 Hey, good morning, everybody. Welcome to Storage X and Posting again. On behalf of my Storage X co-director, Will Chu, we would like to welcome you back. Today we have a very, very exciting speaker here, Dan Riker. If Dan, you want to turn on your camera, please do so. Dan is a friend, is a colleague here at Stanford. He's currently Executive Director of Steyer Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance. He's also a scholar, Senior Research Scholar at Stanford Woods Institute, also deeply involved in prequel institute for energy. While you look at Dan's check record right there is really a start check record. He's a lawyer. He was DOE Assistant Secretary of Energy for EEIE before during the Clinton administration. He also served as the Director of Climate and Change and Energy Initiative of Google back in 2007. In 2008, in Obama's campaign, he was an advisor and a member of Obama Transition Team. He was indeed was conceded for the post of Energy Secretary for the Obama administration, and then we all know later is that Steve Chu was chosen. Well, Dan cares about energy, cares about environment. Today is absolutely a great pleasure to have him to talk about hydropower and pump storage. It's very important part of energy storage solution, indeed in the whole energy ecosystem, pump hydropower and pump storage are always very important. With that, I would like to have Dan take over. Well, thank you, E. Can you hear me okay. Yes, very good. Thank you will thank you to my other Stanford colleagues who've helped me get ready for this presentation. I am going to share my screen. And hopefully my deck will will come up. And it appears to have worked. I look good from your Andy. This looks very good that very good. Well, so thanks again, good morning to all good afternoon. Good evening people I think are beaming in from many, many different places and I'm, I'm, I'm honored and I'm thrilled to be able to talk to you today. I've had a sort of a long route getting me to this point where I'm going to talk about hydropower and pump storage as both a solution to the climate crisis, but also a conservation challenge. And this is a piece of work that I've been pursuing with others at Stanford for the last several years and I'm going to talk about a major agreement that we reached in that context a few years ago. And it's implication for hydropower pump storage, river conservation and climate more, more generally. So, with that, a little bit how I got involved in this some important background on hydropower where it fits in in the US and to eliminate extent globally. This is the Stanford I'm common dialogue which brought together the US environmental community and the US hydropower industry to to forge up an agreement last October that has really given a boost to hydropower pump storage and river conservation. And then I'm going to dig into pump storage or as it's the acronym goes PSH pump storage hydropower. And then I look forward very much to your questions and comments. And as he said, I'm a lawyer by training, I have a policy background I have something of an investment background, I am not an engineer I am not a physicist so some of the technical side of this, I will speak about, but I don't have the depth that some of you do in that particular those particular areas. So with that, I always love this quote the future is is not what it used to be and if there ever was a moment this is it, particularly with the climate crisis. And of course that all comes down to CO2 and methane and other greenhouse gases, a crisis that gets worse by the by the day as all of you know. Well if the future is not what it used to be the best way to predict the future is to invent it and and that's what's so exciting to me about this area and why I've stayed involved with it for a few decades now. There's just so much that can be done there's so much exciting work to do. Let me tell you two ways that we're not going to succeed. These are two Stanford professors talking. And step two is then a miracle occurs. I don't think a miracle is going to occur that's going to allow us to address climate. I always love this. This cartoon from none other than the New Yorker about how to fix climate change sorry Harold but I'm reducing our carbon footprint only the New Yorker can put climate change and gun control in the same cartoon. Instead of all of that. This is what motivates me, and this is what I built my career around if we're going to get to a sustainable energy future. We've got to put together these three key elements technology policy and finance technology is at the top of the triangle for a reason, because that's what we've got to develop and deploy at scale, driven by policy regulation, all of that and also driven by very very substantial amounts of capital and that's where finance investment markets and all come in together. We put all these together at Stanford for several years we taught a course that brought all these together. It was taught to law students business students and engineering students, and we really tried to bring all these, these key aspects of the triangle together. So with that. Let me tell you, there's another aspect of my life that that really has driven my interest in this area of hydropower pump storage and river conservation. I am not just a nerdy energy and climate guy but I'm also a I love rivers and I love kayaking. And this goes way back to growing up in Syracuse New York and then getting to Dartmouth, where I was an undergrad yes that's me on the right with the curly hair behind the brown sign. The guy to my left is a guy named Rob Portman he's going to come back in this story at several points, but we got a grant from National Geographic to kayak, actually to navigate the full length of the of the real grand it had never been done before and it was quite a long length 1888 miles took us six months, and it was quite a journey starting off in Colorado in the spring time, going from Colorado into New Mexico where we quickly ran out of water. This is a new way we invented to get our boats, several miles downstream when the, when the river ran dry. We finally make it to the end after 1888 miles. And it was a great adventure but it really gave me a deep sense about rivers in the United States and I've gone on with this love for rivers was on the board of an organization called American rivers for nine years and stepped down last, last year after my final term. I went back to the Rio Grande in 2018 with a with a reporter from the New Yorker and he wrote a major story on the proposal that President Trump made to build a giant border wall along the Rio Grande. I published this piece in the New York Times, instead of building Trump's border wall we ought to build Franklin Delano Roosevelt's International Park, one of the largest parks in the world if it had gotten built on both sides of the real grand in Mexico and in the United States so a real passion for rivers. Rob Portman and I, a few years after that real grand expedition actually in 1983 we decided to go to China we wanted to see the ANC before the three gorgeous dam the largest, the largest generating facility in the world and the largest hydropower dam at almost 23,000 megawatts and we wanted to see the river before that was built. China had just opened up to what they called backpackers that meant you didn't need an organized trip. And so we, we bought a collapsible kayak stuck it in a big backpack and went to China. We got to paddle through the great gorgeous we got to paddle on the Lee river this is the home of the, the cormorant fishermen these are guys on on these log rafts with a bird in that basket that fishes for cormorants and that's Rob. Actually Rob modeling for North Face the equipment company they gave us some free clothes for the trip. I went back to China, several years ago, and I finally got to see the dam. The three gorgeous dam as I said at at almost 23,000 megawatts we were working on a report at Stanford on China and the solar industry called the new solar system I went back with my Stanford colleague Jeff wall who had been a energy recorder at the Wall Street Journal we got to see the three gorgeous dam we also got to spend a fun day paddling one of the tributaries of the ang see. And here's Rob Portman. On the left that's me on the right and this is now Senator Rob Portman a Republican Senator from Ohio was on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee for several years on the Senate Finance Committee, and Rob will come back in this story again at several points. And that's actually above him above, both of us is one of the kayaks from our Rio Grande trip. So, this is where I am, I both consider hydropower as as this is indicated, you know, the eighth wonder of the world. This is the Grand Coulee Dam when it was first built, but I also consider it a real assault on nature in many cases. It's it's really