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