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Tyler Hamilton

We forget sometimes how inexpensive the gadgets we use have become.

Eighteen years ago I got it into my head that I was going to start my own student magazine. I borrowed $2,000 from a friend so I could purchase a black-and-white laser printer from Hewlett-Packard.

Today, for less than $200, you can get a lighter, smaller, higher-quality colour printer that also functions as a copier, scanner and fax device.

And what can you purchase today for $2,000? On Friday, 3D Systems Inc. of Rock Hill, S.C., began shipping a 3D printing system called Cube that can be purchased for only $1,299 (U.S.), making it one of the lowest-cost printers of its kind in the world.

READ MORE: This $1,300 printer creates 3D objects

Brooklyn, N.Y.-based MakerBot Industries will already sell you its Thing-O-Matic unassembled 3D printer kit for $1,099. It sells another device, called the Replicator, fully assembled for $1,749.

For those not familiar with 3D printers, these amazing devices don’t just print words and images on paper. They magically make things — physical three-dimensional objects — layer by layer, using a growing array of heat- or light-activated materials sold in cartridges.

The objects can either be designed from scratch with software or be based on 3D scans of existing items, anything from Elvis busts and pieces of jewelry to your own head.

3D Systems’ Cube and MakerBot’s Replicator mostly make plastic toys and trinkets, but higher-end 3D printers worth tens of thousands of dollars can use more advanced materials, including a variety of hard and flexible plastics, glass, metal powders, and even edible ingredients like chocolate. The list of materials is growing rapidly.

It’s all part of an emerging and disruptive trend called additive manufacturing, which began as an inexpensive and quick way to make one-off prototypes but, as costs fall and performance improves, is now expanding into on-demand manufacturing.

RELATED: 3D printers manufacture objects in your home

“There are now hundreds and hundreds of companies in 3D printing,” said economist and author Jeremy Rifkin in a recent interview. He considers 3D printing part of an emerging Internet-empowered era of “distributed capitalism” that is going to dramatically change how the world conducts business. “You can print out an airplane wing or part of an automobile — whatever you want.”

Like that necklace your colleague in China is wearing during your Skype video session? She can scan it, email you the coding, and within the hour you can print out your own copy.

Artificial limbs and implants? Not such a crazy idea. Last year, doctors in the Netherlands famously made a new titanium jawbone implant for one woman. San Francisco-based Bespoke Innovations uses 3D printing to make exact replicas of feet, legs and other lost body parts at one-tenth the cost of traditional prosthetic manufacturing.

Rifkin emphasized that additive manufacturing is a more efficient and potentially more sustainable way of making goods.

“With traditional manufacturing there’s a lot of loss, because you take big amounts of material and you whittle them down. So you start off with lots of material and you end up wasting lots of material,” he explained.

“But with additive manufacturing the material is added layer by layer. You have no loss. You actually use one-tenth of the material.”

That’s a huge bonus in an increasingly resource-constrained world.

So if it’s so efficient and far less wasteful, can we call it “green” manufacturing? It certainly has that potential, particularly as it relates to high-end printers that make parts and products for industrial use.

No longer will companies need warehouses full of spare parts. These items can simply be scanned, coded and saved in a database. When a company or its customer needs a part — even for products that have been long discontinued — the item can be downloaded and printed out on demand.

But I can’t help thinking about the Jevons paradox as it relates to 3D printing. English economist William Stanley Jevons argued in the late 1800s that efficiencies enabled by new technologies, which make goods more accessible and cheaper to produce, are often neutralized by our tendency to consume more of these goods.

As the cost of 3D printing falls and the devices become a common feature in every home, is this going to encourage impulse buying? Will we be inclined to print out every little doodad and trinket, article of clothing, fashion accessory or toy just because we can? How much energy will this collectively consume?

Just go to Thingiverse.com and you’ll already find a database full of mostly useless objects you can download and print out on your 3D printer. Pirate Bay, the popular torrent site used to download pirated music, movies and software, announced in January it has created a new category called “physibles” dedicated to 3D printable objects.

So much for the protection of intellectual property. If it can be scanned it can be ripped off. As one Google executive once said, “Think of it as a China on your desktop.” Alternatively, Walmart in your home.

Exciting. Also scary.

In the end, one can hope that resource constraints and rising energy costs will draw out the best of additive manufacturing and discourage the kind of mindless, rampant consumerism that has made a mess of our planet.

Tyler Hamilton, author of Mad Like Tesla, writes weekly about green energy and clean technologies.

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Tyler Hamilton

Richard Ford doesn’t like the term smart grid.

“It means different things to different people,” says the manager of grid solutions at Toronto Hydro. “The term has become overused. It gets in the way.”