both. It provides a vast amount of renewable energy provides a vast amount of pump storage it provides many other uses, but these dams have have come with a cost from an environmental standpoint. When climate advocates, hydro power and pump storage are seen as as absolutely essential to meeting domestic and international carbon reduction goals. On the other hand, conservationists environmentalists point to the damage caused by us dams to a whole host of things, water quality aquatic habitat species, and the rise of dam safety problems. And that globally renewables, you know, more than a quarter now of of global electricity and hydropower is is a dominant portion of that with wind growing fast solar growing fast at the same time. The environmental and conservation community consider this the American circulatory system these are the great rivers of our country, the Hudson, the Mississippi, the Missouri, the Rio Grande, the Colorado, the Columbia the snake, and the free flowing rivers that we used to have are no longer in many cases. These are the 90,000 dams that we now have in the United States the NID is the national inventory of dams this is the inventory kept by the Army Corps of engineers of dams above a certain size. So there are many many of them as you can see, clustered in different parts of the country obviously clustered in large measure where we have a lot of water. And the rising statistic for me when I got into this area, only about two and a half percent of the 90,000 dams make electricity. The rest serve a whole variety of other purposes flood control irrigation. Public water supply recreation and a fair number of them very old ones often serve no purpose anymore and the, and the push from the environmental and conservation community is to take those down. In terms of the ownership of the 90,000 dams two thirds private and and the other proportion largely owned by various levels of government. Looked at in terms of the power dams themselves in terms of plant capacity. The federal government owns much of that, in particular the Army Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of Reclamation. And some other publicly owned utilities around the United States in terms of the number of plants again this is these are the hydropower dams that two and a half percent. Number of plants about two thirds are owned by the private sector. So these tend to be smaller power power dams. And there's an interesting thing that you've got to remember when you look at many us dams and that is that they can provide many many functions at the same time. This is a dam in Oklahoma called the you follow dam. All power production flood control recreation water supply fish and wildlife even navigation. So there are many dams that provide multiple services and this is a dam owned by the Army Corps of Engineers. And when they account for the various costs of this dam and they allocate that to investment, they account for those and allocate them based on the many, many different services that this particular dam like many others provide. So hydropower goes way, way back. The first serious hydroelectric power plant in the world was built in 1895 before the turn of the last century. And we had almost 100 terawatt hours a year installed in the United States by 1950. They continued to grow some but not a lot instead as you all know, when took off in the early 2000 solar has taken off in the later 2000s and into this decade. Where are these facilities located, as I said they tend to be located in areas that are the wetter parts of the country where there is more, more water the big exception to that of course being the Colorado. And along that great river. There are several large hydropower plants that operate. My beloved Rio Grande in a very parched part of the country as you saw from those pictures has little in the way of hydropower. In terms of capacity, it's big 80 gigawatts of hydropower capacity today in the United States and again you can see the spread geographically. The blue is federal ownership and orange is the non federal and pump storage, what we're going to talk about substantially today is is another 21,000 megawatts 21 gigawatts again spread across various parts of the country and with both federal and non federal ownership. And add to that another 80,000 megawatts 80 gigawatts in Canada, very substantial hydropower system in in Canada and as, as many of you know, we have a highly connected US Canadian grids the parts in yellow are 345 KV and bigger power lines that that are from southeastern Canada, Quebec and Ontario and also from the southwestern part of the country as well, bringing electricity to very populated areas of the US on the east and west coast and some to the Midwest as well. In 2019 hydro generation was 274 terawatt hours counted for about 7% of us electricity generation, 38% of electricity from renewables, and more than 90% of us storage and Canadian imports added another 35 to 45 terawatt hours over that period of time. So it's, it's big when you put all these together. Global capacity 1300 gigawatts. Nine of the 10 largest power plants in the world are hydro plants, starting with the three gorgeous dam as I said at close to 23,000 megawatts. The only non hydro plant that makes the list is a large nuclear power plant in Japan. So hydropower is is big. And it, and it has been growing globally terms of the US. I talk about three ways, we're going to expand us hydropower three ways you'll see a fourth. I don't think we're going to be building much in the way of new power dams in the US. Instead, we're going to be upgrading existing dams. We're going to be powering existing non power dams, and we're going to be expanding pump storage. So that's why in this chart, you'll see just four gigawatts in that red circle on the left between the US and Canada of expected hydropower project development and as I'm going to show you, that's going to be more in the mode of powering existing non power dams building hydropower storage, rather than building new hydropower dams. On the other hand, and much of the rest of the world. Very substantial plans for over 400,000 megawatts were in place at the end of 2019. So we differ in the United States for much the rest of the world. In terms of upgrading existing dams interesting statistic more than 16 gigawatts of turbine capacity has been installed in the US was installed in the US between 2007 and 2019. So, so not insignificant even though we're not building new power dams we are replacing and upgrading and adding to the gigawatts of hydropower in the US. I have a connection to this which is. I am a an advisor to a fund called the climate adaptive infrastructure fund. And one of the investments we've made in that fund is actually adding power to non powered dams. As I said at the beginning only 2.5% of us dams are powered so there are 87,500 us dams not powered. And so this investment firm, working with this company this development firm called right development is now in the process of powering 22 for licensed non powered dams, which will result in about 250 megawatts of new generation. Some of the big tech companies have also seen the opportunities around hydro. It can be competitive with wind and solar as measured measured by level life cost, a higher cost per megawatt offset by substantially greater capacity factor, and often much longer useful life as dams can get initial licenses for 40 or 50 years. And those licenses can be extended another 30 or 40 years compare that to the much shorter duration of a set of solar panels or wind turbine so taken together higher capacity factor longer useful life. Hydro has become interesting to these companies. When I was at Google we began to look at the Google data centers and ask what does the energy profile look on a minute by minute basis. The greener this chart, the more it's matched with carbon free energy, the light or dark sections of a particular or particular month or year, the less, the more carbon intensive so Google has made a push to replace as quickly as possible with low carbon and zero carbon energy as much of the energy as it can at these data centers. As have the other big tech firm so Apple is buying dams to power its data centers. Google is working on a facility in Quebec that will be powered with hydropower and Microsoft has a high five year hydropower supply agreement with a public utility district in Washington State, and there are many many other examples like this. Non powered dams. A few years ago, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory did a major study of what the opportunity was with non powered dams how much of those 87,500 dams could be powered. In terms of the where they are, and how big they are. Again it's in the wetter areas of the country in the northeast in the Midwest and the upper northwest. And interestingly, these are often areas that have lower