I have to be honest, up until last week I’d heard a lot about the potential of metal-air batteries — i.e. zinc-air, lithium-air, etc… — but really didn’t know much about the batteries, how they were made, why they are be potentially better, and what challenges need to be overcome for them to unseat the current king of batteries, lithium-ion technology.  Then I was put onto an Arizona-based company called Fluidic Energy, which recently received $5.13 million in funding from the U.S. Department of Energy as part of the recently announced first-phase of ARPA-E awards. Fluidic, a spin-off of Arizona State University, will use this money over the next few years to achieve its mission: a metal-air battery that’s up to 11 times more energy dense than the best lithium-ion battery today, and potentially half or even a third of the cost.

Certainly a big mission, but after chatting with Cody Friesen, Arizona State professor and founder of Fluidic, I quickly realized it’s not mission impossible. And it gave me great hope that five or 10 years from now, whether it’s Fluidic or EEStor or Premium Power or some other company, the big breakthrough we’re looking for will happen. And that, my friends, is an exciting thing.

I urge you to read this story on MIT Technology Review, posted today, which explains what Fluidic is doing and why it may overcome many of the challenges that have dogged the commercial, mass-market introduction of rechargeable metal-air batteries.

The University of Western Ontario, led by engineering professor and wind-analysis expert Horia Hangan, has been given the go-ahead to build a $24 million hexagonal wind tunnel, a first-of-its-kind in the world that will allow for the substantially more accurate study of the wind and how it affects wind turbines, buildings, bridges and anything else that’s constantly ravaged by this unpredictable and often devastating force of nature.

Called the WindEEE Dome, it will be a six-sided structure about 40 metres across and its walls and ceiling will house 240 high-power fans. The facility will be able to physically simulate all kinds of winds, from gusts and storm bursts to tornados and hurricanes. It will be unique in the world. Most wind testing tunnels are straight and unidirectional — i.e. a long tunnel with a bunch of fans on one side. The fans in the WindEEE Dome will be reversible and able to change direction, and can be controlled individually — even randomly as part of a program — to recreate natural chaos. Hangan expects to break ground on the project in a year and hopes to have the facility operational in 2011.

Check out my more detailed story in the Toronto Star.

Smart meters and time-of-use pricing are always well-read stories because there’s true division within the general public on whether smart meters are consumer-friendly gadgets that encourage conservation or utility-friendly devices that make it easier to gouge consumers. See my story in the Toronto Star from Friday. My take is that electricity prices are going up whether we get smart meters or not, and that smart meters — and the applications they enable — offer households a way to shift and even lower their electricity use to buffer the impact of rising prices. The mistake — and again, just my view — is that smart meters have been improperly marketed to consumers as some kind of sexy wonder tool that will help them lower their bills. Instead, utilities should have downplayed the introduction and simply moved ahead with their installation as part of a less exciting grid modernization play — equivalent to a telecom company upgrading from analog to digital networks so that, down the road, new services can be offered to customers. Customers don’t care about the bandwidth, they just care about the handsets and what they can do.

By positioning smart meters as more of an infrastructure play the cost of deployment can be simply incorporated into annual capital budgets and households are more resigned to the fact that getting the new device is mandatory. Let’s face it, initially smart meters are about helping utilities manage their networks better — i.e. they can pinpoint problems and do more detailed analysis of individual household, neighbourhood, and community power consumption, improving system planning and maintenance operations and preparing utilities for increased distributed generation in their service territories.

By making this seem like some gift to consumers, as has been done, utilities open themselves up to consumers expecting certain results and wanting the option of getting or not getting the smart meter. Read the rest of this entry »

I don’t typically give much weight to surveys, particularly ones that have been paid for by private interests, but a new national (Canadian) survey — a joint effort by Bosch Home Appliances and Leger Marketing — caught my attention. It addresses the question of whether people who waste energy and senselessly pollute are at risk of becoming social outcasts in our increasingly green-conscious society. Or, as the survey press release calls them, “environmental delinquents.”

According to the survey of 1,510 adult Canadians, “a full 7 in 10 Canadians say it’s a social faux pas to do things that are environmentally irresponsible.” Dr. David Bell, a professor of environmental studies at Toronto’s York University, compares this social trend to how some people look down on smokers.

He said a combination of green legislation, public policy incentives and disincentives, and leadership from government, schools and corporations has increased awareness so much that he expects within five years the “eco-delinquent” label might stick. ”Canadians are starting to close the gap between their eco-beliefs and their actions — and while we have a ways to go, I see this country at the cusp of great social change,” said Bell. Read the rest of this entry »

Ontario’s decision to require local labour and gear for 40 to 5o per cent of a solar project’s content has ruffled some feathers in Europe.  The province’s government created the Made-in-Ontario rules in parallel with the design of its feed-in tariff program for renewables, which for solar PV pays up to 80.2 cents per kilowatt-hour. That’s a hefty premium, so to justify it to Ontario ratepayers (who will ultimately be picking up the tab) the government created the local content rules as a way to tout the economic benefits that would come from increased investment and green-job creation.

Germany’s solar industries association, BSW-Solar, doesn’t like that very much. It has issued a position statement to its members, including some of the biggest solar PV module manufacturers in the world, urging them to raise their concern with Canadian and Ontario authorities. A European Union trade delegation also raised the issue during trade talks in Ottawa last week. Technically, however, I’m not so sure Ontario’s rules violate World Trade Organization agreements, as BSW-Solar claims. For one, the rules only apply to a portion of a project — not 100 per cent — so this doesn’t preclude any specific product made in Europe. Second, Ontario has not signed onto any WTO agreement regarding product procurement, and it’s doubtful whether this issue falls under a procurement scenario.

And let’s face it, even though Germany didn’t have specified local content targets, this is a cultural given. And because Germany was a first mover in Europe, and to a large extent globally, it really didn’t have to compete with many jurisdictions. It’s likely that BSW-Solar is worried that the German government’s plans to start lowering subsidies for solar will draw attention away from Germany and toward jurisdictions such as Ontario. It will, however, be interesting to see if this issue gets elevated to being a formal complaint filed with the WTO.