The POWER Podcast

Engineering Technicians and Technologists Are an Important Industry Pillar According to Cheryl Farrow, CEO of the Ontario Association of Certified Engineering Technicians and Technologists (OACETT), there are three basic pillars that make up the engineering field. They are licensed engineers, technicians and technologists, and skilled trades. “We can't be successful without all three of these pillars working together effectively,” Farrow said as a guest on The POWER Podcast. “That's why, from our perspective, you need certified technicians and technologists, who have proven to be at the highest level of technical, ethical, and professional performance.” OACETT’s mission is to act as Ontario's independent certifying body for Engineering and Applied Science technicians and technologists. “We provide member certifications, career-long educational opportunities, and professional support for the benefit of our members, for the benefit of the province’s economy, and for the development of safe and secure communities,” said Farrow. There are a number of things OACETT does to raise awareness of opportunities in the engineering field. One major activity is the group’s participation in Canada’s National Engineering Month in March. The event will take place virtually in 2021. “That is our opportunity to create some general awareness about this field of practice,” said Farrow. The organization also works closely with employers. Farrow explained: “That's where you really do start to see job postings where the certifications that OACETT offers will either be required, or they will be preferred, or they will create an advantage for hiring. And we have also just launched what we're calling our 360 Partnership Program, which is to help us connect even more with the employer community, get this message out there, and help them to understand the value of hiring certified technicians and technologists.” In 2021, OACETT plans to launch a government relations strategy. It intends to target specific ministries, and let them know the kind of expertise leaders could draw on from among OACETT’s membership when creating policy. The education community is another area of focus for the group. “We work very closely with all of Ontario's community colleges on outreach to their students,” Farrow said. “We even go so far as to embed our exam programs in some of these college curriculums so they sort of have a leg up even into the certification once they finish school and start working. And then we work together with the colleges so that we can start to get the word out, even in high school, to encourage students to explore these fields of study.”

A Hopeful Narrative for the Nuclear Industry Although there is only one nuclear power plant construction project in progress today in the U.S., that doesn’t mean the nuclear industry has gone dormant. A lot of research and development are ongoing, and the federal government is putting millions of dollars behind some of the efforts. The Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program “The Department of Energy’s [DOE’s] Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program [ARDP] is a real gamechanger for the industry,” Marc Nichol, senior director of new reactors with the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), a policy organization of the nuclear technologies industry, said as a recent guest on The POWER Podcast. “It offers an opportunity for DOE to directly cost-share with different companies developing technologies to help accelerate technology development.” In October, the DOE awarded TerraPower and X-energy $80 million each in initial funding under the ARDP to build two advanced nuclear reactors that can be operational within seven years. The DOE plans to invest a total of $3.2 billion over the next seven years, with industry partners providing matching funds. For its part, TerraPower plans to demonstrate its Natrium reactor, a sodium-cooled fast reactor that supposedly leverages decades of development and design work undertaken by TerraPower and its partner GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy. The high-operating temperature of the Natrium reactor, coupled with thermal energy storage, will reportedly allow the plant to provide flexible electricity output that complements variable renewable generation such as wind and solar. X-energy is expected to deliver a commercial four-unit nuclear power plant based on its Xe-100 reactor design. The Xe-100 is a high-temperature gas-cooled reactor that is said to be ideally suited to provide flexible electricity output as well as process heat for a wide range of industrial heat applications, such as desalination and hydrogen production. “There’s a lot of new and innovative things that these types of reactors can do,” Nichol said, referring to the ARDP-funded designs. Microreactors Among other designs that Nichol spoke about were microreactors (units with power output ranging from 1 MW to 10 MW). “The best way I can describe it is a microreactor would be able to fit on the back of a flatbed semi-truck. The building itself would be about the size of an average home. The size of the site itself would be about the size of a suburban lot. And, so, that gives a visual perspective of how small these things are—you can put them just about anywhere,” he said. Commercial interest for microreactors is coming largely from remote areas, such as in Alaska and northern Canada. Nichol said microreactors can operate 24/7 for years at a time without refueling, and at prices cheaper than what diesel generators can do today. Mobile reactor designs are also being developed. Although there is little interest for mobile rectors from a commercial perspective, the Department of Defense (DOD) sees a use for these types of units. In March, the DOD awarded three teams—BWX Technologies Inc., Westinghouse Government Services, and X-energy—contracts to each begin design work on a mobile nuclear reactor prototype under a Strategic Capabilities Office initiative called Project Pele. “That design effort should conclude sometime next year, in 2021, maybe early 2022,” Nichol said. “From there, they'll move into the manufacturing and operations to test that.”