solar potential. In many cases lower wind potential. So there is a nice complementarity that we see in the opportunity to power non powered dams. And the good thing with powering non powered dams is, you have a low impact, you're obviously doing this at an existing dam picture below you see you add a hot powerhouse and turbines. On the left side of this existing army Corps of Engineers dams. This particular dam serves another important purpose which is navigation, and the river has to be maintained for that function. So water is pretty reliable. And this, this particular facility has a expected 80 year life starting with a 50 year FERC license Federal Energy Regulatory Commission license, very predictable generation based on water flow data that exceed 30 years. And again, as we've already talked about a very proven technology. So that takes us to pump storage and I want to give you a sense about that, and then we're going to come back to it in a little while. Modern, I'm sorry, current pump storage old fashioned pump storage I should say is what's called closed loop pump storage. I'm sorry, it's called open loop pump storage meaning you've got to build a dam on a river. You have to create the lower reservoir and waters pumped up at the to the upper reservoir, and that starts the cycle, as we'll see in a couple of minutes. Modern pump stores is what's called called closed loop, both of the reservoirs are off a river. You excavate a lower river reservoir, you excavate an upper reservoir and you run pipes in between and install a pump generator. That reduces substantially the environmental impact that reduces the controversy around building these. So whereas the projections for new hydropower dams in the US were very, very small. The projections for pump storage in the US and Canada are much, much larger. This was a projection at the end of 2019. 53 gigawatts between the US and Canada were projected then, and very substantial pump storage hydropower being developed or projected to be developed around the world 53 gigawatts, estimated at the end of 2019. So, what is motivating all of this, why this interest in hydropower and and pump storage, why are an increasing number of companies, investors, the government universities really looking at hydropower and pump storage well there's really motivating factors, obviously first and foremost producing and storing low carbon electricity. Second meeting energy and climate mandates that are on the rise. In many ways helping to integrate intermittent wind and solar and providing power system reliability and flexibility. Those are the four big motivators for this substantial growth we're seeing globally and in the United States with pump storage and with with hydropower. As many of you know we have a president who's called for 100% clean electricity by 2035 California has mandated 100% clean energy by 2045. A number of states have adopted renewable energy standards and increasing number are adopting broader clean energy standards, and then we have what was recently called the magnificent seven us states with energy storage mandates, that's that whole process is on the rise as well not only mandating low carbon electricity in terms of generation, but beginning to mandate storage and pump storage being a major piece of that potentially. Interesting example. This is the California independent system operator over a small period of time, August 15 of 2018. You can see the green line as the sun comes up. hydropower the blue line below starts to drop off. As the sun goes down. At the end of the day hydropower ramps up. What you can also see though is imports decreasing as as the sun comes up and the wind may start to blow. And then imports increasing as the sun goes down some of these are Canadian hydropower imports. I'll also point you to the fossil fuel line. Obviously, very substantial generation from fossil fuels and this is obviously what we've got to replace if we're going to get 100% clean energy in California. So this is an opportunity for solar for wind for hydro and for those intermittent sources like solar and when this is going to be the need for much, much greater storage capacity of a whole set of varieties. If the grid reliability is feasible. The question is, is cost, and this is a very critical area of of energy policy of energy finance of energy technology is is developing a reliable and flexible grid. But the issue is at what cost. Hydro scores very very well some of you have seen this chart before. This is a raid at the top, pretty much. I'm sorry raid at the top, a whole host of energy sources coal natural gas nuclear hydro wind solar, and even even demand the green the green circles are where a source does very very well. Yellow, it does okay. And black is where it can't do it at all. And you can see hydro scores very very well in all of these critical aspects of a reliable and flexible grid voltage control frequency control short term and long term availability and even even black start. We've looked at more, more closely. This is how hydro compares to the fast rising world of solar and wind, and that is why there is an increasing alliance being built between the solar and wind industry, and the hydro industry both hydro generation, and pump storage. And black start is interesting you as you can see we don't get black start capability from from solar and when we get very substantial black start capability from Hydro and in fact in the 2003 blackout back east. It was several dams in Western New York state that got the grid going again hydro power with its black start capability put the grid back online. We also are seeing in terms of the ancillary services market, you know several aspects of that previous chart like frequency support. Before hydro played in the ancillary services market. These dams for example this power plant in Missouri was quite predictable in terms of what it was supplying and how it operated over time. As dams like this are playing larger and larger roles in the ancillary services market what we're seeing is lots of fast and frequent operation of the dam to, for example, maintain frequency on the grid in the area of Missouri. So, ancillary services and what hydro can do for that has has has made a big change for hydropower. Having said all this and all the good things that hydro and pump storage can do. We also have a whole host of challenges habitat impacts on fish altered flows, water quality greenhouse gas emissions and reservoirs tribal rights and dam safety and then as we've talked about there's a whole host of competing demands on those dams that not only provide hydropower but provide other services as well. So just a few examples. Fish do are really challenged by hydropower dams and dams of all sorts that's why fish letters have been built, but even with fish ladders and elevators and all that, there remain challenges for fish. And that is a serious challenge, you've got with the 90,000 dams in the United States. We do know that some reservoirs, some reservoirs do emit substantial amounts of greenhouse gas emissions this is a major study that's been done at the Oak Ridge lab. What's interesting and what's a head scratcher for now at least is this huge range from 0.14% to 6.6% of global greenhouse gas emissions might come from reservoirs. We don't have adequate data, a lot of new work is being done by DOE, by EPA, by universities to try to narrow this number. A few things we do have a good sense about and that is that older reservoirs like we have in the United States often emit less in the way of greenhouse gas emissions. One of river facilities which don't have reservoirs or have very small reservoirs, also low greenhouse gas emissions typically and pump storage, typically with low greenhouse gas emissions. So on the things that we are moving forward within the US, I think the expectation is that this greenhouse gas emission number, however it comes out, should be modest compared to building new reservoirs where you've got lots of new biomass on the bottom and lots of methane can be created here in the US what we're going to be moving forward with should have a modest or maybe insignificant piece of whatever this number ends up with in terms of greenhouse gas emissions from global reservoirs. There are also dam safety issues. There are over 15,000 what are called high hazard potential dams in the US, meaning if they get into real trouble, fatalities are likely to occur. Of those, over 4,000 are considered a deficient, meaning they've got dam safety issues. So at that intersection, we've got over 2,000 of those 90,000 that could get into trouble. And if they do get into trouble, could very well cause fatalities. The good news is that dams with hydropower. In general are assessed more frequently in our better condition hydropower dams the rated dams the inspected dams are almost 100%. The other thirds of those are