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Podcast With Moment Energy: Revolutionizing EV Battery Life
68 Plays1 year ago
Explore Moment Energy, led by co-founder and CEO Edward Chiang, as its revolutionizing EV battery life. Batteries are transformed into reliable, eco-friendly, and affordable battery energy storage systems (BESS). In this interview, we talk about the history of the company, the difficulties associated with disposing of electric car batteries, and the complexities of recycling lithium.
🕑 KEY MOMENTS
==================
➜ [00:01:08] The importance of repurposing or recycling lithium batteries
➜ [00:01:53] Supply constraint and opportunity in the EV batteries
➜ [00:04:14] Safety and certifications in EV battery deployment
➜ [00:10:39] Second life EV battery projects
➜ [00:12:10] The importance of collaboration with automakers
➜ [00:14:44] Identifying and securing new projects
➜ [00:20:14] The importance of building a strong team
➜ [00:21:17] The slow adaptation of technology in cleantech
➜ [00:23:27] Finding genuine climate companies
📚 RESOURCES & LINKS
========================
- Website: https://www.momentenergy.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/momentenergy/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/moment_energy
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/momentenergy/
👉 Interview with Edward Chieng: https://www.npws.net/podcast/repurposing-ev-battery-life
🌍 SUSTAINABILITY PODCAST CREATED BY NEW PERSPECTIVE
========================
This podcast is proudly sponsored by New Perspective Marketing, a dynamic growth marketing agency in Boston, MA, celebrating 20 years in business. We help sustainably focused B2B organizations grow their brands and scale up revenue. If you or your organization is looking to grow, visit npws.com for more info.
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#cleanenergy #evbattery #evcharging #evs #sustainability
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Transcript
Podcast Introduction and Sponsor
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello fellow clean tech enthusiasts or professionals. You're watching another episode of the Green New Perspective, your go-to podcast, when you want to learn more about clean tech, major tech, biotech, and ag and tech industry. This episode is proudly sponsored by New Perspective, a next-gen marketing agency working with clean tech clients only. And if you want to learn more about our sponsor, please check out
00:00:23
Speaker
more details in the description of this video.
Meet Edward Chiang and Moment Energy
00:00:26
Speaker
So in this episode we are hosting Edward Chiang who is a co-founder of Moment Energy, a Canadian company that is giving retired EV batteries a second life. So in this episode we are going to talk about why repurposing or recycling lithium batteries is crucial rather than letting them add up in land tilts. So join us as we explore the implications for the automotive community and beyond.
The Need for Battery Repurposing
00:01:01
Speaker
So can you introduce yourself to our audience and then introduce your company Moment Energy and tell us more about your core mission. So I'm Eddie, or Edward, co-founder and CEO at Moment Energy. And what we do is we repurpose electric vehicle batteries into stationary energy storage.
00:01:18
Speaker
Started this company about four years ago now and we really were digging into the core problem of what happens to electric vehicle batteries at end of life. And what we found is majority of them unfortunately aren't properly disposed of because the cost of recycling is prohibitive for consumers as well as for automakers.
00:01:37
Speaker
So for us, our mission is to ensure that these batteries that often have 80% life left on average still can be repurposed for a station or storage application for 10, 15, 20 years. Ben, can you tell me more about the problems with batteries that we have at the moment?
Lithium Supply Constraints and Challenges
00:01:54
Speaker
Yeah, I mean in terms of the new lithium side, there's a huge supply constraint. What we're finding is that a lot of automakers are buying up all the lithium material because they're able to pay significantly more for each gram of lithium compared to stationary storage applications.
00:02:13
Speaker
So what we're finding is EV manufacturers, they're buying up all the materials, new stationary storage manufacturers, they don't have enough materials. But at the same time, at end of life, there's a copious amount of end of life EV batteries that aren't being recycled. So this really provides a huge opportunity where we can then use that end of life EV battery and serve that need for stationary storage.
00:02:38
Speaker
And when you founded your company, so what was the, let's say, the initial idea for your brand identity and how did it evolve throughout the years? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the initial portion of the brand identity was essentially through my time. I was living a little bit north of Canada, doing nuclear energy research for the federal government and what happened in 2018.
00:03:07
Speaker
What happened in 2018 was a tornado hit Ottawa, our capital. So we were a small town of a thousand people, a small town of PhDs. And what happened was Ottawa was out of power for four hours while we were out of power for an entire day, 24 hours. And having grown and been born in Vancouver in Canada, a bigger city, I've just never experienced something like that. Usually outages are only for maybe one or two hours maximum.