Many hydro customers in the city associate the term with the smart meters in their homes and the time-of-use pricing they enable. Some imagine a smart home or building equipped with intelligent appliances and lighting systems that interact with each other and can be remotely managed by software to reduce energy use.

Others think of a kind of energy Internet made up of millions of users and thousands of large and small power producers, all part of a complex web of two-way electricity flows.

The smart grid isn’t any one of those things – it’s all of them, and more. In fact, a big part of the smart grid that rarely gets discussed has to do with technologies that make our electricity system more reliable and safe. These are the behind-the-scenes technologies we don’t and aren’t meant to see. The better they work the less likely we are to notice them.

For the past three years Toronto Hydro has been giving some of these “smart” technologies a test run on the transformers and power lines that make up its electrical distribution network.

Take transformers, those large grey cans on hydro poles that convert high-voltage electricity down to the low voltage we use in our homes. The utility has roughly 60,000 of these devices spread throughout its operating territory.

“In the past we haven’t had any detailed information about how those transformers were performing – whether any were systematically overloaded or underloaded,” explains Ford, adding that even when the devices fail they don’t know about it until customers call to complain.

About 5,600 city transformers now have a kind of smart meter embedded inside, allowing the utility to know what kind of stresses are being placed on the device and to act proactively before its fails, which tends to be at the most inconvenient times – say, during a SuperBowl or hockey playoff game.

What benefit does this bring to electricity consumers? The typical transformer failure means affected customers will be without power for about 7.5 hours. On the other hand, a less inconvenient pre-planned outage aimed at upgrading the transformer before it fails only takes about 70 minutes.

This will become increasingly important as more homeowners add solar panels to their rooftops and plug in electric vehicles overnight for charging. It will give the utility better insight into the changing patterns of electricity use in our neighbourhoods, and allow it to plan accordingly.

An added bonus: smart transformers make it easier to spot grow-ops that have illegally tapped into the system.

The utility is also monitoring some of its power lines. Sensor-based devices attached to the lines can spot abnormal electrical activity and alert control-room staff so they can analyse the data. The analytic software has become so sophisticated it can detect the signatures of different events, such as an overgrown tree rubbing up against a line or a jumping squirrel.

“We keep looking for more signatures of more events,” says Ford. “We want to identify potential faults before they turn into real faults.”

If, for example, a problem is identified as tree overgrowth, a crew can be dispatched to inspect and trim branches. The utility has seven power line monitoring devices installed to date, but plans to add more as part of normal grid upgrades.

On top of power line and transformer monitoring, Toronto Hydro is test driving feeder automation technology. Feeders are higher-voltage power lines that supply electricity to a large area of homes and businesses. Sometimes an unpredictable event, such as a vehicle accident or damage from a backhoe, can cause one section of a feeder to fail.

If a feeder serves thousands of people the resulting outage would affect all of them, and it could take 10s of minutes to a couple of hours for service to be phased back in. Automation technology can isolate a fault on a feeder line and almost immediately restore service to most of the customers affected.

Feeder automation technology has been installed on 10 of the city’s worst feeders since 2010. An outage on one of those feeders in August 2011 affected 4,493 customers. Normally all of them would have a long wait for the lights to come back on, but the automation technology isolated the fault to just one customer – the other 4,492 got service automatically restored within a minute.

It’s an extreme example, says Ford, but illustrates well how the technology can improve customer service.

“We’d like to see all of these technologies more widespread,” he adds. “The benefit is that customers will be interrupted less, and hopefully never even notice when they are.”

It’s not as sexy as the image of a smart home with an electric car in the driveway, solar panels on the roof, intelligent appliances in the kitchen, and a battery pack in the basement. That “stuff” will come, says Ford, but we need to lay the foundation first.

“What we’re doing today is making better use of our existing assets, getting more out of them by making them more effective and more efficient.”

Tyler Hamilton, author of Mad Like Tesla, writes weekly about green energy and clean technologies.

UPDATE: My Clean Break column this week has some more detail.

Oil and gas pipeline giant Enbridge Inc. has invested $5 million in Mississauga, Ont.-based Hydrogenics, a leading maker of proton-exchange membrane fuel cells and electrolysis systems for producing hydrogen gas from water.