considered to be in satisfactory condition, very few of them in the in the poor or unsatisfactory condition, in terms of non power dams, many of them are not rated. Many of them also are in that larger category of unsatisfactory poor or fair. So the good news, certainly not perfect is that the hydropower dams tend to be in better shape from a safety perspective. Another issue is hydropower renewable energy or not. This is a discussion that goes on regularly. We know wind and solar are they're considered by all to be that but hydropower is sort of a tricky issue when it comes for example to state renewable energy standards state clean energy standards and states, literally across the map treat hydropower in, in very different ways. I think what's changing though is with the climate crisis with the increasing comfort that the solar and wind industry have with hydropower and the very increasing comfort with pump storage hydropower is being treated more and more as as a renewable energy source in state law and regulation. And then one other final challenge which is literally the effects that climate change can have on hydropower and that is when we get into droughts. You'll have will have less fuel as it were sitting behind those dams, and that we've seen a significant extent at some Western dams in the US but that's something we do have to contend with as well. Pump storage suffers from that less in certain ways, but also is an issue as well. All of this comes together for me with with an inspiring project that really helped get our Stanford work off the ground several years ago and this is on a river in Maine called the Penobscot and a major agreement was reached several years ago to that looked at the entire river and the many many dams on that river that environmental community hydropower industry. Native American tribes in Maine all sat down and for six years they negotiated a big agreement that would allow for energy to be increased at some of the dams. Fish passage those are in green fish passage to be installed at some of the dams, and at some dams, both both occurred, and some of the dams as well were taken down so so many different actions. Many tens of millions of dollars spent to do this after a major agreement was reached by what had formerly been hotly adversarial parties. And the good news is after a lot of work after 10 years of work by 2016 it was done retrofits removals, upgrading. And the good news is that the energy produced even though some power dams were taken down that were problematic in various ways. Other power dams were upgraded and so energy was maintained at previous levels actually ticked up a tiny amount. And some of the endangered fish in that river came back with fish ladders with fewer dams on the river and all of that so it's a great story and it was a real motivator for us at Stanford. At Stanford we, we began to ask this question back in 2016 2017 what if we could better value the grid related benefits of the low carbon electricity that comes from existing us dams and pump storage. And what if we could generate more. What if we could increase the grid integration and storage of intermittent solar and wind variable solar and wind. What if we can improve the safety and the environmental performance of not just the nation's 2500 power dams, but all 90,000 dams and important so important to the conservation environmental community. What if we could expand free flowing miles of us rivers for climate resilience and fish. So, we did some research with some graduate students in law business and engineering 2016 2017 and in 2018. We launched something called an uncommon dialogue this is a process at the Stanford Woods Institute that basically sits down parties in conflict over sustainability issues so we said let's bring the hydropower industry. The river conservation and environmental community tribes. The government let's get them all to sit down and see whether we could better address climate change and protect rivers through a smarter approach to us hydropower and more broadly to the 90,000 us dams. The objective was a 2020 agreement when we sat down in 2018. And what they had done in Maine we were very impressed and we asked, could we do the same on a national basis. So an agreement between the hydropower industry and the river conservation environmental groups to improve the value of hydropower and protect rivers. That's what we call the three Rs rehabilitations retrofits and removals of us dams, both powered and non powered, and all of that driven by better policy technology and investment remember my triangle on a basin scale as in Maine. You look at the whole watershed the whole river the whole basin and ask yourself what could be done, getting all the people to the table. We didn't pick out a specific river we were looked, we were looking at all the rivers of the United States and all 90,000 dams and again, through the uncommon dialogue process hosted by the Woods Institute. The three Rs. First and foremost rehabilitate dams for improved safety and environmental performance we've really got to get after this average age of dams in the United States is 60 years old. So they're beginning to have not just beginning they do have safety issues. So, big emphasis on retrofitting in the three Rs, both powered and non powered dams for increased electricity generation and storage that would include adding pump storage to existing dams. And then, removing obsolete dams that are harming ecosystems causing safety risks and impeding recreation. This was a major ask by the river conservation community groups like American rivers. This was a major challenge for the hydropower industry to agree to, to even utter the word dam removal. As I said, sponsored by the Stanford Woods Institute, also our center on energy policy and finance, which is a joint center of the law and business schools and also something called the Energy Futures Initiative led by former energy secretary, Ernie Moniz. The Army Corps Oak Ridge Labor at the table, and then a great array of NGOs American rivers the Nature Conservancy, something called the hydropower reform coalition which is more than 40 US environmental groups focused on hydropower. The low impact hydropower initiative the Natural Resources Defense Council American Whitewater World Wildlife Union of Concerned Scientists a great group set down. And we, most importantly at the table the National hydropower association on behalf of the industry General Electric, and you can see the rest of them big company like black and beach and even investors, entities that are investing in upgrades to these dams, building hydropower building pump storage. We did reach an agreement in October of 2020, a major agreement many pages long. And these were the folks who put their names on that agreement with American rivers leading environmental and conservation groups and NHA the natural hydropower association, leading folks from industry. And the news. This is the piece that the New York Times wrote environmentalists and dam operators at war for years start making peace. And we did announce a an unusual agreement as it said, in the lead sense, and we're very proud of this. It's a serious work that we laid out improving hydropower technologies and practices, advocating for dam safety, increasing this use of basin scale decision making not one dam at a time but the whole basin measurement valuation and compensation for the hydropower services, flexibility reliability and the like, and improved environmental performance and more effective river restoration, but the big two that are underway today. In very significant ways are improving federal hydropower licensing real licensing and license surrender. This is led by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and most importantly advocating for increased funding for the three hours. That's been our biggest task, along with focus on licensing real licensing and license surrender and and these other several areas. As soon as we knew that President Biden was going to become president where there would both be an increased focus on climate change and clean energy, as well as a renewed push on major infrastructure funding. We got to work and we reached another agreement in April of this year. We came out with a $63 billion plan for how to invest in the three hours. And we knew that we had to work hard in the infrastructure context with pending infrastructure legislation and related funding coming to Washington DC. So we sat down and we put together a very detailed proposal on that. The good news is that just last month, 2.3 billion was added to the pending bipartisan infrastructure bill to as we say improve or remove us dams. And this is in the wake of the uncommon dialogue that I've just explained to you. Bottom right is my buddy Rob Portman you saw that picture well guess what he was the lead Republican negotiating