Our projects
IESVic-CESAP
The IESVic Clean Energy Systems Accelerator Program, or IESVIC-CESAP, provides technical advice and services to small and medium sized Canadian companies, and assist in the development of technologies, processes, and services related to clean energy systems. Potential research areas include: wave energy system development, water treatment, building energy optimization, risk and resilience analysis, battery system characterization, wind and tidal energy technology, E-bike development, industrial energy efficiency, energy efficient thermal systems, thermal optimization and design.
For more information contact iesvic.admin@uvic.ca.
photo credit: Desmond1234 (cropped)
PRIMED
It is the mission of the Pacific Regional Institute for Marine Energy Discovery (PRIMED) to accelerate the development and adoption of marine renewable energy technologies, including wind, wave, and tidal solutions. This is achieved by working with both communities and the private sector in order to identify the resources, assess the technology, and weigh the economics.
PRIMED’s aim is to act as the connective tissue between BC’s remote communities and marine renewable energy project developers. PRIMED provides second party assessment of MRE devices and we can help communities identify candidate technologies for their projects.
PRIMED is supported with funding from Pacific Economic Development Canada.
BESOS
The Building and Energy Simulation Optimization and Surrogate-modelling (BESOS) platform is a cloud-based portal that makes modular, reusable software components for integrated energy systems analysis available to researchers. Buildings, renewable energy generation and storage technologies and associated energy systems all pose complex operational challenges. Finding high-performing solutions to these problems requires a new generation of computational tools, blending aspects of simulation, optimization, machine learning and visualization.
SESIT
The Sustainable Energy Systems Integration & Transitions (SESIT) group's research is based on the understanding that innovative modelling techniques, combined with stakeholder engagement, can help guide our decision-making during the sustainable energy system transition. SESIT considers how energy systems integration- coordinating energy systems operation and planning across multiple pathways and scales - can unlock flexibility, and seeks to identify the most promising climate mitigation solutions.
Rebuild Initiative
Reducing energy use in existing buildings is key to avoiding catastrophic climate change. Better computer models of how our buildings are performing are needed to give robust design solutions and evidence-based policies. Data-driven methods that use machine-learning have great potential as our buildings provide lots of data, but little is currently used for reducing emissions. The ReBuild Initiative is an industry-government-academia consortium that will undertake 16 projects that encompass the breadth and complexity of the challenge, each co-designed with a partner organization to apply specific areas of research to meet their needs.
Energy, Climate & Environment Program at IIASA
In partnership with the Energy, Climate & Environment Program at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA, www.iiasa.ac.at), IESVic offers a research and scholarship exchange program on the integrated assessment of the water-energy-land nexus. This is a valuable opportunity for graduate students to contribute to applied scientific projects at IIASA. The training provides a foundation of technical research skills complemented by experience in an applied research environment. It aims to develop new state-of-the-art tools for cutting-edge multi-sectoral assessments.
2060 Project
The 2060 project plays a key role in examining potential impacts of integration on large-scale energy systems in Canada under various carbon policies and global growth scenarios. The project produces knowledge that can be used effectively by policymakers, academics, industry and others to shape programs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
WCWI
The West Coast Wave Initiative (WCWI) is a multi-disciplinary group of academics and industry members committed to quantitatively determining the feasibility, impacts and possible structure of wave energy conversion on the west coast of Canada. The group is developing industry leading wave energy resource assessment methods, numerical simulation tools for Wave Energy Converters (WEC) and numerical grid integration toolboxes to create the most accurate possible assessment of the feasibility of wave energy conversion in British Columbia.
Solid Carbon
The world is setting aggressive targets for climate change mitigation and most pathways require negative emission technologies (NETs) to meet these targets. Direct air capture (DAC) is a promising NET that captures carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmospheric air. Solid Carbon is an ambitious project aiming to capture carbon dioxide out of the atmospheric air using enormous offshore wind technical potential and store captured CO2 in deep-sea basalt rocks where CO2 mineralizes and converts into solid carbon rock over time. Research topics include techno-economic optimization and design of offshore capture and storage systems along with broader applications of offshore wind to carbon capture storage (CCS), carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS), electrochemical direct air capture and production of zero-carbon (H2 and NH3) and synthetic fuels.
This project is currently funded in partnership with PICS, and gratefully acknowledges an anonymous donor that has enabled expanded scope beyond the PICS Solid Carbon project. The team has also engaged numerous DAC OEMs, offshore services and wind energy developers and other partners in advancing the concepts toward experimental prototype and demonstration phases.