Could Geothermal Energy Become the ‘Sexy’ Renewable? Geothermal is an often-overlooked and even disregarded renewable energy resource. While new wind and solar energy projects garner headlines nearly every day, geothermal is rarely sighted in news feeds. However, that could change in the future. One company that has made progress on new geothermal technology is GreenFire Energy. In June, the company completed the world’s first field-scale demonstration of closed-loop geothermal energy production. The demonstration was performed using an inactive well at the Coso geothermal field in Coso, California. The project was funded by a $1.48 million grant from the California Energy Commission, with additional support from Shell Oil, the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), and J-POWER—a large Japanese utility and EPRI member. Scherer explained what was done: “At our Coso demo, we were able to insert a tube-in-tube heat exchanger 1,000 feet long into an existing geothermal well that couldn't be used due to the high concentration of non-condensable gases, and we made over 1 MW of power, even though the project wasn’t really at full commercial scale. And with these results, we were able to validate the modeling we use to predict the performance of our various closed-loop solutions and a variety of geothermal resources.” Scherer said another application that shows promise for GreenFire Energy’s technology is in hydrogen production. The company was asked by an oil and gas super major to investigate whether using geothermal heat down bore in its GreenLoop system could make “green” hydrogen more efficiently. “And happily, the answer is yes,” said Scherer. He explained: “Since green hydrogen production is more efficient at high temperatures—and often benefits from high pressure—and since high temperatures and high pressures are free deep down in a geothermal resource, we can indeed substantially improve the efficiency of hydrogen production.” Furthermore, in order to be transported, hydrogen typically requires compression, which is expensive. However, when hydrogen is produced down bore at high pressure, it doesn’t require as much compression, which is an additional money-saving advantage. The hydrogen production technology hasn’t been commercialized yet, but GreenFire Energy has the support to do so and expects that to be accomplished in the next two years. “Geothermal isn’t traditionally regarded as sexy, but hydrogen is. So, our plans to make hydrogen with geothermal energy makes GreenFire and geothermal sexy, right?” Scherer joked.

Clean Energy Tech Company Offers Customers Renewable Options There is a growing trend toward clean energy around the world. A number of high-profile companies, including Google, Apple, Walmart, and more than 260 others, have set 100% renewable electricity goals, and power companies, too, have joined in the movement, with many targeting net-zero emissions in coming decades. However, most consumers have found it more difficult to source 100% renewable energy to power their homes. That is, until now. Inspire, a clean energy technology company headquartered in Santa Monica, California, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, announced on Nov. 9 the availability of its digital energy experience in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Southern California. It claims to provide consumers with the first and only personalized flat-rate, monthly subscription with unlimited access to 100% clean energy. “What we do is we're building a completely digital energy experience that makes it insanely easy for consumers to adopt clean energy and clean energy technologies by providing them as a simple subscription service,” Patrick Maloney, CEO of Inspire, said as a recent guest on The POWER Podcast. Maloney said Inspire did a lot of research and found that many power customers were confused about their bills and didn’t understand the tiers that were often incorporated into their rates. Furthermore, some people had an underlying feeling of guilt because they knew most of their power was generated by fossil fuels, which many believe is harming the planet. “So, what we focused on was entering into those markets where we could really build a technology platform that would effectively almost sit on top of the grid, and allow us to then revolutionize the business model into a subscription model—almost like a Netflix like subscription for clean energy,” Maloney said. “We're at the place where we're now beginning to take the model we pioneered there, and now bring it to a national basis.” According to Inpsire, people can make the switch to access 100% clean energy in minutes. Customers connect their current utility account (giving Inspire access authorization) and Inspire calculates a custom flat price for each customers’ entire monthly utility bill, based on factors such as historic consumption. No matter the usage or season, customers can anticipate the same price month over month, mitigating concerns over large energy bills during extreme weather seasons, for example. The company says there’s no hidden fees or price fluctuations, and it’s risk-free—customers can cancel at any time. Customers pay Inspire using their preferred payment method and Inspire pays their utility bill in full on their behalf every month, while matching home electricity usage to 100% clean energy. Inspire’s impact dashboard lets customers easily track their path to a net-zero lifestyle through easy-to-understand visuals, and practical tips to save energy and reduce CO2 emissions. Maloney said one year with Inspire can have a greater impact in reducing a consumer’s carbon footprint than 10 years of recycling.

