A Burlington, Ontario-based startup called Temporal Power is the focus of my Clean Break column in today’s Toronto Star. Temporal has designed a stationary flywheel energy storage system that it claims can dramatically outperform the next-best system on the market, which you might say comes from Mass.-based Beacon Power. The company has filed patents on the system but they have yet to become public — likely in a few months. Until then, the company is keeping quiet about how it achieves its claimed performance, and I don’t blame them given the competitive pressures. The story behind how the company came about, however, is interesting. And if Temporal can convincingly demonstrate what it claims, it could prove a breakthrough for economical grid-scale energy storage.

For a good primer and innovation update on flywheel energy storage systems, check out this recent story in the Washington Post. My column also explains the basics of how the systems work and the challenges of making them efficient and economical.

So what does Temporal claim? The company says it has designed a system with zero parasitic losses and extremely low friction using relatively simple and easily available components. It uses permanent magnets, not electromagnets, but the overall integration of components is largely a mystery — for now. It claims its flywheel will lose less than 5 per cent of its energy after up to 10 hours of spinning, making it ideal for storing energy from a wind farm in the evening and dispatching it hours later when the power is needed. This is a departure for flywheel systems, which are typically used for short-term energy backup and services such as grid regulation.

The company plans to standardize on 50-kilowatt-hour units, double the size of the main Beacon model, and these systems could be grouped together to achieve a larger scale of energy storage. It already has a working 20-kilowatt-hour prototype. Its first demonstration is likely to be a 10-flywheel project deployed in Hydro One’s distribution network, where the technology will absorb fluctuations from nearby wind turbines in an area of the grid that has strained capacity. The project is partially funded by a grant from Sustainable Development Technology Canada.

I’ve already received a couple of e-mails from skeptics who say flywheels have been researched for years and what Temporal is claiming can’t possibly be done, at least not economically and reliably. I always get a kick out of these knee-jerk, borderline arrogant reactions, usually by engineers who think they’re smarter than everyone else and that anything new can’t be true because, if it was, it would have already been done. I like to keep an open mind. No doubt, others will question the fact Temporal isn’t explaining in detail how it can do what it claims, but really folks, why would it reveal its secret sauce at this point? Why would it risk erasing a competitive edge prematurely?

 Anyway, skepticism is a good thing, as long as it doesn’t degenerate into outright uninformed dismissal.

Those of you who frequent this blog know that I mention Sustainable Development Technology Canada quite regularly (picture to the left is of SDTC chief Vicky Sharpe). That’s because the federal agency, which was created nine years ago, has introduced me over the years to so many interesting, innovative and ambitious clean technology companies. SDTC does the screening. It carries out the due diligence. It offers funding for demonstration projects. It forces the hand of private investors that might not otherwise open their doors or pockets. It offers guidance. Introduces partners and customers. Need I say more? This agency has given dozens of promising green technologies and the companies behind them a solid chance of success. For every dollar of public money it has invested, it has tapped into twice as much (actually more) from the private sector. Over the past few years, that has translated into $515 million in public funding being leveraged to attract about $1.2 billion in mostly private funds.

That’s why in my Clean Break column this week I argue clean technology, and specifically the efforts of SDTC, need to be part of the country’s election dialogue. We need to build on the progress SDTC has achieved to date, not abandon the momentum at a time when major world economies — Germany, China, India, Brazil, the United States – are racing to establish a dominant position in the emerging global green economy.

The leaders of the political parties looking to run the next government need to be asked: How are they prepared to support clean technology innovation and green economic development in Canada?

You’ll recall that last year the Canadian federal government refused to inject more funding into Sustainable Development Technology Canada, an agency that has proven crucial to helping Canadian energy and environmental innovations cross the “Valley of Death.” SDTC has contributed hundreds of millions of dollars to clean technology demonstration projects and leveraged twice as much from the private sector. It has enough money to fund probably one more round of projects, after which it will exist simply to manage its existing portfolio of projects (it also manages and issues grants from a separate biofuels fund). To stop funding new clean technology innovation now would be a huge mistake, and SDTC officials have made this clear to the federal government. We’ll find out at 4:30 pm today, after details of the federal budget go public, if the Harper government will continue to fund the agency’s activities. If it doesn’t, this will be a sad day for cleantech in Canada…. stay tuned.

Results from a pilot project in Oklahoma show that having a wider TOU price gap will encourage more peak-period conservation and shifting of electricity use, a finding that contrasts with the experience in Ontario, where the price gap and the market signal it sends is very weak. In the Oklahoma trial, pricing ranged from 4.2 cents (U.S.) for off-peak times and up to 46 cents for critical peaks, compared to a range of 5.1 to 9.9 cents at an Ontario utility such as Toronto Hydro.

Some participants in the Oklahoma pilot achieved a 57 per cent reduction in energy use during peak periods compared to a control group, while the average reduction was 33 per cent during highest-price periods. Widening the TOU price range in Ontario is crucial to realizing the benefits of smart meters and to enabling competitive services from third-party retailers, including storage services.

My Clean Break column in today’s Toronto Star begins with a look at Toronto-based Hydrostor, an energy-storage startup with a unique idea. Hydrostor’s concept is simple, in many ways. It starts with big tubular balloons the size of a bus submerged 80 meters or more under water — anchored, for example, to a lake bed. On the surface a compressor system uses off-peak, low-cost electricity to pump air into the balloons at high pressure. As the balloons or bags expand the weight of the water above them compress the air. When electricity needs to be dispatched, the air is let out of the balloons and piped back to a turboexpander turbine on the surface that generates power. The company figures about 200 of these balloons, called accumulators, would create a system big enough to supply 2 megawatts for four hours. As far as cost goes, it would fall between conventional pumped storage and conventional compressed-air storage (in salt caverns), according to Hydrostor CEO Curtis VanWalleghem.

Neat idea — though obviously studies would have to be done to assess environmental impacts on the body of water. Still, the fact that 50 per cent of ther world’s population is located near bodies of water, and the fact that Hydrostor’s system uses off-the-shelf components and is highly scalable, this could be a nice niche in the emerging market for grid-scale energy storage. VanWalleghem estimates at this point that the round-trip efficiency of the system is in the ballpark of 70 per cent, which is competitive with other storage technologies, such as zinc-bromide flow battery systems offered by companies such as Premium Power.

The rest of my column urges Ontario to begin taking a more serious look at the regulatory and policy changes required to enable the integration of new technologies into the provincial grid.