237. Datacenters: "Let’s get Physical" with Quinbrook - Jul26

**SPEAKER_1** (0:04)
With Laurent Segalen from London and Gerard Reid from Berlin, this is Redefining Energy.

**Gerard Reid** (0:10)
Today on Redefining Energy, Laurent, we're going to bring an old friend back on the show, aren't we?

**Laurent Segalen** (0:15)
Yes. It's David Scaysbrook, the Brook in Quinbrook. And we had him on the show five years ago, a very popular episode, episode 66
The things have changed so much, so it was probably time to bring in and discuss all this data center and the evolution of 24K power development.

**Gerard Reid** (0:34)
Yeah. I think that what I love about David is, these guys have been at the forefront of this renewable stuff for 25 years over it. And I mean, always at the forefront of it. They're not just an infrastructure investor, really are. They're looking and sort of saying, well, where's the future going?
And that's great. Yeah. Brilliant to have David back on again.

**Laurent Segalen** (0:54)
Yeah. And for the people who don't know Quinbrook, it's a mid-size specialist fund. They have executed $27 billion, 240 projects. They've built more than 40 gigawatts operating across US., UK and Australia.
And they're so good, they're definitely punching above their weight. And of course, at some point, we're going to enter in the data center realm. And here, they have developed out of Tainair, a company called Rowan. So you're going to hear about Rowan, which is one of the top three successful data center developer in America. And they just signed a giant almost deal with Blackstone, $1 billion. So very, very impressive.
I'm keen to hear what David has to say.

**Gerard Reid** (1:43)
So let's bring him on the show.

**Laurent Segalen** (1:45)
David, welcome back to the show.

**David Scaysbrook** (1:48)
It's so nice to see you guys again. I can't believe it's been this long. Always a pleasure to talk to you too.

**Gerard Reid** (1:53)
Well, David, maybe just kick off. Listen, I think actually the last time we were on the show was almost five years ago.

**David Scaysbrook** (1:58)
Yes.

**Gerard Reid** (1:59)
You've been in this renewable space for almost a quarter of a century at this point in time, but I'd love to hear what's changed over the last five years for you. And then we can probably dig a little bit deeper into Quinbrook and what you're doing differently, and then really talk a little bit more about the future. That's what we'd love to sort of go through today. But start up and what are the big things that you look at and say, wow, this is what's changed?

**David Scaysbrook** (2:23)
Yeah, look, I would say if I go back five years, I'm thinking, you know, 21, 22, back then the big things that we were pondering were getting out of wind, onshore wind and into solar and storage in a fairly big way. And the projects that we were doing were persuading us in that direction largely because on the solar and storage side, you know, with our Gemini project in Nevada, it was just cost-based. We were looking at the potency of those two technologies combined together. They've been a lot cheaper since then, but of course, both in time of day, but in overall LCOE, they were unbeatable. And on the other hand, we were finishing up about a five-year build of our Scout wind platform. And it was occurring to us that we saw that the fun was going out of onshore wind from a risk-adjusted return perspective for a couple of reasons, particularly in the US.
We saw it as a cluster technology, which means everyone develops it in the same location, and that tier one wind sites and then the tier two, etc. But that, particularly in the US, with the production tax credits, led to price cannibalization.
And so it was a very, very difficult period to think about consistent returns with so much volatility being driven by too much capacity going into the same node or into the same connection. And of course, then we started to see price separation between your connection point and the relevant pricing node from a customer point of view. So to us, you can't really diversify yourself out of that. Very difficult back then to contract your way out of that, from a hedging perspective. And so there was really a really huge turning point for us, was the decision to get out of onshore wind and into solar and battery storage, which at the time and in the five years since, we saw it back then as the engine room of the energy transition. And we were a pioneer of solar and DC coupled storage, and that was with four-hour solution back then. Everything that's happened since then, I mean, it's more than 80% of most grid queues. It's now the dominant technology combination, and certainly in the markets where we're active. And so I would say for that technology trend based on cost, the sheer cost competitiveness and the time of day service that solar and storage could deliver, has turned out to be absolutely right.