Gotta say, I wasn’t expecting this announcement. I know Enbridge has invested in fuel-cell technology before, and I know it has purchased hundreds of megawatts of solar capacity, operates wind farms and is dabbling in geopower. And yes, it has invested some money into Toronto-based Morgan Solar. What surprises me about this announcement isn’t so much the investment itself, but how Enbridge plans to strategically collaborate with Hydrogenics to bring utility-scale energy storage to renewables in Ontario. You’d think this was about using renewables to generate hydrogen during off-peak hours, storing it, and then putting it through a fuel cell to generate electricity during peak hours. And perhaps this is the longer-term vision. But the way Enbridge describes this collaboration, it has little interest in fuel cells. Instead, it wants to generate hydrogen and inject it into its natural gas pipeline assets, “proportionally increasing the renewable energy content in natural gas pipelines.” In other words — the way I read it from the press release — it wants to reduce the carbon intensity of the natural gas in its pipelines by mixing it with hydrogen. That cleaner natural gas will then be burned in natural gas-fired plants, people’s home furnaces, etc…

Perhaps I’m missing something. If there’s someone from Enbridge reading this, please correct me if I’m wrong.  (I’m right).

Here’s how the two companies describe their “Power-to-Gas” strategy in their press release:

With ‘Power-to-Gas’, the hydrogen produced during periods of excess renewable generation will be injected into the existing natural gas pipeline network, proportionally increasing the renewable energy content in natural gas pipelines for essentially the operating cost of the electrolyzer. Small quantities of hydrogen can be manageable in existing natural gas pipeline networks. With the significant scale of the natural gas pipeline network, these same quantities of hydrogen have a very meaningful impact on electricity energy storage potential.  The natural gas pipeline network represents a vast energy storage system which already exists. The utility scale energy storage leverages existing natural gas pipeline and storage assets to enable improved operability for the electrical system. Furthermore, the economics are further improved by leveraging existing gas generators to bring this renewable energy back to the electrical grid where, and when, it is needed most.

The companies said they will initially focus on Ontario. And Hydrogenics will have the opportunity to participate in up to 50 per cent ownership in a build-own-operate model for energy storage services. I have no clue how the economics will work. I mean, if the hydrogen is being blended with natural gas how can Enbridge capture that value when it sells that gas? How will this work with Ontario’s feed-in-tariff program, which doesn’t have any rules or tiered (peak, off-peak) FIT rates to encourage energy storage services? I’m very curious to learn more about this (and will over the coming days).

What’s clear is that there is momentum building for energy storage solutions in Ontario. Hydro One is testing out Temporal Power flywheels to relieve congestion on its transmission lines. Toronto Hydro is piloting bulk lithium-ion battery storage and testing underwater compressed-air storage in Lake Ontario. Annette Verschuren, former chief executive of Home Depot Canada, is heading up a new venture called NRStor that wants to bring an energy storage park to Ontario. And word has it that the Ontario Ministry of Energy — or the Ontario Power Authority — is sitting on a large draft policy paper related to energy storage that will be released later this year. Perhaps we’ll get some clarity around energy storage after all. There seems to be enough activity in the province to suggest that something is going on behind the scenes to stimulate strong interest in energy storage.

We’ll see.

NOTE: Just got my hands on a backgrounder Q&A from Hydrogenics that explains the above in more detail. A few interesting points, according to this backgrounder:

Injecting only small amounts of hydrogen into the gas grid (less than 5% by volume) offers significant potential. In large markets, like Ontario, the energy storage potential could provide power for over 160,000 homes. This is the equivalent of the new Niagara Tunnel hydro power project in Niagara Falls.

and…

Every GJ of hydrogen produced by a Power-to-Gas application converting surplus renewable generation will displace one GJ of natural gas consumption with a commensurate reduction of 56kg of CO2 equivalent. The estimated annual GHG reduction from a 100MW Power-to-Gas project would be 25 CO2 equivalent kilotonnes.

and…

The first stage will be to develop a 1 MW Power-to-Gas pilot project in Ontario to test the integrated system, develop gas network interconnections and work with the IESO and Canadian Gas Association to design the operating standards and market protocols to run a Power-to-Gas application. After developing commercial scale electrolyzer capability, Hydrogenics will have the opportunity to participate in up to 50% ownership in a build own operate model for energy storage projects with Enbridge.

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Tyler Hamilton

There are nearly 410,000 apartment and condominium units in Ontario that could be—but aren’t—individually monitored for their electricity consumption.

Instead, the buildings in which they’re located engage in “bulk” billing, meaning a single bill is issued for an entire building. The amount on that bill is equally divided by the number of individual residential units in that building.

It’s a simple formula, sure, but it’s one that encourages waste. It means residents who make an effort to conserve and use relatively less electricity end up subsidizing those who always keep the lights on and load their homes with energy-hogging devices and appliances. There’s no incentive for them to conserve.

But what if 410,000 residential units in Ontario currently on bulk metering were suddenly put on individual sub-meters – i.e. smart meters for building units? What would be the impact on electricity conservation?

