Ontario Launches Hydrogen Innovation Fund

BC Hydro Vehicle-to-Grid Pilot enables EVs to deliver V2G power, using bidirectional charging to provide grid services, clean energy resilience, and emergency power for microgrids, critical infrastructure, and storm response.

Key Points

BC Hydro's V2G pilot uses parked EVs as mobile batteries, supplying bidirectional power to the grid for resilience.

✅ Medium- and heavy-duty EV integration via 60 kW charger

✅ Supports critical infrastructure and storm response

✅ Cleaner, faster alternative to diesel generators

BC Hydro has unveiled an innovative pilot project designed to enable electric vehicles (EVs) to contribute electricity back to the power grid, with some owners able to sell electricity back to the grid through managed programs, effectively transforming these vehicles into mobile energy storage units that function as capacity on wheels for the electricity system.

The utility company recently announced the successful trial of the vehicle-to-grid program, allowing for the transfer of electricity from the batteries of medium- and heavy-duty EVs back to the electrical grid. This surplus electricity can be utilized in various ways, including supporting emergency response efforts by energizing critical infrastructure and to power buildings during natural disasters or major storms. It offers a cleaner, faster, and more flexible alternative to conventional methods like the use of diesel generators.

BC Hydro's President and CEO, Chris O'Riley, highlighted the significance of this initiative, stating, "The average car is parked 95 per cent of the time, and with the evolution of technology solutions like vehicle-to-grid, stationary vehicles hold the potential to become mobile batteries, powered by clean and affordable electricity."

The successful test was conducted using a Lion Electric school bus provided by Lynch Bus Lines, which was connected to a 60-kilowatt charger, illustrating BC Hydro's rollout of faster electric vehicle charging across the province. BC Hydro pointed out that the typical bus battery holds 66 kilowatts of electricity, sufficient to power 24 single-family homes with electric heating for two hours. Therefore, if 1,000 of these buses were converted to electric power, they could collectively supply electricity to 24,000 homes for two hours.

This groundbreaking project is a collaborative effort between BC Hydro, Powertech, and Coast to Coast Experience, with funding support from the provincial government amid study findings that B.C. may need to double its power output to meet transport electrification.

While this pilot marks the first of its kind in Canada, similar technology has already been successfully implemented in Europe and the United States, including California's efforts to leverage EVs for grid stability that offer promising potential for enhancing the energy landscape and sustainability in the region.

Separately, Nova Scotia Power plans to pilot electric vehicle to grid integration in Atlantic Canada, underscoring growing national interest in V2G approaches.

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Eastern Green Link 1 is a 190km HVDC subsea electricity superhighway linking Scotland to northern England, delivering renewable energy, boosting grid capacity, and enhancing energy security for National Grid and Scottish Power.

Key Points

A 190km HVDC subsea link sending Scottish renewables to northern England, boosting grid capacity and UK energy security.

✅ 190km HVDC subsea route from East Lothian to County Durham

✅ Cables by Prysmian; converter stations by GE Vernova, Mytilineos

✅ Powers the equivalent of 2 million UK households

One of Britain’s biggest power grid projects has awarded contracts worth £1.8bn for a 190km subsea electricity superhighway, akin to a hydropower line to New York in scale, to bring renewable power from Scotland to the north of England.

National Grid and Scottish Power, following a recent 2GW substation commissioning, plan to begin building the “transformative” £2.5bn high-voltage power line along the east coast of the country from East Lothian to County Durham from 2025.

The Eastern Green Link 1 (EGL1) project is one of Britain’s largest grid upgrade projects in generations and has been designed to carry enough clean electricity to power the equivalent of 2 million households.

The UK is under pressure to deliver a power grid overhaul, including moves to fast-track grid connections nationwide, as it prepares to double its demand for electricity by 2040 as part of a plan to cut the use of gas and other fossil fuels.

The International Energy Agency has forecast that 600,000km of electric lines will need to be either added or upgraded across the UK by the end of the next decade to meet its climate targets, amid a global race to secure supplies of high voltage cabling and other electrical infrastructure components and to explore superconducting cables to cut losses.

