Language
You can read the magazine in one of the following languages
5-min read
Bookmark now
Copy Link
Sitting in his office in 2016, Jan Teichmann had no idea a quick call would be the spark that created Fluence, the global market leader in energy storage products and services. With an overarching aim of creating a business that has a laser focus on doing grid-scale energy storage better than anyone else, Fluence was soon born.
From starting at Fluence, a joint venture between Siemens and AES, Teichmann is now leading Fluence’s Asia–Pacific operations as Senior Vice President and APAC President, building out a 250-plus-strong team across some of the world’s most dynamic and volatile energy markets.
“There is a very important intent to support the energy transition, but nobody does it without a return,” he says.
“Energy storage is our life.”
At the beginning of the cycle, Fluence helps customers identify how to install storage in the grid, how to reach targets in technical terms, but especially how to get a financial return on these often large investments.
Gesturing behind him, Teichmann points to a picture of one of the systems Fluence has installed.
“What we do is not just deliver the components; we are actually delivering turnkey projects,” he says.
“This means we deliver the whole logistics part, the complete engineering part, establishing a connection to the grids, and getting approvals from regulators. It’s very fulfilling.”
For Teichmann, leadership flows from a very simple principle.
“I alone can’t do it. No individual can; we need teams,” he says. “It’s about forming teams that are hungry at the same time as being humble individuals who have the right knowledge and know-how.”
Hiring capable people is only one element of building impactful teams. At the best of times, fostering a culture of competence and excellence is a challenge, but creating cohesion across multiple cultures is even more complex.
“We are active in a large geographical area; at one point, we had over 40 nationalities in our team,” Teichmann explains.
His main goal when building high-performance teams comes from the slogan: “Nobody’s perfect, but the team can be.”
At the top of Teichmann’s agenda is to create a structure where this diversity becomes a strength, by dedicating himself to certain questions.
“How do you profit from individual knowledge? How do you make sure they contribute?” he asks.
The answer always comes back to transparency and an open culture.
As Fluence delivers turnkey projects, last-minute snags and unknown ‘surprises’ are par for the course.
“None of them ever goes entirely as planned,” he says. “But if you work in an open and transparent way, you can handle problems fast and effectively.”
“When I started, a 20-megawatt, one-hour system was a major project,” Teichmann recalls.
Today, it’s possible for Fluence to work on 500-megawatt programs that help stabilize power grids. Innovation becomes a necessity when storage sizes keep getting larger and larger and the same extremely high level of reliability is expected.
“I can’t deliver the project if I don’t have the right local partners.”
The shift toward ‘grid forming’, where the energy storage can restart the grid after a worst-case scenario blackout, is driving not just technical excellence but also new ways of working.
For example, in countries like Australia, the Philippines and Taiwan, which have no neighboring energy networks to rely on during emergencies, storage is moving to the level of a power plant in terms of technical functionality.
More and more hybrid systems, where storage is built together with solar, are being constructed, according to Teichmann.
“This is what replaces aging coal, gas and nuclear assets without waiting a decade for new thermal generation. Solar and storage in combination fulfill the same purpose, in a much faster and also cheaper way,” he adds.
By drawing on the relationship with Siemens and AES, Teichmann and his team can access crucial knowledge on how to run the plants, as well as best practices for generation and distribution.
“This heritage certainly gives us the know-how to understand both sides,” he says.
Taking a highly selective approach toward partnerships ensures Fluence can rely on a handful of local firms that are trusted to deliver complex turnkey solutions, which sit at the heart of the company’s value proposition. Long-standing collaborators like ACE Engineering and RJE Global are essential to this model, supporting large-scale deployments with high-voltage works and grid connection expertise.
“I can’t deliver the project if I don’t have the right local partners,” he says. “We have very strong parent firms, Siemens and AES, which also help us in terms of understanding how markets function and how projects can be implemented and in the supply chain.”
“The issue with wind and solar is that they don’t necessarily generate at the time when you need the energy. Storage has the purpose to make that energy generation and availability of energy in line with the consumption needs,” Teichmann explains.
By combining renewable energy with advanced storage, Fluence is playing a critical role in driving forward genuine power sustainability.
High levels of control and deeper collaboration are the main benefits of this focus on quality over quantity. A newly opened, cutting-edge factory in Vietnam gives Fluence an edge over competitors, with batteries from suppliers being tested and integrated before shipping across the Asia–Pacific, a regional advantage that shortens lead times compared to Europe or the United States.
“Energy storage is our life. We don’t build cars and we don’t have any other business that may require our focus,” Teichman concludes.
“The key differentiator is we absolutely 100 percent focus only on storage and nothing else.”
RELATED ARTICLES 
Home
Podcasts
Covers
Be Featured
Community
