Green Energy Storage Systems with Dr. Imre Gyuk: The Tech Between Us, Season 3 Episode 1, Part 2

Transcript:

Raymond Yin:
Welcome back to The Tech Between Us. We'd like to continue our conversation on Green Energy Storage Systems with Dr. Imre Gyuk, Director of Energy Storage Research at the US Department of Energy, Office of Electricity. This is part two of our discussion on this topic. To hear what you missed about Green Energy Storage Systems, visit The Tech Between Us page and get caught up on part one.
So, let's shift technical gears and talk about an innovation relatively new in mouser’s world of semiconductor components, wideband gap semiconductors. Is that an area that the DOE has researched and where do you see these devices taking energy storage systems?

Imre Gyuk:
Well, we became aware of wide band gap semiconductors quite early in the game, almost at the same time that we started doing energy storage in general.

Raymond Yin:
Okay. So going on 20, 30 years now then?

Imre Gyuk:
Yeah, exactly. You know, we worked with silicon carbide first and now we are into gallium. We worked basically on switches and then incorporating the switches into bigger devices. And you have a number of options there. I mean, one of the things is to have integrated devices where you make the paths of the electrons as short as possible. You can get things very fast and with fewer glitches.

Raymond Yin:
Right. It, it minimizing all the parasitics along the way.

Imre Gyuk:
Yeah. And, you know, we've been very successful in at least producing prototypes of these things. And many of the small companies, well, a number of the small companies that we have worked with in developing these devices have since become bigger and then eventually have been brought up by larger companies. And they're now part of the commercial world.

Raymond Yin:
So, I mean, wide band gaps, silicon carbide and gallium nitride are, you know, huge for many of our suppliers in targeting both EV and green energy applications. Especially for the larger inverters and whatnot.

Imre Gyuk:
Because they're so much smaller. You know, you, you gain fantastically on footprint by about a factor of 10, particularly when you build a big facility with thousands of batteries in it. You know, you can't afford big devices there to do the connection between the batteries and the outside.

Raymond Yin:
Right. And that goes back to your discussion about infrastructure. The more we can minimize the infrastructure in the space and the heat, the better the overall system works.

Imre Gyuk:
Right.

Raymond Yin:
Silicon is still being primarily used in energy storage. Do you see wide band gap really changing that whole landscape?

Imre Gyuk:
Well, it changes the inside. I wouldn't say that it drives the storage industry. It's just one of those things that you need to do because it's like walking with an ill-fitting pair of shoes…
You know, we are looking into other devices such as soft magnetics for transformers and new band gap technologies like aluminum and boron nitride and eventually diamonds.

Raymond Yin:
Yeah, I've read about that. That will be interesting.

Imre Gyuk:
Yeah.

Raymond Yin:
Now, how promising does that look and, and how far out do you think any of these newer -  the boron technology and especially diamond - how far out do you think that's going to be?

Imre Gyuk:
Diamond is far out. The boron is beginning to happen.

Raymond Yin:
Okay. So based on similar timelines from when you started investigating silicon carbide, so probably another decade or two then it sounds like?

Imre Gyuk:
Yeah, could be. But again, as we have more and more concentrate on electric vehicles and storage the market is bigger for these things.

Raymond Yin:
Right. Yeah. I mean the, obviously the EV market especially is exploding. And, and if we are to go truly to decarbonizing - carbon neutral – obviously, renewables and green energy has got to continue.

Imre Gyuk:
Correct.

Raymond Yin:
Right. And probably double, triple, quadruple in size.

Imre Gyuk:
Yeah. Exponential.

Raymond Yin:
Right. Absolutely. What other device technologies should we be keeping an eye on? I mean, you mentioned soft magnetics. What else are you guys looking at that has the potential to be a game changer?

Imre Gyuk:
Well, actually, as I mentioned, aluminum and boron nitride, we are taking our power electronics step by step because basically the funding is considerably less than the funding in energy storage itself. As a matter of fact, I have been carrying the power electronics essentially because it's something I like and because I can set a little bit of the funding aside for developing it.

Raymond Yin:
And obviously as Mouser, as an electronics component company, that's where our focus is in the power electronics, working with our suppliers to make sure their newest silicon carbide, gallium nitride products get to market and are available to customers, to engineers to design in.

Imre Gyuk:
Yeah. It's essential.

Raymond Yin:
I mean, I look forward to seeing what comes out of the labs on that front. I've read about some of these technologies and I'm glad to hear that they are beginning to move forward.

Imre Gyuk:
Yeah.

Raymond Yin:
We've talked a lot about the technology behind energy storage systems, but obviously it all comes down to real world deployments and applications for energy storage. From an overall standpoint, how does your office, in the DOE, how do you prioritize between technology research and actual real world deployment?

Imre Gyuk:
Well, you know, we produce a new materials technology, or we find that other people have found technology successful, and then we try to support them by partnering with well anybody, to actually build something. And our guideline there is whenever we get involved in a partnership to build something, it's got to be something innovative and new. You know, there's no point in supporting yet another lithium-ion facility. It's got to be something new. Either the materials have to be new, or the financial structure has to be new, or the application has to be new.