The short answer, according to a study this week from research firm Navigant Consulting, is that the average reduction in electricity use would be “significant.”

Navigant found that in buildings heated by electricity average consumption would fall by 27 per cent, or 106 kilowatt-hours a month, while those building units that don’t use electricity for heating would see average power use reduced by 34 per cent, or 112 kilowatt-hours a month.

“If sub-metering were deployed in all currently bulk-metered, multi-residential buildings the annual potential electricity savings following complete deployment over five years could be 3.3 terawatt-hours annually – more than all of the electricity produced from Ontario’s wind power facilities in 2010,” according to the study.

During peak times, it would equate to eliminating the need for 383 megawatts of generating capacity, equivalent taking a medium-sized gas-fired power plant out of the province’s fleet of generators.

It should be noted that Navigant didn’t do this study out of the kindness of heart. It was hired by EnerCare Connections (formerly Stratacon), one of the largest suppliers of sub-metering devices in Ontario. EnerCare’s interests are obvious. At the same time, Navigant is a respected international research and consulting firm not known to customize conclusions to satisfy its clients.

As for how Navigant came to such conclusions, it relied on data from Natural Resources Canada, Statistics Canada’s 2007 Census data, and hundreds of samples of monthly electricity consumption data from customers of EnerCare that had already switched from bulk billing to sub-metered billing.

So if the conservation benefits are so obvious, why isn’t there a mass rush to embrace sub-metering?

Sub-metering in buildings is for some a hot-button issue. Clearly, individuals in buildings who use relatively more electricity than their neighbours are going to end up paying a higher monthly bill. It’s hard to sympathize – either they should pay for what they use or use less.

It’s a bit trickier with renters. Switching to more efficient light bulbs can only go so far. Apartment tenants are often stuck using old and inefficient appliances that gobble electricity. They can reduce use of these appliances, but they’re still at the mercy of landlords not keen on upgrading to more efficient models.

Chris Jaglowitz, a “condo” lawyer at Gardiner Miller Arnold LLP and publisher of the Ontario Condo Law Blog, says a big sticking point with all building residents relates to the extra charges they must pay to get their bills separately.

“That’s what gets people’s ires up,” says Jaglowitz. “Even people using very little electricity are getting dinged with fairly significant charges. Anecdotally, I’m hearing people are paying more.”

Then again, they’re paying more because electricity prices have been going up – and will continue to go up. With sub-metering, at least condo owners and tenants can take some actions to shield themselves from the impacts of rising electricity rates.

“That’s the argument everybody forgets,” says Jaglowitz.

Tyler Hamilton, author of Mad Like Tesla, writes weekly about green energy and clean technologies.

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Tyler Hamilton

When Serbian-American engineer Nikola Tesla came up with the design of his alternating current induction motor — which truly revolutionized the way we thought about electricity — it is said he was walking in the park when a picture of the motor shot into his head like a flash of lightning.

Disruptive innovations are often associated with such flashes of brilliance. It happened this way to Anthony Wong, 38, who in 2000 was riding a streetcar in Toronto when he came up with the design for a new transmission technology, one that could make everything from fans and pumps to windmills and vehicles operate more efficiently and reliably.

An avid cyclist, Wong had for some time been thinking about how to make bicycle gear systems better.

As most cyclists know, when you want to shift to a higher or lower gear there is a mechanism that physically moves the bicycle chain left or right to a larger or smaller sprocket, which is the metal disc that grabs the chain with its teeth. During this transition from one sprocket to another there is a brief period when fewer teeth are engaging the chain. It is at this point of vulnerability that the chain can slip, lose tension, or completely fall off.

“I was thinking, how can we change gears without pushing the chain side to side? How can we keep the chain always in line with the sprockets?” Wong recalled. “Then it hit me, instead of pushing the chain side to side, why don’t we move the sprockets underneath the chain?”

In other words, cut up the toothed sprockets into smaller pieces and move individual pieces under the chain in a way that seamlessly changes the size of the sprocket. The sprocket, in essence, becomes a kind of puzzle with a wide range of pieces that allow it to morph from small to large, kind of like a kid’s Transformer toy. More importantly, the chain is always solidly engaged on the maximum number of sprocket teeth while carrying a load.

(Note to reader: It’s really something that has to be seen, so I encourage you to check out the demo video.

Now, if all of this seems terribly complicated, well, that’s because it is. Still, advancements around electronics, controllers and materials have made it possible to choreograph the movement of these sprocket pieces with high reliability and precision. It’s not easy — especially when attempted at high speeds — but it can be done.

Wong, in his late 20s and growing tired of his computer programming job, was drawn to the challenge. After a bit of soul-searching that included a motorcycle journey across the United States, he decided to dedicate himself to turning his invention – called a mechatronic variable speed drive—into a commercial product.