this infrastructure bill so he understood rivers he understood dams he understands river conservation he understands climate change. And so he gave us some help. In getting this 2.3 billion. As you can see 2.3 billion relative to the 60 billion we identified is big but it's it represents just a down payment on that much larger amount of money that we need. But to have this in the bipartisan infrastructure bill is a big big deal because it's getting recognition that it had never gotten before. So, that takes me to pump storage. And I hopefully have given you context because pump storage is an element of hydropower hydropower is an element of US rivers US rivers are subject to lots and lots of demands in terms of conservation and environment and competing uses so let's dive into pump storage. So first of all I want to I want to stress that we need all forms of electricity storage. I'm talking about pump storage, but we need it all, both to be small and large quantities of storage capacity, and meet radically different time dimensions from milliseconds to literally months and years of storage. So I am a, I'm a big fan of a very big, of a very big tent, but I do think pumped hydro provides a very interesting opportunity for large quantities. In terms of capacity, and for long duration storage, as, as many of you know. So, let me put this 90 second video up to give you a little bit more of a sense about what pump storage actually is, which is produced recently by the Department of Energy. So, let's see if this actually works. Think of it as a big battery. It's flexible enough to respond to various power delays. The sun is shining and the wind is blowing. Electricity is an high supply, so water is pumped to higher elevation reservoirs during this time. When the sun goes down, or the wind stops blowing, water is released back to lower reservoirs, basically filling in the gaps during peak demand and generating immediate electricity. Energy storage is the most dominant form of energy storage on the electric grid today. There's more than 21 gigawatts of storage capacity already installed in the United States with future opportunities to more than double that, keeping the grid reliable and ready to add more electricity to the mix at low operating costs to learn more about hydropower and pump storage is their website at water.energy.gov. All right. So that was the, that was the beginner's guide to pump storage. And as you saw, it represents a very substantial part of US storage capacity today, over 90% with the rest, a mix of thermal storage and batteries. And, and what I'm going to talk about is how, as we've seen before, we expected to grow potentially quite substantially in the US and around the world. So today, as most of you know, we're focused on energy. So moving forward, capacity and ancillary services are going to be a bigger and bigger chunk of what we need. And that obviously is where pump storage can play a very big role. This is a little bit of what we saw earlier, but these are the real important applications that we need from electricity storage from arbitrage to from capacity. So we have a set of operating reserves, you know, and frequency voltage spinning reserve, replacing and deferring the need for transmission and distribution and as we talked about before, black start. This is the hydropower industry, writing it's very long list of all the things that it can do for the grid in the US and around the world, many, many things that that it can contribute. And as you heard in the video, think of it as a giant battery. And this is in fact, the Bath County pump storage station, some call it the largest battery in the world, 3000 and three megawatts the largest pump storage project in the world storage capacity of 11 hours and 33 megawatt hours. In comparison, total US electrochemical batteries deployed as of today is I think only about 1000 megawatts so as things stand obviously things are changing with the massive deployment of batteries and I am a supporter of those, but pump storage has a big is a big chunk of today's storage capacity and I think it's going to grow over time in the US and around the world. It is very well distributed. And essentially, as some of you know, it got bills, most of what we've got today in the 60 70s 80s as an adjunct to nuclear power stations, meaning nuclear didn't have much of a market at night with lower electricity and so these pump storage projects built near large nukes around the country, allowed that nuclear electricity to be stored overnight, and sold into a higher price market the next day so you'll see these adjoin where there are lots of nuclear power plants in the southeast and northeast and on the California coast. And that's why California is at the top of the list in terms of current pump storage capacity and Virginia second. And that's because of that largest battery in the world that I just showed you. Speaking of California. So this is an interesting chart, which basically shows California's large 1200 megawatt pump storage station near the Diablo Canyon reactors. It used to operate to store as I said nuclear generated electricity at night. And that's what you see the high blue bar but as time has gone by, as the more and more solar and wind electricity have been developed and deployed in California we've seen a shift in the operation of this plant to more and more pumping today, with the excess electricity, we increasingly have from solar and wind, and less and less pumping at night so this is a shift we're seeing around the country and in California with the increasing belly of the of the duck curve that so many of you know, in the second part of the chart below. Looking at that Helms plant further on the left. This is detailed transaction data for a number of us pump storage hydro plants from 2014 to 2018. And it shows that energy sales were the largest revenue stream. So that's the Helms plan as you can see in green energy was its biggest chunk but it was also providing and getting paid for energy imbalance for uplift for frequency regulation. For example from in PJM. You'll see the Seneca plant in the in the middle, where a big chunk of that was for capacity, the capacity payments and the energy payments were the big, big chunk there with less focus on for example energy and balance. So, across the various independent system operators various ways that these pump storage plants are being used and I think that has even changed since 2014 to 2018 with more and more solar and wind on the grid. Similarly, pump storage capacity has increased by 1400 megawatts between 2010 and 2019, even though no new plants were built except for a 42 megawatt plant in California and that was because of capacity increases at existing pump storage projects you can go in. You can do a whole host of things that will increase the capacity of those plants so not insignificant 1.4 gigawatt increase in pump storage, and you can see plants in California, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, South Carolina we're all upgraded to increase the net capacity and is this chart also shows pump storage is the vast proportion of energy storage capacity in the US and as you'll see at the bottom 158,000 gigawatts of pump storage in 35 countries around the world, and a lot more being built as we speak. Another interesting fact in the various isos the shares of things that pump storage can do like frequency regulation and related reserves are much higher than the hydropower share of the installed capacity. So this is looking at hydropower broadly and as you can see, for example, this is this is a chart of PJM hydropower is barely 5% of the overall resource in PJM. But it in terms of providing regulation services, non synchronized primary reserves and the like you'll see those green bars go up pretty high whereas the red side the black ticks at the bottom only show about 5% actual energy generating capacity, and the hydropower being used in these other ways has been very significant to the operation of these various regional systems operators. Now you've probably seen this chart before. But this is again, you know, part of what we want in terms of storage is power. Part of what we measured in megawatts part of what we want is energy measured in megawatt hours, and part of what we need is discharge times measured in seconds, and in other cases measured in hours or days or even weeks. And a whole host of technologies to do that you'll see pump storage, strong on energy, strong on large megawatt hours and strong on long duration. So DOE for example says that pump storage continues to be the preferred least cost technology option for four to 16 hour duration storage. Actually, compressed air energy storage is even lower costs, but only two case plants as they're called have been have been built worldwide in 1978 and 1991, versus globally, more than 150 pump storage hydro