00:03:34
Speaker
So I started asking the locals and asked them, how often does this happen? That's over 24 hours. And they said, yeah, this is a short outage. Every year we experience outages for up to a week. And that was just very surprising to me because we were only two hours north of Ottawa, our capital. And in terms of what really started the company and the passion for me was if Canadians and Americans are facing this yearly.
00:03:59
Speaker
What's the rest of the world? And that's really why we started this company to ensure that all humans have access to clean and reliable energy. And where do you see the biggest challenges on the market?
Safety and Certification in Battery Deployment
00:04:12
Speaker
The two things, same company, yeah.
00:04:14
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, in terms of the markets, what we're finding is just making sure that batteries are deployed safely. While we're seeing even in new lithium companies, we hear that, you know, people are just deploying projects because it is, you know, a way to make money. And a lot of people are not as genuine and they're just deploying energy storage, new lithium, new chemistry batteries and whatnot. But they're not really putting so much effort into the safety and
00:04:44
Speaker
the certifications were hard to deploy safe batteries. And that's exactly our focus at Moment Energy. These batteries that we're repurposing from EVs have gone through all the safety certifications of a vehicle, which is really stringent. Because ideally, these batteries are still safe, even if you crash them into a wall at 200 kilometers an hour. Now, ensuring that that safe process from the automotive perspective is now brought into the stationary storage perspective is very important to us.
00:05:11
Speaker
Um, so our focus over the past, uh, four years is to ensure that we create the safest systems in the industry. Can you, can you explain for our audiences who don't know much about leaking batteries? What's the actual problem with that? What, you know, because Lydium is often talked about as like a miracle solution to climate change. So what do you need to do with Lydium? Yeah.
00:05:33
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. And that's why we're repurposing. The whole problem with lithium is typically the lithium material is mined by huge conglomerates. And no matter if it's Tesla, Apple, or whatever company, they all say that they're mining their batteries sustainably. But in reality, they all get their batteries by this one or two mining companies.
00:05:57
Speaker
I mean, mining can never be totally sustainable. So yeah, exactly. Something we have to say, not just for delirium. Totally. And especially within lithium batteries, there's terrible, terrible mining practices happening in the Congo, for example. And, you know, human lives are being put at stake there. And that's really why our customers are really interested in Second Life batteries, because they've gone through the process. And now, you know, rather than just throwing these batteries away on one end or
00:06:25
Speaker
rather than mining and refining new lithium material for the stationary storage application, why don't we just take batteries that have already gone through that so that we don't need to mine new lithium for stationary storage? So it's significantly more environmentally on the GHG side, environmentally friendly, as well as socially, not requiring the hugely negative mining practices that are happening in Africa to grow.
00:06:51
Speaker
And how do you market yourself to distinguish from another competitors in the market? Yeah, safety. So yeah, what's been really amazing is end of September, we actually became the first and only company in North America with UL certification.
00:07:09
Speaker
UL certification stands for Underwriters Laboratory Certification here in North America. And you need the certification to, one, prove the safest solution, that you can then commercially deploy projects. And for us, we've been commercially deploying projects for a lot of off-grid communities where they're very diesel dependent, reducing their diesel consumption by 70% for four years now. And now, when we're going on-grid, that requires these certifications, we essentially are the only company that has a certification to prove that we are the safest.
00:07:38
Speaker
while other companies essentially have not. They've been deploying projects that are not certified on-grid. And what that does is that endangers your customers. If, you know, knock on wood, if there's ever a fire event, that entire building is uninsured. So that customer is being put in major environmental and safety risk as well. So for us, our differentiator is ensuring that on the technology side,
00:08:00
Speaker
We are the safest, so we have our own proprietary technology to keep batteries safe called the battery management system, electrical systems, hardware systems for fire propagation, all the way to getting a third body reviewer to come in and ensure that we are the safest. And do you feel like you need to educate both the general public and then the potential investor and potential future clients about all the implications you've mentioned about the dangers of lithium and then recycling of batteries?
