In our quest to live lighter on the earth and
avoid environmental
catastrophe a great challenge looms before us
Renewable energy is central to the solution
but energy from the Sun or wind is limited if we don't have an
Effective way of storing this energy through down times could it be that the solution to this existential
problem is right here in Vancouver our city has an unusual cluster of
electrochemical experts a legacy from pulp and paper industry and our next guest
Just may be on the verge of
converting this unique advantage
into something very significant, please welcome Matt Harper
Well, thanks, Sam and thanks to Lynn and everyone else who's been involved in pulling this together tonight and and look
I think that this event is such a phenomenal part of our civic fabric
And I want to thank all of you for taking part for coming out and sharing in this dialogue. Give yourselves a round of applause
Okay, you don't need the clap for me anymore perfect some of the most amazing advances in human progress
Have been made by our ability to control
Our resources and to control those resources both in where we use them. I had to control those resources in when we use them
You think about?
Prehistoric times you know we were able to move from the plains
up into caves because we were able to collect water and earthenware bowls and
Carry it with us
if you think about
if you think about some of the great advances in
Politics and philosophy and science it was the critical mass of cities
where those ideas were able to build and become part of
part of our history and
Those cities were only possible because of the aqueducts bringing water into cities like Rome and Athens
In the last 300 years
Humankind's
mobility and Industry has made all of our lives better by
Allowing us the the goods that allow us to live better lives the ability to travel to experience other cultures and different people
That has been
facilitated by our ability to store and transport fuels
Now
Over the last hundred and thirty years what we've seen is
our electricity system has brought us most of the things that we refer to as modern conveniences and
The electric grid is the thing that has brought that energy into our homes and the electric grid is an amazing machine
It's the most complex machine humankind has ever built any hour of any day
There are millions of people around the world working to make sure that the 6.3 billion people who have access to electricity
Can walk over to a wall flip a switch and have light come on. It's an incredible achievement
But what we've never mastered is the ability to control electricity in time
The way the electricity system works right now is that electricity is generated the instant
It is consumed it travels at the speed of light from generator to consumption
Think of it this way
Imagine us imagine if the world we lived in was one where water had to be consumed the instant it fell from the sky
That's what our electricity system is today
Now up until now this hasn't mattered because
We make electricity by burning stuff
We burn gas we burn coal or oil we burn whatever we want and we control when that burning happens
So we're able to make an estimate of how much stuff helen collects history
We're going to need and then we can burn as much stuff as we want when we want it well
the problem with that is that
The negative environmental impacts and impacts on our ecosphere of that burning are starting to catch up with us
And we're seeing increased toxins in the environment
And we're seeing increased carbon emissions into our atmosphere
Twenty-five percent of our carbon emissions are currently
Used are currently produced by generating electricity that's more than transportation. That's more than industrial usage. That's the biggest single category of
Co2 generation in the world today, and if we don't do something about that
We are gonna have a very very hard time mitigating climate change
So fortunately in the last couple of years. There's been this amazing revolution in renewable energy and
You know we've seen that the massive rollout of you know wind power plants and solar power plants
You know these are these are installations. You can now see from space these are massive efforts
But the problem with these devices is that they are not under our control
they generate when they want to generate when the Sun is out the solar panels make power when the wind is blowing the
We get we get power from our wind generators, so
That has created an incredible amount of instability in areas that are using more and more
renewable power
We see tremendous instability in the markets that support our electricity system
We see tremendous
instability in the amount of power available so you start seeing blackouts in places like
California and Australia where there's a tremendous amount of this renewable energy being used
So if we're going to continue down this path we need to find a way to control when electricity is used
in time
So why can't we just do this?
I mean we all have we all know what we all want know what batteries
Are we know we have them in our cell phones, and we have them in our cars
And we have them in this wonderful little device here
the problem with the batteries that we have right now is
again related to the sophistication and maturity of the electric grid the electric grid is made up of devices that are
unbelievably reliable and at last for a very very very long period of time
We have hydro generator facilities here in BC that have been in operation for over a hundred years
the batteries that we have today are
Devices you know made to be used for a couple of years
You know you get a new cell phone used for two or three years
You know the charge starts to suck so you go and upgrade to a new one
But that kind of device is not gonna. Give us the low-cost reliable energy that we need on the grid
So what do we do about this well?
There's a number of people myself included lots of people around the world are starting to talk about what we refer to as
Grid connected energy storage, or just energy storage for short, and it's terrible branding ok elastic stored energy fair enough
But you know energy storage is how this nascent industry is being described
And what these what are essentially very large batteries?
Do is they're able to store for much longer periods and as a resource that's appropriate for supporting our current electric grid
My company Avalon battery is building and designing and constructing these
Devices right here in East Vancouver, and what we're building is
devices
Called a vanadium flow battery
Which is a hybrid essentially of?
Conventional battery technologies and fuel cell technologies where we're able to do the regular charge and discharge that little batteries do but to do that
Tens of thousands of times over decades which is exactly the kind of resource we need if we're going to decouple
the time of electricity use consumption on the grid in
Doing this work we are tapping into a Sam mentioned is some of the great
pioneering work in electrochemical engineering and product development has been done right here in Vancouver
You know in recent memory companies like Ballard Power Systems, but going back in history to the the chlor-alkali
capabilities that were built to support our
Pulp and paper industry in the 60s and 70s has all been part of this pioneering work this led us to where we are today
so
We're not going to be the only part of this there are going to be many different solutions for
Making sure that this decoupling can happen, but ultimately we believe that being able to by being able to store energy
We are going to make renewable energy reliable and we're going to be able to provide clean
Reliable energy for our cities for our industry and for ourselves in the future. Thank you
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