit of a kick in the a** day, it was depressing, but it’s activity, you just more and more yet you’re active and you’re out there trying to communicate or talk to people about the opportunity, it just keeps coming. And I think horizon, it’s the opportunity to share, it’s just to How hard are you prepared to work to achieve the outcome.

Kevin Sturmer 30:22
And it’s also it’s showing them that it works. You know, that those tangible examples, those those being able to point to a project that has been successful, it’s sort of like a parent feeding a child for the first time. And then you know, they take that first bite, and they say, oh, that’s where that goes. And they kind of figure that out. And this is going to be good for them in the long run. And that’s sort of how it is here that adoption will increase when people see success in other places.

Sandra Brodie 30:49
Yeah, and we’re finding do that will often go and speak with a customer. And we’ll start with an application or a couple of applications that we think will work best. And then as we talk with the customer, and we workshop, we ended up uncovering another 10 things that neither of us had thought of before. So it’s really exciting. And every customer that we speak to, is inspired by the technology as well. As Damien said, there’s a little bit of like, you can feel the cogs going because I haven’t thought about energy in this way before. But then inevitably, the week after, they’ll come back with a thought about 10 other things that we could do with the technology. So that gives us a lot of inspiration, in terms of where we’ll be in the next few years. That’s great to hear.

Kevin Sturmer 31:32
Any other questions, Tim?

Tim Doling 31:34
No, I’ve enjoyed this. I like some of Damien’s comments there. Activity equals outcomes and bite off more than you can chew and then chew like hell this, do you have any more of those, Damien?

Sandra Brodie 31:46
The other favorite one, yeah.

Damien Glanville 31:47
We were talking about this yesterday, we were thinking about what could be one that sort of simulates with the sales and we’re probably talking about the underachieving Buffalo Bills. Every year, they look like they’re a chance to, you know, to make the big GF, the grand final or the playoff

Tim Doling 32:05
Yep.

Damien Glanville 32:05
And they just perform and they die, I die. But I suppose when you got Patrick mahomes running around for the Nemesis there, it’s probably going to beat him every year. But

Tim Doling 32:14
it seems to be the way the way probably doing what he’s doing. He’s doing.

Damien Glanville 32:21
Really, but I think the key here is, it’s a great opportunity. You know, I think there’s, you know, your your vision. And, you know, the way you want to take this product is I suppose supports our ability when you know, we talk about this all the time, and there’s a company around the world called Thank You. And what they’re about is we listened to one of the founders speak a while back. And his argument is you only need to do 5% good and let 95% be done by other people let them do it really good. And then you can create this great model of achieving success. And and that’s where we’re at, we want to be good at our 5% which is finding the customers and deploying to the customers and working with you on that other 95, which is the you know, the brains and evolving of that technology and, you know, as and making it smarter, and possibly bigger. And when we say bigger, not bigger and footprint but bigger in output.

Tim Doling 33:17
Exactly. We’re excited for the partnership. And I think we can work together very well.

Kevin Sturmer 33:22
Yeah, well now, as we do with every episode, we do end by answering a question from our audience. And if you have a question that you would like to submit, you can send it to [email protected]. Now today’s question comes from Ken in California, Ken asks, What actions are needed to boost the adoption of solutions like the power back Max, which we’ve been talking about, and move us closer to that net zero globally?

Sandra Brodie 33:49
The first thing for me is education. And we’ve we’ve talked about that a lot. But it’s been a theme for us in speaking with customers and others across industries, the more that we can educate particularly through examples, but the more information that we can give to the market, the more comfortable they become with the technology and it opens up new opportunities. So I definitely think that that is something crucial.

Damien Glanville 34:15
And with that comes belief too I think what we need is from you know, your your sales channels is that massive belief in the product and and this is where the future is going. With that belief you have the strong will to actually force change. And this isn’t going to be easy, because you’ve got to convince people to change their habits here and habits could be from using less combustion fuel to adopting a battery to actually using less energy to adopt a battery. So I think, you know, humans don’t like change, it’s just it’s quite, it’s just obvious. That’s how we function. So you know, our job is to is to really educate and push change. And if we do that, people will adopt this technology faster. And I think this time Technology is still quite a long way ahead of any of the other renewable technologies that, you know, falling behind like hydrogen or something like that.

Sandra Brodie 35:08
Yeah, and I just want to add one other thing, too, is that in the same way that we were speaking about before, we’ve taken lessons from other parts of the world and doing that and showing others how it has been working, whether that’s in the US or in Europe, also, it’s it’s part of education, but it gives confidence that whilst it may be the first time that a customer is using it, in this particular way, in this country, they can take confidence in it has been deployed in these ways in other countries, and they can take confidence in a supplier like yourselves that have track record. So you put all of those things together, and then you sort of de risk that solution for the customer and it becomes a no brainer. Yep,

Damien Glanville 35:50
Listen and learn. It like your favorite sports in cricket, to get out.

Tim Doling 35:56
Talking about cricket, since the World Cups over we’re not going there.

Damien Glanville 36:01
That’s why we were talking about the Dutch.

Kevin Sturmer 36:07
Whatever platform you’re on, please hit the like button, the subscribe button, leave a review, do all those good things that you do. And if you want to learn more, we’ll have links to everything in the show notes. Where can people find you online, actually?

Sandra Brodie 36:20
We are at Powershift.tech is our website. And you can also follow Powershift on LinkedIn.

Kevin Sturmer 36:27
If you have any questions head over to LeadingTheCharge.io. And now our legal team wants me to say that any statements or views expressed by the hosts or guests I’m Leading the Charge are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or positions of POWR2 their partners or affiliates. And I just want to say a big thank you to Damien and Sandra and Tim, for being here and sharing so much insight.

Sandra Brodie 36:50
All right. Thank you.

Damien Glanville 36:52
Enjoy your evening.

Tim Doling 36:53
Thank you. Cheers you too. Thanks a lot.

Kevin Sturmer 36:55
And we know your time is valuable and appreciate you spending even a little bit of that time with us. So let’s simplify sustainability and keep leading the charge toward a world powered by sustainable energy. See you next time.

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