Power Plays

by Dr Charlotte Kirk and Lucy Shaw

Season 1

Modernising the Grid: Solid-State Transformers, How coal is being co-opted for defence, and Space-Based Tech

Recorded 22 February 2026. Episode Discussion Points: Two solid-state transformer startups raised major funding this week Why transformers are a critical bottleneck in grid expansion and amidst modernisation pressures Differences between traditional iron-core transformers and solid-state transformers How SSTs use semiconductor power electronics and software control What the benefits of SSTs are Why data centres are an early target market for SST technology Energy Security Coal becoming linked to energy security narratives in the US Energy security increasingly shaping policy decisions Government support for coal plants despite economics Military interest in resilient energy systems and microgrids Role of renewables in reducing fuel logistics risks Future / Speculative Energy Infrastructure Space-based solar power concepts Space-based data centres powered by solar Economic and engineering challenges of space energy systems

S1 · E5

Feb 26, 2026

34:44

Critical Minerals: Microgrids, Rare-Earths, Copper recycling, and European Industrial Policy for Iron & Steel

Recorded 15th February. Delivering the energy transition increasingly depends on the inputs required: materials availability, processing capacity, & the industrial policy that determines what actually gets built. Rising demand for critical minerals is driving supply-security concerns, strategic stockpiles, recycling scale-up, & copper innovation. It’s also increasingly shaping industrial investment decisions, particularly in Europe. This week’s headlines illustrate that: · Policy signal - Project Vault: The US proposed a strategic critical minerals reserve with $12B of financing to reduce reliance on foreign suppliers, mainly China. It could work if treated as a resilience stockpile, but $2B of private investment signals returns expectations, which may push it to act like a market instrument not insurance. · Rare earths - geopolitics most concentrated & recycling as a hedge: Cyclic Materials $75M Series C to scale rare earth recycling & diversify supply beyond primary mining. RE magnet supply chains remain highly concentrated, especially in heavy’s where China has almost a complete monopoly & has tightened export controls since 2023. · But in battery recycling, a pivot: Redwood Materials $425M Series E, for a growing stationary energy storage business using recovered & second-life batteries. Originally focused on circular battery supply chains, the move reflects tighter recycling margins, rising storage demand & benefits of vertical integration. The story extends to copper, the metal of electrification. Without significant new supply coming online soon, net-zero risks being short-circuited as it’s highly conductive, durable & recyclable, with few grid-scale substitutes: · Cu processing: Two biomining deals - Transition Metals Solutions ($6M seed) & Endolith ($13.5M Series A) to improve Cu recovery from lower-grade ores using microbes. The promise; lower energy & access to stranded resources. Challenges; speed, control & industrial scale-up. · Cu recycling: Recuperate Metals $6M seed to mechanically upgrade Cu scrap & industrial waste into higher-quality secondary feedstocks. If scalable, it could accelerate capacity with lower capex & energy intensity, but impurities, input variability & qualification timelines remain hurdles. · Cu substitution: DexMat $5M seed to scale production of carbon-nanotube conductive fibre. It won’t replace copper broadly, but could be used in weight-sensitive or high-performance niches like aerospace or satellites. Materials pressure doesn’t stop at clean-tech supply chains, it’s reshaping heavy industry as carbon policy tightens: · European steel: ArcelorMittal confirmed a €1.3B EAF project at Dunkirk - currently its only new-build investment. Using scrap steel, DRI/HBI, & some hot metal, it cuts emissions 3x cf. the traditional BF-BOF approach. · Policy driver - CBAM now operational: Europe is extending carbon pricing to imports making C intensity a real competitiveness factor. It’s creating investable conditions for industrial decarbonisation by narrowing the cost gap between EU producers & higher-emissions imports - favouring lower-emissions production, particularly scrap-heavy EAF steel backed by low-C power.

S1 · E4

Feb 20, 2026

42:53

Deliverable Capacity: Flexibility, Storage, and the dark side of Data Centres Going Off-Grid

