"Flow Batteries for Grid Energy Storage"

Dr. Marc-Antoni Goulet

School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University

Seminar: 12pm on Thursday, October 26th at CAER' in the Ben Bandy Conference Room

As the demand for electricity continues to increase around the world, so does the size and complexity of electrical grids.  Although new energy generation infrastructure is often necessary to address this additional demand, in many cases, constraints such as capital cost, resource scarcity and legislation make energy storage and arbitrage a more cost-effective option. Among the technologies available, batteries are a leading contender due their adaptability and suitability for a wide range of arbitrage timescales.  In a world looking to transition towards non-emitting renewable energy, one particularly important timescale is the daily disparity between peak demand and the supply of intermittent solar energy.  Flow batteries have recently gained considerable interest for such longer duration requirements due to their decoupled energy and power costs.  This presentation will introduce the concept of these flow batteries and provide a brief overview of the history and development of the technology.  Some of the current approaches to address remaining challenges will also be discussed to provide a realistic perspective on the state of the art and the probability of large scale deployment.

Biography: Marc-Antoni is currently a postdoctoral fellow working on aqueous organic flow batteries within the research group of Michael J. Aziz at Harvard University. He earned a B.Sc. in Physics and Mathematics from McGill University followed by a M.Sc. in Physics from McMaster University.  His Ph.D. in Engineering Science at Simon Fraser University included work on hydrogen fuel cell membranes and optimization of vanadium based microfluidic batteries. Since then, his research interests have become focused on grid scale energy storage technology and range from fundamental electrochemistry and battery lifetime to cost modeling and commercialization pathways.