My professor once told me I was more excited about why renewables would fail than why they’d succeed. A decade later, I think about that conversation a lot.
Back in my engineering days, I presented a paper on EWICON, a bladeless wind-based power generation system.
After the presentation, my professor pulled me aside and said:
“Adnan, you seem more enthusiastic presenting the disadvantages of this system than the advantages.”
He wasn’t wrong.
I told him straight, I’m all in for renewables, but I genuinely didn’t believe any of them could scale to grid-level integration. Sure, they’re great for green credits, marketing, and small systems. But can you actually dispatch them on demand? Wind blows when it wants. The sun sets when it wants. Even if we crack efficiency, availability is a whole different problem.
He just smiled and said, “Technology updates very quickly.” Then laughed.
More than a decade later, he’s having the last laugh.
I watched solar and wind generation overtake conventional power sources by massive margins across multiple countries. Efficiency clearly improved. But my old question kept coming back: what about availability?
That’s when I discovered BESS — Battery Energy Storage System.
It was the missing piece. The technology that finally answered my decade-old skepticism and helped renewables go mainstream.
My curiosity led me to Sergey S.’s course on Udemy, an incredibly thorough overview of BESS, covering everything from individual cell chemistry all the way to project finance and bankability.
If you’re in the energy space and haven’t explored BESS yet, it’s worth your time.