Developments in Offshore Wind Technology By some estimates, offshore wind energy has the potential to deliver 18 times the current global electricity demand. The International Energy Agency (IEA) has said offshore wind power could develop into a $1 trillion industry over the next two decades, so there’s obviously a lot of growth potential around the world. While the cost for offshore wind projects is currently higher than onshore systems, John Olav Giæver Tande, Norwegian Chief Scientist at SINTEF Energy Research, said the difference is less than most people realize. “Offshore wind is maybe cheaper than you think,” Tande said as a guest on The POWER Podcast. “Bottom-fixed offshore wind farms, they are today built without any subsidies—so, simply competing on electricity price at the best locations.” Tande offered the Dogger Bank Wind Farm as a case in point. The site is being developed in three phases off the northeast coast of England. Each phase will have an installed generation capacity of up to 1.2 GW. When finished, the 3.6-GW development will be the largest wind farm in the world. “It’s competitive with the cost of electricity in the UK without any subsidies,” Tande said. Floating platforms could provide a great new opportunity for wind power developers too. About 80% of the ocean is deep water, which means it’s not suitable for bottom-fixed wind farms. However, with floating wind turbines, the situation changes. “You have a much larger area to locate your floating wind farms, and they can be located at more ideal positions related to wind resource. But also, related to impact to other interest or an environmental impact or grid connection or fisheries or what have you,” Tande said. To make floating technology more competitive, Tande said two things still need to happen: the design and operation of floating wind turbines need to be optimized through research and innovation, and the supply chain needs to be developed. “These two things will make floating wind cost-competitive within the next decade or so,” he said. Among the technology SINTEF has helped develop over recent years are remote maintenance and surveillance systems, optimized boring systems, new generator concepts, and greatly improved methods and tools for designing floating and fixed offshore wind turbines. “The one innovation that has had the highest value were actually these models to optimize the constructions,” said Tande. “You can’t say that is a game-changer, but it has huge impact on the cost of electricity from an offshore wind farm. If you can reduce the amount of steel [by] maybe 5%, then you have an automatic cost reduction.” Tande said his group is currently working on ways to operate wind farms using a more holistic approach. Historically, each wind turbine was operated to maximize individual output—the effect each turbine had on the operation of other surrounding turbines was not really considered. Now, researchers are investigating ways to maximize a farm’s overall output, which could mean curtailing operation of some turbines to improve the operation of others. “We are working hard to develop methods that we—in real time—are able to predict how the wind speed inside a wind farm is going to change depending on how we are controlling the individual turbines,” Tande said. An offshore wind-filled power system does present some challenges for the grid. Europe is planning to have 450 GW of offshore wind by 2050, and some ambitious estimates suggest there could be 1,400 GW of offshore wind installed worldwide by that time. “With these kinds of massive amounts of offshore wind, it's really a challenge of how to develop the grid to bring the power to shore and the technology to do that,” said Tande.