Raymond Yin:
So you're always looking to push some sort of innovation either in a materials or a device, or even, like we were talking about regulation finance, infrastructure, any of those.

Imre Gyuk:
Yeah.

Raymond Yin:
So things have to be constantly moving forward.

Imre Gyuk:
Actually, the first thing that we got involved in was substation upgrade.

Raymond Yin:
Okay.

Imre Gyuk:
If a substation isn't up to it anymore, because the load has become too big, you have to upgrade it.

Raymond Yin:
Right.

Imre Gyuk:
And upgrading is very expensive because essentially you have to just build a bigger one.

Raymond Yin:
Right. And a lot of the substations are in the middle of cities surrounded by neighborhoods and developments and regulations.

Imre Gyuk:
But if you pair the substation with storage to take care of the extra load, then you can do it in a modular way. You can keep adding storage or taking it away if the load becomes less. Which does happen. And so you get much more flexibility in your substation upgrade or development. However, that was not the first serious application of storage. We built a few of those, but they weren't quite cost effective.

Raymond Yin:
Okay.

Imre Gyuk:
So, we hit upon something new and that was frequency regulation.

Raymond Yin:
Oh, really? What's that?

Imre Gyuk:
Well, frequency regulation is basically the grid continually jitters.

Raymond Yin:
Right. Yeah

Imre Gyuk:
I think it's as switch on and off and on and off

Raymond Yin:
Yeah. The constantly load is changing.

Imre Gyuk:
Yeah. So you have to smooth it.

Raymond Yin:
Okay.

Imre Gyuk:
Or if you have a lot of photovoltaics on it, if you have a cloud coming past, you have to go over that.

Raymond Yin:
Right.

Imre Gyuk:
And it's done by changing the frequency, but let's not go into that. Okay. But the point is, it's something you have to do. And the way it used to be done traditionally was that you reserve a little bit of extra energy, say 10% on your generation so that you can go up and down. If you have storage, you don't have to do that anymore. The storage takes care of the fluctuations on the grid, short term fluctuations. At 15 minutes to half an hour or so.

Raymond Yin:
So in electronic terms, it's almost like your storage facility becomes a capacitor.

Imre Gyuk:
Right. And that hit home. That worked and a profit, it was the first economically viable technology for -  technology application for energy storage. And, you know, as soon as we demonstrated that, and I should mention that we demonstrated it in company with both the California Energy Commission and New York State Energy Development. Those were our partners in that, and we showed that it could pay off. And once we did that, frequency regulation plants came up like mushrooms. Everybody did one until basically there was enough frequency regulation so that you couldn't really make much money putting in a new one.

Raymond Yin:
So the landscape became saturated in terms of frequency regulation facilities.

Imre Gyuk:
Yeah. But that showed the utility industry that they needed storage. That storage was going to feature as an item on their future grid. And then the next one was solar plus storage. And we showed that solar plus storage works much better than solar alone, because if you do solar alone, you get only about 20% as a safe bet. You know, it's not dispatchable, but with storage, the solar becomes dispatchable and that became commercially viable.

Raymond Yin:
Is that pretty much standard deployment now? You don't deploy a new solar facility or add-on to a solar facility without the corresponding storage system?

Imre Gyuk:
It's becoming almost standard.

Raymond Yin:
Right? Yeah, I would think so. Once again, just logically thinking it through, like you said, the sun doesn't shine all the time, and yet people are going to need energy all the time.

Imre Gyuk:
And the more photovoltaics you have, the more storage you will need.

Raymond Yin:
And, it just builds and builds and builds.

Imre Gyuk:
Yeah. And at the same time, the regulatory structure has to build. At the moment, only half of our states actually have regulatory structure in place.

Raymond Yin:
That's interesting. I would have never guessed that. I would've thought that's just part of business.

Imre Gyuk:
Yeah. Well, most of the middle of the country, is doing business as usual, and they have not gotten to developing a regulatory structure which can accommodate this new element of storage. Although if you're a wise utility, you will work with it so that you're ready when you do need it.

Raymond Yin:
The source is free. You think that would be a no-brainer. Renewable energy, in addition to storage systems, are really changing the way we look at the grid, the way we look at society in general. Long-term, where do you see renewable energy really benefiting society in a major way?

Imre Gyuk:
Well, the first thing we have to do, in terms of storage, is we have to get ready for more and more renewable energy. And that means the total decarbonization. Which means we have to store energy for the vehicles, for agriculture, for buildings, wherever the renewable energy is going to be used. And that's quite a load. So, we have to not only have short term storage … see frequency regulation, you can get away with an hour or two and most of the solar plus storage is about four hours. But once we have serious solar, it's going to be overnight. You need 12 hours.

Raymond Yin:
Okay. 12 hours of potential storage capability.

Imre Gyuk:
Exactly.

Raymond Yin:
Ah, right.

