Jason Badeaux

Rooftop solar, battery storage, electric vehicles, and energy management devices are all examples of DERs – numerous pockets of energy spread throughout the grid rather than concentrated in a single spot. Unlike centralized sources of power, DERs can make the grid flexible and enable control of both electricity supply and demand in real-time.... See more

Complexity science, also called complex systems science, studies how a large collection of components – locally interacting with each other at small scales – can spontaneously self-organize to exhibit non-trivial global structures and behaviors at larger scales, often without external intervention, central authorities or leaders. The properties of... See more

In terms of its function on the grid, the best way to think of Form’s battery is not as storage, but as the equivalent of a carbon-free natural gas plant. Rather than methane, it runs on renewable energy as fuel, but from the grid’s perspective, it provides basically the same service, which is reliable, dispatchable generation that can run for 100... See more

I found something else surprising about previous energy transitions. Each one later enabled new modes of transport and new materials which were very hard to conceive of during its early phases. In each of the past transitions, the energy source unlocked new distribution technologies and materials that helped drive more adoption for the energy... See more

Dahn and his team solved this with a single crystal NMC 532 cathode. This has much higher levels of manganese (30%) and cobalt (20%), which makes it more efficient. Also, rather than being loads of crystals squashed together, they have been formed into one cohesive crystal, which means there are very few falts for degradation to take hold, which... See more

The core strategy has unique elements at each level of the ecosystem: overturning the core product architecture, positioning themselves in key bottleneck components, and resolving system-level limitations that slow the adoption of the technology. At the same time, they have applied an effective approach to build their innovation capital so they can... See more

Tesla recognized the complex supply chain in the automotive industry and revolutionized it through vertical integration across its factory, including battery and electric motor production. At its recent AI day, Tesla revealed its in-house AI training chip (called the D1 Dojo chip). The chip, based on itself, would be ranked in the top 10 super... See more

In Tesla’s 2016 annual shareholders meeting, Musk said:“We realized that the true problem, the true difficulty, and where the greatest potential is — is building the machine that makes the machine. In other words, it’s building the factory. I’m really thinking of the factory like a product.”