The EGL1 project has awarded Prysmian Group, an international cable maker, the contract to deliver nearly 400km of power cable. The contract to supply two HVDC technology converter stations, one at each end of the cable, has been awarded to GE Vernova and Mytilineos.

The upgrades are expected to cost tens of billions of pounds, according to National Grid, which faces plans for an independent system operator overseeing Great Britain’s electricity market. The FTSE 100 energy company has warned that five times as many pylons and underground lines need to be constructed by the end of the decade than in the past 30 years, and four times more undersea cables laid than there are at present.

Britain’s power grid upgrades are also expected to emerge as an important battleground in the general election. The next government will need to balance the strong local opposition to new grid infrastructure across rural areas of the UK against the climate and economic benefits of the work.

Research undertaken by National Grid has found there will be an estimated 400,000 jobs created by 2050 due to the work needed to rewire Britain’s grid, a trend mirrored by recent cross-border transmission approvals in North America, including about 150,000 jobs anticipated in Scotland and the north of England.

Peter Roper, the project director for EGL1, said the super-cable would be “a transformative project for the UK, enhancing security of supply and helping to connect and transport green power for all customers”.

He added: “These contract announcements are big wins for the supply chain and another important milestone as we build the new network infrastructure to help the UK meet its net zero and energy security ambitions.

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Pyroelectric Energy Harvesting captures low-grade heat via thin-film materials, converting temperature fluctuations into power for waste heat recovery in electronics, vehicles, and industrial machinery, offering a thermoelectric alternative for microelectronics and exascale systems.

Key Points

Thin-film pyroelectric harvesting turns temperature changes into electricity, enabling low-grade waste heat recovery.

✅ Converts low-grade heat fluctuations into usable power

✅ Thin-film design suits microelectronics and edge devices

✅ Alternative to thermoelectrics for waste heat recovery

The electronic device you are reading this on is currently producing a modest to significant amount of waste heat that emerging thermoelectric materials could help recover in principle. In fact, nearly 70% of the energy produced annually in the US is ultimately wasted as heat, much of it less than 100 degrees Celsius. The main culprits are computers and other electronic devices, vehicles, as well as industrial machinery. Heat waste is also a big problem for supercomputers, because as more circuitry is condensed into smaller and smaller areas, the hotter those microcircuits get.

It’s also been estimated that a single next-generation exascale supercomputer could feasibly use up to 10% of the energy output of just one coal-fired power station, and that nearly all of that energy would ultimately be wasted as heat.

What if it were possible to convert that heat energy into a useable energy source, and even to generate electricity at night from temperature differences as well?

#google#

It’s not a new idea, of course. In fact the possibility of thermoelectric energy generation, where thermal energy is turned into electricity was recognised as early as 1821, around the same time that Michael Faraday developed the electric motor.

Unfortunately, when the heat source is ‘low grade’, aka less than 100 degrees Celsius, a number of limitations arise, and related approaches for nighttime renewable generation face similar challenges as well. For it to work well, you need materials that have quite high electrical conductivity, but low thermal conductivity. It’s not an easy combination to come by.

Taking a different approach, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, have developed thin-film that uses pyroelectric harvesting to capture heat-waste and convert heat to electricity in prototype demonstrations. The findings were published today in Nature Materials.

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China Compressed-Air Energy Storage enables grid flexibility using salt caverns in Jiangsu, delivering long-duration storage for wind and solar, 60 MW capacity, dispatchable power, and low-cost, safe, round-the-clock clean energy integration.

Key Points

Stores off-peak power by compressing air in salt caverns, then drives turbines on demand to balance renewables.

✅ 60 MW Jintan plant connects to grid; commercial CAES milestone

✅ Uses salt caverns; low-cost long-duration storage; high safety

✅ Balances wind and solar; improves grid flexibility and reliability

China is set to connect its first commercial compressed-air energy storage plant to the grid as it seeks more ways to harness fast-growing clean power resources, including new hydropower alongside other long-duration options such as gravity power technologies for around-the-clock use.

