• Attention getter for audience:

Imagine the power going out at a hospital — [pause]

life-support failing within minutes.

At a data center — [pause]

millions lost in seconds.

At a lab — [pause]

years of research erased overnight. [longer pause]

At your homes, your ice cream melts... and you lose Netflix.

The stakes couldn’t be higher!

• Need (Have <> Want) for audience:

So, what do we rely on today to keep the power going?

Diesel or natural gas generators. [pause]

But beyond their [pause] CO₂ emissions, the real challenge for these generators is fuel logistics. [pause]

Here at Berkeley Lab, getting diesel up the hill after an earthquake would be nearly impossible. It’s hard enough just getting visitors up here. [pause]

And even when fuel is available, tanks usually run out in just a day or two. [longer pause]

• Task:

So, the very system meant to keep us safe runs out when we need it most. [pause]

At this point, we need a backup for our backup. [beat]

That’s where hydrogen comes in.

Right now, we put it in giant high-pressure tanks. [pause] 

They work — but they’re bulky, costly, and only last a few hours. [pause]

Hospitals and labs don’t have room for football-field-sized storage, and data centers can’t afford that kind of overhead. [pause]

So, if we want hydrogen to be more than a science fair demo, we need compact, affordable storage systems. [pause]

• Main message:

This challenge is exactly what I work on at. [pause]

I went beyond tanks to explore new storage forms: one liquid, safe as baking soda on a shelf. And two solids — one porous, one dense — that hold hydrogen the way a battery holds energy: charge them, drain them, use them again. [pause]

I tested them with thousands of Monte Carlo simulations —basically like buying every ticket in a lottery. [pause]

Each ticket is a different future: a long blackout, a sudden demand spike, or soaring costs.

Looking across them reveals not just best or worst case — but the full range of what’s realistic.

The method I created strips away market noise from the discovery process.

The result? Some materials are already cheaper than compressed gas. [pause]

Solid “battery” materials are harder to perfect and are more expensive at current prices,

but the shelf-stable liquid 

opens the biggest, most practical solution space. [pause]

And that’s where we see the best chance

to deliver reliable, affordable backup power. [longer pause]

What this really comes down to is simple: when the grid goes down, power has to hold. [pause]

• Close:

Think of the Tesla Powerwall — [pause]

a battery you put in your home to keep the lights on during outages. [pause]

The systems I study are already cost-competitive with that benchmark. [pause]

But unlike a home battery,

they can scale to power hospitals, data centers and national labs — [pause]

Ensuring life support stays on, your servers don’t crash, and your research never stops. [hold for final impact]

And your ice cream doesn’t melt.