You may remember that last year we took part in a joint webinar with Ata Insights.
 
This year, Ata Insights is launching a bunch of new webinars, and we will be collaborating with the company again on an event in March, dedicated to renewables with battery storage for microgrids and islands.  
 
Feel free to sign up now as an attendee or a sponsor.
 
In the meantime, you also might want to check out another upcoming webinar from ATA Insights, on the latest innovation in bulk storage technologies.
 
Taking place on February 1, the free-to-attend event will see industry experts comparing the different technologies available for long-term bulk storage for grids. Sign up to it now.
 
And while on the subject of partnerships, this week we hand the Energy Storage Report reins over to David Hunt of Hyperion Executive Search, which provides the jobs listing that could give you your next career break.
 
What follows was previously published in Smart Cities World and is reproduced here with permission from the author. 

    

Never mind the lithium, what about the talent?

By David Hunt
 
Throughout my time in the clean energy sector there has always been talk of scarcity of supply. First it was silicon, then in the boom times of solar development it was solar PV modules themselves.
 
More recently, we read of the potential scarcity of lithium, a core ingredient for lithium-ion and related batteries, driven by the significant growth in energy storage and electric vehicles (EVs).
 
Now we have scare stories about the scarcity of electricity at certain times of the day if we all plug in our EVs to charge. But what about the scarcity of talent?
 
Clearly, as the clean energy transition grows there is increasingly a skills and talent gap, one which is seldom talked about. Demand is very much outstripping supply.
 
That might be a good thing, in the short term, for headhunters like us, but for the sector as a whole it is something that will significantly hinder the growth of companies and the smart energy and cities sector as a whole.
 
Hugely talented and experienced engineers
 
At utility scale, we have an aging electricity generation and distribution network, managed by a hugely talented and experienced number of engineers. Significant numbers of which are at, or fast approaching, retirement age.
 
In a recent report, Engineering 2017, it is suggested in the UK there is, conservatively, a 20,000-annual shortfall in graduates in engineering disciplines. That’s an annual shortfall.
 
Not only are we not seeing enough graduates, though; decades of hands-on practical experience is disappearing rapidly. On top of this, many parts of the smart energy sector are very nascent.
 
Yes, batteries have been around for a very long time, but the energy storage sector, as we see and understand it today, is just a few years old. The same can be said of the e-mobility sector.
 
As for the digitisation of the energy supply, or the ‘internet of energy’, we’re making it up as we go along. There is no experienced talent pool.
 
Demand doesn’t just come from the energy sector
 
To exacerbate this problem, the demand for the new breed of coders, software architects and fully IT-literate electrical engineers doesn’t just come from the energy sector or mobility as a service.
 
These same individuals are in demand from the fintech, medical devices and finance and banking sectors, among others. It takes more than a dress-down policy and bean bags to attract them.
 
The challenge must be met head on and quickly. The industry, in my opinion, must focus in three key areas.
 
Firstly, we need to encourage more children and those at school age into STEM subjects, then into engineering and computational subjects through higher education and into university.
 
The industry needs to engage fully with the whole education system to make sure we get the raw talent we need. Having a government that doesn’t politically interfere with education and curriculum would be a great start.
 
Education separated from the political sphere
 
In many of the most successful countries, such as Singapore and Finland, education is separated from the political sphere. We could do with the same for energy, but that’s another story.
 
At least we need consistency and strong engagement between industry and educational establishments, and not just by the large corporations, but also SMEs and start-ups which are the backbone of the energy transformation.
 
Secondly, companies need to be far more prepared to look at transferable skills, and to be prepared to invest in training. This can be difficult, particularly for SMEs and start-ups.
 
Time and resource are very tight, and the industry moves at breakneck speed.
 
But if everyone is chasing the same very small talent pool, we’re creating a big problem, not least Premier League salaries and a transient workforce, as an example.
 
Exceptional talent in allied industries
 
We have helped many companies in the UK and Germany to find exceptional talent in allied industries, as well as directly from competitors.
 
For example, it’s not a great leap for candidates from a solar background to adapt to the energy storage or e-mobility sectors.
 
People who have been involved in traditional lighting, HVAC, BMS or UPS companies have the raw experience and capability to adapt to new digital and interconnected versions of the same.
 
We always recruit as much for cultural fit and the ‘soundness’ of the individual as for the skills and experience they have. Companies need to show some patience at times, and recruit for the long term, not the potential instant fix.
 
Thirdly, as an industry we really need to address diversity.
 
In an already limited pool of talent, whether by accident or design, we limit our options by not recruiting or encouraging candidates from all genders, ethnicities and sections of society.
 
