Beyond Lithium

🌉 What are the biggest fatal mistakes battery startups make? How do we close battery ecosystem gaps and collaborate domestically to compete with China? How is AI being used in batteries? What actions combat stereotypes and cultural barriers to enhance gender representation in the battery industry? For answers, host Nate Kirchhofer speaks with Dr. Sama Aghniaey , founder and president of The Batte...

🪨 What product is the cornerstone of the US economy, enabling workers to commute every single day? What is the real trick to a truly circular economy? And how is this all tied to the end of World War I? For answers, we turn to Roger Miksad, president and Executive Director of Battery Council International , in discussion with Nate Kirchhofer, CEO of BioZen Batteries. The rise of the electric star...

📈 Are Flow Batteries poised to break out in North America? How do AI and data centers compare to electric utilities in their priorities? What is FBNA and how can I attend? Kicking off Season 2 of Beyond Lithium , returning guest Russ Weed (President, CleanTech Strategies) sits down with Nate Kirchhofer (CEO, BioZen Batteries) to unpack how the policy winds have shifted, why private demand from da...

🚒🧯 What’s the best strategy to prevent future battery fires? What type of energy storage system (ESS) does the fire department think is best? How do we build safe energy storage systems? For answers, we turn to Doug Wilson—Senior Fire Plans Examiner for Scottsdale, AZ Fire Department—in conversation with BioZen Batteries’ CEO Nate Kirchhofer. You’ll hear about Doug’s 30+ year background in both...

🐳 Why doesn’t Nature store energy using metal? And what does it use? And how many kWh of energy per liter is stored in a Blue Whale?! For answers, we turn to the dynamic duo of Constantin Eis (CEO, CMBlu Energy AG—the mothership) & Giovanni Damato (President, CMBlu Energy, Inc.—the CA, US manufacturing subsidiary) who sit down (in person!) with BioZen’s CEO Nate Kirchhofer at RE+ in Anaheim,...

🧗‍♂️ What is Fourth Power’s Guinness World record? Can we make renewables just as dispatchable as fossil fuels? And how is a battery like a carabiner?! For answers, tune into this episode where Arvin Ganesan , CEO of Fourth Power , sits down to discuss the company's groundbreaking thermal battery technology and its role in the future of renewable energy with host Nate Kirchhofer, CEO of BioZen Ba...

🔋 What’s a 50 year old battery technology, made from abundant elements, with no risk of thermal runaway and no cycling degradation? Why was it originally targeted for EVs but now more for grid storage? What unique advantages does this decades-old technology bring to the table in today’s market? What do the utilities think? In this latest episode, our guest Ben Kaun, Chief Commercial Officer at In...

📊 What is impact , and how is it quantified? Why are 87% of clean energy projects severely delayed or failing? If current electricity consumption is 4000 TWh/year, what will it be in 2050 (hint: a lot more)? What is the biggest challenge in decarbonizing that increased demand? And what is BioZen's possible impact ? For answers, we're bringing back our guest from Episode 4, Dr. Daniel Howard, CEO...

🚀 “ It’s not rocket science ,” someone once told Mike Berger, Stryten Energy’s Director of Product Engineering. "Yes," he agreed. “ It’s probably even a little more complicated than rocket science because really it takes chemistry, electricity, materials, and electrochemistry .” Listen to this episode to understand what he’s talking about in discussion with BioZen’s CEO Nate Kirchhofer. Stryten E...

🏭 For the electric utilities, what is the most important metric for energy storage technology? What is the rule of 17%? What is dunkelflaute?! For answers, we turn to Kieran Claffey of Southern Company in discussion with BioZen's CEO Nate Kirchhofer. To add some weight to Kieran's opinion, consider that as of 2021, Southern Company is the second largest utility company in the US, serving 9 millio...

🐝 What is >100X more energy dense (33 kWh/kg) than Li-ion batteries (0.3kW/kg), and why is it so hard to store it at room temperature? What is a naturally-occurring gas that can be uniquely compressed into a non-toxic, non-flammable liquid at room temperature? And, how is beekeeping like energy storage cleantech?! To answer these questions, we're joined by Cullen Quine . He provides insights o...

🌡 What's the difference between a heat pump and a heat engine ? What is synchronous inertia ? What are the four horses pulling the chariot of a startup company? Why does a technology need its own sandbox? For answers, we're joined by Ben Bollinger , a career early-stage tech startup pro, PhD scientist, and currently VP of Strategic Initiatives at Malta Inc. —where they're working on molten salt th...

🚗 What is the most recycled product in the world, with 99.7% being collected into the recycling stream? Where does it get used beyond the starter / lighting / ignition functions in your car? Why does it have such a bad rap, and why should you in fact be excited about it? To answer these questions, we bring in Matt Raiford and Alyssa McQuilling from the Consortium for Battery Innovation (CBI) to t...

