Keynote Speakers

 

Professor Rupp Carriveau

University of Windsor, Canada
Chair of the IEEE Ocean Energy Technology Committee

Smart Energy Solutions for Agriculture Applications

Abstract: The Canadian Greenhouse Sector is experiencing explosive growth. The energy demand of the industry has been projected to expand more than six-fold over the next 5 years. Central electricity and gas grids have already seen their new Greenhouseintended infrastructure projects fully-subscribed. Continued economic expansion of this nationally critical sector will require innovative distributed energy resource (DER) solutions. The greatest concentration of Greenhouses in North America is in Southern Ontario, which is also home to one of the densest regions of established Wind Energy in Canada. Maturing power purchase agreements in the wind sector have owners looking ahead to novel market opportunities. A new study will develop a parametric economic model to illustrate the potential for wind farms to supply electricity, hydrogen, and ammonia to the Canadian Greenhouse Sector. Massive crop lighting loads will be served by wind farm-supplied electricity that will also drive water electrolysis for hydrogen and (potentially) ammonia production. While both are excellent energy carriers, hydrogen heating offers a significant reduction in CEA’s carbon footprint, and ammonia has important agricultural fertilizer applications beyond Greenhouses. High-resolution heat and power demand characterizations of several commercial greenhouses, and detailed historic production data from two large wind farms will be leveraged to build relationships between fundamental process variables. An economic sensitivity analysis will drive the development of transparent business cases to illustrate the opportunities and challenges associated with the direct coupling of wind farms and Canadian Controlled Environment Agriculture.
Partners: Ontario Greenhouse Vegetable Growers, Kruger Energy, Enbridge Inc., UWin Turbulence and Energy Lab.

Bio: Dr. Rupp Carriveau is the Director of the Environmental Energy Institute and Co‐ Director of the Turbulence and Energy Lab at the University of Windsor. His research activities focus on energy systems futures. Dr. Carriveau serves on the Editorial Boards of Wind Engineering, Advances in Energy Research, and the International Journal of Sustainable Energy. He recently Guest‐Edited special editions of Energies and The Journal of Energy Storage. Professor Carriveau was a recent recipient of the University Scholar Award and has acted as a Research Ambassador for the Council of Ontario Universities. Dr. Carriveau is a Founder of the Offshore Energy and Storage Society (OSES) and recently Co‐Chaired OSES2018 Ningbo China, and OSES2019 Brest France. Professor Carriveau is Chair of the IEEE Ocean Energy Technology Committee and was just named to Canada’s Clean50 2020 for his contributions to clean capitalism.