EXECUTIVE BIO

Randall Selesky

TITLE: CRO

COMPANY: ENERVENUE

25+ years of experience working in, and leading, a global sales organisation within a Fortune 500 Company & Start-ups. Mainly focused on entrepreneurial environments with focus on emerging technology and markets. With a career that spans industrial software & controls to battery storage, microgrids, and VPP's.

Considering alternatives

Sodium shares many chemical similarities with lithium. And, as it doesn’t have the same environmental impact as lithium, It’s a potential alternative.

As such, sodium-ion batteries could provide a viable solution. They don't rely on scarce resources, and production doesn’t necessitate rare lithium salts, either. Instead, they can be produced using common table salt.

EnerVenue – a company dedicated to developing nickel-hydrogen batteries – has revealed plans to construct a $1bn gigafactory, spanning 1mn/sqft, on a 73-acre property located in Shelby County, Kentucky. This facility will serve as a hub for the design, production, and testing of the company's Energy Storage Vessels, which utilise nickel-hydrogen technology.

EnerVenue’s CRO, Randall Selesky, believes alternative technologies have emerged that are expected to perform better across stationary storage use cases and, critically, also take the load off of lithium-ion.

“Sodium-ion battery technology offers a glide path for power providers seeking to upgrade existing lithium-ion-based solutions directly. Sodium-ion batteries contrast with li-ion chemistries by leveraging more sustainable and available materials with far fewer environmental concerns. At the same time, improving sodium-ion batteries are on target to possibly surpass lithium-ion batteries in energy density, while already coming in at a low cost,” Selesky states.

“Sodium-ion battery production is such that existing lithium-ion manufacturing facilities can easily convert to producing sodium-ion batteries, enabling a frictionless shift as demand for this technology matures. For stationary energy storage use-cases, sodium-ion batteries should offer a compelling substitute for lithium-ion in the near future.”

Supply chain resilience

Better supply chain management such as localisation, vertical supply chains, and strategic partnerships are integral in ensuring supply chain resilience. Due to the limited availability of regional raw materials, effective management of the upstream supply chain will continue to be crucial.

To enhance the security of supply and cost-reduction, a more integrated approach between metallurgy and chemistry at the production level could well be key. A positive by-product of such an approach would be the incidental sustainability improvements, geopolitical and ESG risk-reduction, and lower costs achieved by regionalising and colocating multiple steps in battery manufacturing.

An integrated approach and vertical supply chains are important to Clarios, with Muellerweiss stating: “When we try to sell a battery, we want to recover a battery and get that back. It doesn't matter if we made the battery, it doesn't matter if it's exactly the same size that we're selling. It doesn't matter if there are multiple batteries that somebody wants to return back. We want it because that is the star of our supply chain.

“For us, our raw materials come from around the corner, not around the world. They come from an auto parts store, an auto dealer, or a repair shop where people are replacing batteries throughout their lifespan. By doing this, it provides us with a resilient, local, low-carbon, low-energy footprint source of raw materials that allows us to turn those right back into new batteries – new batteries that are now specifically designed for the EV revolution that we're supporting.”

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Kurnool Ultra Mega Solar Park India

Located in the Kurnool district, Andhra Pradesh, south India, with an operational capacity of 1GW (1000MW) of energy each year, a significant portion of India's gross installed electricity capacity of over 350GW, the solar park saves an estimated 1,892,160

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Nearly all of Jinchuan in China's Gansu province is covered in solar power plants. A second cluster of projects is to the south, and the solar park occupies almost 90km2 of semi-desert to the west of the city. The solar park now has 15 plants, all of which have a combined capacity of just over 1GW. The

Datong Solar Power Top Runner Base China

Located in Shanxi, China, Datong is a 3GW solar PV power project. Commissioned in 2016, the project cost $138m and was developed by China Power International Development and China Three Gorges. The project is currently owned by China Power International Development with a stake of 100%.

The plant will be able to produce 3.2bn kilowatt-hours of solar energy in 25 years and reduce CO2 emissions by 2.74m tonnes.

Noor Abu Dhabi Solar Power Project UAE

The world’s largest single-site power plant, Noor Abu Dhabi provides power to roughly 90,000 homes with 1.17GW. It has 3.2m solar panels and is 8sqkm in size. The plant generates approximately 1.2GW of electricity, reducing the reliance on natural gas for electricity generation and reducing the country’s carbon footprint by 1m metric tonnes per year – enough to eliminate 200,000 vehicles from the road.

Abu Dhabi National Energy Company owns 60% of the project with Marubeni Corporation and JinkoPower each holding 20%.

The Tengger Desert Solar Park China

The Tengger Desert Solar Park currently powers around 600,000 homes with its 43km2 of solar panels providing a 1.51GW output.

The capacity of the project's first phase will be 1m kilowatts. When the base is fully operational, its yearly power result will be 5.78bn kilowatts, the equivalent to saving 1.92m tonnes of standard coal each year. This is significant for a country that relies heavily on coal for energy.

Benban Solar Park Egypt

Costing $4bn, Benban Solar Park is Africa’s largest solar farm, with a colossal solar potential of 6.3kWh/m2 per day. This amounts to 41 solar power plants in total.

The 1.8GW project is managed by the New and Renewable Energy Authority (NREA), which is owned by the state. It includes a number of small solar power plants that are being built by different companies. The project is a part of the Egyptian government’s Sustainable Energy Strategy 2030.

Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park

Pavagada Solar Park India

UAE Spread over 13,000 acres, Pavagada Solar Park provides 2.05GW to Indian citizens. Costing $2bn, the solar park was developed by Karnataka Solar Power Development Corporation (KSPDCL), a joint venture between Karnataka Renewable Energy Development (KREDL) and Solar Energy Corporation of India Limited (SECI) that was formed in March 2015.

The desert nation of the UAE is home to a 76km solar park, the largest in the world, with a current capacity of 1.63GW. This is planning to grow to 5GW by 2030.

The solar park provides power to 270,000 homes, offsetting a total of 1.4m tonnes of carbon. Developed and managed by the Dubai Electricity & Water Authority, the solar park is one of Dubai’s key initiatives in the Dubai Clean Energy Strategy 2050 – to produce 75% of the city's energy requirements from clean sources by 2050.

Karnataka, the state in which this solar park is based, has the highest solar installed capacity among the Indian states followed by Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu.

Bhadla Solar Park India

Soaking up the sun in India’s Thar Desert is Bhadla Solar Park, consisting of 14,000 acres of colocated solar power plants, with a consistent generation of 2.25GW (Bhadla now totals about 2.7GW of capacity since recent additions).

The park benefits from nearperfect conditions, with the Rajasthan region receiving 5.72kWh/ m2 of solar irradiation each day on average. Additionally, the solar farm benefits greatly from 300 sunny days per year.

Bhadla, like some of the other large solar farms on this list, was ordered by a number of businesses to auction off specific amounts of solar capacity. For instance, the Solar Energy Corporation of India held an auction for 25MW capacity, and 27 businesses all made bids.

Golmud Solar Park China

With an installed capacity of 2.8GW, the Golmud Solar Park in China’s Qinghai Province, houses 80 solar power plants in total – this is enough to power over one million houses.

Costing a total of $587.22mn, the project was developed by China Longyuan Power Group and is currently owned by SDIC Huajing Power Holdings, with a stake of 100%.

Construction of the Golmud Solar Park began in 2011 and was completed in 2019. The solar park uses photovoltaic (PV) technology, with over 7.2m solar panels installed to generate electricity. The park is connected to the State Grid Corporation of China's power transmission network, which allows the electricity generated to be distributed across the country.