2017 Clean Energy Research Grant Recap

It has once again been a successful year for the Tyler Lewis Clean Energy Research Foundation. Not only did the Ride for Clean Energy raise over $20,000 for its third consecutive year, but we were fortunate enough to be able to award two research grants for the first time in the Foundation’s history. With the growth of the Foundation came a steep increase in top quality applications and consequently, a deep desire to fund more than one project each year. Because of the continued success of the Ride for Clean Energy, we were able to materialise that desire into reality and we could not be happier with the success of our two grant recipients this year!

Below is a recap of this year’s two grant recipients, Leah Ellis and Marten Pape’s research activities, milestones and accomplishments.


Leah Ellis – Surface Studies of Aging Lithium-Ion Electrodes

Dalhousie University

  • Since receiving the 2017 Tyler Lewis Research Grant, Leah’s research efforts contributed to the publication of 11 peer-reviewed articles.
  • Her paper entitled “A New Method for Determining the Concentration of Electrolyte Components in Lithium-Ion Cells, using Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy and Machine Learning” was highlighted in Research Interfaces’ February 2018 battery science literature review.
    • This paper describes a new technique for characterizing electrolyte solutions in a faster and more environmentally friendly way.
    • A patent was filed for the concept.
  • The Tyler Lewis Research Grant enabled Leah to attend the 2017 International Meeting on Lithium-Ion Batteries (IMLB) in Kyoto, Japan, where Leah presented a poster on her research.
  • The Tyler Lewis Research Grant also enabled Leah to take a comprehensive project management course. Leah hopes to gain project management experience in the coming years, so that she can help take clean technology from the lab to the marketplace, where it can make a real impact.
  • The Dalhousie Green Chemistry Initiative, founded by Leah, organized several successful events on campus, including “Green Chemistry Trivia” for St. Patrick’s Day, and a green chemistry themed departmental seminar by Dr. Phillip Jessop, from Queen’s University.
  • Under Leah’s leadership, the Dalhousie Green Chemistry Initiative was awarded a $2,000 Campus Catalyst grant from Credit Union Atlantic.
  • Leah achieved the Advanced Communicator Bronze Award and the Competent Leadership Award from Toastmasters International.
  • Leah was awarded the prestigious Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship, and the NSERC Postdoctoral Fellowship (declined).
  • Leah completed her PhD in chemistry in August, 2018.

As of September 2018, Leah has been a postdoctoral fellow at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), under the supervision of Dr. Yet-Ming Chiang. Her research will continue to focus on sustainable energy storage technologies.


Marten Pape – Partial Power Processing Converters in Offshore Wind Farms with a DC Collection System

University of Waterloo

  • With the support provided by the Tyler Lewis Clean Energy Research Foundation, full project funding for Marten’s research was secured by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada.
  • Confirmation of the efficiency advantage of the proposed wind farm configuration through further modeling was achieved
  • Work comparing previously proposed related wind farm configurations have shown that Marten’s proposal can maintain a better conversion efficiency because its design adheres better to the ‘natural’ operating points of individual wind turbines’ electric converters.
  • Through collaborations, access to field measurement data and further expertise has been attained.
    • This has helped for studies related to dynamic operation of wind turbines and studies linking wind turbine design with local wind speed conditions, specific to the requirements of our proposed scheme.
    • Following steps include linking specific control algorithms with the wind turbine design to further exploit potential advantages in the converter design of Marten’s proposed scheme
  • In future steps, Marten and his team are planning to study the control and behaviour of wind turbines under abnormal conditions and investigate to what extent thir concept is beneficial when the proposed scheme is applied to parallel-connected strings of series-connected wind turbines.
  • Marten’s work has been presented in a poster at the University of Waterloo and has been submitted for consideration for publication.

Everyone at the Tyler Lewis Clean Energy Research Foundation are extremely proud of the work that Marten and Leah have accomplished while representing the Foundation over the last year. They have embodied the mission of the Foundation and helped us continue to build Tyler’s vision of a more sustainable future.

We would like to thank Leah and Marten for their hard work and dedication, congratulate them on their accomplishments, as well as wish them the best of luck with their future research endeavours.

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