Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC) handed out more commercialization money this week. The arm’s length federal government granting organization invested more than $45 million in several new projects and existing ones.

Companies pioneering innovative smart energy technologies and pursuing new wastewater treatment processes were two areas where SDTC made multiple funding awards.

Opus One Solutions Energy Corp. received more than $5.3 million to continue working what it describes as a transactive energy network. In essence, this is an intelligent energy networking platform that connects, manages and optimizes distributed energy resources (DERs). The project has additional funding from the Centre of Urban Energy at Ryerson University, Nova Scotia Power and Toronto Hydro just to name a few. The total value of the project is $16.4 million.

Energy storage technology from e-Zn Inc. secured $700,000 in funding for its use of zinc in an energy storage application. The company’s says its electrochemical reaction is comparable to the least costly form of bulk energy storage and therefore offers flexibility to scale up and be deployed in a variety of applications.

As part of this project, e-Zn will scale up its 20-watt/500 kilowatt-hour prototype reactor to a demonstration-level, energy storage system rated at one kilowatt/24 kilowatt-hours. It aims to use the energy storage technology for solar arrays.

Schneider Electric landed an SDTC award of more than $1.8 million to commercialize an all-in-one smart energy storage system (SmartESS Inverter). Combined in a single box is a battery and a solar PV inverter. It’s designed for residential and small business customers as well as energy providers and off-grid communities.

The project is targeting to develop an integrated solution with inverter, lithium-ion battery storage, balance-of-system, and communication technology that provides increased performance, reliability, and simplicity at a cost lower than existing solutions. Total value of the project is more than $9 million.

Wastewater treatment firms Axine Water Technologies ($2 million) and Saltworks Technologies ($4 million) are secured funding from SDTC.

Axine will use the money to to develop, scale-up and pilot a new application of its technology for treating wastewater. Once demonstrated, this application can be widely replicated across the chemical manufacturing sector and other industries. It’s consortium partner is Hexion.

Total project is worth nearly $5 million.

Saltworks will puts its $4 million funding award to work in further its ammonia treatment technology. The company had developed an Ammonia Splitter that can either permanently destroy the ammonia to benign nitrogen gas or produce a valued fertilizer by-product without sensitivity to temperature or salinity.

The Ammonia Splitter is a compact and modular system that can bolt on to existing plants. In this project, Saltworks and its consortium partner, EPCOR, will build upon the success of a lab scale Ammonia Splitter pilot treating WWTP centrate and landfill leachate.
Total project is valued at $12 million.

For a complete list of funding recipients, click HERE.