Impact Canada Cleantech Challenge – Charging the Future

Transcript

Salient

It's important for companies to develop the next generation of rechargeable battery technologies because batteries are critical to solving climate change.

GBatteries

Canada has been ranked fourth country in the world with the reserves for raw materials to produce lithium-ion batteries.

e-Zinc

In order for us to achieve our decarbonization goals, we know that we need energy storage. It's the holy grail to achieving deep penetrations of renewables.

Calogy

Today, the transportation sector is one of the largest emitters of greenhouse gas emissions. What can we do about it? Well, electrifying our fleet while using renewable electricity is one way to really address the problem at the source.

Agora

There are tremendous opportunities to develop novel batteries for large grid scale energy storage. The need is there. The exponentially growing market is developing hence the time is now to invent, develop and commercialize new batteries.

Salient

The most important thing to know about our zinc ion battery is that it's basically just like a lithium-ion battery. We've made this lithium-ion substitute with materials that are far more abundant, far less expensive and intrinsically safe.

By solving the problems of material scarcity, by solving the problems of safety, by enabling a much lower cost, we can make the batteries that will enable renewable energy to become humanity's primary source of electricity.

e-Zinc

In Canada, we have everything from the minerals to the processing, the manufacturing, the assembly, the system integration and the deployment, including, in fact, the use cases for energy storage. And so really, we have a tremendous opportunity within Canada's borders to create a full holistic energy storage value chain, not only delivering solutions to customers locally here, but also internationally.

The difference with our technology is that we decouple power from energy, allowing us to store vast amounts of energy and therefore can deploy energy storage systems that have very long durations of energy.

We're developing a long duration technology that is focused on coupling together with renewable energy generation to allow us to actually achieve those decarbonization goals at the grid scale. There are a lot of really unique opportunities that Canada presents.

GBatteries

G Batteries Active Battery Management System, a software-based charging protocol, is chemistry agnostic. It enables us to accelerate production of batteries by a factor of 10. Reduce the cost by 15 percent. Accelerate charging rate as fast as it takes to fill up a tank of gas without compromising the life and do it safely by means of real time state of health analysis.

Any lithium-ion battery consists of two electrodes submerged in electrolyte. When we charge the battery, ions are starting to flow from one end to another. The faster we charge the battery, the faster the ions are starting to flow. The faster the ions are flowing, the more traffic of ions we’re creating on the inside of the battery cell.

G-Batteries technology on the other side is a pulse charging protocol that enables us to charge batteries and pulses, except each and every pulse is different in size, shape and form. As we charge the battery and send a certain burst of ions into the battery, we're monitoring the traffic and adjusting accordingly. As a result, we are operating at the lowest internal resistance or impedance of the battery cell. We're not increasing the temperature of the battery and able to achieve extreme fast charge, low degradation and do it safely.

Calogy

With our thermal ground plane, or TGP, we succeed in making the temperatures uniform throughout the battery pack, allow fast charging and make sure the battery pack does not overheat.

The impact is that we can have an air-cooled system, which can be as performant as a liquid cooled battery pack, simplifying the implementation while making it lightweight and high performance.

Today, transportation is one of the largest emitters of greenhouse gases. Going towards electrification is one way to take advantage of our renewable electricity in order to reduce the impact of transportation for the generations to come. At Calogy solutions, we bring a technology which allows batteries to be cheaper, higher performance, safer and last longer – all while being charged quicker than a normal battery would be.

Agora

The first thing to know is that Agora Energy is a pioneer in a new, transformative field of CO2 based power sources. The second important thing to know is that the Canadian company invented and is developing the first large scale, long duration energy storage flow battery technology that uses carbon dioxide as an active battery material.

Unlike any battery proposed to date, we address two growing markets: energy storage and CO2 conversion to marketable products. In this sense, we align the economic interests of heavy CO2 emitters, like cement manufacturers, with renewable electricity generators and consumers at the other end.

Developing innovative battery technology to meet the energy needs of the future is a critical element in Canada’s climate goals.

This challenge was designed to unlock the potential in Canadian battery technologies to improve energy density, temperature range, life, and cost. Launched in 2019, the Charging the Future Challenge recognized that the global demand for battery technology was growing, and there was a need to increase the pace of Canadian innovation to improve the competitiveness of the Canadian battery ecosystem.

Charging the Future challenged Canadian innovators to develop technologies to advance clean battery technologies for use in electric vehicles, homes, businesses and communities, with the ultimate goal of accelerating the most promising made-in-Canada battery technology innovations from the laboratory to the marketplace, reducing harmful emissions and integrating renewable energy onto the electricity grid.

Process

More Information about the Charging the Future challenge

The Challenge initially received 39 applications which were reviewed by an expert jury. Narrowed down to 5 finalists, each received the following support over a 2-year incubation period:

up to $770,000 financial support to build their proposed battery solution concept into a testable prototype, and produce evidence to demonstrate the functionality and impacts of their solution.

Grand Prize

Following prototype development and performance testing, finalists submitted their test results and commercialization plans to compete for the $1,000,000 grand prize.

Challenge Collaborators

The Electrochemical Society
Innovation en énergie électrique
Propulsion Québec
Ryerson University, Centre for Urban Energy
Electric Mobility Canada

Finalists & Projects

e-Zinc – Challenge Winner

e-Zinc’s zinc-based energy storage system can be significantly less expensive than comparable lithium-ion systems for long-duration applications. Importantly, its energy storage system can cycle without degradation in capacity. It is also fire resistant, made of fully recyclable materials, does not rely on precious metals, and has fast response time. Learn more about e-Zinc’s project.