Key takeaway
In Part 2 of this Intelligence Optimised conversation, Todd Crowley and Dominic Spooner – founder and CEO of Volta – move from diagnosis to decisions.
Battery systems rarely fail because of chemistry. They fail because of misaligned expectations at commissioning, inter-system communications breakdowns, and AI automation deployed before anyone properly understood what was happening inside the battery.
Granular battery diagnostics are the most immediate and underutilised lever available to defence and infrastructure planners. Most energy management systems assume the technology works. Almost none verify it at cell level.
Australia commissioned more grid-scale battery storage in 2025 than the previous eight years combined. Most of those systems have no cell-level visibility, no long-term support plan, and no answer to what happens when the supply chain that feeds them gets cut.
In Part 2, Todd Crowley and Dominic Spooner move from diagnosis to decisions. What sovereign battery manufacturing actually requires. Why defence and infrastructure planners are still catching up while sodium-ion is already commercially available. Why batteries rarely fail because of chemistry — and what they actually fail because of. And the three questions every procurement officer should answer before the decision gets made for them.
What is your actual exposure. Why it matters to your specific operation. What you do before the disruption forces the answer.
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