E353: Only One in Ten Batteries Joins a VPP. Here's Why

Reah 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 from TV and print to social media, from reactive crisis comms to always-on reputation management, and now to an AI world where the line between real and fake is disappearing. We talk about what it takes to build a voice when everyone has one, why bots attacked ADB's annual meeting and what she did about it, how institutional climate communications has been quietly muzzled by geopolitics, and why AI won't take your job — but the person next to you who uses AI will. Reah Sy is a Communications Officer at the International Monetary Fund, previously a Social Media Communications Officer at the Asian Development Bank. Facebook @sohailhasnie X (Twitter) @shasnie LinkedIn @shasnie ADB Blog Sohail Hasnie YouTube @energypreneurs

This is a different episode. Reah 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 from TV and print to social media, from reactive crisis comms to always-on reputation management, and now to an AI world where the line between real and fake is disappearing. We talk about what it takes to build a voice when everyone has one, why bots attacked ADB's annual meeting and what she did about it, how institutional climate communications has been quietly muzzled by geopolitics, and why AI won't take your job — but the person next to you who uses AI will. Reah Sy is a Communications Officer at the International Monetary Fund, previously a Social Media Communications Officer at the Asian Development Bank. Connect with Sohail Hasnie: Facebook @sohailhasnie X (Twitter) @shasnie LinkedIn @shasnie ADB Blog Sohail Hasnie YouTube @energypreneurs

Australia'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 Asia, people are still paying 80 US cents a kilowatt-hour for diesel-generated power, with 40% of some island populations having no electricity at all. Mark Lister has worked on clean energy transition across both worlds. We talk about why the energy transition is happening fast in Australia and almost nowhere else, why AI is replacing knowledge but not the financing gap, and what it will actually take to move things in markets that are stuck. Mark Lister is Managing Partner at Asia Clean Energy Partners and co-organiser of the Southeast Asia Corporate Decarbonisation Exchange (CDX). Connect with Sohail Hasnie: Facebook @sohailhasnie X (Twitter) @shasnie LinkedIn @shasnie ADB Blog Sohail Hasnie YouTube @energypreneurs

Chris Cooper co-founded Orchestra Technologies, software that models and operates commercial and industrial energy projects — solar, batteries, EV charging, virtual power plants. More than 35,000 projects have run through it. His argument is uncomfortable for anyone selling battery revenue. The speculative front-of-meter income — frequency services, wholesale arbitrage — gets cannibalised as more batteries arrive. FCAS in Australia is already not what it was. As he puts it: batteries eat battery revenue. Which matters, because if that income is what justifies the project, the whole case is dead on arrival. Then the behavioural problem. Australia has a lot of home batteries and only about one in ten is connected to a virtual power plant, because people don't want someone else controlling their battery — even when they're paid for it. And a car is worse, because you need it charged when you need it. We also get into behind-the-meter versus front-of-meter markets for listeners outside Australia, and what a commercial or industrial site should actually do first. Connect with Sohail Hasnie: Facebook @sohailhasnie X (Twitter) @shasnie LinkedIn @shasnie ADB Blog Sohail Hasnie YouTube @energypreneurs

Is 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 relationship between households and the traditional electricity grid. Using Australia, Hawaii and Pakistan as examples, the discussion examines self-consumption, battery storage, virtual energy networks, grid "death spirals," and the growing ability of homes and neighborhoods to generate, store and manage their own electricity. Connect with Sohail Hasnie: Facebook @sohailhasnie X (Twitter) @shasnie LinkedIn @shasnie ADB Blog Sohail Hasnie YouTube @energypreneurs

For 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 electricity than one Australian house uses in a year. I set off this morning thinking seven-kilowatt home chargers should be restricted. By the end of the drive I'd changed my mind, and the reason is the three hours of free midday power retailers now have to offer. I brought Grok along to check my arithmetic. At one point it agreed with a number I'd got wrong. Come and check your own numbers with me, not the ones in the LinkedIn posts. This picks up where Ep 350 left off, Matt Rennie told me three EV chargers in one street can be a problem for a transformer. I think the answer isn't fewer chargers. Connect with Sohail Hasnie: Facebook @sohailhasnie X (Twitter) @shasnie LinkedIn @shasnie ADB Blog Sohail Hasnie YouTube @energypreneurs

Matt 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 other eighteen hours as a separate problem, and nobody has solved it yet. Then it got sharper. When his team asked a California control room what EV uptake was doing to the network, someone said it was like watching transformers pop like popcorn in a pan. Come and think it through with me. Matt Rennie is founder of Rennie Advisory — 110 people across six cities. Previously EY's global leader for utilities, strategy and transactions. Connect with Sohail Hasnie: Facebook @sohailhasnie X (Twitter) @shasnie LinkedIn @shasnie ADB Blog Sohail Hasnie YouTube @energypreneurs

John 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 electricity market anyone had built. He was in the room for the Longford gas crisis in Victoria. So when he says the two nuclear plants Britain is currently paying EDF to build will be white elephants by the time they commission, it's worth hearing why. His argument: the technology has moved too fast for centralised generation to make sense. Australia's rooftop solar penetration is unmatched anywhere in the world, South Australia leads on home batteries, and the wholesale price here is heading to zero or near zero for ten or twelve hours a day. That changes what a grid is for — and it makes energy-intensive industry a mobile asset that will follow cheap power. We also get into why private companies adopt new energy technology faster than public ones, why the UK is falling behind Australia on EVs, and what "peak" and "off-peak" even mean once storage is everywhere. Connect with Sohail Hasnie: Facebook @sohailhasnie X (Twitter) @shasnie LinkedIn @shasnie ADB Blog Sohail Hasnie YouTube @energypreneurs

Many 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 programs for a living, and bought one himself in 2017. If the numbers don't explain why 450,000 households have done this, something else does. We buy what our neighbours have, what governments put money behind, what becomes a thing you have. Which raises a real question: are subsidies buying hardware, or buying legitimacy? Then the part that does stack up. Time-of-use tariffs are "okay, but wrong most of the time." Dynamic pricing is better — but only with automation, because nobody thinks about their dishwasher at 4pm. And under a dynamic tariff, a car battery stops being an income stream and becomes a physical hedge against price spikes. Jon Sibley is a consultant working on consumer energy resources integration. Connect with Sohail Hasnie: Facebook @sohailhasnie X (Twitter) @shasnie LinkedIn @shasnie ADB Blog Sohail Hasnie YouTube @energypreneurs

Everyone 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 claim wrong now outweighs the benefit of talking at all. A 20-year communications specialist who once brought the first EVs into Europe, she's sharp on why "business sense" beats "moral duty," where greenwashing actually comes from inside a company, and why you should never test a sustainability claim on a general AI — including what her team built instead. Connect with Sohail Hasnie: Facebook @sohailhasnie X (Twitter) @shasnie LinkedIn @shasnie ADB Blog Sohail Hasnie YouTube @energypreneurs