Speaker 1 0:01 Where? Where was the dean's office back in the day? Is this? Yeah, this was not here. This building was here, but not used. Chris Yip 0:07 It was inside the building I think. Vince Arone 0:11 Hey, I know you look at this all the time, and you probably take it for granted, maybe, maybe not, but I am in awe when I come here, right? You pass any one of these buildings and you get into this King's College circle. It's soothing. It's kind of always... Chris Yip 0:27 Amazing, right? Welcome to Tell Me More: Coffee with Chris Yip, the official podcast of the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering at the University of Toronto. Each month, I sit down with someone from our vibrant global community to talk about what places them at the heart of designing bold solutions for a better world. You'll meet alumni, students and professors who are making a difference across a range of fields, including some where you may not expect to find them. My guest today is not only a distinguished alumnus, but a classmate and a wonderful friend of mine, Vince Arone. We both graduated, we're both class of '88. Vince was a mechanical engineer, I'm a chemical engineer. I love to say that chem and mech just misspellings of each other, which means we're twins in a sense. We're soulmates. Since graduating, Vince has had senior roles in a number of tech companies, and most recently, has entered the exciting world of battery electric storage systems and DC fast chargers. We're going to talk a lot about that today. He's now brought some of that tech back to campus, and he's been very instrumental in supporting the next generation of graduates in engineering with the new U of T 8T8 resilience scholarship. So Vince, welcome to the podcast. Speaker 1 1:49 Thank you, Chris or Dean Yip, as I formally should address you, but really nice to be back on campus and to be doing this podcast with you. Chris Yip 1:57 We always start these conversations all the way to the back to the beginning, and this is actually going to be pre, I guess, 1984, September, 1984 when we came onto campus. I remember, I think it was raining the day that we came in on campus. I remember being wet. I remember getting our purple arms or fingers or digits, and some of the various shenanigans that we went through. But let's talk a little bit even before that. So tell me a little bit about where you grew up, and how did you decide engineering was for you? Speaker 1 2:27 All right. Great question. I think for myself, I grew up in Toronto, born and raised here in Toronto. I'm a son of immigrant parents, which is probably the big story for most students. I got into engineering by happenstance, I wasn't even sure what engineering was about. I had a huge passion for cars back in high school, and I had an incredible shop teacher, which I spent countless hours just fixing old cars and turning them into cars that can drive and were roadworthy. But it wasn't until grade 12, grade 13, my shop teacher, I remember it like it was yesterday, Mr. Robinson said, "You know, Vince, it goes, you got a really good mechanical aptitude, you're good with cars. You should probably go into engineering." I think the big word for me looking back in '84 is being naive. But it was a good kind of naive, because I was pretty solid in all the maths, the sciences, the physics and all those sort of things but I love cars. So here I was thinking, I can't go wrong with the shop teacher's suggestion, let me go into engineering. I think U of T transformed me, as it did many other students, classmates, which, by the way, were still friends with a bunch of the 8T8 grads. It transformed us into, I'll use that word again, a naive individual teenager, not knowing a lot, to coming to this wonderful institution right in the center of the city, and you almost had to grow up immediately. All the decisions were yours to make, right or wrong. And the other thing was, there's a sense of humility too, in the sense that we were top of game in high school. We got to U of T, and the saying was, you know, you were put down a few notches to where you belong with all your fellow classmates. And that's not a bad thing, right? Because it was the best of the best. It was the hardest working individuals, and all of a sudden you had to put the skills that you learned in high school, adapt and then thrive. Chris Yip 4:26 Yeah, it really is, and that's actually kind of the theme around your scholarship, which we'll talk a little bit later but it really is about finding yourself as you come into the program, right? So okay, so you came in all about cars, engines and then, but then you went into telecom and technology, and then now you've pivoted to battery storage and actually nothing to do with internal combustion. What prompted that change or that transition, like, how did you go through those different career paths? Vince Arone 4:51 Yeah, well, I think when we graduated, we were all keen to get a good job, something that we could use our engineering skills, something that would help us, you know, further our own development. And at the time, there were many jobs that were available. I had applied to, God knows how many, and then back in the day, you know, for today's students, right? We had to do this all by pen, paper, stamps, the old fashioned way, right? Chris Yip 5:15 Hand written letters. Vince Arone 5:16 Hand written letters right? Yeah, fortuitously, I had applied to a number of jobs and then one company that really intrigued me was General Electric, GE, and they had this mentorship program where, once you came out of school for a two-year