Fusion Power May Be Closer Than You Think Fusion research and development have been ongoing for decades, and many people probably believe a fusion power system will remain out of reach for decades longer. But the truth is that more than 100 tokamaks have been constructed and the science behind fusion is well-understood. What has been elusive is generating net energy from a fusion reaction, that is, getting more energy out than goes in to heat the plasma. One company that believes it is on the cusp of a breakthrough is Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS). Bob Mumgaard, the company’s CEO, was a guest on The POWER Podcast and explained why he’s excited about the future. One big reason is that a groundbreaking series of seven papers were recently published and peer reviewed in a special edition of the Journal of Plasma Physics, validating CFS’s approach to commercial fusion energy. The papers, written in collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT’s) Plasma Science and Fusion Center, are the first peer-reviewed publications from any private commercial fusion company that verify a compact fusion device will achieve net energy. Mumgaard acknowledged that his company, which is only about two years old, has capitalized on much of the previous research conducted by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), universities, national labs, and other countries, to get to where it is today. In fact, CFS spun out from MIT and gained a lot of knowledge from the Alcator C-Mod project—a compact, high-magnetic field tokamak that the DOE funded at the university. In 2016, C-Mod broke its own record for plasma pressure in a magnetically confined device, an important measurement for fusion. “It’s a really interesting story of the long history of fusion and all these stepwise improvements that have been done. And, you know, most of these have all been towards making a machine, basically a fusion machine, that can create the conditions that are necessary inside of it, which is namely having a very, very small amount of fuel, like a grain of rice worth of fuel, that is at very hot temperatures—like 100 million degrees, so hotter than the center of the sun—and at densities where you get enough reactions, and insulated well enough so that it doesn't cool itself off, to the point where you can make more power from fusion than it took to heat it up. That's called breakeven or net-energy,” Mumgaard explained. CFS is now developing and testing new high-temperature superconductor (HTS) magnets, which will allow for smaller, faster, and less-expensive tokamaks using the science developed on Alcator C-Mod and other devices. “We’re now starting to assemble a full-scale first-of-a-kind, 20-Tesla, multi-ton magnet that will really push this technology way beyond what anyone has done before,” said Mumgaard. “That’s at the parameter range that you need to build these high-field compact fusion tokamaks.” Once the HTS magnets are finalized, CFS will utilize them in a demonstration unit called SPARC, which could be the world’s first fusion device to produce more energy than it consumes. Mumgaard expects construction on that machine to commence next summer. Once that system is complete, “You’ll be able to show up, push a button, and make a whole bunch of excess energy—more energy than it took to run the fusion plasma for the very first time. And that feels kind of like the Wright Brothers moment for fusion,” Mumgaard said.

Developing a Safer Lithium-Ion Battery. Most consumers know that lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries can get hot. People experience the phenomenon in devices such as cell phones and laptop computers. In extreme circumstances, the heat can cause fires with catastrophic consequences. One company that is working to remedy the problem is Burlington, Washington-headquartered LAVLE. The company’s COO Morten Pedersen and CTO Ben Gully were guests on The POWER Podcast. They explained how LAVLE is making Li-ion batteries safer. “The foundation of safety in the lithium-ion battery really comes from a good and effective thermal management system,” Gully said. “Another really critical component for safety actually ends up being the battery management system—the BMS. That’s kind of the electrical computer brains of the battery,” he said. LAVLE has put a lot of emphasis on incorporating reliable and redundant protection into its designs “that give the whole system a very high level of safety.” Heat is generated in Li-ion batteries due to the chemical reaction that takes place in the process, as well as from inefficiencies or losses. As battery systems become larger, operate at higher power levels, and are asked to charge and discharge at faster rates, additional heat is generated, making effective management systems even more important. “That’s really one of the key aspects of the lithium-ion batteries, especially of today, is managing that heat and getting them to make sure they operate in a safe and comfortable temperature range,” Gully said. LAVLE has made great strides in improving battery cooling systems. It has tested various materials and cell arrangements to figure out the most efficient and effective way to remove heat from each individual cell in the quickest way possible, using every accessible surface. The company has also experimented with different working fluids and heat exchange mechanisms. Still, Gully suggested more improvements could be made in a number of areas to make Li-ion batteries safer. LAVLE sees the marine sector as a prime market for Li-ion batteries, and its products in particular. Pedersen noted that the marine sector transfers much of the world’s cargo and releases between 2% and 3% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. Incorporating batteries into the shipping industry could lessen that greatly. Nonetheless, much of the progress the company has made on battery technology also translates to other sectors. “As new power generating technologies come to market, the battery is probably a very good enabler to make those work efficiently as well, because many of the technologies we see are not very good at big peaks in power consumption,” said Pedersen. “So, the battery can kind of be the buffer that takes the big hits and the big changes in load. And then, those stable power generating technologies can help.”

