Energypreneurs
by Sohail Hasnie
Latest episode
E364: Hazardous, Flammable, Expensive. Would You Buy Gas Today
E364: Hazardous, Flammable, Expensive. Would You Buy Gas Today
About this podcast
Energypreneurs is a podcast that brings solar power, electric vehicles and battery technologies to young entrepreneurs. Sohail Hasnie, our host, is a firm believer that the solution to climate change lies in these technologies, which will also fundamentally change the way we think about electricity and transportation—on road, on water and even on air.
Over the last 35 years, Sohail has applied technology and innovation in many large infrastructure projects across Australasia. As a staff of the Asian Development Bank since 2001, he has developed large investment projects with solar power, battery, and electric vehicles across Asia.
Episodes
The newest 50 of 372 episodes
- E364: Hazardous, Flammable, Expensive. Would You Buy Gas Today · 42 min · Season 1 Episode 364Tim Forcey moved to Australia to work in the gas industry. Today he helps people get their homes off it. A chemical engineer with decades in oil and gas, Tim has been inside more…
- E363: If Solar Makes Everything Free, What Will We Strive For · 32 min · Season 1 Episode 363A podcaster I listened to argued that AI works like Newton's third law: the more we lean on it, the dumber we get. So on a Sunday drive across Sydney, I tested the idea. I used…
- How Do you Sell Solar to a Climate Denier | Ep 222 | Cherie Gregoire [Re-edited] · 1 h 5 min · Season 1When Cherie Gregoire was asking Cambridgeshire's councillors for money to build solar, some of them didn't believe in climate change. She decided she was never going to convince…
- Does Australia Need 1,000 Home Batteries a Day - or Just Its Cars | Ep 269 | Glenn Drover [Re-edited] · 56 min · Season 1If Australia tried to meet the storage in its long-term grid plan with home batteries alone, Glenn Drover worked out you would need to install about 1,000 Powerwall-sized…
- Why Is Half Your Power Bill Paying for Poles and Wires? |Ep 246| Grant McDowell [Re-edited] · 55 min · Season 1In 2006 Grant McDowell had a shady roof in Marrickville and an idea: put the panels on a solar farm somewhere sunny, and match that energy to your house every half hour. He…
- E362: If You Can Leave the Grid, Why Would You Stay? · 1 h 6 min · Season 1 Episode 362Can you leave the grid? A couple of houses in the middle of Townsville already have. But Steve Blume, who has been banging on about load duration curves for forty years, thinks…
- Why Did Pakistan's Citizens Build 20 GW While the Big Projects Stalled | Ep 270 | Danny Kennedy [Re-edited] · 56 min · Season 1A few years ago Pakistan had about two gigawatts of big wind and solar projects at an advanced stage. None reached financial close. Meanwhile, as Danny Kennedy puts it, its…
- E361: 500 Gigawatts. Western Australia's Grid Is 10 · 1 h 5 min · Season 1 Episode 361Western Australia sends almost a billion tonnes of iron ore offshore every year. Ray Wills wants it to leave as green iron instead — and to make that, he says, WA needs about 500…
- Why Were the Clean-Up Boats Polluting the River? |Ep 277| Sanyuktha, Clearbot [Re-edited] · 35 min · Season 1Clearbot started because its founders watched people on big diesel boats trying to fish rubbish out of rivers with pool nets — polluting more than they were collecting, with a…
- E360: Nobody Can Dispatch 500,000 Batteries · 53 min · Season 1 Episode 360Australia now has around half a million home batteries, thanks to the federal Cheaper Home Batteries program. Almost none of them can be dispatched. Glenn Dahlenburg puts it at…
- Bigger Than Snowy 2.0, Parked in Our Driveways | Ep 338 | Portia Rooney [Re-edited] · 55 min · Season 1By the early 2030s, the aggregated battery capacity of Australia's EV fleet is expected to exceed Snowy Hydro 2.0. Not approach it — exceed it. And unlike Snowy, it's already…
- E359: What Counts as an Outage Any More? · 56 min · Season 1 Episode 359Simon English has spent 15 years inside Australia's electricity distribution networks, and he's been asking them an awkward question: what actually counts as an outage now? With…
- E358: Why Has a 40-Year Tech Company Stopped Hiring Graduates? · 1 h 5 min · Season 1 Episode 358In the last year, Karim's 40-year IT company hired zero entry-level graduates. Every job junior coders used to do, AI does now. Karim and I studied high school together in Dhaka…
- E357: Who Pays When the Gas Network Dies? · 1 h 2 min · Season 1 Episode 357Disconnecting your house from the gas network costs you about $250. The gas companies say the real cost to them is $900. Somebody has to cover the difference, and Ben Potter has…
- E356: Why More Storage Means Worse Returns · 48 min · Season 1 Episode 356Australian wholesale power can trade anywhere from minus $1,000 to $23,000 a megawatt-hour, and it re-prices every five minutes. Marija Petkovic models what happens to that…