period, they would give you a lot of in-depth training. So it wasn't just a job, it was an opportunity to go into different departments, try different things. GE, because it's such a diversified business, had many, many different divisions. I had two offers. One was in their computer division, and the other one was in telecom. They had two way radios for public sector public service people, so police, fire, ambulance, and that intrigued me. My true passion didn't come out until a couple of years later, once I got this job that I realized I was a people person. Through engineering, we sort of kind of those introverted individuals, but really, the real Vince came out a couple years later, and it was sales. I had a passion to take the technology being able to translate it to, I'd say, layman's terms, to help sell technical equipment. So I was selling to, and remember, I was still wet behind the ears and selling to, you know, the RCMP, Toronto Police, Peel Regional Police, these were some of our customers, and you really had to know your technology. One thing I say to a lot of young folks that I mentor as well is that we come to the table with an intellectual curiosity. We're always looking to see, how does this work? Why did they design it this way and what have you. And that's always been sort of my mantra throughout my career. I did have a career in telecom for around 20 years. Then I started my own business, which was somewhat related in telecom. It was a wireless company that we did GPS tracking for fleet management. So this was the ability to help companies with logistics, routing, optimization, things of that nature. And it wasn't until 2018 that we had been tapped on the shoulder to sell our company, which was another fabulous story into itself. And from that point after we sold the business, I figured, okay, I'm done. Am I ready to retire? I thought I was but I wasn't. I was still wanting to do some more. And ironically, I reconnected with Carmen Pizzurro, who was also a class of 8T8 grad and he started a business called Jule. He took some of the knowledge that he had — by the way, he was mechanical — took some of the knowledge that he had working for GM in the battery plant, and repurposed the knowledge that he had into building battery storage for grid resilience. It wasn't even for EV charging. Chris Yip 7:51 Right, right. Vince Arone 7:51 So here he was, took that skill, took that design and built a product. And it wasn't until, I believe, 2013, 2014 they said, you know, with the number of EVs that are out there, we could design some DC fast chargers, connect them to the batteries and be able to provide very little impact to the grid and supply, you know what the public needs, high speed chargers and that's what he had. So this all came through a couple of cups of coffees, discussions he was starting the business, he says, "You know what I could use a sales guy. Would you like to join?" And to be honest with you, Chris and my wife tells this story all the time for probably the first three to four months, I felt like I was in a different world. I'm trying to remember kilowatt, kilowatt hours, you know, ohms, resistance, all these things but as an engineer, you know what? What U of T helped us do is learn how to learn. So, okay, you know what another problem set. So we got into the electrical side of the world. I got proficient in the terminology and how it all came together, and then eventually I was able to help sell this solution to customers. Chris Yip 8:57 Okay, so the industry is growing, there's lots of EV stuff happening, charging infrastructure is huge, huge challenges. Can you tell us a bit about the industry right now, and what's unique about the chargers that Jule has come up with, that Carmine has come up with? Speaker 1 9:12 Sure, yeah, I think one of the things, and again, a lot of the electrical students, or even, you know, some of our alumni that have gone through this. You know that with power and energy, there's a unique difference, right? Sometimes we use this interchangeably, thinking, you know, there, there's synonyms, but they're not, right? Energy is the ability to do work, and power is at the rate that you do this, right? So we could charge electric cars into our 110 at home, wait 57 hours and it's charged but nobody has that sort of time, right? The next best thing is to put it up to what we call a NEMA plug, or something like a 220 a dryer plug, and that goes from the 57 hours to four hours, six hours, eight hours, depending on how the charge is, right? But that's still a long time, unless you do it in the evening and then the car's ready in the morning. But if we're on the go, our typical modus operandi is to go to a gas station, couple of minutes you're fueled, and away you go so we've been able to do the high speed charging by creating more power in a short amount of time with a charge that takes 20 to 30 minutes. That's more representative of what we could expect. But in order to do that, if we all connected to the grid at those high levels, we would need a lot of power. We don't have an energy problem, we have a power problem. The battery acts as what I would call a water tower. We fill it slowly with, say, a garden hose, and then when it's time to dispense, we open up the valves on the bottom and we dispense at a fire hose rate, as long as there's fluid, i.e. the charge in the battery, we can charge quickly. And that's what the concept with Jule is. Chris Yip 10:49 Cool. So Jule is also using technology that's come from U of T, right? Vince Arone 10:55 Absolutely. Carmen went back to the university when he was doing