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Premier Luncheon: Building the World’s Most Powerful Battery

Date: Friday, 26 May 2023 

Time: 12:00 PM – 2:00 PM 

Location: Regent Taipei (4F VIP Room 5+6)

Address: No. 3, Lane 39, Section 2, Zhongshan N Rd, Zhongshan District, Taipei City, Taiwan 104


Join us for this Premier Luncheon where we have the privilege to invite Nick Carter and Paul Curnow from Akaysha Energy to share about the World's Most Powerful Battery that they're currently building.  


Australia and Taiwan - albeit on differing scales - face very similar challenges over the next decade as each country's 2030 net zero commitments require rapid decarbonisation of the electricity grid. Increasing levels of renewable energy - coupled with des reading reliance on baseload coal and gas - means significant amounts of storage capacity will be required in both energy markets. 


Australia is already seeing this storage need accelerate as large coal-fired generators exit the market earlier than planned. In this market, Akaysha Energy is building what will be the world's most powerful battery on an old decommissioned coal-fired power station, now repurposed to host the 850MW/1680MWh Waratah Super Battery.  This large-scale grid-connected battery - supported by a NSW Govt capacity support mechanism - presents an interesting and highly relevant case study for Taiwan as it too looks to bring more battery storage into the Taiwanese electricity market.


In this seminar, you will hear from the team at Akaysha Energy and their insights from designing and building the Waratah Super Battery and how similar designed and structured storage projects could be deployed in Taiwan. this will be followed by a panel Q&A with the Bureau of Energy to further discuss the plans and opportunities for accelerating battery storage in Taiwan.



Topics

  • Insights from designing and building the Waratah Super Battery - the world's most powerful battery.
  • How similar designed and structured storage projects could be deployed in Taiwan.
  • Taiwan's opportunities and development for battery storage and grid stability.


Agenda


12:00 - 12:30  Registration and Networking

12:30 - 12:35  Welcome Remarks

12:35 - 12:50  Policy Keynote: Taiwan's Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) Development


      Guest of Honour: 

  • Chi-Wei Wu, Counselor, Ministry of Economic Affairs, Taiwan

12:50 - 13:20  Building the World’s Most Powerful Battery: Opportunities for Taiwan


      Speakers:

  • Nick Carter, CEO/Managing Director, Akaysha Energy
  • Paul Curnow, Managing Director of Strategy and General Counsel, Akaysha Energy

13:20 - 13:45  Panel Q&A

13:45 - 14:00  Closing



Speakers


Nick Carter, CEO/Managing Director, Akaysha Energy


Nick Carter has 25 years of engineering and energy systems experience in Australia, Asia and North America. This includes roles such as: Senior Vice President at Macquarie Capital in the Energy Technology and Solutions team within the Green Investment Group; Business Development and Sales Engineering at Tesla Energy for large front of the meter, commercial and industrial stationary storage and Virtual Power Plants (APAC); Head of Electric Vehicle Infrastructure and Project Development at AGL Energy; and technical engineering roles at General Motors and Toyota for advanced powertrain control systems. Nick was motivated to start Akaysha Energy after not only seeing gaps in the market for a fully integrated development business focused primarily on battery storage, but also seeing the opportunity created by the rapid renewable energy transition in Australia, across Asia and globally. As Managing Director of Akaysha, Nick leads a group of multi-domain experts and senior leaders across the 4 four key pillars. In terms of the battery storage project development life cycle Nick is involved on a day-to-day basis across development, techno-economic optimisation, engineering, investment, project finance, asset management and energy trading.


Paul Curnow, Managing Director of Strategy and General Counsel, Akaysha Energy


Paul is Managing Director of Strategy and General Counsel with Akaysha Energy, leading our cross-business strategy for revenue contracting and entry into new energy markets and products. Prior to joining Akasysha at the end of 2022, Paul held leadership positions in private practice with law firms Ashurst (as Global Head of Energy) and Baker McKenzie (as Head of Renewable Energy APAC), building on a successful 25 year legal career focused on clean energy and climate change. During this time, Paul was recognised as one of Australia's leading renewable energy lawyers and globally as a long-standing market leader in climate change and carbon markets. During his two decades in private practice, Paul has been a driving force behind giga-watts of market-first greenfield renewable energy and M&A transactions across solar, wind, pumped hydro, energy from waste, and battery storage at both the utility scale and distributed generation. In addition, Paul has been – and continues to be - a long-standing policy voice for the clean energy sector as the energy transition accelerates toward net zero.



Tickets

  • Members - $1,900
  • Non-members - $2,300
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