Imre Gyuk:
But what if the sun doesn't shine for a day or two, then we need backup. And there we need about three days. You know, and so the aim at the moment, the big aim is to develop long duration storage because lithium-ion is really good only for four hours. So, we don't have a real need as yet, but we know it's coming, and we have to develop long-duration storage.
The other direction we can go in, of course, is we have to look at that part of the population that does not have easy access to electricity. And that's our disadvantaged population, or underserved is the word one uses. And that's becoming a big issue nowadays because we have realized that we can't go ahead with half the population or any population being underserved. And so we work on that.

Raymond Yin:
Have you done projects around specifically targeting underserved populations and helping them, bringing them onto the grid?

Imre Gyuk:
Yeah, most definitely. Actually we have had projects with underdeveloped societies for quite a while. We work with tribes. We have a high school in Albuquerque that mostly serves Hispanic population where we installed a storage plus for the photovoltaics. And the point is, you know, if you make a high school more independent, then that place can serve the population in case of emergencies, which becomes a center where people can go and feel safe and, and have…

Raymond Yin:
Oh, that’s interesting

Imre Gyuk:
Well, and have electricity, you know?

Raymond Yin:
Right, absolutely. I live downtown and, you know, I take it for granted. But for - especially out in more rural areas, that may not be the case.

Imre Gyuk:
Yeah. So, we have rural populations, we have disadvantaged urban populations, and we have tribals. And because we saw this need, we started a project called Energy Storage for Social Equity.

Raymond Yin:
Okay. Terrific.

Imre Gyuk:
And what we have done is, we have, by sending out a request for proposals - we started with 60 proposals. We cut them down to 14 and we took those 14 communities and gave them intensive training for one year exploring how energy storage could help them. And there's a lot of things that the community cannot really do on their own. And that's dealing with all the interconnections to utilities, dealing with the municipality - if there is one there - making sure that you are not building on marshland and going against code that way. So we work with them and we get them around all those things and try to explore how energy storage could help them. And now that they've had this preparation for a year from Pacific Northwest Laboratories, my team at Sandia will take over and will actually partner with them and build a storage facility that fits their needs.

Raymond Yin:
So not only do you do the education and the support for municipalities and regulation, you actually, your team, one of the national labs actually goes out and builds it and installs the facility for them?

Imre Gyuk:
Well, we don't actually install it. We help them hire a contractor, we help them with the specs, and we help them with making sure that they're getting their money's worth and that it works after it's built.

Raymond Yin:
Terrific. So once again, from soup to nuts. From the beginning all the way through the end. Helping the tribes make sure that nobody lives in an energy desert.

Imre Gyuk:
Yeah, exactly. Energy desert, I mean, poor populations have more outages and the outages take longer to mitigate than more affluent communities. And you think of Puerto Rico, you know, in the central mountain districts of Puerto Rico, there are still people who are out of electricity after the three big hurricanes.

Raymond Yin:
I read that after the most recent hurricane that they hadn't even rebuilt from the one before.

Imre Gyuk:
Right.

Raymond Yin:
Yeah. That's scary. I cannot imagine not having reliable electricity for that length of time.

Imre Gyuk:
So we have a project in Puerto Rico as well.

Raymond Yin:
That's terrific. So true change within society as a result of technology and energy storage and renewables.
Let's take a look at a noteworthy innovation with our next question that comes from our sponsored partner, Panasonic, who is providing cutting edge components for engineering solutions worldwide. Explore more from them by visiting mouser.com/panasonic.
As I'm sure you're well-aware, the fusion research team at Lawrence Livermore recently announced achieving net energy gain through the fusion process. And I know it's decades and probably tens of billions of dollars away from commercialization, but where do you see fusion and renewables coexisting in the future? To provide clean, relatively inexpensive energy for the entire globe?

Imre Gyuk:
Well, that proof that we can control fusion has been very elusive for a long time.

Raymond Yin:
Absolutely.

Imre Gyuk:
It was always 10 years from now, but we now have that proof. It's a fantastic accomplishment. You know that we can produce net energy by fusion if only for a short time.

Raymond Yin:
Right.

Imre Gyuk:
Now, how soon this can become a practical source of energy, I have no idea. But with proper funding and application of intelligence, it shouldn't be in the indefinite future. I expect it to happen.

Raymond Yin:
This has been a really interesting discussion. We've moved from intro to technology and societal benefits. I really appreciate it.

Imre Gyuk:
It's been a pleasure.

Raymond Yin:
We hope you've enjoyed part two of our conversation with Dr. Imre Gyuk. Join us in part three as we wrap up our discussion. The Tech Between Us Podcast is included in Mouser’s in-depth look at Green Energy Storage Systems. To learn more, explore the entire empowering innovation together content series at mouser.com/empowering-innovation and explore articles, videos, use cases, and more,

Panasonic Commercial:
Providing cutting edge components for the progress and development of engineering solutions worldwide. Panasonics products enable solutions across a wide set of applications for automotive EV charging, battery storage and more. Visit mouser.com/panasonic.