- E355: Adapting to the Noise — What 25 Years in Communications Taught Me · 51 min · Season 1 Episode 355Reah Sy has spent two decades building communications strategy for some of the world's largest institutions — ADB, the IMF, and multinational corporates. She's seen the shift…
- E354: Australia Cut Electricity Prices 10%. Southeast Asia Is Still Running on Diesel. · 44 min · Season 1 Episode 354Australia's electricity regulator just cut wholesale prices 10% — because solar and batteries have penetrated the grid so deeply that supply is outrunning demand. In Southeast…
- E353: Only One in Ten Batteries Joins a VPP. Here's Why · 47 min · Season 1 Episode 353Chris Cooper co-founded Orchestra Technologies, software that models and operates commercial and industrial energy projects — solar, batteries, EV charging, virtual power plants…
- E352: The Grid is Becoming Optional | Energypreneurs Briefing · 26 min · Season 1 Episode 352Is the electricity grid really becoming optional? In this episode, Sohail Hasnie explores how rooftop solar, home batteries, EVs and vehicle-to-grid technology are changing the…
- E351: My EV Charger Is a Kettle · 33 min · Season 1 Episode 351For three and a half years we've charged our car from an ordinary power point. Two kilowatts — about a kettle. Thirty-two thousand kilometres, roughly four megawatt-hours, less…
- E350: All of Australia's Grid Growth Is Going on Roofs. What Fills the Other 18 Hours? · 57 min · Season 1 Episode 350Matt Rennie said something that stopped me. The entire growth of Australia's grid — two to three gigawatts a year — is going onto rooftops, between 10am and 4pm. That leaves the…
- E349: Zero Wholesale Prices for Twelve Hours a Day. Then What? · 44 min · Season 1 Episode 349John Mather has worked in electricity markets in more than a dozen countries. He started at PowerGen in 1990, weeks before privatisation, when the UK was inventing the first…
- E348: Batteries Aren't a Financial Decision. So What Are They? · 38 min · Season 1 Episode 348Many of the home batteries Australians are buying under the federal scheme won't pay for themselves. Jon Sibley says so plainly — and he's not against them. He designed rebate…
- E347: Green Hushing: Why Companies Hide Their Climate Wins · 53 min · Season 1 Episode 347Everyone knows greenwashing. Helen Neal is more worried about its opposite — green hushing, where companies making real climate progress stay silent because the risk of getting a…
- E346: The Grid Ends at the Meter · 57 min · Season 1 Episode 346Bruce Nordman spent decades at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory working on demand flexibility. He returns with an argument that cuts against most of what the industry is…
- E345: The Cheapest Electricity in History | Energypreneurs Briefing · 21 min · Season 1 Episode 345One in three Australian homes now has solar on the roof. Nobody built a power station to make it happen — millions of households just did it themselves. That's the largest…
- E344: Why Development Banking Is About to Be Disrupted Like Consumer Banking Was · 49 min · Season 1 Episode 344Back in 2018, Ozzeir Khan ran an experiment at the Asian Development Bank: could AI predict GDP better than the bank's PhD economists? It came remarkably close. The economists'…
- E343: How a Text Message Replaces a Power Plant: Octopus Energy · 31 min · Season 1 Episode 343Most energy retailers earn more the more you use. Octopus Energy built its business on the opposite idea — that a utility should help you spend less. Eric Davids, who leads US…
- E342: Your Car is the Next Power Plant | Energypreneurs Briefing · 26 min · Season 1 Episode 342There are 200 cars parked outside right now. Each carries a 60–80 kWh battery. Together, that's a small power station sitting idle. That's Vehicle-to-Grid — and it's closer than…
- E341: A $22,000 Battery That Pays for Itself in Four Years · 46 min · Season 1 Episode 341Australia's home battery market is booming — but the gap between the sales pitch and the lived reality is wider than most people think. Christina Li works at the frontline of…
- E340: Your Dung Is Our Dough: The Fuel Cell Anyone Can Make · 43 min · Season 1 Episode 340Nick Abson made pop videos for Queen, then children's puppets, then built Europe's largest fuel cell company, which was later killed off. At 79, his argument is that a community…
- E339: The Zero Marginal Cost Drive: Arguing with Tesla's AI · 45 min · Season 1 Episode 338For almost a decade I've been convinced electricity will end up free — free the way the internet is free. Last week I charged the car for nothing at a shopping mall, same as I…