But he also knew he needed help, so in 2002 he recruited his friend Paul Bottero, a man with a history of building and running businesses. The two spent many evenings in Bottero’s loft scouring patent databases, and they soon realized they had more than just a potentially new type of gear system for bicycles.

“We believe we have the world’s most efficient and cost-effective variable speed device,” said Bottero.

Cars. Wind turbines. Fans. Pumps. The design had application for all sorts of industrial equipment that operate at different speeds. The most obvious market, at least to start, was heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC). Consider that 45 per cent of the world’s electricity is used to operate electric motors, and nine per cent of that market – about $50 billion annually – relates to HVAC equipment.

Their first patent was filed in 2007. A year later they built their first prototype and formally established a company named Vicicog, which operates out of the MaRS Discovery District and last September renamed itself inMotive. So far the company has raised about $1 million in private financing and $1.4 million in government funding.

Investors have reason to take note. “We can get paybacks that are twice as good as our competition,” said Bottero.

He explained that inMotive’s devices are less expensive to manufacture and operate 5 per cent (at least) more efficiently than the best competing variable frequency drive on the market. When applied to motors that currently don’t operate at variable speed, energy savings can be as much as 70 per cent.

The company’s mechatronic device also doesn’t create the kind of electronic noise normally associated with variable frequency drives. Electronic noise, often referred to as harmonics, can damage sensitive equipment found in places such as hospitals, data centres and airports. Harmonics can be controlled, but that adds extra layers of cost.

“All along the way engineers have told us this isn’t going to work, that we’ll never move the sprocket segments fast enough,” said Wong.

So far, he’s proved them wrong.

As for building a better bicycle gear system, “we still plan to do it,” he said.

Tyler Hamilton, author of Mad Like Tesla, writes weekly about green energy and clean technologies.

The exhibition will showcase the most outstanding examples of clean technology designed and developed in Ontario. Exhibitors have been selected by a panel of experts, which included directors and senior managers of Investeco Capital Corp., Green Chip Financial, MaRS Clean Tech Fund, Corporate Knights, Green Living Enterprises and NGO sponsors. The Exhibition itself has the backing of Sustainable Development Technology Canada, MaRS Discovery District and the Ontario Centres of Excellence, and its exclusive private sector sponsor is GE Canada. In other words, this exhibition is the real deal. For anyone interested in seeing the engine under the hood of Ontario’s cleantech sector, visit the show to find out.

About 20 companies, mostly start-ups, will form the core exhibition. They range from makers of electric-assist bicycles, to developers of cutting-edge solar and energy storage systems, to those making the latest advances in the areas of green chemistry, energy efficiency and intelligent transportation. Solar Ship, a designer of a hybrid, solar-powered airship, will also have a presence at the show, and to top it off — like the cherry on a sundae — we will have the greenest project from this month’s Toronto Science Fair competition, as selected by myself and a representative from GE Canada. Innovation and invention in this field stretches far beyond commercial enterprise. Indeed, it often begins in the laboratories and research facilities of our academic institutions. So to further round out the exhibition, we are also including some of the top “green” research projects at Ontario universities.

You can see which companies and universities are attending by clicking here.

I’m really excited about this exhibition and it’s great to see a half year of hard work finally coming to fruition. We don’t shine a big enough spotlight on the Ontario cleantech sector. Sure, we do individual company profiles and hold industry conferences, but rarely does the general public get a chance to see all this great innovation in one place. And let’s face it, we need the public to get excited about this stuff, because this is where our political leaders take their cues. If we want more public investment in cleantech R&D and deployment then we have to get public buy-in. At the same time, busloads of school children attend the Green Living Show. This is an opportunity to educate and inspire young minds — i.e. the green engineers and entrepreneurs in our future.

I hope to see you there. For my colleagues in the business community, consider attending the morning Business Forum Panel on the first day where we will discuss the growing importance of corporate venturing in the Canadian cleantech sector. We have some top-notch senior panelists lined up, and it promises to be an engaging and insightful discussion.

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Tyler Hamilton

Change is in the air at Canada’s single-largest scientific outpost, located two hours northwest of Ottawa. That’s the history-rich home of Chalk River Laboratories, the heart of Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd.’s nuclear research division.

You’ll recall that the Crown corporation’s commercial Candu reactor division was sold last year to Canadian engineering giant SNC Lavalin. That transaction represented the first phase of a larger AECL restructuring plan.

Under the second phase, which kicked off in February, the government is targeting the research division with an eye to getting more bang for the taxpayer buck, and bringing in a private-sector partner to make it happen.