00:08:30
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. A lot of the education on the consumer side, as well as the governmental side, is what typically happens to these EV batteries. A lot of governments don't realize what's happening. For example, the US Department of Energy have internal studies showing that even after all of the billions of dollars investment they put into recycling,
00:08:51
Speaker
Still, recycling is only looking to capture about 7% of all end-of-life EV batteries, which means 93% of all end-of-life EV batteries. Where are they going to go? Are they going to go into landfills? Hopefully not, right? So that's why there needs to be more recyclers, needs to be more Second Life companies repurposing the batteries over 20 years to ensure these batteries aren't ending up in landfills.
00:09:10
Speaker
But at the same time, that's why we started this company. We started this company because we talked to local consumers who had electric vehicles. And we asked them, hey, your vehicles reached end of life. So what does your dealership tell you to do with the batteries? What does the automaker say? And the automaker says, yeah, send it to your recycler. And then they go take it to the local recycler. And the recycler says, sure, I'll charge you $2,000, $3,000, $4,000 just to recycle your electric vehicle battery. And these prices are prices that consumers can't pay.
00:09:40
Speaker
Ultimately, what we found is in countries like in China, as well as half of all European Union countries, which is great, they've mandated by law about five years ago that all batteries have to be either repurposed or recycled. And it's the automaker's responsibility, which is much better for the entire market because automakers can afford it. They just don't want to. And they are the ones that should be responsible for all end of life EV batteries.
00:10:05
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, and other consumers, that's for sure, yeah. Because that way, I mean, it's not really, you don't know if it's going to get recycled and that should be mandatory, yes. So you had a big collaboration with Mercedes-Benz Energy.
Collaboration with Mercedes-Benz
00:10:20
Speaker
So can you tell me what does that collaboration means for you? And collaboration with bigger companies like
00:10:27
Speaker
How come that collaboration actually, what kind of impact it has on smaller producers, smaller companies, smaller startups within the plaintext space?
00:10:39
Speaker
Yeah, I'll start off by talking about what the automakers think about this whole process. So automakers like Mercedes, Nissan, a lot of the other automakers like Renault, they've actually deployed second life EV battery projects before. They did it about, let's say five years ago, it was the timeframe. And what they really saw was there's amazing value because there's still 80% life left after you're done driving these electric vehicles for 10 to 15 years.
00:11:05
Speaker
But secondly is they also realized, OK, building and designing stationary storage is completely different from creating electric vehicle. So instead, since the laws are forcing us to disassemble our battery packs, either send them to recyclers or send it to a repurposer, let's just stop there. We'll be the supplier of the batteries. And then we're going to partner with companies, like Moment Energy, to ensure that their batteries are repurposed. And that relationship between us and Mercedes, but at this point, we work with every single automaker
00:11:36
Speaker
other than the Chinese automakers as of right now, on R&D or on supply chain processes for, yeah, over the past four years now. And it's a very symbiotic relationship there. We ensure that they are fulfilling the legal requirements and the environmental requirements that their batteries are not being thrown away, but instead are being repurposed. And then after we repurpose, we ensure that our batteries are recycled.
00:12:03
Speaker
And at the same time, they are happy to essentially co-develop on projects. We co-develop on R&D and they help us with a lot of R&D of our own battery systems as well to ensure that we can integrate their electric vehicle batteries. And do you feel that this kind of collaboration means a lot for your brand positioning, for your future collaborations? Is it something that you would definitely recommend for other companies, not just like yours, but all over the clean tech space? Yeah, absolutely.
00:12:33
Speaker
So for us, it's a little bit more interesting. The reason why we became the first and only company in North America with UL certification is because we had these relationships. A lot of these certifications actually require, for example, in our industries, certain data sheets on how these batteries were manufactured even before they entered the electric vehicle. So in those cases, it's actually impossible to get certification without working directly with that automaker.
00:13:01
Speaker
which is what our competitors did. And that's why they've been trying for three plus years and they still have a minimum to get the certification. But for us, we were able to do it. So working directly with the big corporations is helpful. And as long as you know how to navigate it as a partnership rather than, you know, you feeling like you become a subsidiary of a big corporation.
Growth through Seed Funding
00:13:21
Speaker
Yeah, that's true. You also raised the significant seed funding recently. So how does this funding contribute to your company's growth and development as well?
00:13:33
Speaker
I mean, pretty massively, right? For us, that's why we're one of the only Second Life companies that have developed and deployed so many projects. We have seven projects online in the field. They're customer sites. They're not pilot projects. Our systems have to work. Unlike other Second Life companies where they hadn't risen enough, so then they're kind of just pilot projects in their own backyard, all the way to developing those strong relationships with the automakers and their partners. If you're a small startup that hasn't risen any money,
00:14:01
Speaker
then you could disappear at any moment. But by raising substantial enough capital, for example, for us, we have 10 million. We're in talks right now for another 50 right now with the US government as well as investors. That ensures that you're one company that's not going to just disappear tomorrow. That's why the automakers are so reluctant to work with other of our Second Life competitors.