projects. So DOE thinks that pump storage is the preferred least cost technology option. When it comes to electricity storage. I have a colleague at Stanford Jeff Brown, who says he thinks there's a little bit more competition between pump storage and batteries for example. In the eight hour range for example but he will tell you as you'll see in the middle chart. Lithium ion batteries get very, very, very expensive as you go out to more and more hours so the way he puts it. Lithium ion cheap for megawatts, expensive for storage measured in megawatt hours, pumped hydro expensive for megawatts but cheap for large quantities of long duration storage measured in megawatt hours. So, he also at the bottom you'll see data is very scattered on cost of pump storage and lithium ion batteries so it's anybody's guess on a given day. What this comparison really is it's very site specific it's very project specific it's changing as we speak, and as we may move from open loop to close loop pump storage that will affect things as well. Open loop and close loop to review it again open loop you build a dam and you build an upper reservoir closed loop, you don't build a dam on a river you build a reservoir at the bottom of the hill you build a reservoir at the top of the hill. You run a pipe in between, and you pump water when you got extra electricity and you turn the pumps around and make electricity. There's electricity demand. The environmental community vastly prefers closed loop pump storage which is most of what's being built in the US and around the world, the days of open loop pump storage are on the way. So what about pump storage development in the United States well there's a lot of it that is being moved along. There's many gigawatts and even some project upgrades, one that'll add couple that'll add 250 megawatts to the current fleet. The three projects in the US that are furthest along in terms of new closed loop pump storage hydropower are the three in the red circles Gordon beaut in Montana, Swan Lake and Oregon, and Eagle Mountain in California. The circles of various colors show you how far along these projects are, and as you'll see those three, each have been issued a license they're in that gray blue. Those three, you'll also see things that are the squares where there are upgrades being made to current hydropower, I'm sorry to current pump storage facilities. Lake, about 400 megawatts, about 4000 megawatt hours and nine and a half hours of storage received its work license in 2019. It has a companion facility that has not yet received its work license, but it's far bigger 1200 megawatts 25,000 megawatt hours 20 hours of storage so bigger longer duration. Still working on its first license. Interestingly, both these projects were were bought recently by a major major European energy investors called Copenhagen infrastructure partners. These are the big boys of clean energy project finance in Europe and they are making their moves in the United States and they bought both of these projects and that was a big signal about the very bright prospects for these two projects on in Oregon in Washington, and I'm going to go back one second because I want to show you. These are located in Washington in Oregon Swan Lake is near the Oregon California border, and therefore has great opportunities to sell into the California grid. The project in Washington State, Goldendale has great opportunities to sell into the broader Northwest grid and also get on the transmission lines that bring electricity down to California. Another project, this is the Eagle Mountain pump storage project in Southern California. It's being backed by next era energy, the world's largest operator of solar and wind farms. And that was a big signal when next era. A major player in solar and wind says we got to get our hands on pump storage, and this is working to connect to old mining pits, billions of gallons of water, and creating, you know, a plant that the developer as you see says would help California get more of its power from renewable sources, and less from fossil fuels. It also has a FERC license, but also does have some opposition because it's adjacent to a wilderness area and there's some other aspects of this project but I think the betting is that this will continue to make progress. And then in Montana. Again, with Copenhagen infrastructure partners a big energy project developer, Absaroka energy is working on another pump storage project 400 megawatt pump storage. And like what that developer says his proposed pump storage facility he describes it as two line swimming pools connected by a pipe. And that's really all it is, obviously with with turbine generators and a great connection as well. So, some of the facts and figures around these projects the three projects with these licenses are all closed loop. They provide eight to nine hours as I did say that second one in Washington state would have even more storage duration closer to 20 hours. The three licensed projects if they get built would be about at 10% two gigawatts to us pump storage. If all of those proposed pump storage projects I showed you on that big map, that would more than double the capacity of the existing fleet. It will not get built, and it remains to be seen what actually gets constructed, but we know for a fact that a not insignificant percentage will not get built the question is just how much will. There's a wide array, wide array of sizes that we're looking at and all these new projects that you saw in that big map from 20 megawatts to 3600 megawatts, even bigger than the world's largest battery that I showed you. And those investments tend to be in the northeast and southeast 12 of the 18 projects with capacities greater than 1000 megawatts are in four southwestern states. And over 90% of the pump storage projects are pursued by private developers only one is being developed by an investor owned utility. Those investor owned utilities instead of developing new projects tend to expand the capacity of their existing pump storage assets as we, as we've seen. We saw in those four projects I showed you it's private developers just like private power plant developers that are leading the charge on pump storage development. There's another interesting project. I don't know a lot about its current status but a few years ago, big New York Times story about a plan to turn the Hoover dam into a pump storage unit by pumping water through a pipe that would start downstream from the dam and and running that through both existing and new generating capacity. An interesting concept. There are other so called hybrid hydropower and pump storage projects in the United States which can do this so it wouldn't be totally new but remains to be seen whether this goes anywhere and as some of you know, you know one of the issues with the Hoover dam and some of these other southwestern dams is is the availability of the water. And then some very innovative new pump storage technologies this is a in ground pump storage hydropower concept that's being worked on. You'll see how things work in generating mode and how things work in storing mode. There's a water flow, a deep storage shaft pistons that operate. And so this is, this is worth keeping your eye on increasingly people are asking this question in addition to, you know, surface impoundments admittedly off river but what if we could do some of this underground. And that's what's being worked on. And then even more innovative build an artificial island in the ocean. With a pond in the middle essentially higher water level capacity than the ocean itself populated with wind turbines float solar panels. When you have a lot of electricity more than you need pump water from the ocean up to this higher level reservoir, when you want to send the electricity to shore. You can get that water back through the powerhouse and in a transmission line, send it to land. So, this is a European concept in Belgium, but there's all sorts of innovation going on in the hydropower, I'm sorry in the pump storage region. I also quickly wanted to mention before I wrap up lots going on in terms of pump storage related policy making. This is something that I'm very interested in. And so for example, in, in 2017, the Federal Energy Commission announced a revised policy on license terms, which where the default would come 40 years instead of somewhere between 30 and 50 years. The default would be 40 years, and the expectation is you could get another 40 years after that that's why again these sorts of facilities have very long long lifetimes compared to much shorter a set of solar panels or wind turbine we have a big bill that got passed by Congress in 2018 directed for to speed up the licensing process. Two years from license application to final decision for qualifying non powered dams and for closed loop pump storage projects. And as we