Taking Lithium-Ion Batteries to the Next Level. Although the first lithium-ion (Li-ion) battery was conceived more than 50 years ago, the technology continues to be refined and improved today. Scientists and engineers are constantly modifying and testing electrolytes, anodes, and cathodes in an effort to make Li-ion batteries more energy-efficient, cost-effective, and safer. Chicago, Illinois-based NanoGraf Technologies is one company working to improve the technology. The company has demonstrated a novel high-energy-density silicon-based anode material that has the long-term potential to replace graphite-based anodes in Li-ion batteries. By some estimates, NanoGraf’s formulation may be able to increase the energy density of current Li-ion batteries by 20% to 40%, while also improving the usable life of batteries. Chip Breitenkamp, vice president of business development with NanoGraf, was a guest on The POWER Podcast and talked about progress being made by the company. He said NanoGraf has been working in collaboration with researchers at Northwestern University and Argonne National Laboratory to develop, optimize, and patent its proprietary technology. According to NanoGraf, current graphite-based anodes offer a capacity of about 372 milliamp-hours per gram (mAh/g). NanoGraf’s silicon alloy-graphene material architecture can be customized to achieve capacities from 1,000 mAh/g to more than 2,500 mAh/g, delivering higher cell-level energy density and best-in-class rate capabilities for high-discharge applications. “NanoGraf has been working on [overcoming] the challenges that are associated with silicon for about eight years now,” Breitenkamp said. “Those challenges are: as lithium is taken into silicon particles during charge and discharge cycles of the battery, it swells, it cracks, and it sort of falls apart. And what the co-founders of NanoGraf [Cary Hayner and Josh Lau] have been working on is a way to utilize graphene and other coating treatments to allow those particles to swell and contract, but hold them together. Graphene is a huge part of that.” Breitenkamp said some competitors rely on vapor deposition-based systems in their manufacturing processes, but NanoGraf utilizes a wet-chemistry process that is highly scalable, cheaper, and less complex. The company has already proven the process at a pilot manufacturing line in Japan, where it is producing at a 10-ton scale. Breitenkamp said the company expects to ramp that up in the near future. “We can get to cost-parity with graphite at only a 500-ton scale, which is where we’re getting to very soon. Once we get to that thousand-ton scale, we actually become cheaper than graphite on a kilowatt-hour basis,” said Breitenkamp.

Leaders in the Smart City Movement What is a “Smart City”? According to one definition, it’s an urban area that uses different types of electronic methods and sensors to collect data, with insights gained from that data used to manage assets, resources, and services efficiently. Clint Vince, chair of Dentons’ U.S. Energy Practice and co-chair of Dentons’ Global Energy Sector, was a guest on The POWER Podcast. Vince created the firm’s groundbreaking Smart Cities and Connected Communities Initiative and Think Tank, and he is one of the industry’s leaders on the subject. “We have been deeply involved with cities and communities around the country and around the world for decades,” Vince said. “My initial introduction in the Smart Cities concept was really through grid modernization for cities. But we quickly realized that the Smart Cities approach requires integration with many other sectors and subject areas.” Dentons system of working with power companies and other utilities to implement Smart City technology is quite innovative for a legal practice. “I think that our approach to Smart Cities is unique. I don't know of any other law firm with a think tank,” said Vince. “Our clients like it when we focus not just on legal issues, but on business and policy issues, and try to integrate all of those together.” Dentons’ Smart City Think Tank has 16 pillars, including every major sector in the law firm, such as cyber, transportation, communications, intellectual property, and so on. More than 500 thought-leaders from around the globe are involved, which allows insightful sharing of best practices from the various regions. The group feels creating a Smart City requires more than just harnessing technology, it involves modernizing infrastructure. Vince offered CPS Energy, the municipal electric and gas utility serving San Antonio, Texas, as an example of a company making great strides forward in the Smart City area. He said Dentons has helped CPS Energy develop innovation zones, modernize its grid, identify dark fiber in its networks to be used for advanced