Such public-private arrangements are well tested south of the border, where companies such as Lockheed Martin and Battelle operate major national labs in partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy. The model seems to work well.

“The restructuring needs to determine the activities of interest to those stakeholders willing to invest in AECL, which would enable enhanced sharing of both benefits and risks while strengthening accountability,” according to a call for expressions of interest on Feb. 9.

Which areas of nuclear research should Chalk River focus on? What role, if any, does Canada want to play in the nuclear world? Those with ideas and suggestions have until April 2 to have their say.

One sensible view: focus on the waste.

The world has massive amounts of nuclear waste in the form of spent fuel from its existing fleet of nuclear plants. Even if we closed down all nuclear power plants tomorrow and stopped making nuclear weapons, we would still have a major waste management problem on our collective hands. The waste is here and it’s not going away anytime soon.

We can try to bury it at considerable expense and hope all will work out well for the next hundred thousand or so years, or we can purse ways of reusing that waste as a new source of fuel. Those are really the only two options.

The latter, if done right and responsibly, can solve many problems: It can reduce the volume of radioactive material that must go into long-term storage. It can reduce our need to mine new uranium and the associated environmental impacts of doing so. And it can give us more emission-free energy to wean us off fossil fuels and reduce global greenhouse-gas emissions.

Five years ago I wrote an article in this paper detailing a little-discussed feature of the Candu reactor design that allows it to use “waste” from rival light-water reactors (such as those used in the United States) as a fuel. It’s called the DUPIC process – standing for Direct Use of Spent Pressurized Water Reactor Fuel in Candus.

The Canadian government established a joint research program with the Korean Atomic Energy Research Institute in 1991 to investigate the approach, and both sides have demonstrated that it’s feasible.

“It’s progressed to the prototype stage,” said Jeremy Whitlock, a scientist at the Chalk River Lab. “We’ve made the fuel and we’ve put it into a reactor and it works fine.”

There are other, more expensive approaches that involve dissolving spent fuel in strong acids, carefully separating fissile material from the waste, turning it back into a solid material, and then processing back into useable fuel. This chemical processing is nasty, resulting in liquid wastes that need to be treated.

DUPIC doesn’t involve chemical separation, making it much simpler. The spent light-water reactor fuel is instead mechanically reshaped into fuel rods that fit into Candu reactors. And because plutonium is not chemically isolated and separated the approach is more proliferation resistant.

Politics aside, imagine co-locating DUPIC-configured Candu reactors at existing light-water nuclear facilities around the world, with their job being to generate additional emission-free electricity from stockpiles of spent fuel in short-term storage.

There are challenges. Handling and mechanically reprocessing spent fuel is tricky. This is hot stuff that’s highly radioactive. Special equipment, procedures and reactor modifications would be required to safely handle the material.

But it can be done, and arguably faster and more easily than trying to build fleets of waste-consuming fast breeder reactors, another technology worthy of pursuit but with longer time horizons. The Koreans, unfortunately, began losing interest in DUPIC a few year ago and have since turned their attention to the more ambitious fast breeder model.

Perhaps Chalk River should double-down on efforts? Perhaps SNC Lavalin, which now has exclusive commercial rights to DUPIC, could turn this into a new business opportunity?

Another opportunity is fusion. General Fusion, the fusion technology start-up in Burnaby, B.C., is urging the federal government to devote part of Chalk River’s mandate to fusion research.

“There is expertise at Chalk River, world leading in some cases, in areas such as tritium handling,” explained Michael Delage, vice-president of business development at General Fusion.

Tritium is a radioactive form of hydrogen, and is a byproduct of Candu reactor operation. It’s also one of two isotopes that can be most easily combined to create a nuclear fusion reaction. General Fusion needs tritium, and could seriously benefit from Chalk River’s tritium handling expertise.

Whitlock pointed out that Canada once had a fusion program at Chalk River. In fact, in 2001 Canada put in a bid to host the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project. But we never backed up ambition with money. The federal government cut funding to our fusion program in 1997, and a general lack of financial support led to our withdrawal in 2003 from the ITER consortium.

With Chalk River once again under the spotlight, it’s time to make some choices.

Tyler Hamilton, author of Mad Like Tesla, writes weekly about green energy and clean technologies.

The exhibition will showcase the most outstanding examples of clean technology designed and developed in Ontario. Exhibitors have been selected by a panel of experts, which included directors and senior managers of Investeco Capital Corp., Green Chip Financial, MaRS Clean Tech Fund, Corporate Knights, Green Living Enterprises and NGO sponsors. The Exhibition itself has the backing of Sustainable Development Technology Canada, MaRS Discovery District and the Ontario Centres of Excellence, and its exclusive private sector sponsor is GE Canada. In other words, this exhibition is the real deal. For anyone interested in seeing the engine under the hood of Ontario’s cleantech sector, visit the show to find out.