talked about states are committing to higher and higher renewable energy and clean energy mandates that could, and I think will increase investment in new hydropower and pump storage. And I also want to mention that our uncommon dialogue continues to work as I mentioned, one of our projects involves expedited licensing and what's called license surrender what you need to take a damn down if it's overseen by FERC. And we've got the best hydropower licensing lawyers and the best environmental community environmental lawyers who've been at the table quietly for almost a year, negotiating what we hope will be further progress on FERC licensing for all these kinds of projects. And very exciting. I already mentioned 2.3 billion for the three hours that we were able to get in the Senate bipartisan infrastructure and with help from my, my friend now Senator Portman. As you most of you have been reading, we're hoping that that infrastructure bill gets voted on soon we're hoping it gets adopted. Meanwhile, there's several other things going on that could move lots of money into hydropower and pump storage something called the 21st century dams act that was introduced. Senator Feinstein. In the Senate. Congresswoman Custer who sits on the Energy and Commerce Committee in the house, along with Republican support introduced something called the 21st century dams act, which would basically take that 2.3 billion and multiply it by 10 terms of funding for the three hours. The context of what is called the reconciliation bill that the Democrats are moving along in the Senate and in the House remains to be seeing what it gets whether it gets finally adopted, but we took our more than $60 billion proposal, and we proposed a 22 billion that we thought needed to be spent the NGOs and the hydropower industry needed to be spent and ought to be included in this reconciliation bill. There's also pending in the reconciliation bill of three hours tax credit of substantial tax credit that would help with not only powering and repowering dams what would help as well with rehabilitating dams for safety, and even removing dams would help increase reliability of dams a very substantial tax credit. And then that fourth bullet PTC ITC those are the production tax credit and the investment tax credit for renewables including hydropower and for storage. Those are moving along as well and something called direct pay, which would mean instead of you having to find somebody an investment house for example that could make use of the tax credit. The developer, instead of having to find an investor like that could make use of the of the tax credit directly. And that would save on the cost of of running the tax credit program through a small only a very small group of investment banks. So that would be a big step forward as well. And then press literally last night. The same groups that sat down and negotiated the agreement in October of last year that negotiated the infrastructure proposal in April of this year sat down in the context of this reconciliation process. And they said, we know you're looking for savings on these reconciliationals, it billion would take us along a long way in the three hours of the nation's 90,000 dams. So, we continue to work together this this unlikely alliance brought together by Stanford University through the uncommon dialogue. It leaves me with all that we've been up to with all the support we're getting with the broad support from the industry to the environmental community to the safety regulators, Republicans and Democrats alike. And I'm hopeful that we can make real progress in the United States on the three hours and leaves be quite hopeful that we can make real progress in the US on pump storage as a critical element of US and global electricity storage. So, I want to thank you for listening. Thank you for the triangle. I'm going to remember how to kayak, and happy to take your questions. Well, then thank you so much for really deep dive into the pomper hydro for the power for the storage. This is very exciting I learned so much today. The triangle, the technology, the policy and the finance deep in my mind when I started the job as director of prequel Institute I remember you told me about that so absolutely true, particularly for the palm hydro related storage. I have a couple of questions. And maybe I'll go ahead and ask them first before we will also jump jumps in and asking other questions. So first one is, I look at the US electricity consumption. You know, and then do a quick calculation myself and say well US electricity in terms of power, it's about close to 500 gigawatt somewhere around there very close. And if you look at the Biden administration wants to do right 2035 100% you know electricity, clean electricity. So I look at that I say wow 500 gigawatts how much storage I would need if it come from solar when some a little bit new clear and US here, and also certainly hydropower right. So, and I use your number right there I'm trying to understand palm hydro, what's the potential you can offer for the whole electric electric green is from your slides what 50 gigawatt roughly is a US, Canada adding together. Maybe in terms of power maybe about 10% is my understanding correct by 10% of the total electricity power. That's 500 gigawatt. So, that's not small if you get to 10% is a long duration story you can last for 10 hours or 20 hours is not small. Similarly, looking at a closed loop system, if permits, you can get permit. Indeed, the close loop system, maybe the expansion can be even more so I try to understand right how people get to the 50 gigawatt of a possibility palm hydro storage. Why not bigger so what's the limiting that. I think that's the question E and I think you put your finger on an important element of this which is closed loop. The issue with open loop is not only the objection from the environmental community and having to build big new dams. It's that there just aren't that many places to do it, even if you have support whereas the beauty of closed loop is. A change in elevation 1000 feet 1500 feet whatever whatever head you want to produce. You need the top of the hill you need the bottom of a hill and you, you know, as he said dig a swimming pool and line it at the bottom dig a swimming pool at the top and line it at the top and run a pipe and start making electricity so so I think the there was a much, much, much vaster geography that becomes available with that so that's why I think the 50, you know, 60 gigawatts of pump storage is quite doable and to your point, we could potentially do a lot more. Now what are the constraints on that one constraint of course is water. This, there are going to be areas of the country where, you know, water will be an issue although the good news about pump storage is, you know, it is closed loop. You don't, you don't have that much evaporative loss. So, while it will be an issue it's it's not an overwhelming issue and I also don't want to minimize, you know, there will be objections to some of these projects as we saw in Southern California, one that's close to a national monument and so, and these are big projects, you know, these are billion two billion three billion dollar projects and they're not easy to do and they take a long time. So, plenty of opportunity, much reduced objection to these kinds of projects moving from open loop to close loop, but still not a simple process so I think 4050 gigawatts. So on top of the 20 we've got is doable and you know you may be right, maybe we could, maybe we could do more. Last thing I'll quickly say is, but as I said at the beginning, we need all sorts of other forms of storage as well. It's all got to come together. Thanks Dan, I'll ask one more and then pass to Will. From the audience, there's a question about what then you mentioned the three are so really good, you know, three hours you got to do. What's the timeline to reach the goals for the three hours nationally. And, and also what's the typical timeline investment necessary for initial construction of the dams to the real power generation right so what's the realistic timeline right there. I think that I can't give you a specific timeline for the three hours but what I can tell you is I'm increasingly optimistic that people are getting the need to bring these communities together. You can't an engineer can't build a project by himself or herself, the policy person can't an investor can't you got to come together. And I think increasingly that's being recognized the projects that do succeed. The big energy projects people get that the classes we taught at Stanford I can't tell you how much excitement there was among engineering students. I know that I'm talking for the first time to law students or to business students and likewise. So we're sending, we're sending people with expertise out in the world, who are really smart at one