telecommunications, address cyber-related issues, and team with the joint military base in San Antonio for further collaboration. CPS Energy has invested heavily in renewable energy and on energy efficiency initiatives. “We would identify them as a real rising star,” Vince said. As a global firm, Dentons works with cities all over the world. Vince suggested many other countries are well ahead of the U.S. in Smart City adoption. “Singapore often is singled out as sort of the lead Smart City in the world,” he said. “They really are extremely advanced.” Vince said Singapore invested more than $1 billion into its Smart Cities approach in 2019. Some specific infrastructure and social advancements that Vince thought were notable included Singapore’s ubiquitous very-high-speed internet, which supports other initiatives. “They’ve got online voting down. They have an online system where any citizen can report into the city for maintenance repairs that are needed,” Vince said. Singapore’s pandemic response was also a model for the world, not just in terms of policies for limiting exposure, but also its testing and tracing methods. Vince also noted that Singapore has advanced beyond pilot projects for autonomous vehicles. “They are using autonomous vehicles in portions of their city very, very effectively. They have a government technology agency, which is allowing them to be one of the leaders on sensor technology and integration with the Internet of Things. So, they are of a scale and economic dimension that they can really teach a lot of other cities some impressive things,” Vince said.

Is Carbon Capture Technology a Viable Solution? Carbon capture utilization and storage (CCUS) is widely viewed as a necessary technology to facilitate the continued use of fossil fuels in light of climate change concerns around the world. One company that has been highly focused on CCUS research and development, as well as deployment of the technology, is Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI). Tiffany Wu, business development manager for MHI America, was a guest on The POWER Podcast, and talked about the technology and its future prospects. Wu has a degree in chemical engineering and began her career working intimately on CCUS projects, including at Alabama Power’s Plant Barry facility and on the Petra Nova project—POWER’s Plant of the Year in 2017. “I think that carbon capture is going to become an increasingly important part of the energy portfolio,” Wu said. “In the absence of any regulatory pressure in the U.S., what matters to the industry is whether or not these carbon capture facilities are going to be economic or not. So, our customers are trying to come up with not only environmentally friendly projects, but also economic projects.” Wu said there are reasons for optimism. “In the U.S., we have a really great environment for [viable projects], because one, we have all of this history with enhanced oil recovery [EOR]. And so, there’s a lot of infrastructure in place that they can build off of. And then the other thing is that there have been a lot of federal incentives such as the 45Q tax credit that can help bolster the technology and these projects.” Section 45Q provides a tax credit on a per-ton basis for CO2 that is sequestered. Beginning in 2008, an incentive of $20 per metric ton for CO2 geologic storage and $10 per metric ton for CO2 used for EOR or enhanced natural gas recovery was available. In February 2018, the credit increased to $35 per metric ton for EOR and $50 per metric ton for geologic storage by 2026. The $35 tax credit is also available for non-EOR CO2 utilization and direct air capture projects. MHI’s carbon capture process is known as Kansai Mitsubishi Carbon Dioxide Recovery (KM CDR). It has been installed on at least 13 commercial plants around the world. Wu explained how the KM CDR process works. “It’s very similar to other amine-based processes,” she said. “Flue gas is introduced into the system, and in one of the initial towers, which we call the absorber, we also introduce a solvent. known as an amine, and the CO2 attaches itself to the amine. So, through that process, we’re able to capture 90%—and in some cases, we can capture up to 95%—of the CO2 from the flue gas.” The process is a closed loop system, and the amine is reused. Wu continued, “We introduce the amine that’s rich in CO2 into another tower we call a regeneration tower, and in that tower, steam is introduced and the amine is heated up so that the CO2 separates itself from the amine.” The CO2 is compressed and the amine is sent back to the front of the process. This sort of technology is used by various industrial sectors, including for acid gas treatment. In each case, there may be different flue gas constituents, but the process is essentially the same.