In this episode Matt Lensink chats with Tomas Van Stee, Founder and CEO of EnPowered about the impact COVID-19 is having on the energy sector, and the tools and strategies EnPowered is using to monitor changes in energy usage.

EnPowered is an energy management company that helps our customers to  control their energy usage and save up to 93% on their energy costs.   

We all know that electricity is cheap at night and expensive during the  day, but it's actually not that simple. The true cost of power is very  cheap almost always, but extremely expensive for short periods of time.  At EnPowered, we predict when these price spikes happen in advance, and  help our customers to reduce their usage when electricity is expensive  to save up to 93% on their energy costs.

CEM Engineering Website

EnPowered website

Matt Lensink sits down to chat with Scott Peever, VP Business Development & James Larsen, CEO of EZ-n Energy Storage (e-zn.com). 

e-Zn's unique Zn Reactor Technology turns electricity into physically free zinc material. The metal can be flexibly and inexpensively contained for large scale storage of energy. 

Founded in 2012, e-Zn is a Toronto based  corporation that has developed a breakthrough electrochemical  technology, the Zn Reactor, for storing energy in zinc metal.  This  economical energy storage solution will make renewable energy such as  solar and wind economic, competitive, and reliable.

The company is currently undertaking a project awarded by Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC) to demonstrate storage of solar energy with a Zn Reactor system.

e-Zn has recently won the coveted Shell GameChanger award in an international competition.

In this episode Matt Lensink sits down with David Teichroeb to discuss diversifying your energy portfolio. From gas, to electricity and hydrogen technologies, Matt and Dave talk about a wide range of ways to consume energy and where we should focus our efforts going forward.

Background:

David is an advocate for expanding our economy’s access to affordable, resilient, renewable and non-emitting energy. His advocacy is based on real-life experience developing projects involving renewable natural gas, hydrogen, next-generation heating technologies and solar microgrids with storage. To achieve deep reductions in emissions, we need to move beyond the current herd thinking that focuses on “electrify everything”. Failing to embrace a diversified portfolio of renewable and non-emitting energy solutions would reduce energy supply diversity and limit how consumers access energy. Furthermore, it is detrimental to cold-climate economies in countries like Canada. It would erode access to existing cost-effective, seasonal energy storage that exists in our vast pipeline networks. Maintaining and growing this seasonal storage capability will be key to delivering real emission reductions as our intermittent supplies of renewable energy grow.

In this episode Matt Lensink and Lisa Barber sit down with Aqeel Zaidi, M.Sc., P.Eng., CEM, CMVP.  Aqeel is Supervisor, Commercial/Industrial Technologies, Enbridge Gas Inc., to chat about all things CHP.

Aqeel has over 35 years of professional engineering experience in the energy industry, primarily dealing with energy efficiency, demand side management (DSM), combined heat and power (CHP), gas heat pump (GHP), energy auditing, boilers, steam plants, industrial process equipment, solar energy and GHG emissions including Ontario’s electricity grid emissions.

Prior to joining Enbridge Gas Distribution in 2006, Aqeel held similar positions at Union Gas Limited, Natural Resources Canada (NRCan), ADMIC Controls and two consulting engineering firms.

Education:

University of Manitoba (1981)

M.Sc. Mechanical Engineering

(Heat Transfer and Fluid Flow)

University of Engineering and Technology, Lahore, Pakistan (1976)

B.Sc. Mechanical Engineering

Memberships:

Aqeel is a registered Professional Engineer in Ontario and a member of Ontario Society of Professional Engineers, Association of Energy Engineers, Pulp and Paper Technical Association of Canada and Energy Solutions Center based in Washington, D.C.

Aqeel is currently co-chair of the Industrial and Major Account Consortium (IMAC), past-chair of Industrial Energy Efficiency Consortium, Gas Paper Drying Consortium and the Boiler Burner Consortium of the Energy Solution Center, and past-chair of the Energy Committee of the Pulp and Paper Technical Association of Canada (Paptac).

He is a current member of the Industry Advisory Committee of the Department of Automotive, Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering of the Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science of Ontario Tech University, Oshawa.

He is a past member of the US DOE Steam Steering Committee.

He was guest lecturer at the Gas Technology Institute, Chicago for the Chartered Industrial Gas Consultant (CIGC) program from 1996-2000.

Awards:

He is inaugural recipient of the Life Time Achievement Award of the Energy Solution Center, Washington, D.C. (2019)

He is recipient of 2012 F.G. Robinson Award for being a leading Committee Chair of Paptac. (2012).