💡 Can you trademark a sound? Why can you only patent "non-obvious" inventions? Who decides what is non-obvious? What is Enablement and how does the Supreme Court's ruling on it affect cleantech?! For answers to these questions and lots more, today's episode features Brendan Serapiglia, PhD and Jason Feldmar —partners and intellectual property (IP) attorneys at Gates & Cooper LLP —in discussio...

♾ That's right: Invinity, with a V for vanadium. How many square meters does it take to set up 1 MWh of vanadium flow batteries? For the answer, we turn to Matt Harper , CCO and Co-founder at Invinity, in discussion with BioZen's CEO Nate Kirchhofer. Invinity Energy Systems was formed from the merger of RedT and Avalon in 2020 and focuses on vanadium redox flow batteries (VRFBs) for large-scale, l...

🐻 The capybara is nature's ultimate collaborator, existing peacefully in diverse global ecosystems. That harmonious disposition is exactly what CapyBara Energy seeks to bring to the energy storage market with their aqueous supercapacitor technology. How? CapyBara's Founder & CEO Matt Millard tells BioZen's CEO Nate Kirchhofer that it's possible because their technology is uniquely " Sustainab...

0️⃣ What's your favorite zero-emission load following dispatchable resource to enable green baseload? What even *is* green baseload?! For this episode, Mark Wanamaker of Lockheed Martin Energy Storage joins BioZen Batteries' CEO Nate Kirchhofer to discuss one possible answer to that question: Lockheed Martin's GridStar™ Flow Batteries! This technology was acquired from MIT-spinout Sun Catalytics i...

🔥 Is it just a glorified toaster? Not quite: At more than 1500 °C (2700 °F), the carbon blocks inside Antora's unique thermal batteries are resistively heated (like toaster coils heat bread), storing energy glowing-hot at >1/4 the temperature of the Sun's surface. Our guest for this episode, Leah Kuritzky (Antora's Head of PV Operations) tells BioZen's CEO Nate Kirchhofer that the stored therm...

🍣🐟 "Operating the electric grid without energy storage is sort of like operating a sushi restaurant without a refrigerator." Tune into this episode to find out what Otoro Energy's CEO Michael Marshak means by that in conversation with BioZen Batteries CEO Nate Kirchhofer. Then, stick around to learn about Otoro's key innovation in higher-voltage, non-flammable, highly-stable, aqueous-soluble met...

⚡ Which metal was used as far back as 1799 when Alessandro Volta invented the voltaic pile, the original battery? Hint: It's still in use today in single-use alkaline batteries, and it's gaining adoption for safe, high-cycle, high-efficiency, high-energy-density grid scale batteries too. For this episode, Onas Bolton joins BioZen CEO Nate Kirchhofer to dive into how Octet Scientific is making the...

💯 Pop Quiz! Define the following: EPCs, SCADA systems, upregulation, downregulation, frequency regulation, spinning reserves, timeshifting, and dispatchable assets. Didn't get them all right? That's okay! We've brought in Mahesh Morjaria of Terabase Energy to get you up to speed in conversation with BioZen's CEO Nate Kirchhofer. We're going to dive into just what an engineering marvel the grid is...

♻️ What does "sustainability" mean to you? How do you put a price on the safety of a battery? If we want society to adopt renewable energy, why is there so much NIMBYism about it? To answer these questions, and more, clean energy expert Ilja Pawel calls in from Austria to join BioZen's CEO Nate Kirchhofer. Ilja is an independent consultant and star communicator on renewable energy generation and s...

🦠 You've heard of two major domains of life: Bacteria (think E. coli) and Eukaryotes (like yeast, plants, animals, etc). Do you know what the third major domain is? (Hint: it's hidden in the company name, Electrochaea.) Do you know how it stores energy? Tune into this episode where Doris Hafenbradl joins BioZen's CEO Nate Kirchhofer to discuss these ancient microorganisms—the biocatalysts at the...

🧪 What are the critical chemicals that need to be scaled for energy storage right now? In 5 years, what battery chemistry is going to be winning in the marketplace? We're changing the pace with two guests to answer these questions: Dr. Tyler Farnsworth and Tom Borak, who join BioZen's CEO Nate Kirchhofer and bring their perspective from MERGE Chemistry—the custom/specialty chemical manufacturing...

🤺 How competitive is the energy storage market? On this episode, Cofounder & CTO of VoltStorage Michael Peither joins, as always, BioZen's CEO Nate Kirchhofer to discuss this, the size of the need (in TWh), and perspectives on battery development cycles. VoltStorage is a leading manufacturer of vanadium redox flow batteries (V-RFBs) for agriculture and industrial applications requiring "Comme...