Green Success Stories got to speak with Yuri Vlasov, an engineer with big plans to simplify electrification and access to renewable energy for all. His system will optimize energy consumption, connect to the cloud and sell your energy, reduce your electricity bill and help the environment by reducing your carbon emissions.
Tell us a little bit about you and your background:
I am the founder and CEO of Watts Battery, an engineering startup that is aiming to simplify access to renewable energy with a lego-like home power system, solving the complexity of existing home power solutions with plug and play interface. No installation, no connection permits. The system provides backup, solar access, and smart grid. A system is capable of controlling the entire load from an appliance to a house.
I worked in the energy sector corporate, with a financial background, and an MBA. But my soul always was with engineering, so when I was faced with the exciting complexity of access to solar energy and the absence of independent power source solutions available for people with no technical skills, I decided to take action and build a product that will help people get access to electricity whenever and wherever one needs it.
What is a fun fact about you?
During my first show of the product at CES2018, there was a black-out at the exhibition, and our booth was the only light spot in a huge dark area of this venue, because we had our product with us and it was powering all our equipment at the booth.
So we ended up getting so much attention from CES visitors, that even CES TV decide to interview me, but my English speaking skills were so low, that after taking the video interview, they were not able to promote it. That is how bad was my English was at the time! Frankly speaking, it is not much better now, but I am working to improve my communication skills.
Why do you think climate change and sustainability is such an important topic today?
I spent more than 10 years in the multinational energy corporation “Gazprom”, which has a huge infrastructure, that distributes energy resources across many countries in Europe and Asia. It consumes a gigantic amount of resources to keep this structure alive and on the other side, it is so vulnerable as is any big infrastructure that was implemented during the past 100 years on our planet.
Most of those were built without any consideration for the impact they have on the environment and nature, and the older they become, the more harmful their impact and the more resources they consume. One day it will start collapsing and we as humanity need to be ready and have instruments and technologies to withstand this transition.
The earlier that we start to take actions to ease our dependence on infrastructure, the more chances we will have to create a more clear future with less impact on the environment, fewer resources to consume. This will have a positive result of allowing more water and food to be available for our increasing population, as well as cleaner air.
What do you envision your industry looking like 10 years from now?
I would love to see progress for the planet in the form of no environmental pollution from people, and everyone has solar power at home, with distributed energy systems providing power generated by your home to your downtown office. Hopefully the atmosphere is clean and global warming is stopped. This is how I see it, hopefully, it will happen in just 10 years.
But with regards to the electrical industry, I had a vision, that it will become completely people-friendly, and users of electricity will be capable instead of paying utilities for a lifetime, to earn money with electrical appliances. The energy market will become similar to today’s stock market, but instead of selling and buying shares, we will sell and buy our energy assets. You will have your EV car as a big emergency battery for your home and a small modular power system, that helps you to manage your energy, including solar. You will be able to trade your assets, but also keep your house connection running while your big battery is on the wheels is away from home.
The big generation assets, like solar farms, wind farms, hydro, and nuclear will serve only to big factories and industrial clusters, but domestic electricity needs will be fully self-regulated and self-sustained with homes, apartments, and offices exchanging the electricity assets with the help of individual power nodes. Just like we have seen it in Sci-Fi movies, but this will lead me to speak about space exploration, which goes outside of this topic.
What can the average person do to make a difference?
Mind how you consume resources, water, and electricity, and how you dispose of your garbage.
If even some of us simply start to be aware of their impact that we all make on the environment with our day to day unconscious living, it will be more than enough to make a huge difference to this planet and its future.
Yuri, it was a pleasure learning about your work and your mission to simplify electrification and access to renewable energy for all.
Green Success Stories is a television show, podcast, social media, and news platform, hosted by Dylan Welch, that highlights climate change scientists, renewable energy experts, and clean tech entrepreneurs by giving them a voice in the mainstream media. The Green Podcast highlights leading experts in cleantech, sustainability, media, finance, and real estate. Tune in and subscribe to the podcast on Apple or Spotify to listen to interviews with leading cleantech and sustainable experts. If you are interested in being featured on Green, click HERE.