Energy Insiders - a RenewEconomy Podcast Why batteries are the answer to nearly everything
Mar 20, 2026
Adam Cameron, innovation engineer at SA Power Networks, showcases the Innovation Centre and household flexibility trials. Jeff Munday, Chief Growth Officer at Fluence, explains falling battery costs and industrial uses. They discuss batteries taming data centre demand, peak shaving, replacing diesel backup, rapid response to load swings, grid-forming and how home flexibility can reshape networks.
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Falling Battery Costs Enable New Applications
- Battery costs falling and higher cell capacities are expanding viable applications from grid-scale to data centres and long-duration storage.
- Jeff Munday explained Fluence's SmartStack packs 10 MWh in a single enclosure using 305 Ah cells and integrated hardware/software to boost density and deployment flexibility.
Offer Long Service Agreements To Build Trust
- Design and offer long-term service and warranty packages to build customer trust and lower lifecycle risk.
- Fluence extends LTSAs and warranties up to 20 years, using high availability (98.5%) performance to back those offers.
Why Data Centres Are Turning To Batteries
- Data centres need batteries for three roles: peak shaving to lower firm grid commitments, replacing slow diesel gensets/UPS, and acting as millisecond shock absorbers for sudden GPU load swings.
- Munday noted batteries can cut OpEx from gensets (~$4m/yr) and respond orders of magnitude faster to protect grid frequency.