Gianpaolo Giuliani is a seasoned executive in Commercial and Business Development, carrying over 23 years of experience and leading a talented team of experts at Sunlight Group’s ESS division. Before joining Sunlight, he held significant management roles in GE across various sectors. As of 2014, Gianpaolo has been specializing in renewables and energy storage, his latest position before joining Sunlight Group being Global Sales Director of Energy Storage, a business he significantly contributed to build and grow. Gianpaolo Giuliani is a certified engineer. He holds a BS and Master’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Politecnico di Torino.
The world is seeing a novel approach in energy storage technologies, from lithium to lead-acid, graphene to hydrogen, and now iron-air batteries. These innovations are charioting the eco-friendly wave and radicalizing how we store energy. Having extensive experience in the domain, how do you see these trends evolving for the future?
The research of new, cost-effective, more sustainable and eco-friendly energy storage technologies has never stopped in the last decade or so, and will continue in the years to come. This is an outstanding and collective effort without which we wouldn’t have had the current chemistries and technologies that changed the world of energy management: from the early automotive EV batteries to the grid-scale lithium-ion solutions of today.
Grid-scale lithium-ion solutions are without a doubt the next revolution after wind and solar, and as key stakeholders, we must be mindful of the social impact that our decisions can have.
That said, research and industrialization have their own rules, and time is one of the most critical aspects: it takes time to have a proven, reliable, alternate technology take over from the previous generation. Lithium-ion technology itself has been evolving, gradually moving from NMC to LFP. This evolution, which –in name– is “just” about changing some parts of the chemistry, took a decade to gain the level of efficiency, reliability, and safety required for massive installations, especially in grid-scale installations. Already available today, technologies such as compressed air or flow batteries are mature enough to take over in certain sectors, when the application parameters (such as duration, response time, and round trip efficiency) make them economically viable. As for the future, we look forward to seeing new, very promising stationary storage chemistries, taking over from today’s Li-Ion legacy. However, we must realistically admit that this is unlikely to happen in the short term.
A shift in the trend toward the use of localized energy procurement is seen in recent years. What approach do you take when providing energy services whilst meeting stringent regulations, especially when the hydroelectric power segment holds the maximum share of the renewable energy market?
What I can tell from the last 12 years of my career in this sector, serving customers that, among others, provide energy services, is a simple message: still too much complicated. The regulatory framework needs to evolve for practical reasons: not only can obsolete regulations become a hurdle for most innovative solutions, like energy storage (and even renewable generation, in some cases); but they may also eventually play against their intended mission.
This is happening because most of the regulatory frameworks, both the commercial ones and the technical ones, were designed around an energy network setup that doesn’t exist any longer. When an electricity grid has to handle the double-digit share of non-predictable renewables in the new energy mix; reversed energy flows due to unprecedented demand curves caused by climate changes; EV fast-charging stations popping up anywhere and suddenly sucking huge amounts of power uncontrollably… well, if you try to protect that grid from the risk of instability by using countermeasures dating back 30 years ago – you just make things worse.
The renewables penetration won’t slow down; it’s a fact and a process that we all want to keep growing. It has, however, side effects that need to be countered. And if the treatment for those side effects is inappropriate, like most of the current grid codes and energy market regulations, you just end up killing the patient. De-regulation has proven to be the most effective way to date. And, not surprisingly, the countries that are better managing the penetration of new, unpredictable energy demand/generation assets now, are those that de-regulated the market early on. The energy market is a macro-ecosystem: it’s able to self-adapt, provided you allow it to.
Is there an emerging technology in the renewables or battery space that you are optimistic about? How is it going to take a step closer to Net Zero by 2030 coalitions?
I think the best approach in the short term is the hybrid one, meaning, an adequate mix of solar and/or wind generation, along with one or more of the existing grid-stabilization technologies, such as short-duration energy storage; long-duration energy storage; aggregated services like demand side management; and, last but not least, commercial framework to modulate the off-take from electric vehicles. These are all valid technologies at hand, but still, too few brains are deployed to find the optimum blend: the one that brings the best life-cycle cost rather than the least CAPEX. For example, at Sunlight Group we have a recycling plant for lead-acid batteries where we invested in innovative, but (initially) expensive technologies… Well, that costly investment paid itself back within just a few years, and the CO2 impact was incredibly reduced compared to the more traditional and cheaper systems.
On top of these valid considerations is the most important one: we are still wasting too much energy. In an ideal world, an effective NetZero coalition should be able to foster virtuous ecosystems, communities that get rewarded for proving that their total CO2 bill, for the full blend of renewable assets, storage assets, and energy efficiency assets, is indeed the lowest – and vice-versa. We are very far from this ideal scenario.
Can you give us a brief background about your roles in the organizations you've worked for? How does the experience augment your role and responsibility at your current organization?
I’ve been in the wider energy industry for 24 years. I was lucky, as a young graduate, to join a large company like General Electric, where I could move not only vertically, but also diversify my competency fields in almost any sector: from Oil & Gas to traditional Power Generation, Water, and eventually Energy Storage and Renewables. In terms of leadership skills, I think I value all of my experiences the same: I learned and grew in my latest and current senior positions just as much as I did when I started working, straight out of university. At that time, I was a zero-experience engineer that had been thrown into a tough, high-paced industrial testing department, where I had to manage 7 experienced employees who were, on average, double my age. Being recognized as a talented person and staying humble at the same time is one of the rare, yet most precious skills that you either learn soon or never learn at all. People understand when you respect them, as opposed to pretending to respect. And at Sunlight Group, mutual respect is really valued.
As an ending note, what is your advice for other senior leaders and CXOs working in the space? How can they extract the full potential of emerging technologies?
My current sector, grid-scale lithium-ion solutions, is undoubtedly the next revolution, after Wind and Solar. As key stakeholders, we must be conscious of the social impact that our decisions can make. Imagine you are a pilot of a plane with 200 passengers' lives depending on you: It’s immediate to feel your responsibility. The link between what you are doing today to save energy and some tenth of degrees C for the planet, and the lives depending on those efforts, is not that immediate, yet it’s equally real. To use the same analogy: we’re piloting an aircraft with 7 billion passengers.
Choosing the cheapest technology to add some decimal points to a company’s EBITDA, without considering safety or reliability implications, may add costs to end clients, pollute, hurt, or -even worse- kill people; and also ruin your business. Looking for the best life-cycle cost for your customers: this is the winning enabler for the future. At Sunlight, we have over 200 engineers doing R&D, testing new chemistries and safer arrangements, for the optimal and longer life of our batteries and solutions: in my book, there’s no better investment, because safer and longer duration means life-cost saving for our customers and, at the same time, better management of precious and finite resources.
My final thought: we must stay curious, eager of learning, and brave enough to make educated decisions when the time comes to switch to the next technology that deserves our trust as leaders, as businesspeople, and as wise fathers and mothers.
