Blog

In March 2019, seven members of the NSERC Energy Storage Technology (NEST) Network travelled to Central Europe to visit researchers in Denmark and Germany. The trip was part of the NEST Network’s broader internationalization strategy – to make connections with like-minded researchers world-wide to promote the sharing of information, to grow student mobility, and to augment collaborative scientific investigations.

Energy sustainability is a pressing global issue. There is a growing consensus that addressing the ‘energy trilemma’ on a global scale calls for more transnational, multi-stakeholder collaboration and interdisciplinary research. While this approach comes with its own challenges, it continues to show us how breaking out of our comfort zones can spur solutions for the world’s most complex problems.

During the last week of September 2018, five members of the NEST Network travelled to the United States in order to learn about energy storage research activities going on ‘south of the border’ and to identify areas for potential future cooperation. This trip was a key part of the Network’s broader internationalization strategy.

Internationalizing research has come to be seen to be critical. It takes the best minds from around the world – each bringing their own insights, wisdom, and experiences – to tackle the world’s most pressing problems and its most exciting opportunities. Increasingly, collaborative, transnational research is vital to knowledge breakthroughs.

On Wednesday, February 21^st, Project 4.6 participants Dr. James Gaede (post-doctoral fellow) and Dr. Ian Rowlands (principal investigator) travelled, with others, to Shawinigan, Quebec to participate in the NEST Network 2018 Winter School.

Energy storage is increasingly recognized as integral to the further decarbonization of electricity grids in Canada, yet progress to date has been slow and inconsistent. To complement ongoing research on the market and technical feasibility of storage, we wanted to better understand how public discussions around energy storage may be influencing deployment of the technology.

I participated in the Canada-UK Energy Storage for Utility Applications Roundtable at Ryerson University’s Centre for Urban Energy last week (21 September 2017). Supported by the NSERC Energy Storage Technology (NEST) Network and the British Consulate-General in Toronto, this meeting brought together more than 25 energy professionals from government, industry, research and other communities on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean to share experiences, to cross-fertilize ideas, and to explore potential future collaborative work.

One of the objectives of our project on the social acceptance of energy storage systems was to conduct a systematic review of the existing literature on this topic. Unfortunately, preliminary literature searches revealed that there was very little literature in this area.