Energy Unpacked

This week, it's just Adam and Bronte on the mic again reflecting on the conversations, surprises, and big ideas that defined the Grid Scale Projects Miniseries. From vanadium flow batteries to heat batteries built from bricks and toasters, and why the "boring stuff" — roads, water, labour — might actually be the most important stuff of all. If you haven't caught all four guest episodes yet with Kira (Rondo Energy), Oxana (BCG) , Renee (Oricon), and Graham (VSUN), this is a great place to start.

Industrial heat is one of the most overlooked challenges in theenergy transition. Around 20% of Australia’s total energy goes to making it, much of it above 1,000°C, and the cheapest path has historically been to burn fossil fuels. In this episode we speak with Kira Rundel, Commercial Director Australia at Rondo Energy, about how Rondo’s heat battery technology is starting to change that.

The conversation covers the industries best suited to the tech,the commercial models opening different doors for customers, and recent policy and tariff shifts that are supporting the economics. As Kira puts it, we no longer need to call industrial heat hard to abate. The technology is here, now it’s about deploying it.

Kira is a return guest, having joined us in an earlier season to discuss Raygen’s solar thermal and long-duration storage solutions.

In this episode, we chat with Graham Arvidson, CEO of Australian Vanadium Limited, on the case for long-duration energy storage and Australia’s opportunity in vanadium flow batteries.

Graham walks us through how flow batteries work, why they’re uniquely suited to long-duration applications, and why their economics flip the equation: every extra hour of duration is just another tank of electrolyte, not another full battery.

He also makes the case for Australia’s supply chain opportunity, given we have the second-largest vanadium resources in the world.

*This episode was recorded in November 2025, so any dates mentioned are relative to that time

In this episode, we chat with Oxana Dankova, Partner and Director of Energy Networks at BCG, on the global state of transmission and distribution investment. Grid investment is set to double in the next five years globally, with the world's grid footprint more than doubling by 2050.

But the build-out isn't straightforward. Oxana walks us through the funding pressures that could push tariffs higher, the supply chain bottlenecks stretching cable orders 5–7 years out, and the "not in my backyard" challenges. She also makes the case that the most interesting innovation isn't in the giant transmission lines — it's at the distribution level, where flexibility and smarter planning could change what we actually need to build.

* This episode was recorded in August 2025 so any dates mentioned are relative to that time.

Australia’s energy transition depends on more than just solar panels and wind turbines — it depends on thousands of kilometres of high-voltage transmission infrastructure threading through remote landscapes, alpine terrain, and regional communities. But building that infrastructure is far more complex than many people (including us) realise.

In this episode we sit down with Renene Windsor, Industry Director Transmission & Distribution at Aurecon, to pull back the curtain on what it actually takes to build the backbone of Australia’s clean energy future.

Links:

New England REZ network tender shortlist.

https://www.energyco.nsw.gov.au/news/new-england-rez-network-operator-tender-shortlist-announced

Following our Innovation Miniseries, we’re diving into grid-scale projects: the big, complex, critical infrastructure that will make or break Australia’s energy transition.

We’re sitting down with guests from Rondo Energy, Aurecon, BCG and VSUN Energy to unpack:

- What’s driving transmission project delays and cost overruns

- Australia’s REZ landscape — how zones compare in structure, maturity and community coordination

- Innovation in environmental planning and financing, and what we can learn from overseas

- Making better use of distribution network capacity and resource adequacy modelling

- Why long duration storage is critical — for the grid and for large industrial customers

- Commercial LDES solutions: heat batteries and vanadium flow batteries

- The opportunity to build a domestic vanadium flow battery supply chain in Australia

Tune into this introductory conversation to learn more about why we chose this topic and what we hope to learn from our guests in this miniseries.

This week, it’s just us—Adam and Bronte—on the mic, reflecting on the common threads, key insights and ideas that have stuck with us from the Innovation Miniseries.

If you haven’t caught all the miniseries episodes yet, this is a great place to start—a snapshot of the themes and conversations with brilliant innovators from Plico, Kapture, 5B, and Project Ohm.

In this episode, we sit down again with Brian Innes - this time with his Accenture hat on- to unpack how AI is actually being used in the energy transition—and where it may be overhyped.

We explore how machine learning is helping forecast supply and demand, optimise generation, and unlock flexibility in industrial processes to better match renewable energy. Rather than replacing humans, AI is emerging as a decision-support tool—augmenting operators and enabling participation in increasingly complex, fast-moving energy markets.

We also touch on the broader system impacts, from improving grid efficiency to the growing importance of data, as well as key challenges like model drift, oversight, and the rising energy demand of data centres.

In this episode of Energy Unpacked we talk with Nicole, Chief Strategy Officer from 5B about the innovative Maverick solar technology, including its advantages in deployment speed and land use efficiency. We also discuss the company's global expansion strategy and learnings, risk management in large projects, and the importance of customer feedback in product development. A particularly great episode for innovators in the clean technology space.

This week we’re joined by Brian Innes, founder of Plico, an innovator in the VPP space. Brian shares his journey into the energy industry and explains Plico’s unique membership model, designed to address key challenges of owning and operating DER in Australia.

We explore the importance of customer education and engagement, flexible ownership structures, and the critical role of asset management and ongoing support in successful VPPs. The conversation also looks ahead to future trends, including the growing integration of electric vehicles into the energy ecosystem.