By: Akemi Liyanage

To say that Dr. Bala Venkatesh “gets” energy is an understatement. Aside from being a professor of engineering, he is the founding academic director of Ryerson’s Centre for Urban Energy, an institute that aims to create solutions for the world’s energy crisis.

Dr. Venkatesh began by talking about his passion for energy engineering research. He feels that solving the energy crisis begins with spurring fresh interest in young people in the field. “…many of them want to do research in energy, but it’s not engineering research. It is research in policy, it is research on the environmental effects on energy.” It is his first aim, therefore to encourage undergraduates to do research on energy with an “engineering flavour.”

He then turned the discussion towards technology, the foundation of our energy system. “There is a phenomenal technology that Rogers engages in getting your text message and making sure that the message actually goes to the right person,” he said. And although it’s easy to focus on what your technology does for you, we often forget the massive amount of energy and infrastructure that goes towards providing the energy to us in the first place. And what’s especially lost in translation is that our “…system is really expensive, difficult to maintain and difficult to make sure you will get reliable supply all the time.”

While we have solved the first part of the problem with solar panels and other forms of renewable energy, Dr. Venkatesh says the challenge now is to address the second part: how to successfully integrate renewable energy sources into a central system. “When you look at individual devices it’s one product, but when you connect it you have a huge physical system that is hard to manage.” And with support from government and industry, he hopes that his extensive research in energy will help pave the way towards applying sustainable energy solutions.