- E338: Bigger Than Snowy Hydro 2.0 — If We Can Unlock It · 47 min · Season 1 Episode 338Australia's aggregated EV fleet capacity is expected to exceed Snowy Hydro 2.0 by the early 2030s. The government spent $12 billion on Snowy Hydro. The EV battery potential is…
- E337: Convert, Don't Replace: 4 Million Trucks Can't Wait 50 Years · 39 min · Season 1 Episode 337Ben Hutt runs Janus Electric — converting big diesel prime movers to electric for the same price as a diesel engine rebuild. In North America alone there are four million of…
- E336: Copenhagen Flooded Three Times. Here's How They Fixed It — And Who Paid. · 43 min · Season 1 Episode 336Stella Whittaker spent four years doing a PhD on one question: why is it so hard to raise money for climate adaptation — the part of the climate crisis that's already happening?…
- E335: Why Does Energy Get More Expensive When Renewables Are the Cheapest Ever Created? · 53 min · Season 1 Episode 335Skip Bowman is an organisational psychologist who started interviewing energy leaders for a book on green leadership — and kept running into one question he couldn't answer: why…
- E334: Energy's WhatsApp Moment Is Coming — Tim Ryan Returns · 48 min · Season 1 Episode 334Two weeks after a dropped call cut our first conversation short, Tim Ryan is back — fresh from Race for 2030's Consumer Grid Summit with 40 of Australia's top energy minds. In…
- E333: "The Duck's Gut Is Being Eaten" — Australia's Consumer Energy Revolution · 45 min · Season 1 Episode 331Tim Ryan has spent decades thinking about energy markets — and he talks about them the way most people talk about sport. In this conversation we get into the Cheaper Home Battery…
- E332: Building a City With a Soul: Inside Indonesia's New Capital · 47 min · Season 1 Episode 332Bambang Susantono has had three careers that would each be a full life's work — Vice Minister of Transportation for Indonesia, Vice President of the Asian Development Bank, and…
- E331: We Don't Need Subsidies Anymore. We're Winning. · 56 min · Season 1 Episode 331Patrick Strom has spent 25 years in the wind industry, from prospecting sites to predictive maintenance on turbines the size of skyscrapers. His message is simple: renewables…
- The Internet Taught Us How to Run a Grid. We Just Haven't Noticed Yet.| Ep 264 | Bruce Nordman [Re-edited] · 50 min · Season 1 Episode 264Bruce Nordman spent nearly 40 years at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory asking one question: what if we ran electricity the way we run the internet? His answer reframes…
- E330: Everything You Think Is the Future Already Happened Here · 42 min · Season 1 Episode 329John Lin grew up Dutch-Chinese, worked strategy at the Netherlands' biggest e-commerce company, and spent years telling his McKinsey colleagues that everything they called "the…
- Hydrogen Is Dying. Here's What the Data Actually Says | Ep 230 | Michael Barnard [Re-edited] · 52 min · Season 1 Episode 230Originally published as Episode 230 — this conversation has only become more relevant since. Michael Barnard is a climate futurist who builds decade-by-decade projections of the…
- E329: From Cooking With Gas to Cooking With Batteries · 47 min · Season 1 Episode 329Hamish McKenzie is Deputy Director of the Energy and Climate Program at the Grattan Institute. His team just published a landmark report on Australia's gas transition — and the…
- E328: The Duck Curve Is Dying. Here's What Replaced It · 47 min · Season 1 Episode 326Jess Hunt has spent 25 years redesigning electricity markets. She was involved in the Hornsdale Big Battery — the world's first grid-scale battery — and now consults for…
- E327: Why Is the Energy Transition Inevitable? | Energypreneurs Masterclass Ep 1 · 22 min · Season 1 Episode 327Why is the energy transition inevitable? Not just desirable, but inevitable. In this first module of the Energypreneurs Masterclass, I curated five conversations from 300+…
- E326: The Technology is Ready. So Why Hasn't it Scaled? · 48 min · Season 1 Episode 326The Philippines imports $15 billion worth of oil every year. 4 million tricycles burn a significant share of it. Paul Johnston is the CEO of Pure EV, 350 electric tricycles…
- E325: Never Waste a Good Crisis · 48 min · Season 1 Episode 325The Philippines has one of the best renewable energy laws in the world, one of the highest electricity tariffs relative to income, and 278 island communities still running on…
- E324: Bottom-Up Development: Lessons from Bangladesh · 52 min · Season 1 Episode 324In this episode, our guests are Sayeed and Zahir, two experienced engineers and infrastructure specialists who discuss Bangladesh's development journey across water, transport…
- E323: Solar, Batteries and the End of the Power Bill · 53 min · Season 1 Episode 323South Australia is producing 150% of its electricity demand from solar. Australia installed 10% of global battery capacity in a single month — for a country that represents 1% of…