point of that triangle they've dug deep whether it's law or engineering or business, but they have some facility with regard to the other two. And they're miles ahead when they go out to work in the energy area because they get it. I'll say it in a different way. Often, Washington DC doesn't understand Wall Street Wall Street doesn't understand Silicon Valley. And you can go on from there and this is all about getting all of those pieces put together in a in a much more aggressive substantial way. You know, I'm a big fan of this triangle. And I think answering the question, getting better at it, we will increase, we will decrease the length of time these projects take. But having said that, these projects take a long time. A big solar array set on the ground in the desert, you know, doesn't take as long. It will have its own set of challenges, you know, there will be objections there are increasing objections sometimes to land use and impacts on wildlife and that sort of thing. But I am optimistic that the multiple years that pump storage projects will take can be reduced in a few different ways. One, faster for licensing to I think we're going to see increasing modular construction of various sorts of things. We're going to see better and better technologies. I think we're going to see environmental review processes speed sped up like the National Environmental Policy Act that mandates environmental impact statements. I think the construction is pretty straightforward and so as we get more experience in building these things. I think that can be sped up, but I want to, I don't want to sit here today and say these are going to be two year projects because they're not. Thank you, Dan. Well, Dan, let me add my thanks for a very comprehensive and intriguing talk covering all aspects. Very exciting. You mentioned in your talk that many of these installations were made in the 60 and 70s to complement nuclear electricity generation. You know, 50 years has passed. Can you give us an historical perspective of how things have changed that the boundary conditions 50s ago now and certainly the demand for storage is far greater today with the renewables. But how about some of the blockers. Have they changed as well and how have they evolved blockers meaning that's making deployment challenging today. And you know we created all of this 50 years ago infrastructure. What is the change in the boundary conditions today. So, from on the positive front. Think about, let's go back to the Helms plant near where you're sitting in California that's 1200 megawatt pump storage projects down the road from the substantial Diablo Canyon reactors when do those reactors shut down I think 2024 2025. Sometimes when, you know, when large infrastructure loses a purpose, you know when the nuclear reactors shut down that large infrastructure goes away. This is the opposite in the case of these pump storage facilities. They are quickly finding new uses as we saw there. They're operating characteristics flip as we saw. So and that's happening all over the country. And as as nuclear changes it's operating mode as it gets shut down. So that's, I think the good news aspect of this. I think in terms of the blockers. I mean I think, you know, one blocker which is, I guess I would, you know, call it healthy competition there's lots of, there's lots of storage technologies out there, and prices for many of them are coming down. Another of this is some very healthy competition that pump storage has with a lot of these others but there aren't any at this point with the kind of track record capacity. And the progress it's will be made, even if it isn't made in the US around the world and building building these projects. And with that will also come a reduced price whether they get developed in the US or not as we build more and more of these closed loop systems we can. So, I think that pump storage has a good future I'm not saying today that it has the brightest of all the storage technologies, but I think, as a, as a compliment to the shorter duration, lower capacity sorts of storage technologies that I think I think it's, it's very promising. I mean you think about batteries they have a cycle life. They're increasing, but they have a cycle life pump storage projects don't really have a cycle life. They can run for 50 years they can get another license they can run for another 30 years. You've got to do upgrades you've got to always be checking things. And I will say that the closed loop ones are way simpler. They have a massive dam, you know with all that comes with a massive dam, like the tallest dam in California, they got into trouble, tallest dam in the United States, they got into trouble a few years ago because of some deterioration of one of its systems. So, you got a swimming pool at the bottom again swimming pool at the bottom of the hill swimming pool at the top of the hill they're lying, and you pump water in between so I think the price should come down. I think that the longevity of the facility should go up so I'm relatively optimistic. I fully agree with you that along the performance access pump hydro has most of the qualities required for the long duration storage, especially costs. But I think one thing that I was very clear presentation is that the development, the project development time is just very long I believe you showed a slide just on two projects, taking many many years and I think in contrast to say, lithium is a big deployment which can happen in about two year time. In that sense, then I wonder if I can ask you to make a more international comparison, you know, certainly infrastructure projects in the United States, take a substantial amount of time and if I were to make a comparison globally, you know, China naturally comes to mind as being able to run infrastructure projects much faster. Can you maybe give us a bit of insight to what pump hydro looks like in China today. Other plants are getting built faster. And they, you know, they have a lower bar when it comes to environmental permitting they have a lower bar, some would argue when it comes to some safety considerations wildlife. I mean anyone who's seen the three gorges dam, you know, 1.2 million people were displaced when that when that dam got built China's got an ability to get stuff done quickly. They're going to build these things as quickly in the US as they are in China but having, but having seen other countries do it having had other countries gain experience again in closed loop. And having the urgency of the climate crisis, really begin to push us in ways that we haven't been pushed before. Why is, why was FERC licensing and re licensing such a big element of our uncommon dialogue. And why are we working on it so hard. We all understand that for in many cases is not fast enough and what it does, particularly with respect to projects that either have serious upside for addressing climate or some cases have serious safety issues and the dam needs to be taken down we shouldn't have to wait a long time for, for, for to make a decision about that so similarly, federal agencies under various federal environmental laws are speeding things up. So we're never going to be as fast as China were never going to be able to, you know, deploy people in the way that the Chinese have in these major projects, you know, again, 23,000 megawatt dam I'm just blown away by those numbers. But I think we can speed things up we are speeding things up. And I do. I do feel strongly that closed loop represents a much simpler, much simpler approach. And I think, finally, I think, once people get comfortable with these kinds of projects you can, you can get in your car and drive and see one. You can watch a video not of some artist rendition of what it's going to be like but it's operating you might people might end up saying well, what's the big deal with that. You know, makers at the bottom of the hill some makers at the top of the hill, some pumps that turn into generators, big pipes and a power line. So, and thank you very much. We are actually coming at our time here. So, let me thank you once more Dan for this outstanding presentation on again all aspects of pump hydro. I wish just more time to discuss, and I'm sure there'd be more opportunities in the future. So, let me thank you once more. Dan's presentation today concludes our summer presentations for the storage X symposium. And in just about a week, we will unveil our next quarters lineup, and we'll have five presentations in the fall quarter, please stay tuned. All of the presentation from the summer quarter will be posted on YouTube soon and our website. So you can review all the exciting talks from the past three months. And to take this opportunity and thank everyone for joining Dan and I for the symposium today, and see you all soon in October. Thank you Dan. Thank you. And good luck to everyone. Yeah. Bye.