Introducing Terrajoule
Hi, I’m Steve Bisset. Let’s talk about the transition to clean electricity, specifically a cheaper, more reliable, and more scalable way to deliver the clean electricity that solar offers at night when the demand is highest, and the sun isn’t shining.For solar to work at night, you need to add storage. You’re probably thinking of batteries, and that’s what most of the industry is thinking. However, there are serious problems with batteries: they are expensive to produce, degrade over time, and require replacement every 10-15 years. Battery gigafactories take a long time to gear up, and they cost billions. Battery supply chains are very complex, risky, and controlled by competing foreign governments. And even more problematic is that batteries are worth more in electric vehicles than they are in electric power stations.For electric utilities, these are not future problems — they are current, and they are urgent. This is why I started Terrajoule.
The Technology
Terrajoule provides what utilities need — a cheaper, more reliable, and more scalable way to capture, store, and dispatch electricity. We can do this up to 50% cheaper than existing combinations of solar panels and batteries. Here’s how we’re different, and how we’re going to beat the current battery paradigm: instead of solar panels, we capture the sun’s energy with mirrors; instead of batteries, we store the sun’s energy in pressurized hot water; and instead of electronic inverters, we dispatch the sun’s energy as electricity on-demand with steam-powered turbines.It’s a simpler, cleaner solution with proven technology. A single power station lasts at least 25 years — without capacity degradation. Our supply chain is independent of the battery companies; we just need glass and steel. And again — it’s up to 50% cheaper.
The Team
My team and I have spent the last five years derisking this technology. My co-founder Roop is a pioneer in the solar plus storage industry. We’ve applied for two fundamental patents. We have an exceptional founder partner, the KGISL Group in India. They have the world’s leading solar thermal team with the practical experience to bring Terrajoule to market. Their revenue is $750 million a year, so they have the financial strength to be major project guarantors, and they’re also investors.As for me, I led a previous company to a half a billion dollar exit. We delivered high-tech, mission-critical equipment to blue-chip companies. We had to be reliable, else their factories would shut down. We had to scale to meet our customers’ skyrocketing needs. And we had to be profitable. Those were the skills that gave us our exit, and I’m bringing those same skills to Terrajoule.
The Economics
We’re not innovative with our business model — we don’t have to be. We use the standard model for renewable energy power stations. We sell them at a profit with positive cash flow on day one, and we will collect recurring revenue for the 25-plus year life of the project. With the cash flow from one project, we can scale up the next ten. You heard that correctly: after our Series B, no additional investment capital is required for us to scale. Our first units are installed in 2027, and Terrajoule makes a profit in 2028.A leading California utility included Terrajoule in their integrated resource plan for 2030. We’re not only viable; we’re preferred to all their alternatives. That’s a $200 million opportunity. This indicates that for California as a whole in 2030, we’d be the preferred option for $10 billion. The timing is right. These utilities need this solution today.
The Ask
So, what's our path to market? We’re raising $1.5 million to fund the critical step of integration and validation of the building blocks of the power station. From there, we’ll move into our Series A to complete the market-ready power station and the facility to manufacture them in volume.The transition to solar at night is a difficult problem. Difficult problems require difficult solutions — unless you work really hard at finding a simpler one. We’ve done that hard work. We’ve found that simpler solution. The result is an exceptional opportunity to make a large impact with a small investment.Happy to answer any questions. Thanks for your time. Let’s chat soon.
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