tomkat center for sustainable energy · » networking and complex systems, information technology,...

TOMKAT CENTER FOR SUSTAINABLE

ENERGY Presentation to PIE Advisory Board

Presented by Stacey Bent, December 12, 2012

© TOMKAT 2011. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Mission: Make human electricity and transportation systems more sustainable

Generation and Conversion »  Solar, hydro, biofuels, fuel cells, photocatalysts, and geothermal

Transmission and Distribution »  Networking and complex systems, information technology, and security

Storage »  Both large-scale and portable storage

Land and Water »  Impact of large scale wind and solar farms, biofuels. Strongly

dependent on social science, law, policy, and environmental research

2

Electricity

Transportation


Summary of Accomplishments

Seed grant program »  $3.2 million in seed grant support

»  Nearly 25 Stanford faculty funded through seed grant program

»  10 departments and programs represented

Workshops and outreach »  4 conferences on smart grid

»  2 Connecting the Dots conferences

»  Reached over 1000 attendees (faculty, staff, students, researchers, alumni, community)

Strategic planning

3


Strategic Plan

4


STRATEGIC PLANNING PROCESS

Barrier identified »  Need to overcome the barrier in moving transformational research out of the

laboratory toward practical, commercializable solutions


Strategies

STRATEGY 1: Set and promote an interdisciplinary agenda for energy research and targeted technologies with high impact

STRATEGY 2: Support translation from research to prototype STRATEGY 3: Build bridges between university researchers and technology innovators

and those who will enable commercialization STRATEGY 4: Produce the next generation of problem solvers and leaders


STRATEGY 1: Set and promote an interdisciplinary agenda for energy research and targeted technologies with high impact

Actions »  Develop agenda and identify high-impact technologies

»  Convene cross-disciplinary faculty groups to articulate challenges of sustainable energy technologies

»  Engage scholars inside and outside of Stanford

»  Organize events to facilitate discussion on national and international needs in sustainable energy

»  Produce academic works (proceedings, reports, books, website materials)


STRATEGY 2: Support translation from research to prototype

Actions »  Use agenda developed in Strategy 1 to target key areas

»  Run seed grant competition for basic research

»  Run competition for innovation translation projects

»  Develop staff to support the strategic initiatives (in basic research and innovation translation)

»  Develop thriving pilot program model using various incentives, for example

•  Fund well developed proposals that articulate the pathway toward innovative technology development with near-term impact

•  Work with Stanford to develop pilot program space for research translation •  Provide laboratory funds to allow translational work (to test proof of concept)

8


STRATEGY 3: Build bridges between university researchers and technology innovators and those who will enable commercialization

Actions »  Facilitate early partnering with the Office of Technology and Licensing (OTL) to

develop commercialization pathway

»  Help make connections between Stanford innovators and entities that can help commercialize

»  Engage VCs, companies, investors

•  Assemble an advisory board or oversight committee with veteran industry folks; the committee acts as board for new projects

•  Convene periodic presentations and meetings of innovators and investor-mentors

»  Coordinate and collaborate with the Steyer-Taylor Center on Energy Policy and Finance and other policy and finance centers

9


STRATEGY 4: Produce the next generation of problem solvers

Actions »  Support students/postdoctoral scholars through seed grants

»  Encourage innovation translation projects to hire Stanford undergraduates for summer internships

»  Organize events that are educational for students

»  Engage TomKat Center postdoctoral scholars

»  Develop mini-sabbatical program

10


Seed Grants

11


SMART GRID SEED GRANTS AWARDED IN 2010

“Analysis and Control of Smart Electrical Distribution Systems” »  Sanjay Lall and Dimitry Gorinevsky, Aero-Astro, $300,000

“Catching Wind By The Tail: Improving Intermittent Power Operations with Sensing, Statistics and Control” »  Ram Rajagopal, Civil and Environmental Engineering, $300,000

“Reducing the Regulatory Barriers to a Transmission Network that Facilitates Renewable Energy Deployment in a Wholesale Market Regime” »  Frank Wolak, Stephen Boyd, Mark Thurber, Program on Energy and Sustainable Development