his development. Because, you know, as a startup, you don't have a lot of money, so you're looking for creative ways to do things. So by coming back to the university, he had talked about the product, the ideas that he had, and he worked with a lot of great individuals at the university, and one in particular, which we'll do a shout out to, is Professor Reza Iravani, who's still with the Faculty of Engineering, great guy. He's known within our circles as the godfather of power electronics, and he helped build and sort of validate a lot of the designs that are there today. And I think by having that connection, it gave Carmen, Jule, a lot more credence. But not only that, it really involved the university to say, you know, this is one of our alumni, this is one of the folks that was part of our early phases in the 80s, and now he's come up with a product. I'll also say this, he's true to the university, in the sense that we probably have eight to nine PEY professional experience year students that are within Jule. Chris Yip 12:02 Right. Vince Arone 12:02 And they come in, and I love watching them first days of of work, where they don't even know where the coffee station is. By the time they leave, they are talking circles around me in terms of the technology. They have added something more than then when they came into the company. So it's really a phenomenal way to stay connected with the university. Chris Yip 12:21 It really is. It's an amazing story. And what's also interesting, you talk about the fire hose analogy, you know, the car's ability to take that power is also a challenge, right? So it's one thing to sort of have the fire hose. The other one is whether your tank on the other side is actually sized and can deal with it, right? And this is another part of the technology that's under development at U of T through our electric vehicle center, right? The work that Olivier Trescases is doing around charging technologies, battery technologies, all that infrastructure. So it's, it's really a fully integrated system. Vince Arone 12:51 It is. Chris Yip 12:52 So we just did this massive renovation on campus, landmark project. It's gorgeous. Vince Arone 12:58 By the way, can we give a shout out to the professor's design, who happens to be a mechanical! Chris Yip 13:05 All right? Fine. Vince Arone 13:06 Professor C. Hooper. Chris Yip 13:07 Yes. Vince Arone 13:08 Who was one of our profs. I don't know if you had the ability to have him as a prof, but he was great. And when I heard that that was his design, I said, you know, kudos to him and the university. So shoutout to him. Chris Yip 13:19 The geo side of it, right? The geothermal and the earth battery approach, right? Inside landmark, but your system now, what do we got down there now? Speaker 1 13:27 This is amazing. It's a full circle application where we've taken this technology, we've brought it on campus. It has a battery storage unit right underground. It's in itself, contained environment so that it is thermally consistent in terms of temperatures and provides high speed charging. And I will also do another shout out. This is the fastest charger in the downtown core, at 200 kilowatts. There's nobody else that's providing it will be right here on campus for super fast charging and really proud to see that we have those high speed chargers. Now there is probably 40 or 50 level two chargers there as well, which I'm glad to see, because that just will promote the use of more EVs here on campus but the full design is on campus, and I won't let the cat out of the bag here, but you've got to be the see the special logos that were put on these chargers. Speaker 1 13:40 So I know that when we first talked about the Jule system, this was even before it came on campus, right? We were talking about where you were citing the systems, where you're putting the systems in play, and then you explain to me why Loblaws basically put the system in there. Vince Arone 14:34 Absolutely. Chris Yip 14:35 I don't know if you want to tell our listeners that story. Speaker 1 14:37 All right, so for our fellow engineers, the techies here, Loblaws didn't put those chargers in predominantly for charging. It was a nice to have. Vince Arone 14:46 Right. Chris Yip 14:47 But really, Loblaws went in there for energy management purposes without getting too over the top here, Loblaws is considered a Class A user of electricity in Ontario, and what that means is that they get charged utility rates based on the amount of power they consume over the course of the year. The higher the top five peaks that they use throughout the year is, their entire year's utility bill is based on those five peaks. So of course, if you're optimizing, you're going to try and reduce those peaks. The best way to optimize or reduce those peaks, is to have some way of offloading the store's power requirements to something like a battery they actually save, and it's a six-digit figure per year as a result of that battery being there. The system itself has unique software, again developed by Jule, in which it can decide what's the most economical time to charge that battery. So if you're looking at utility rates as an example, again, before I started with Jule, a utility bill was foreign to me, but now I'm I'm studying it like it was a midterm. You look at it and you say, Well, if I charge between the hours of 11pm and 7am I'm paying 2.8 cents per kilowatt hour, as opposed to 28 cents at other times. So the software will take the lowest cost of charging and charge at that time. What I love about this technology that Carmen has designed is it touches every