Sebastian Berning (Instagrid): Breaking free from combustion generators with clean portable batteries

Sebastian Berning is the co-founder & CEO of Instagrid, a startup aiming to replace combustion generators used for mobile power supply by clean portable batteries.

These generators are used every time power supply is needed without an easy access to the grid: in food carts to cook, on construction sites to run jackhammers, at festivals for lighting & sound, and in countless other applications.

While not getting much attention from regulators to date, these generators do pose massive health and climate problem by releasing huge quantities of air particulates, typically in dense urban areas, and producing significant CO2 emissions (1h run time of a generator is equivalent to driving 250km with a car)

In this episode, we talk with Sebastian about:

• Instagrid's ideation from his experience in Silicon Valley innovation labs to building a battery factory in Germany
• how are batteries built and how Instagrid has fully redesigned the battery management system
• how to sell a complex industrial product before building anything
• the challenge of scaling up a business with a long tail of small customers

Enjoy the discussion!

To learn more about Instagrid and clean mobile power:

• Clean Air Project: EU-funded study assessing generators climate emissions (~ 30m, ~ 20 pages)
• Instagrid use cases visualized