China Huaneng Group Co. said its Jiangsu Jintan Salt Cave project recently underwent four days of successful trials and is now ready for commercial operations. The 60-megawatt plant will be the largest compressed air energy storage plant built anywhere in the world since 1991, and the first in China outside of small-scale technology demonstration projects, as China's electricity demand patterns remain in flux, according to BloombergNEF.

The plant will use electricity at night when demand is low to pump air into an underground salt cavern. Then, when demand is high during the day, it can release the compressed air at high enough pressure to spin a turbine and produce electricity, aligning with projections that 60% electricity by 2060 could be reached according to industry outlooks.

Underground compressed air is considered one of the least costly forms of long-term energy storage and has low safety concerns, according to BloombergNEF. But its reliance on certain topographical features such as underground caverns may limit wider deployment, a challenge shared by other regions weighing large-scale storage options for reliability. It’s gained a foothold in China, with nearly four gigawatts of projects in the pipeline, while there are less than two gigawatts combined planned in the rest of the world. Shandong province said just this week in this year's work plan that it would build three projects using the technology.

The Jintan salt caves in Jiangsu, China’s second-biggest provincial economy just north of Shanghai, can store about 10 million cubic meters of gas, enough to power four gigawatts of compressed air plants, according to a Science and Technology Daily report from last year. 

Energy storage is a key part of China’s plan to build a larger and more flexible grid as it tries to peak carbon emissions before 2030 and zero them out before 2060, alongside continued nuclear energy development to stabilize baseload supply. The country is adding a world-leading amount of wind and solar power every year, but their intermittency strains grids that need to be able to deliver electricity all the time, spurring interest in green hydrogen as a flexible complement. China has set targets of 30 gigawatts of new-energy storage by 2025 and 120 gigawatts of pumped hydro storage by 2030. 

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CAISO Renewable Curtailments reflect grid balancing under transmission congestion and oversupply, reducing solar and wind output while leveraging WEIM trading, battery storage, and transmission expansion to integrate renewables and stabilize demand-supply.

Key Points

CAISO renewable curtailments are reductions in wind and solar output to balance grid amid congestion or oversupply.

✅ Driven mainly by transmission congestion, less by oversupply.

✅ Peaks in spring when demand is low and solar output is high.

✅ Mitigated by WEIM trades, new lines, and battery storage growth.

The California Independent System Operator (CAISO), the grid operator for most of the state, is increasingly curtailing solar- and wind-powered electricity generation, as reported in rising curtailments, as it balances supply and demand during the rapid growth of wind and solar power in California.

Grid operators must balance supply and demand to maintain a stable electric system as advances in solar and wind continue to scale. The output of wind and solar generators are reduced either through price signals or rarely, through an order to reduce output, during periods of:

Congestion, when power lines don’t have enough capacity to deliver available energy
Oversupply, when generation exceeds customer electricity demand

In CAISO, curtailment is largely a result of congestion. Congestion-related curtailments have increased significantly since 2019 because California's solar boom has been outpacing upgrades in transmission capacity.

In 2022, CAISO curtailed 2.4 million megawatthours (MWh) of utility-scale wind and solar output, a 63% increase from the amount of electricity curtailed in 2021. As of September, CAISO has curtailed more than 2.3 million MWh of wind and solar output so far this year, even as the US project pipeline is dominated by wind, solar, and batteries.

Solar accounts for almost all of the energy curtailed in CAISO—95% in 2022 and 94% in the first seven months of 2023. CAISO tends to curtail the most solar in the spring when electricity demand is relatively low (because moderate spring temperatures mean less demand for space heating or air conditioning) and solar output is relatively high, although wildfire smoke impacts can reduce available generation during fire season as well.

CAISO has increasingly curtailed renewable generation as renewable capacity has grown in California, and the state has even experienced a near-100% renewables moment on the grid in recent years. In 2014, a combined 9.0 gigawatts (GW) of wind and solar capacity had been built in California. As of July 2023, that number had grown to 17.6 GW. Developers plan to add another 3.0 GW by the end of 2024.