Shocking lack of diversity
 
It’s shocking when we look at the lack of diversity in the people we place into new roles. Certainly not by our design, and not by design of our clients, but because of lack of alternatives.
 
I don’t believe in positive discrimination. The best person for the job should always be recruited, regardless of their age, gender, religion or sexual orientation.
 
But I do believe we have a lot to do to encourage more diversity in the workforce. This starts with engaging with children at school, but we have to find a way to engage with all sections of society at all stages of their careers.
 
Otherwise we not only limit the pool of talent, but we limit our potential as businesses and as an industry. Diversity is good for innovation, for learning and for growth.
 
These are exciting times in the smart energy world; there is much potential, innovation and opportunity happening all around us.
 
We can’t afford to be stifled as businesses or a sector by the lack of talent, or a lack of willingness to actively broaden our horizons in regard to our people. 

  

The ESR intelligence brief

Industry headlines from our Twitter feed and elsewhere.

• German firm Autarsys is supplying a plug-and-play lithium-ion battery storage system to a refugee camp in Iraq, which will work with a 300kW solar plant.
• Greentech Media has published a free report that collates the opinions of 500 energy industry professionals about the future of energy storage over the next five years.
• Research and consultancy company Roskill is holding an inaugural Battery Supply Chain Europe Conference in Düsseldorf, Germany this March.
• Australian battery company Redflow has started manufacturing core components for its zinc-bromine flow batteries at its new production facility in Thailand.
• In October 2017, the US had over 700MW of installed utility-scale battery capacity, says the US Energy Information Administration, with a further 91MW already planned for the rest of 2017 and 2018.
• One of the best new markets for energy storage could be Florida, which might see USD$230m of investment in utility-owned battery systems by 2021, according to a report from the University of California San Diego.
• To unleash a hydrogen economy, solar energy could be stored, bottled and shipped globally in existing ammonia infrastructure as a zero-carbon liquid fuel, says prominent Australian researcher Keith Lovegrove.
• Scott Shepard of Navigant Research looks at the business models that various companies are developing for vehicle-grid integration.
• The UK’s redT is closing or selling two of its commercial divisions so that it can concentrate exclusively on its vanadium flow battery storage business.
• At CES 2018 in Las Vegas, Fisker has unveiled its EMotion luxury electric sedan, along with its new Fisker Flexible Solid-State Battery, which reportedly delivers 2.5 times the energy density of lithium-ion batteries.
• As part of the Joint Initiative for Hydrogen Vehicles Across Europe project, 10 hydrogen fuel cell buses are joining the Scottish city of Aberdeen’s bus fleet in 2018.
• Rolls Royce is looking to develop an all-electric car with a range of up to 600km.
• Fluence, the new energy storage company jointly owned by Siemens and AES, will install a 100MW, 400MWh lithium-ion battery system in Long Beach, California, serving Southern California Edison and Western Los Angeles.
• The government of the Northern Territory in Australia has released a tender for the construction of a 45MW storage system.
• Utility NV Energy has issued a request for proposals for up to 330MW of new renewable energy projects, to which it will consider adding integrated battery storage systems.
• A government grant programme has been made available to English farmers, with financing for up to 40% of the cost of an energy storage project subject to a minimum of GBP£35,000 and a maximum of £1m.
• Liquid air energy storage company Highview Power has appointed Colin Roy, apparently a pioneer of modern corporate finance and mergers and acquisitions practices, as its new chairman.
• Franklin Energy, a development company based in Idaho, is seeking to have that state’s regulators declared in violation of a law intended to promote alternative energy by not allowing it a long-term contract for a battery storage facility.
• Engie and Macquarie Group have invested GBP£3m in Newcastle, England-based battery storage firm Connected Energy, which creates storage systems for industrial and commercial companies from used electric vehicle batteries.
• England’s Battery Energy Storage Solutions has secured GBP£28.5m in funding from Santander that will be used to build and operate a 100MW portfolio of grid-scale battery storage assets by the end of 2018.
• The Moroccan Agency for Sustainable Energy and Swedish company Cleanergy will jointly develop a thermal energy storage system using Cleanergy’s technology.
• By adding a third electrode, a researcher from Nanyang Technological University in Singapore claims to have discovered a way to restore used lithium-ion batteries to 95% of their original capacity.
• The Chinese Academy of Sciences and the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences have developed a lithium-metal battery that suppresses dendrite formation using a solid electrolyte that is rigid on one side and soft on the other.
• Japanese battery maker GS Yuasa is setting up a factory in Hungary that will assemble lithium-ion batteries for automobiles.
• Ford will significantly increase its planned investments in electric vehicles to USD$11bn and have 40 hybrid and fully electric vehicles in its model line-up by 2022.