Mention hydro bills at any Tim Hortons in Ontario and you’re sure to set off a chorus of grumbling. Electricity rates in the province have skyrocketed in recent years. Today, they’re among the highest in Canada.

According to WISE researcher Anindya Sen, that’s due in part to the province’s High-5 program. Introduced in 2011, it provides incentives for large industries to reduce electricity consumption during the highest demand hours of the year.

Trimming peak consumption avoids the need to…

There’s no question: electric vehicles are a greener choice than their gas-powered counterparts, producing less air pollution and greenhouse gases. But a major barrier to their adoption is limited battery range. If drivers want to use electric vehicles for anything more than short commutes or errands around town, they need a network of fast-charging stations.

So how do we go about building an effective one? Over the past few years, WISE researchers Yassir Alhazmi and Magdy Salama examined that…

Around the world, governments, utility companies and environmental organizations alike are encouraging consumers to use electricity more wisely. And with good reason. Reducing electricity consumption or shifting it to off-peak hours can cut greenhouse gas emissions, postpone the need for new generating stations and reduce the pressure on electricity grids.

What exactly does that look like at the household level? Three WISE researchers decided to find out.

Ian Rowlands, Paul Parker and Ivan…

The better you can optimize the flow of electricity in a power grid, the more energy you save and the fewer planet-warming greenhouse gases you generate. But that’s easier said than done.

Supply and demand fluctuate month by month, day by day and hour by hour. On top of that, there are a host of constraints to take into account. To date, no one has come up with an algorithm that can consistently find the optimal answer in every situation — at least, not in a reasonable length of time. Instead,…

From steam engines to spaceships, humans have been using flywheels for centuries. These simple wheels serve as batteries by stockpiling excess energy as mechanical motion, spinning faster the more energy they store.

Now, WISE researchers suggest this tried-and-true technology could give photovoltaic systems a boost, addressing two of the key challenges involved in tapping the sun’s energy.

Challenge number one is that the sun doesn’t always shine when we need energy, creating a mismatch in…

Although plug-in electric vehicles (EVs) currently make up less than one per cent of vehicles on the world’s roads, that figure is poised to increase significantly as more and more drivers recognize the advantages of going electric.

Mass adoption of EVs would put a big dent in global carbon emissions. However, it also poses challenges for electrical distribution systems. When thousands of commuters within a city arrive at work and plug in their vehicle, the surge in demand could overload…

In an ideal electrical grid, the frequency and voltage stay constant. However, when you have several sources of power, the variations in the amount of power generated create shifts in voltage and frequency.

In a traditional grid where the electricity flows in a single direction from generator to consumer, that’s relatively simple to achieve with a centralized control system of primary and secondary controls.

So-called “droop control” stabilizes voltage and frequency, which is good. However,…

Many reputable organizations, including the U.S. Department of Energy, have predicted a shortage of certain rare earth elements (REEs) — a shortage they suggest could endanger direct-drive wind turbines, electric vehicles and other clean energy technologies.

Don’t panic, says Waterloo researcher Komal Habib.

Habib and her Danish colleague Henrik Wenzel reviewed the “resource criticality” assessments that underpin these predictions and found some crucial shortcomings.

Standard resource…

The ultimate goal is to develop a power-to-fuel system that will use renewable energy (produced by wind turbines, solar panels etc.) to drive an electrolyzer that will convert water into oxygen and hydrogen. The generated hydrogen will then be fed into the thermocatalytic converter being developed by Prof. Simakov’s team. This highly efficient catalytic unit combines the hydrogen with carbon dioxide from sources such as raw biogas, landfill gas, and flue gas from a power plant, producing…