Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

1. OverviewElectricity has become a necessity in our daily operations and its unavailability may result in undesirable consequences that can be avoided since a well-maintained power grid is generally more resistant to failure. Hence, the aim of this research program is the development of fault-resilient energy storage technologies. Establishing an advanced reliability framework would lead to new scientific tools, accelerating their deployment in grid integration and electric transportation. For that, calendar aging of both next generation energy storage devices is an instrumental key for the development of new fault diagnosis and failure prognosis tools. Once these failure predictors are determined, advanced methods can be developed to minimize aging precursors on these components for their lifetime extension. The developed technologies will provide a foundation for self-monitoring smart-energy storage systems that can recognize failure precursors at an early stage and thus help prevent catastrophic failures.2. Intellectual meritsThe aim is to investigate incipient faults and develop online fault diagnosis/failure prognosis tools to establish early warning systems for future energy systems. The rapid and widespread deployment of energy storage devices raises significant reliability concerns, particularly for safety critical systems. Continuously monitoring these systems is essential to prevent unexpected shutdowns and tragic failures that could result in fatal accidents or significant loss in operations. Current diagnostic engineering tools are not mature enough to detect or identify failure precursors in real-time, leading to a major reliability gap in energy storage systems. In order to reliably move these technologies forward, this research program investigates numerous degradation processes of energy storage devices to develop novel online degradation monitoring tools and improve the overall reliability of energy systems. Developed tools will enable autonomous incipient fault diagnosis and health assessment for self-monitoring smart-energy systems.3. Broader impactsThe expertise and research results will benefit the broad transportation and energy sectors. However, considering the vast market of renewable energies, industrial benefits may go far beyond these sectors and spread to other fast-growing fields. The proposed research program will accelerate technology transfer from academic research to industrial sectors and the intellectual property will be the subject of patent applications for the IP-core, for example. International corporations such as ABB, Vestas, Senvion, Adelser, and so on, and Canadian companies such as, TM4, BRP, Gentec, NovaBus, Hewitt, and Opal-RT Technologies, and so on are primary consumers of the developed technologies.