Event

The Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering invites you to attend a Public Lecture by Carlton Cummins, Chief Technical Officer and Co-founder of Aceleron, on the topic, Batteries designed for the Circular Economy. The lecture takes place on Thursday, September 23, at 2 p.m. via Zoom. This event is free and open to the public. However, you need to register to participate.

Zoom Registration:  https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZcpde6vpzMrGtVu6rssUJ8PwxrCnVF7p2Bh

For further information, please email Mechanical.Engineering@sta.uwi.edu or call 662-2002 ext. 82170/82171.

Abstract

In 2016, Carlton Cummins and Amrit Chandran founded Aceleron as a response to the future mountain of lithium battery waste, anticipated from the rise in adoption of EVs and other new technology.  In this talk, Carlton will recount his experiences as a young entrepreneur and the road to co-founding his company, Aceleron. He will also describe key aspects of the science behind developing recyclable lithium-ion batteries as a means of storing and providing clean energy.

The challenge with existing lithium batteries is that they are made using permanent assembly methods and are not designed to be serviced and maintained. As a result, they cannot be repurposed easily. The key aims of Aceleron’s circular economy technology is to offer reusable, recyclable, serviceable and upgradable high-performance lithium-ion technology that can be used with first-life or second-life battery cells thereby reducing the lifetime cost for our users. Ensuring sufficient energy access is an ongoing and pressing challenge for global development.

About Carlton Cummins

Carlton Cummins is an entrepreneur and design engineer creating solutions relevant to the challenges faced by society. After completing his BSc (Mechanical Engineering) at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine Campus in 2011, he began his career working in the solar space, coordinating over 100 installations in the Caribbean. He moved to the UK in 2014 to pursue a Master's in Business & Sustainability.

These experiences provided the insight on the growing demand for affordable energy storage, which led to his co-founding Aceleron, This award winning start-up strives to provide accessible energy storage for the growing renewable energy market. Aceleron has been featured on Business Growth Fund’s inaugural 10 Green Tech companies to Watch listed in the Sunday Times Tech Track in 2020 and was also named the Data Centre World London ‘Environmental product of the year’! in 2021.

For his efforts, Carlton has been featured within the media, including on BBC Breakfast Live, Autodesk trade magazine and Energy Storage news. He is one of the top 10 Entrepreneurs of Barbados having been named explicitly by the Prime Minister in her state address in 2019.

Carlton has also been named the Shell Young Entrepreneur of the Year (2016), Shell Global Innovator (2017) and was featured on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list (2017).