(PESD) and Economics, $275,000

“GridSpice: A Virtual Platform for Modeling, Analysis, and Optimization of the Smart Grid” »  El Gamal, Boyd, Van Roy, Narayan and O’Neill, Electrical Engineering, $400,000

12


CURRENT OUTCOMES OF SMART GRID INITIATIVE Connections made to industry and utilities »  Working with EEAP to leverage smart grid TomKat programs

»  CISCO, State Grid of Corporation of China, China Electric Power Research Institute joined EEAP with financial commitment to smart grid research.

»  Funding from GE ($1.2 million) for smart grid, including TomKat researchers

»  Collaboration with Pacific Gas and Electric, Palo Alto Utilities, EPRI, LBNL, wind power industry

»  Amit Narayan (TKC co-PI of GridSpice project) is founder and CEO of the startup company AutoGrid which provides software to utilities for demand-response systems. AutoGrid has raised $9 million in venture capital funding.

Many researchers engaged »  Ten funded faculty on TomKat Center smart grid projects, plus new faculty engaged.

»  Graduate students across CS, MS&E, Statistics, ERE, EE, CEE

»  TKC PI Ram Rajagopal is designing and building Stanford’s new Smart Grid Lab for research and education to design and test grid management tools, devices, protocols, and software, with particular focus on distribution system resources.

Workshops and meetings »  Grid Integration of Renewables (January 13, 2011); Putting the Smart in Smart Grid w EEAP (May 4-5,

2011); Transmission Policies to Unlock America's Renewable Energy Resources (Sept 15, 2011); Optimized Distribution Systems for Renewables (April 25, 2012)

13


LARGE SCALE SOLAR SEED GRANTS AWARDED 2011

“Bimolecular Upconverter-Enhanced Photovoltaics: Cost-Effective, Broadband Solar Energy Conversion” »  Jen Dionne and Mike McGehee, Materials Science and Engineering, $300,000

“Consuming Renewable Power” »  Ram Rajagopal, Civil and Environmental Engineering, $300,000

“Storing Electricity in the Form of Chemical Bonds: An Alkaline Exchange Membrane Unitized Regenerative Fuel Cell” »  Thomas Jaramillo and Curtis Frank, Chemical Engineering, $300,000

“Market-Based Valuation of Ecosystem Services for Competitive Large-Scale Solar Power Generation”** »  Michael Lepech, David Freyberg, Stefan Reichelstein, John Weyant, Civil and Environmental

Engineering, Management Science and Engineering, Graduate School of Business, $300,000

“Effects of Large-Scale Solar Energy on Land and Water Resources in the Southwest US”** »  Chris Field, Noah Diffenbaugh, David Lobell, Environmental Earth Systems Sciences, $285,000

14

**co-funded with PIE


Bimolecular Upconverter-Enhanced Photovoltaics: Cost-Effective, Broadband Solar Energy Conversion

»  Most solar cells can only absorb light up to visible and near-infrared wavelengths, wasting about 30-50% of the sun’s energy due to transmission losses.

»  Upconversion converts low energy photos to higher energy photos.

»  Upconversion technology can be highly efficient and inexpensive, as an “add-on” to existing cells

5 % Ultraviolet 43 % Visible 52 % Infrared

Solar cell

30-50% of sun’s energy cannot be absorbed

Solar cell

Upconverter Insulator

Utilize low-energy transmitted photons

Solar upconversion

Dionne and McGehee


Bimolecular Upconverter-Enhanced Photovoltaics: Cost-Effective, Broadband Solar Energy Conversion

»  Application of existing upconverters (15%) can increase solar cell efficiency by 0.66 absolute percent

»  Research aims to improve upconverter efficiencies using plasmonic nanostructures to enhance absorption and emission