discipline in engineering. So I had to put my civil design hat on to look at how we were going to place it, then there's the electrical component, there's the mechanical component, there's the chemical, thermodynamics plays such an incredible part. I didn't realize this. We actually had a PhD grad that worked for us, Omri. He was at U of T and really a lot of calculations that have to go in there, because as part of the balance with batteries, you have to manage heat transfer and making sure that you don't have something that's called thermal runaway, because then you can get into some catastrophes, right? But I just want to say that if you wanted to have an all encompassing project, this one touches all the disciplines. So that's the dual project, the renovation. We talked a little bit about the research stuff that you guys are involved in, but also you've come back as a class effectively, right? With this 8T8 resilience scholarship. Can you give us some background on that? Vince Arone 17:10 Yeah, it's funny, Chris, when you go through life and we get older and yeah, you said 40 is a big number, my goodness, wait till 50, and if we're fortunate enough, 60 and so forth but you never forget your roots. You never forget sort of how you got to where you got and it was December 31, 2022 I came up with a bright idea. We're actually on vacation with a bunch of other classmates that we're still in touch with, and we said, Okay, we got to come up with a new year's resolution. And they're all looking at me and saying, really, do we have to? I said, Yes, we have to. One of the things that I decided is I want to give back to the university. I want to give back to, you know, the great things that we were fortunate to have. And I tested the waters by coming up with some way of developing a scholarship. I didn't even know if it existed. So again, just started researching it, did a little bit of work, understood that there was a minimum amount that we'd have to collect. So as all things, instead of broadcasting to the world as a whole, I went to our core classmates, and I said, I'm thinking of doing the following, and I'd like to be able to help a student that might have financial needs in engineering. To my surprise, Chris, when I went out there, there was about five or six people that put some serious money down and said, I'm in. Chris Yip 18:27 Right. Vince Arone 18:27 And I was just curious to know what inspired them to want to go that quickly? And it wasn't until 30 to 35 years at this point after graduating, that I asked them this question and said, you know, Vince, he said, back in '84, '85, '86 we had financial troubles at home, and I had to either get an OSAP loan or I had to borrow money, I had to do this. And they said, I'm all in. I want to support that. And from that point, the 8T8 resiliency award was born, and like yourself as one of our founders, and I was really happy that you supported us, we came together with this, and every year, in perpetuity, forever, nothing is forever, but this scholarship is. So all the money that we've collected goes in the U of T endowment fund, pays out an interest on an annual basis, and now for the rest of our lives, and then some, it'll pay out. Chris Yip 19:17 Yeah. It's wonderful. It really is. You know, as a dean, I can say, thank you so much but as an alum, I also know that this is something that I support as well, and I think it's, it's wonderful. You're, you have so many connections into engineering right now. Vince Arone 19:30 I do, I do. Chris Yip 19:32 I was like, and I just, I know that I roped you into other ones as well. What other things are you doing as an alumnus now? Vince Arone 19:39 So after our alumni reunion, by the way, just letting people know that you don't have to wait 30 years or 25 years, as I did anyway, to get reconnected. Chris Yip 19:47 Yeah, yeah, no, no. Vince Arone 19:48 Right? Do it after five, do it after 10, stay connected but it was really a great way to get reinspired. And I think what I really enjoyed most is that when we did get together with the reunion dinners, the 5, 10, 15 year dinners, there was a lot of staff within U of T that talked to us, supported us, and then gave me opportunities to do some volunteering in ILead and some of the other programs. I even did a hackathon earlier in this year, which I was really, you know, fascinated to see how these young students, these young minds can operate in such a short period to deliver some great designs. So that's the connection and if I may say, I also found myself in a very unique situation, not thinking I'd be teaching at the university. So thanks to you, Chris and your LinkedIn post position came up I had the time of my life in the winter program. It was January to April, looking at fourth year students, we had some thirds and seconds that were looking at engineering entrepreneurship and startups for engineers, I should say. And it brought me back to the Wahlberg Building, Chemical Building. Chris Yip 21:00 Finally, Chem shows up in this entire conversation, this entire podcast. Speaker 1 21:04 So I spent my winter on Thursday nights, teaching this great group of young students, and for most of them, they might not start a business, but I said 90% of what you're going to pick up in this class you might be using in your day to day job, whether it was financial, marketing, law, it was all part of it, and I really have to thank you for opening my eyes to that, because I've always enjoyed the opportunity to teach, but it never happened earlier on in my career. Speaker 1 21:05 So I saw pictures you brought in fellow