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Battery energy storage went from niche to critical infrastructure. Fluence's Julian Jansen on Europe's storage boom, Germany, and AI data centers.

Julian Jansen has been in energy storage since 2014, back when most projects lasted 15 to 30 minutes and the industry was still trying to prove a battery could do the job at all. In this episode of Soliverse, he walks host Peter Pongracz through the turning points that took battery storage from a niche grid service to critical energy infrastructure, including the 2016 acceleration in the PJM and UK markets and the moment South Korea installed 2.9 gigawatt hours in a single year.

The conversation gets specific on Europe today. Germany is going through a boom, with 720 gigawatts of grid connection requests for battery storage and a clear move from two-hour to four-hour duration systems. Julian explains the grid fee exemption that can add 1.5 to 2 percent to project IRR, the new Reifegradverfahren that sorts the connection queue by project maturity, and why hybridizing solar with storage has become a no-brainer in markets with long periods of negative pricing.

He also covers the rise of battery storage as a foundational part of AI-ready data center infrastructure, Fluence's large data center pipeline, the SmartStack platform approach, the shift from NMC to LFP chemistry and the coming challenge from sodium ion, and the hard operating truth that with storage the value sits in performance over the lifetime of the asset, not in the cheapest block you can buy.

Connect with Julian Jansen:
LinkedIn
Fluence

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Thank you for listening to Soliverse | The Future of Solar, the podcast for people building the future of solar, storage, and renewable infrastructure.

Each episode features grounded, unfiltered conversations with the people financing, developing, operating, and scaling real projects across the solar and clean energy ecosystem.

Soliverse exists to cut through noise, hype, and disconnected narratives and replace them with clarity, realism, and execution-focused insight for professionals who want to make smarter decisions, faster.

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