About 20 companies, mostly start-ups, will form the core exhibition. They range from makers of electric-assist bicycles, to developers of cutting-edge solar and energy storage systems, to those making the latest advances in the areas of green chemistry, energy efficiency and intelligent transportation. Solar Ship, a designer of a hybrid, solar-powered airship, will also have a presence at the show, and to top it off — like the cherry on a sundae — we will have the greenest project from this month’s Toronto Science Fair competition, as selected by myself and a representative from GE Canada. Innovation and invention in this field stretches far beyond commercial enterprise. Indeed, it often begins in the laboratories and research facilities of our academic institutions. So to further round out the exhibition, we are also including some of the top “green” research projects at Ontario universities.

You can see which companies and universities are attending by clicking here.

I’m really excited about this exhibition and it’s great to see a half year of hard work finally coming to fruition. We don’t shine a big enough spotlight on the Ontario cleantech sector. Sure, we do individual company profiles and hold industry conferences, but rarely does the general public get a chance to see all this great innovation in one place. And let’s face it, we need the public to get excited about this stuff, because this is where our political leaders take their cues. If we want more public investment in cleantech R&D and deployment then we have to get public buy-in. At the same time, busloads of school children attend the Green Living Show. This is an opportunity to educate and inspire young minds — i.e. the green engineers and entrepreneurs in our future.

I hope to see you there. For my colleagues in the business community, consider attending the morning Business Forum Panel on the first day where we will discuss the growing importance of corporate venturing in the Canadian cleantech sector. We have some top-notch senior panelists lined up, and it promises to be an engaging and insightful discussion.

It’s been a long time coming, and many have already declared the company dead — or at least close to it. Back in December 2010 Greentech Media posed the question: Is the EEStor saga finished? Since then, those who aren’t EEStor diehards have come to the conclusion that, yes, it’s pretty much over. Of course, EEStor was the major focus of a chapter in my book Mad Like Tesla (to buy on Amazon click here), so I have a personal interest in seeing things through to their true end. Based on comments made yesterday by EEStor-investor ZENN Motor Co. at its annual general meeting, the dream still appears to be very much alive.

Here’s what ZENN said on March 26 in a press release to report is first quarter 2012 numbers: “The Company recently participated as a minority investor in an equity financing completed by EEStor Inc. While the Company’s investment was small, the investment was part of a financing that provided EEStor with additional working capital to further the development of its power storage technology. Importantly, as part of the investment the Company was able to review certain aspects of the technology and obtain a covenant from EEStor regarding a timeline for near term public disclosure of the status of its technological development certified by an independent third party.”

A day later, at ZENN’s AGM in Toronto, company chairman and chief executive James Kofman gave EEStor investors and groupies a clearer picture of what to expect in the months ahead, and spoke about the state of ZENN’s relationship with EEStor, which hasn’t disclosed anything publicly since 2009.

“The relationship between ZENN and EEStor is as strong as it’s ever been, and certainly stronger than it’s been in many, many years,” Kofman said. “There is a very good dialogue between the companies, and regular rapport on many fronts… The recent announcement has demonstrated we really are in a good position with them, much better than we were a year ago. What everyone is looking for is real transparency and real disclosure. The announcement we made puts us finally on a path where we have a clear methodology for getting better public disclosure.”

So what does that means? It means that going forward, as part of ZENN’s latest minority investment in EEStor, the company will have greater access to EEStor and insight into its progress. As well, EEStor will have to do a better job of disclosing that progress publicly. “I met (EEStor founder and CEO) Dick Weir before I joined the board and went down to Austin. We have kept a very regular dialogue. A number of directors have kept a regular dialogue with him, and also have visited with EEStor in Texas,” said Kofman, in an effort to give investors more confidence that ZENN isn’t oblivious to what’s going down in Austin.  “We now have a very clear agreement with EEStor which provides for a mechanism for them to publicly reveal where their technology is, and to do so certified by a third-party expert in the near term.”

Kofman continued: “Dick is a very secretive person, he’s very careful about his patents, and we respect that. We’ve worked incredibly hard over the last year to earn his trust. There were some issues that happened a number of years ago that made him very cautious about making any statements for fear they would end up in the public domain. I think we’ve demonstrated consistently to him we can be trusted. Through that he’s opened up more to us than he has in a very long time.”

So when can the world expect Weir and Co. to reveal what’s going on inside the walls of EEStor? “We’re expecting this before the summer, if not well before that time,” said Kofman. “It’s coming, and it’s very specific on what needs to be disclosed. So we’re excited.”