classmates, right? Vince Arone 21:37 Yes, I did, I did. I wrote them in. Chris Yip 21:38 You wrote them in. I think Larry came in. Vince Arone 21:42 Larry came in. Yes, with Beacon Utilities, yep. Chris Yip 21:45 To talk about what they're doing now, right? Again, hugely eye opening for students, right? To see people like built their own businesses, doing these sorts of things, some in big business, some in smaller businesses, but they're all successful, right? And it's all about how engineering helped frame that for that foundation. I can, I can draw the link back to your, your shop teacher, right? Same thing is happening where you've got that one individual who's inspiring a class, right? And you're doing the same thing now for our classmates, or our incoming, current students. So what's next? I mean, what's what's next on the docket for prevents, in terms of projects, and also any advice you have for our current students? Vince Arone 22:24 All right, let me start with the advice. So to my fellow future engineers, maybe you've graduated and you are an engineer. Maybe you're in first year, maybe you're second, third, fourth, you're on a PEY program. I will say the following, don't give up. First year is tough. It's that whole acclimatizing to a new environment, new people. Stay the course, and if you can't, it's okay to ask for help. There's a lot of amazing support on this campus, outside of the campus, friends, family, reach out to people like myself, and if it's not me, I'm sure that someone like yourself, Chris can help navigate. The next thing that I want to say is, you know, when I graduated high school, in my yearbook, it's written, "Loosen your tie, we play for keeps going forward." I didn't know the significance of it, and I started to think of it, how did I come up with that? But everything you do from here on in is gonna matter. Okay? You could have did whatever you had to do in high school before you were a young, individual, young kid, what have you but now you're an adult. This is your career. This is your future. What you put into it, you get out of it, right? The other thing I will say is try not to say, no. It's so easy to say, well, I don't want to get involved in this, and I don't want to do this. It's not my job. It's easy to say no and then you walk away. But look at the opportunity that lies ahead if you say yes, and if you fail, it's okay. I know when you're going through it, it might seem like the end of the world, but failure has proven time and time again. And I look at startups and entrepreneurs and things of that nature, that say, if I didn't fail, I wouldn't have done better. I look at individuals, and we had it at our last alumni reunion, I had a gentleman, if you recall, John Ruffolo. And John Ruffolo suffered an unfortunate accident that left him paralyzed and I asked him, through another classmate that went to high school with him, would he speak for us? And he talked about resilience. And if you want to see what resilience looks like, because here is a fellow that was at the top of his career as an accountant and had literally his legs removed from him now had to navigate differently. I have never seen somebody so passionate that he didn't give up, and I think he's worth more now in what he's doing, so I want students to take that. Chris Yip 24:46 Vince, this has been a wonderful conversation. Vince Arone 24:49 Likewise, I enjoyed it. You brought me back through a lot of different facets of memory lane. So it was great. Chris Yip 24:55 Yeah, this is great. I do want us to wander. At some point, we'll see if we could do the podcast. We're gonna wander over and take a sneak peek at the install over in landmark. Again, thank you Vince, so much for being here today. Vince Arone 25:05 My pleasure. Great to be with you, Chris. Thank you. Chris Yip 25:08 Thank you. Vince Arone 25:12 More structure, right? So... Speaker 2 25:13 And this is what's funny as we're about to walk downstairs, is to realize what's underneath this, which I think is the super cool stuff. Vince Arone 25:21 It is, it is. They say they're going to open it up. I peeked my, I popped my head in and looked and it's pretty cool. Painting it, concrete's all polished. Oh, somebody from Jule is here, Mark. Hey, how are you, man? Good to see you. Been a while. This is Dean Yip, this is Mark. Chris Yip 25:43 Nice to meet you. Vince Arone 25:39 So what's interesting here, Chris, see this little pipe here, the conduit that's the power to feed the batteries. This is the power that goes to the chargers. Notice the difference in diameter? Chris Yip 25:39 Here's your analogy. Vince Arone 25:39 So, so, yeah. So here's the garden hose. Those are the fire hose this. Do you know what else Carmen does with this? He brings his espresso machine, plugs it in, and he has coffee to go. So coffee with Chris on the go. Chris Yip 26:13 Thanks again for listening to Tell Me More: Coffee with Chris Yip. If you want to catch up on past episodes and to make sure you don't miss the next one, please subscribe. We're on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and more, just look for Coffee with Chris Yip. You can also check out @uoftengineering on Facebook, Instagram, X and LinkedIn for more stories about how our community is building a better world. And finally, if you'd be inspired to join us, we'd love to welcome you. If you're thinking of taking a degree or working with us on our research projects, you can find us online at engineering.utoronto.ca or you can visit our beautiful campus in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. I hope I can join you for coffee soon.