00:14:27
Speaker
all the way to safety and having enough R&D funding to ensure that your systems are safe, which again is something that a lot of other companies are lacking. And you mentioned you have seven active projects at the moment, so how do you identify and secure new projects?
00:14:45
Speaker
Yeah. For us, again, we treat these as sales, like a lot of startups and clean tech, especially, you know, you can get caught up very easily by pilot projects, right? They do one pilot project and they think, okay, great. Now it's going to be commercial. And then some, for some reason, something doesn't really work out. And then they think, maybe I'll do a second pilot project at a different site and think, and it just becomes a little too like, yeah, pilot projects. Yeah.
00:15:09
Speaker
Yeah, and the goal here is really, yeah, maybe you can do one-pilot project, but at the moment, we just took the philosophy of just commercial. Your very first project has to be commercial. You have to not just be deploying projects at a laboratory or in your backyard. You have to be deploying it at a customer site and making sure that your product is serving a customer need.
00:15:28
Speaker
In the end, I think, especially with a lot of climate becoming more hyped and more and more funding kind of everywhere for climate, it's easy for a lot of researcher types who just start developing product because it's a cool product. And honestly, it is a cool technology, but ultimately, you're creating business now.
00:15:45
Speaker
And you can create a business if you're not customer-centric. So that's really what we focused on. And taking it as almost sales, we send out our sales team. We make sure that we are listening to our customers. The customers tell us, hey, moment, we really need these characteristics. And then we add those characteristics into our battery systems to ensure we're serving a need, not a want.
00:16:08
Speaker
And do you have some future projects that you're excited about that you can share with us
Future Projects and Innovations
00:16:13
Speaker
here? Absolutely. So we actually have four projects that we're super excited about. One of them, which is at Vancouver International Airport. So here in Canada, we're actually going to be deploying our systems for EV charging. And the reason is, yeah, it's really exciting.
00:16:31
Speaker
The reasoning is because they've transitioned all the vehicles to electric for the airport. Now the problem is all the charging infrastructure is on the ground side, not on the airport side or the air side. So now what they really want is a shipping container that's portable.
00:16:46
Speaker
We have batteries inside it. We have a charger inside it, maybe even some solar, and we'll put it right into the middle of the airfield. And if they want to move it, they can move it anywhere. So it's very portable EV charging. So they don't have to drive the vehicles onto the ground side. Instead, they keep it all in the air side.
00:17:01
Speaker
Um, second one is actually three, uh, uh, hospitals. So what we're doing is a lot of these hospitals, they have brownouts because these are hospitals. Um, we serve what we call the commercial industrial industry. So we don't power an entire city. We power buildings, uh, or neighborhoods.
00:17:19
Speaker
Within that industry, the major problem is the grid is very old. We hear that a lot, right? Because the grid's really old, as more and more customers are installing more solar, which actually puts load on the grid, also drawing more energy in general, they're using more energy, that puts all load on the grid. Unfortunately, those small pockets like neighborhoods or hospitals, they just black out, or they brown out is what we call it. And these hospitals have experienced a lot of brownouts recently.
00:17:49
Speaker
Thank you.
00:17:50
Speaker
So essentially it's like blackouts, but for like a couple, um, couple like hours. Okay. It doesn't last long. So yeah, it doesn't last super long. But the thing is, even if it's minutes, imagine lives are right. You have life sustaining equipment there. So that's really why I'm hard to have batteries. They have a diesel generator. The generator sometimes doesn't turn on all the time, right? It's not a hundred percent reliable. So having batteries plus a generator really helps with all these, uh, uh, life important systems as well.
00:18:21
Speaker
And what would you say that you're excited the most when you think about the future of the energy storage sector?
Scaling in the Energy Storage Sector
00:18:29
Speaker
Yeah. I think in terms of the entire energy storage sector, I think it's just the rate of scaling for all companies, not just moment energy, but for all companies. The demand is huge. Essentially, if you create an energy storage company with new lithium batteries, you can make a lot of money. And it's not just about money, though. For us, it's about
00:18:50
Speaker
making that tangible difference. That's why we're powering homes, empowering communities, empowering buildings, rather than powering entire city. So we think that powering a little bit smaller, like 10 homes is still pretty big, but a little bit smaller applications is where the impact to human to human impact is. But really, there's so much demand that you can create utility scale or residential scale energy storage, and you can make a lot of money and create a lot of positive social environmental impact.
