To inform interested individuals on energy storage and also to encourage undergraduate and graduate students to pursue this field of study, the UP Center for Integrative and Development Studies (CIDS) Sustainable Energy Program organized a public lecture entitled “Energy Storage Innovation: Perspectives from the Academe” last October 9, 2015 at the Seminar Room 1/F of the National Center for Transportation Studies, UP Diliman with speakers Prof. Joey D. Ocon of the Laboratory of Electrochemical Engineering and Prof. Rinlee Butch Cervera of Advanced Ceramics Laboratory.
Prof. Cervera was the first speaker who introduced the concept of energy storage and its significance in the power sector. He discussed his research interest on batteries which is one of the types of energy storage devices. Prof. Cervera’s research aims to replace graphite as the anode material in a battery with a new material with better capacity. Silicon is a candidate material as an alternative to graphite which has ten times better capacity. He also discussed energy storage applications and other storage technology which is hydrogen energy storage where the excess energy for renewable energy can be utilized for splitting water into its oxygen and hydrogen components and having the latter stored for electricity grid usage.
Meanwhile, Prof. Ocon mentioned the important roles of energy storage such as reducing electricity costs and improving reliability of the power supply. He highlighted energy storage as a tool for sustainable energy development. With his background in chemical engineering, he proposes how the field of study can be one of the long term solutions in energy storage. His major research field as of now is electrochemistry, the study of the conversion of chemical energy to electrical energy and vice versa, and catalysis which is the acceleration of a slow chemical process by means of a foreign material known as catalyst. He ended his talk by mentioning various literatures to those interested for more information on energy storage.