PdOEP sensitizer 532 nm excitation

PdOEP+DPA

Upconverted photoluminescence 50 nm 50 nm

Solar cell

Solar cell

Upconverted pow

er towards

cell

No plasmonic nanocrescent

With plasmonic nanocrescent

Dionne and McGehee


Effects of Large-Scale Solar Energy on Land and Water Resources in the Southwest US

Study the interaction between large-scale solar energy projects and ability of region they occupy to provide important ecosystem goods and services

»  High-resolution climate models to evaluate the consequences of large-scale solar energy

projects for local climate, with a focus on the SouthWest monsoon

•  Noah Diffenbaugh and Bereket Lebassi (postdoc)

»  Interactions involving dust, water, agriculture for bioenergy, and utility-scale PV

•  David Lobell and Sujith Ravi (postdoc)

»  Evaluation of environmental impacts of utility scale solar for a range of alternative deployment scenarios

•  Chris Field and Rebecca Hernandez (PhD student)

17


Effects of Large-Scale Solar Energy on Land and Water Resources in the Southwest US

Life-cycle analysis on PV, agave, and mixed PV-agave »  Agave is a drought-tolerant bioenergy crop

»  Compare agave grown with water inputs at ambient only (250 mm yr-1 – low yield), at level of water inputs sufficient to clean the PVs (adding 150 mm yr-1 above rainfall – baseline yield), and at level of water input required for high agave yield (adding 550 mm y-1 above rainfall – high yield)

»  The 150 mm yr-1 of water required to clean the PVs could be used to irrigate agave. The yield and energy benefits of this would be quite small, approximately a factor of 10 lower than the direct benefit of the cleaner PVs.

18

Net energy yield from agave bioenergy plantations at 3 levels of water input.

Lobell


Storing Electricity in the Form of Chemical Bonds: An Alkaline Exchange Membrane Unitized Regenerative Fuel Cell

Unitized regenerative fuel cell (URFC) »  Energy storage device for vehicular and grid applications

»  The URFC stores renewable energy as H2 while in electrolyzer mode, and then uses that H2 to produce electric energy when in fuel cell mode.

Jaramillo and Frank


Storing Electricity in the Form of Chemical Bonds: An Alkaline Exchange Membrane Unitized Regenerative Fuel Cell

Working AEM-URFC demonstrated with earth abundant catalysts »  H2 electrode catalyst = Ni on carbon black (Ni/C)

»  O2 electrode catalyst = manganese oxide (on glassy carbon particles (MnOx/GC)

»  RT efficiency of 40%, an excellent efficiency for this type of device

•  Best precious-metal based PEM-URFCs reach RT efficiencies of 60% •  Batteries or pumped hydro can reach RT efficiencies of 65-90%

»  Stability: 15% drop after 8 cycles

0 5 10 15 20 250.0

0.5

1.0

1.5

2.0

2 H 2O 2 H 2 + O 2E o H 2O /O 2

2 H 2 + O 2 2 H 2OF ue l C e ll Mode

(B )

Potential (V)

C urrent Dens ity (mA/cm2geo)

1st Cycle 2nd Cycle 4th Cycle 6th Cycle 8th Cycle

Water E lec trolyz er Mode

PEG domain

PEG Domain OH-‐

Jaramillo and Frank


SEED GRANTS AWARDED 2012

“Wireless Power Transfer to a Moving Vehicle” »  Shanhui Fan, Electrical Engineering, $300,000

“Reliability vs. Cost Tradeoffs in California Renewable Energy Investments” »  Frank Wolak, Economics/Program on Energy and Sustainable Development ; Burton Richter, SLAC/

PESD, $300,000

21

AC/DC rectifier

Induction pick up

DC/AC Power inverter

Charging pad

Energy management

system battery


UPCOMING PLANS

Strategic plan deployment »  Hire staff (Executive Director of Innovation Transfer)

»  Assemble technology advisory board

»  Launch innovation transfer program

Continuation of seed grant research programs »  Support cutting edge research

Workshops »  Large scale solar portfolio meetings

“Connecting the Dots” Year 3 »  Energy

22

tomkat center for sustainable energy · » networking and complex systems, information technology,...

Documents