00:19:19
Speaker
But the key is just, can we scale fast enough? Can we build and manufacture fast enough? Which is why already we've been working with the US Treasury and Department of Energy where we're building the first Second Life Gigafactory over the next couple of years. So in other words, manufacturing over one gigawatt hour of stationary energy storage per year. And we're super excited about just trying to serve the demand when utilizing Second Life batteries.
00:19:44
Speaker
And for other entrepreneurs who are facing similar challenges that you just mentioned, what advice would you give them based on your personal experience with your company?
Advice for Clean Tech Entrepreneurs
00:19:58
Speaker
I think in all, in clean tech especially, it's very capital intensive.
00:20:05
Speaker
Even the software side, there are clean tech companies that have pure software. You need hardware to upload your software into solar or wind or batteries. So in the end, everybody here in clean tech is going to be working with infrastructure and energy. And I think the typical thing is, do not underestimate that aspect. Even if you feel like you're building a pure software company, you're more or less going to have to work with some hardware. And building that really strong team that's done it before,
00:20:31
Speaker
Is the number one key like a moment what we always say is hiring and building the best team in the world is the most important part it doesn't matter if you know they're genius at their craft but if they're just not genuine people and they don't care about the environment they're just here for you know their own selfish reasons maybe they're mean to other people as well and they're not kind.
00:20:52
Speaker
Those are the people that you do not want to build a company around because when you're in clean tech, this is a marathon. It's not a sprint. You need a strong team that can perform well over a long period of time. Maybe genius individuals that can help you perform in a short amount of time really quickly, but then the team falls apart because you didn't hire genuine people that care about the mission.
00:21:17
Speaker
I think it's also about the expectations. Like you said, it's a long run. Maybe some people want to see results really fast, and that's just ain't going to happen within the clean tech space. The adaptation of technology is slower. Then what's going on with other technologies who are not focused on resolving some problem issues with climate change. So yeah, I think that's another aspect that we could mention here. Sorry for interrupting you.
00:21:48
Speaker
Can you tell me where can people reach out to you on socials, on your website, if they're interested to learn more about your technology, about your team, about your company? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, so you can reach us at our main website, which is momentoenergy.com. As well, we do have socials, Moment Energy on Instagram as well as Facebook and LinkedIn as well. For LinkedIn, we love to hire, we're always hiring.
00:22:16
Speaker
We grew the team from four people to 40 in just three to four years. And now we're just constantly looking to hire all the way up to 200. And then for projects, that's the website. And then to see our amazing culture, we love hanging out together.
00:22:34
Speaker
It's important to embrace climate as an entire team and work together and just see how much fun we're having while we're trying to solve this climate catastrophe. You can find us on Instagram there as well.
00:22:48
Speaker
Great. I have to share. I had a conversation with Tello. That's a company that's producing electric trucks. And they use Discord. And they created a group there. So they basically created a community of people who are interested in their products, where they can share their experiences. It's kind of, well, for me, Discord is a bit more intimate way of communication. So that's something that you can maybe think about.
00:23:16
Speaker
My impression was that you want to hear feedback from the people.
00:23:22
Speaker
Totally, yeah. There are also a lot of really cool Slack groups that cost more effort for climate, which is great. I think that's really what's awesome about climate in general. It's very hard to find climate companies that are disingenuous, right? In the end, we're all in climate, not for the money. We're kind of here to solve this major problem, right? If we wanted to make lots of money in a short amount of time, we could have created some software in tech company. But instead, we're all in climate.
00:23:49
Speaker
for solar, for wind, for batteries, because we just want to ensure that this world stays clean. Well, I'm really feeling hopeful when I meet people like you, so keep up the good work. And thank you again for being our guest here. Thank you so much for having me.
00:24:17
Speaker
So yes, your guests will help. This marks the end of another episode of the Green New Perspective podcast. And I really hope you enjoyed the conversation with Edward Chiang, co-founder of Moment Energy. If you want to stay in touch with innovations happening within clean technology tech biotech, agri tech space, you know what to do. Subscribe to our channel. Until next episode. Bye.