He said EEStor continues to file patents and work on its patent portfolio. “That’s critical because there’s a lot of competition out there.” But Kofman made clear that whatever developments there are at EEStor the technology, for all its potential, isn’t going to change the world tomorrow. “I think we’ve recognized that technology doesn’t just happen overnight. So even if there is in the near term some public disclosure that says where you are, it doesn’t mean you can just plug it into your Chevy Volt… It’s likely the EEStor technology will be used in some of the simpler applications well before automotive.”

Asked by one shareholder about EEStor’s competitive advantage against other up-and-coming technologies and startups, Kofman replied: “I don’t want to put words in Dick’s mouth. I will say Dick remains incredibly bullish that there is no technology like his technology… I’m paid to be a little more of a skeptic… We recognize eventually there will be competitive technologies one way or another, but in fairness to date we haven’t seen anything with the potential of this technology – not yet. But it will come.” He left open the possibility of major joint ventures, or even the scenario that ZENN would get bought out. “We’re going to do whatever it takes to get the most value for shareholders.”

As far as cash flow goes, he said he wasn’t comfortable with where ZENN was at — about $750,000 in the bank. For this reason, the company is going to look at doing a new round of financing to make sure the company can move quickly to leverage its investment in EEStor when the time is right.

One shareholder asked why EEStor has been selling off manufacturing equipment, and whether this was a sign it was running out of money and desperate. Kofman dismissed the idea. “I sold an old pair of skis the other day. It doesn’t mean I’m running out of money. I just don’t use those skis anymore. For EEStor, this is equipment they’re not currently using and don’t see a use for. And definitely capital is more interesting than equipment that’s going to get less valuable over time. They’re getting rid of equipment, as I understand it, that they’re not using and don’t expect to use.”

The reason why this update should not be dismissed as just another EEStor striptease is that it’s coming from Kofman, who is highly respected in the Toronto financial community and has his own reputation to protect. (See this little backgrounder prepared by TheEEStory.com). A veteran investment banker who worked at UBS Canada until 2009, Kofman joined Cormark Securities last fall as its vice-chairman. He holds that role in parallel to his dual chairman/CEO role at EEStor, which he first joined as a director in March 2011. As one Cormark colleague of Kofman’s told me recently: “He’s far too busy here, and it’s far too lucrative, for him to waste time at ZENN unless he felt it was ultimately worth it.”

Kofman, it should be pointed out, isn’t getting paid. He’s taking stock options only in the hopes that his contributions to ZENN will pay off. If nothing happens, he gets zero back — pretty much the same position ZENN shareholders are in. Shareholders seem to like the message. The stock is up 28 per cent as of noon today and could soon shed its penny-stock status.

So, perhaps EEStor will still surprise and survive… In the meantime, ZENN is sitting tight, slowing down cash burn, raising extra money, and waiting for the day that Dick Weir will make good on a very delayed and very important promise.

“What I’ve seen as a lead in MaRS over the past few years is a pipeline of opportunities that is unparalleled,” Rand told me then. “It’s only by associating yourself with an institute with that kind of pipeline that you can have this kind of seed investment vehicle.” What happened, initially, is that Rand found himself being an individual angel investor to many of the companies passing through MaRS’ halls — Morgan Solar and Hydrostor, among them. He figured, having talked to other angels like himself, that there was a serious appetite in the market for the creation of a seed fund that could take advantage of these more speculative, early-stage investment opportunities. MaRS had this incredible pipeline, he said, “but what we don’t have is risk money in the order of half a million dollars to $2 million that can get these companies to a Round A funding stage. Everyone knows seed funding is the place to be, but it’s difficult to do. We aim to fill that gap.”

Added Rand: “We’re willing to take technology risk when other people aren’t… We’re a filtered deal-flow engine for venture funds and big corporations. We do the triage for them.” He said the private fund — made up of angels and entrepreneurs willing to put their own flesh in the game — will complement some of the early stage funding and grants that, in Ontario, come from agencies such as the Ontario Power Authority and Ontario Centres of Excellence.

This is what Ontario needs, so kudos to Rand and McCaig for taking the bull by the horns and getting this done. Obviously, the idea for them is to make money for fund investors, but it’s an investment vehicle that was desperately needed in Ontario and, by leveraging the pipeline of opportunities provided through MaRS, will hopefully grow. The first two investments made so far are in GreenMantra Technologies, which can turn old plastic bags into lubricants and other useful chemicals, and Smart Energy Instruments, which makes advanced smart sensor devices for smart grid equipment.

Read Rand’s own MaRS blog entry for more details.