CAISO is exploring and implementing various solutions to its increasing curtailment of renewables, including:

The Western Energy Imbalance Market (WEIM) is a real-time market that allows participants outside of CAISO to buy and sell energy to balance demand and supply. In 2022, more than 10% of total possible curtailments were avoided by trading within the WEIM. A day ahead market is expected to be operational in Spring 2025.

CAISO is expanding transmission capacity to reduce congestion. CAISO’s 2022–23 Transmission Planning Process includes 45 transmission projects to accommodate load growth and a larger share of generation from renewable energy sources.

CAISO is promoting the development of flexible resources that can quickly respond to sudden increases and decreases in demand such as battery storage technologies that are rapidly becoming more affordable. California has 4.9 GW of battery storage, and developers plan to add another 7.6 GW by the end of 2024, according to our survey of recent and planned capacity changes. Renewable generators can charge these batteries with electricity that would otherwise have been curtailed.

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Ukraine Wind Energy Resilience shields the grid with wind power along the Black Sea, dispersing turbines to withstand missile attacks, accelerate clean energy transition, aid EU integration, and strengthen energy security and rapid recovery.

Key Points

A strategy in Ukraine using wind farms to harden the grid, ensure clean power, and speed recovery from missile strikes.

✅ Distributed turbines reduce single-point-of-failure risk

✅ Faster repair of substations and lines than power plants

✅ Supports EU-aligned clean energy and grid security goals

The giants catch the wind with their huge arms, helping to keep the lights on in Ukraine — newly built windmills, on plains along the Black Sea.

In 15 months of war, Russia has launched countless missiles and exploding drones at power plants, hydroelectric dams and substations, trying to black out as much of Ukraine as it can, as often as it can, even amid talk of limiting attacks on energy sites that has surfaced, in its campaign to pound the country into submission.

The new Tyligulska wind farm stands only a few dozen miles from Russian artillery, but Ukrainians say it has a crucial advantage over most of the country’s grid, helping stabilize the system even as electricity exports have occasionally resumed under fire.

A single, well-placed missile can damage a power plant severely enough to take it out of action, but Ukrainian officials say that doing the same to a set of windmills — each one tens of meters apart from any other — would require dozens of missiles. A wind farm can be temporarily disabled by striking a transformer substation or transmission lines, but these are much easier to repair than power plants.

“It is our response to Russians,” said Maksym Timchenko, CEO of DTEK Group, the company that built the turbines in the southern Mykolaiv region — the first phase of what is planned as Eastern Europe’s largest wind farm. “It is the most profitable and, as we know now, most secure form of energy.”

Ukraine has had laws in place since 2014 to promote a transition to renewable energy, both to lower dependence on Russian energy imports, with periods when electricity exports resumed to neighbors, and because it was profitable. But that transition still has a long way to go, and the war makes its prospects, like everything else about Ukraine’s future, murky.

In 2020, 12% of Ukraine’s electricity came from renewable sources — barely half the percentage for the European Union. Plans for the Tyligulska project call for 85 turbines producing up to 500 megawatts of electricity. That’s enough for 500,000 apartments — an impressive output for a wind farm, but less than 1% of the country’s prewar generating capacity.

After the Kremlin began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the need for new power sources became acute, prompting deliveries such as a mobile gas turbine power plant to bolster capacity. Russia has bombarded Ukraine’s power plants and cut off delivery of the natural gas that fueled some of them.

Russian occupation forces have seized a large part of the country’s power supply, and Russia has built power lines to reactivate the Zaporizhzhia plant in occupied territory, ensuring that its output does not reach territory still held by Ukraine. They hold the single largest generator, the 5,700-megawatt Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, which has been damaged repeatedly in fighting and has stopped transmitting energy to the grid, with UN inspectors warning of mines at the site during recent visits. They also control 90% of Ukraine’s renewable energy plants, which are concentrated in the southeast.

The postwar recovery plans Ukraine has presented to supporters including the European Union, which it hopes to join, feature a major new commitment to clean energy, even as a controversial proposal on Ukraine’s nuclear plants continues to stir debate.

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