Recorded Feb 6th 2026. Access to electricity and speed to power remain defining challenges, but the deeper issue emerging is how to ensure deliverable capacity at the exact moment demand peaks, which is increasingly critical for grid reliability. With transmission projects often taking a decade, substation upgrades costly and contentious, and new generation facing interconnection delays, this week’s deal headlines centre on a core question: how do you create dependable capacity without simply building more generation? The answers are emerging in layers - from grid-scale storage to distributed assets, orchestration software, market consolidation, and policy reform: Grid-Scale Storage: Terralayr secured $72M in project-finance debt to deploy front-of-the-meter battery systems, highlighting grid-scale storage as one of the fastest deployable reliability resources. Batteries are increasingly treated as predictable infrastructure assets delivering dispatchable capacity without new power plants. Distributed Capacity: Lunar Energy raised $232M in growth capital to scale residential battery deployment. Homes are becoming active grid participants, with distributed storage transitioning from backup resilience products to scalable capacity assets aggregated into VPPs. his shift places flexibility at the grid edge, helping defer costly infrastructure upgrades while improving utilisation of existing assets. Orchestration Layer: WeaveGrid expanded its DISCO (Distribution-Integrated System Capacity Orchestration) platform beyond EV charging to include residential batteries through a partnership with SolarEdge. As distributed assets scale, software coordination is becoming critical, making flexibility visible, controllable, and dispatchable for utilities. Market Validation: Storm Fern provided a real-world test of how storage, distributed assets, and market signals performed under stress, and at scale. Storage and demand response played a central role in maintaining reliability, with volatility increasingly tied to short flexibility gaps rather than prolonged generation shortages. Market Consolidation: NRG’s acquisition of CPower as part of a $12B transaction with LS Power, signals incumbent adoption of flexibility as core infrastructure. The deal adds roughly 6 GW of commercial and industrial demand-response capacity, effectively expanding virtual power plant capabilities within mainstream utility operations. Policy Signal: Virginia passed the first U.S. legislation explicitly focused on grid utilisation, requiring regulators and utilities to measure how effectively existing infrastructure is used before approving new buildout. Then we move on to discuss: Data Centres & Speed-to-Power: Over 50 GW of on-site generation, much of it gas-fired, is being built ahead of grid connections, raising concerns about emissions lock-in. Overbuild vs Grid Integration: Off-grid renewables require significant overbuild reinforcing the continued value of interconnected grids that aggregate flexibility across regions New Procurement Models: Mechanisms like CTTs and BYOC allow large loads to contract power directly while leveraging distributed flexibility, accelerating deployment without full co-location.

S1 · E3

Feb 20, 2026

28:39

Clean Firm Power: Geothermal matures, Fusion tests the market, and the UK's Warm Homes Plan

Recorded 30th January 2026. With AI, hyperscalers, and the broader ‘electrification of everything’ accelerating demand for clean, firm, and reliable power, capital markets are beginning to reopen to fund it. As speed-to-power becomes the decisive factor, strategy is moving upstream toward how electricity is secured, controlled, and delivered efficiently. This shift shows up clearly in the week’s deal headlines - from owning and optimising dispatchable fleets, to upgrading brownfield assets, to tackling the bottlenecks that have historically constrained scale. Together, the deals reveal a growing split in how ‘clean firm’ energy is being financed. Geothermal is being steadily de-risked across the value chain, with capital flowing into discovery, drilling, and operations. Fusion, meanwhile, is testing public markets as a frontier bet, shaped by vast capital requirements and long development timelines. Constellation’s $16.4B equity acquisition of Calpine (≈$26.5B EV) signals incumbents securing near-term capacity by acquiring the ability to control dispatchable portfolios under reliability pressure. Calpine’s geothermal fleet includes ~200MW of underutilised turbine capacity. With existing permits, turbines, interconnection, and subsurface data in place, brownfield upgrades offer a compressed timeline to deliver additional clean firm MW and place a premium on assets that can be upgraded. Zanskar’s $115M Series C highlights capital flowing upstream to address exploration uncertainty. By applying AI to subsurface mapping and geothermal discovery, the company aims to reduce the dry well problem that often halts projects before development. Lower exploration risk strengthens the project pipeline and geothermal’s evolution into a scalable infrastructure category. Sage Geosystems’ $97M Series B co-led by Ormat, addresses operational credibility. Its geo-pressurised geothermal approach uses the subsurface as both a heat source and a compressed-rock energy storage medium, enabling load shifting and expanding the value stack toward firm power plus flexibility. Ormat’s participation signals confidence in operational discipline, uptime, and long-term asset performance. Fervo’s IPO filing marks a category transition. After years of climate-tech investors pointing to a lack of exits, the filing signals that liquidity may be returning, with geothermal emerging as an early test case. Having raised more than $1B in private capital, Fervo’s move to the public markets will assess whether enhanced geothermal is valued alongside established infrastructure assets. Fusion also moved toward public markets this week: General Fusion’s planned ~$1B SPAC transaction (≈$300M proceeds) and TAE’s proposed all-stock merger illustrate how long development horizons and large capital needs are pushing fusion developers toward broader funding pools. Public listing introduces access to capital alongside heightened scrutiny, volatility, and milestone pressure. We close by bringing the discussion to the UK. The Warm Homes Plan reframes energy policy around affordability and resilience at the household level. Through insulation upgrades, heating support, and distributed energy technologies, the programme targets renters and lower-income households while incorporating tighter implementation standards to address past failures. Across the episode, the pattern is clear: as electricity constraint intensifies, value accrues to those who can compress timelines, reduce risk, and deliver bankable capacity.