Matt Lensink, P.Eng.,Chief Operating Officer at CEM Engineering sits  down to talk with Richard Laszlo, President of Laszlo Energy Services and Tim Short about their experiences in the energy sector, electric vehicles, where we are headed with CHP and more.

Richard Laszlo

Richard has now been working on energy and climate policies and technology for nearly 20 years with a variety of public, private and non-profit organizations and has facilitated and spoken at dozens of workshops and events across Canada. Richard has been providing customized energy and carbon policy, strategy and communications expertise to corporate, utility and government clients under Laszlo Energy Services since 2010. As a Senior Associate with QUEST, Richard chairs the Ontario CHP Consortium, representing over 130 energy leaders from 70 organizations committed to moving combined heat and power (CHP) policies and projects forward. Richard is the proud author of Pollution Probe’s first Primer on Energy Systems in Canada and contributed to the development of the Ontario’s Renewable Energy Approval under the Green Energy and Green Economy Act.

Tim Short

Tim has worked in the mining, chemical, banking, telecommunications and energy sectors in sales, and market and business development roles for thirty years. At Enbridge, he was involved in a wide variety of assignments: project-lead for the successful change in the rule within national emergency generator Standard (CSA C282) to enable natural gas utility-fed designs, co-founder of the Ontario CHP Consortium, project-lead to pilot bi-fuel generation in Ontario with the Ministries or Energy and Environment, business development lead on the installation of the major gas pipelines that currently feed the Northland 265 MW CHP in Thorold and the Pristine Power 400 MW gas-peaker plant in King City, project-lead on the roll-out of Ontario electricity and gas utilities’ “5 & 25 Rule” which was the first formal procedure to share electricity and gas consumption with municipalities, project manager in Enbridge’s recently commissioned hydrogen Power-to-Gas facility in Markham, active member on the joint Alectra-Enbridge-NRCan-Ryerson hybrid (gas + electric) heating project, and business developer of RNG projects with municipalities and private developers. As Partner with Laszlo Energy Services, Tim continues to broaden his reach into energy-related work including most recently developing projects to roll out EV charger networks in Ontario.

Matt Lensink, P.Eng.,Chief Operating Officer at CEM Engineering sits  down to talk with Diego Mandelbaum, P.Eng., LEED AP BD+C and Vice President, Development at CREATIVENERGY about energy solutions  in a post carbon world.   

Matt Lensink 

Matt has over 10 years of project engineering experience in power  generation, Combined Heat and Power and biogas. Early in Matt’s career,  he was with a leading biogas design-build firm, where he was responsible  for the development of 12 biogas-based combined heat and power (CHP)  facilities throughout Canada. 

Matt is now the Chief Operating Officer with CEM Engineering and is  responsible for the development and schematic design of natural gas  fired cogeneration projects for industrial and institutional clients.    Matt holds a licence to practice engineering in both Ontario and  Alberta.   

Diego Mandelbaum 

Creative Energy- August 2019- Present 

Stantec: 8 Years 

Bachelor, Mechanical Engineering (University of BC) LEED Certified, P.Eng. 

Experienced MMA enthusiast

In this episode Matt, P. Eng., Chief Operating Officer sits down with CEM team members Pascal Robichaud, (P. Eng., Director, Cogeneration) and Dave Roorda, ( P. Eng., Director, Western Canada) about their early beginnings with Westinghouse and their journey to CEM Engineering. You can also watch this podcast on Youtube. 

https://youtu.be/34ugdMci6wo

On this episode of Energy Radio, CEM's Natalie Tardif sits down with Martin Lensink to discuss one of our top three core values - being customer focused. To us, this means understanding and caring about what our client's expectations and needs are. Not just for our external customers, but also for our internal customers (our colleagues).  We feel our client's pain and want to help! 

On this special "bonus feature" episode of Energy Radio, CEM's Martin Lensink and Lisa Barber discuss how the energy market is becoming much more dynamic and we get a sense of where things are heading. Climate change is a big thought on our minds and Martin and Lisa dive into some of the areas where we are seeing trends heading. Enjoy!

On this episode of Energy Radio, we talk about Flexible CHP or "Flex CHP". The US Department of Energy released a paper in 2018 about what the State of California is doing on this front. CEM's Martin Lensink walks us through what Flex CHP is and how this could have an impact in Canada.