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Susan Uthayakumar, country president of Schneider Electric Canada, opened the conference with a warm welcoming address.

鈥淚 feel that as we look at the future and as we look at sustainability and energy storage, we in the country and globally have to come together to create that solution for a cleaner future,鈥� she said before introducing the next speaker, Terry Young, interim president and CEO of the IESO, who touched upon the priorities for his organization moving forward.

鈥淲e鈥檙e starting to look at various technologies: we鈥檝e got some work we want to keep doing on storage, there鈥檚 work we want to do around demand response, we鈥檙e looking at different ways of partnering storage with some of the facilities like wind. So it feels like we鈥檙e at this critical point where there鈥檚 a fair amount of investment from us [and] from others to keep moving in the direction that we need to move in,鈥� he said. 

In the next session, Neetika Sathe, the Alectra vice president of the Green Energy and Technology (GRE&T) Centre and the chair of NESTNet鈥檚 board of directors, moderated a discussion about the current state of Canadian energy storage with panelists Dave Rogers, founder and CEO of Amp, Hani Taki, director of Standards and Technical Studies at Toronto Hydro, Alexandre Nassif, a specialist engineer of Planning and Operations at ATCO Electric, and Ammar Nawaz, the vice president of Distributed Energy Solutions at Alectra. 

Nassif touched upon what energy storage looks like today and its future potential. 

鈥淲hat we see today, we see predominantly lithium-ion batteries if they are being used for electrical applications, but in the future as technology matures, costs reduce and regulations allow, we think we鈥檙e going to be seeing a lot more diversification of technologies too,鈥� he said. 鈥淲e鈥檝e seen a lot of exploration, not connection yet, but we believe it will be [available] in the future.鈥�

Ammar Nawat chimed in on how the average energy consumer鈥檚 preferences in how energy is generated will impact how energy is made and stored. 

鈥淥ur customers today are a lot more aware - this is not a typical utility customer back in the 80s or the 70s,鈥� he said. 鈥淭hey want to be in control of their energy systems; they care about how their energy is being sourced, its carbon footprint and most importantly, if their energy provider is environmentally conscious and responsible. This is where I believe energy storage holds the key in transforming a sector that quite frankly has seen little transformation in technology or business model.鈥�

Building upon Young鈥檚 comments earlier in the day, the third session kicked of with a presentation by IESO supervisor for advanced technology research Edward Arlitt, who presented an overview for his organization鈥檚 completed Storage Design Project, a culmination of over two years of stakeholder consultation on energy integration and eight years of field research. The system operator has now begun the process of amending its market rules to implement the project鈥檚 interim design measures, to go into force in early 2021. 

鈥淚 think what we really want to do is now send a signal to the NESTNet community that we are definitely turning our attention to behind-the-metre and hybrid storage,鈥� said Arlitt. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a major reason why we鈥檙e now funding a transactive energy research chair at Ryerson University, it鈥檚 why we鈥檙e still heavily engaged with NESTNet on behind-the-meter storage-type problems. The IESO will have a lot more specifically to talk about both of these topics in the very near future.鈥�

Panelists Sarah Griffiths, director, head of regulatory affairs at Enel Group, Fr茅d茅rick Morency, vice president of Energy and Services at Schneider Electric Canada and Matt Sachs, COO of Peak Power, joined Arlitt and moderator Jessie Ma, IESO Research Fellow at the Centre for Urban Energy. Transactive energy, as the panelists agreed, will change the way energy is generated, sold and used.

鈥淎ll the projections are showing the consumption of electricity will double in the next 20 years. This offers a great deal of opportunity,鈥� said Morency. 鈥淚 don鈥檛 think we can afford the same approach as we have taken in the past in building massive generating infrastructure and transmission lines and so on. This peer-to-peer energy transaction is a way to free up this capacity and enable us to build the energy infrastructure of tomorrow.鈥�

During the fourth and final session, which was moderated by F. Handan Tezel, professor at University of Ottawa, Yulong Ding, director of Birmingham Centre for Energy Storage at the University of Birmingham, Andrew Rowe, executive director at the Institute for Integrated Energy Systems at University of Victoria, Ian Rowlands, professor at University of Waterloo and Lukas Swan, professor at Dalhousie University, discussed the very latest energy storage technologies from their labs.

鈥淚 think people are understanding there鈥檚 nuances in terms of the GHG (greenhouse gas) value of hydrogen depending upon the resource we use,鈥� said Rowe, who distinguished between so-called green, blue and black hydrogen. 鈥淭he electrolysis is clearly the nice one when it comes to carbon, but the problem compared to the other two is the cost issue.鈥�

Moving forward, the future of energy storage and production needs to be equitable and sustainable, said Rowlands.

鈥淎s we think about the future of energy systems, I think we鈥檝e got to make sure we don鈥檛 leave anybody behind," said Rowlands. 鈥淭hat might be financial, that might be regulatory and that might be strategy reflecting on how different kinds of policies cross fertilize as well.鈥�

Picking up on this theme, Bala Venkatesh, the academic director of the Centre for Urban Energy, wrapped up the conference with a note of solidarity. 

鈥淲hen we make this energy transition happen, it has to be equitable and we have to make sure everyone is taken along with us on that journey,鈥� he said.