S1 · E2

Feb 20, 2026

38:02

Repricing Electricity: Tech to Deliver AI infrastructure, and the UK's Renewable Auctions

Recorded Jan 16th 2026. Exponential demand growth and AI mean the 2026 conversation is shifting from simply ‘power and data centres' to who can actually build what and when, as clean, reliable electrons grow scarce. We track this shift through the week’s deal headlines, which show how electricity constraint propagates upward from rack-level efficiency and inference per MW, to securing alternative compute architectures, vertically integrating generation ownership, procuring firm nuclear & geothermal power, and ultimately orchestrating an increasingly complex grid. Incremental efficiency gains still matter, but as grid constraints tighten, the system increasingly needs technologies that materially change power requirements, deployment flexibility, operating envelopes, and siting options. 1. Groq’s $20 billion non-exclusive licensing agreement with Nvidia reframes chip efficiency as grid strategy: if you can do more inference per megawatt, you can deploy AI where others can’t, as power-efficient inference translates directly into deployable capacity when power delivery to a rack is constrained. 2. OpenAI’s $10 billion, multi-year commitment to Cerebras goes beyond marginal optimisation by securing alternative compute architectures at scale with distinct power and siting characteristics. 3. Google/Alphabet’s $4.75 billion acquisition of Intersect Power shows that when efficiency gains aren’t enough, hyperscalers move to vertically integrate and own the power pipeline, as uncommitted, secure, grid-ready capacity and optionality become the most valuable strategic assets — reflecting the reality of interconnection queues and time-to-power. Control over power supply then raises the question of quality. Intermittent renewables and batteries are improving, but hyperscalers are also looking for long-duration, clean firm powerm not from a decarbonisation perspective, but for reliability, security, and scale. 4. Meta signed three nuclear deals for up to 6.6 GW with Vistra, TerraPower, and Oklo. 5. Fervo Energy raised a $462M Series E, positioning enhanced geothermal as a complementary route to 24/7 clean power that could scale faster and across more geographies than nuclear alone. 6. Octopus Energy’s $1 billion raise to spin out Kraken Technologies at an $8.65 billion valuation shows that as the system becomes more distributed and complex, coordination and grid orchestration are becoming as critical as generation itself, increasingly determining who gets power, when, and how efficiently. We then bring it home to the UK, unpacking the latest offshore wind auction outcomes and what they signal, the north–south transmission bottlenecks driving curtailment and balancing costs, and why “cheap renewables” don’t automatically translate into cheap bills without major grid buildout. We explore why prices can go negative while gas still runs, why strike prices can rise even as renewables mature, and why the UK continues to avoid locational pricing—for now. The energy trilemma remains real, but in today’s environment, resilience and security are increasingly setting the agenda.

S1 · E1

Feb 19, 2026

49:22

Part 2: Should the state intervene more in energy?

Recorded 14th June - Part 2: This episode was so packed that we’re releasing it in two parts, so we don’t have to cut any of the good bits. Here in Part 2, Lucy picks up the theme of state intervention in energy markets - looking at where governments are trying to shape, correct or accelerate the energy transition. First up: the European Union’s plans to expand carbon pricing for extra-EU aviation. The discussion covers: why most international aviation emissions are currently excluded from EU carbon pricing the history of the EU ETS, “stop the clock”, and the role of CORSIA how the EU is using both carbon pricing and RefuelEU Aviation to push airlines towards lower-carbon fuels why sustainable aviation fuel still faces major cost, scale and feedstock constraints the difference between bio-based SAF and e-SAF how aviation policy compares with maritime decarbonisation, the IMO and emerging global carbon pricing for shipping Lucy then turns to South Africa, where Eskom is launching Eskom Green and beginning to convert some of its coal-heavy sites towards renewables. We discuss: why coal still dominates South Africa’s power system how Eskom’s role is changing as the market liberalises why private sector renewables, rooftop solar and behind-the-meter power have grown in response to blackouts and high energy costs what it means for a state-owned utility to lead renewables deployment while the market is opening up Finally, Lucy looks at the UK’s latest grid connection reforms, after the National Energy System Operator approved 713 generation projects representing around 37 GW of capacity. The conversation explores: why grid connections have become one of the biggest bottlenecks in the UK power system how Clean Power 2030 is reshaping national planning why connecting more generation is only one side of the challenge the need to electrify heat, transport and demand alongside new supply how grid-enhancing technologies, dynamic line ratings, advanced conductors, topology optimisation, VPPs, distributed batteries, smart thermostats, EVs, heat pumps, microgrids and behind-the-meter assets can help get more out of the grid we already have Across all of these stories, the common theme is how governments and markets interact: when to intervene, when to let price signals work, and how to design energy systems that can scale clean power without making energy more expensive or less reliable.

Jun 18, 2026

36:54

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