Speaking to BBC Radio 4, Dr Ballance said quantum computers were “the most powerful form of computer allowed by the laws of physics”.
“The hardware is fundamentally very different,” he said.
“[It] just calculates problems in a very different way and a conventional computer is much closer to an abacus in conventional compute power than it is to a quantum computer.”
The company said the delivery marked “a significant step forward in making commercially valuable quantum computing a reality” and “ensuring the UK is equipped with the compute power to solve some of the world’s most pressing challenges”.
“For that right now, if you want to build a better battery, you mostly have to go into a lab and test out some chemicals,” Dr Ballance said.
“Those kind of problems we’ve known for 50 years how to write down – we just can’t solve them on conventional computers.
“And quantum computers will allow us to take a lot of that work from the lab into a problem we can now solve on a computer.”
He said a conventional supercomputer “might use the output of a small power plant to power it”.
“Our quantum computer uses less power than an electric kettle.
“The systems we’re building next year, which will outperform … the largest supercomputers humanity will ever build, will still use less power than just one server rack in a standard data centre.”