GridSmartCity™ is Burlington Hydro’s effort to begin transforming today’s electricity system into the smart grid of tomorrow. A smart grid integrates electricity production, delivery and consumption to produce a more efficient, reliable and responsive system with a lower environmental footprint. The smart grid uses sensors and monitors and combines these with advanced communications and computer analytics to improve the ability to incorporate renewable generation from the sun and wind and new technologies such as electric vehicles. It also uses smart meters, time differentiated prices and in-home energy management devices to help consumers to better understand their electricity use and enable them to control usage to manage electricity cost.
Over the past several months, several leaders of Ontario’s electricity industry including Burlington Hydro, have been engaged in a collaborative effort to promote the development of a smart grid in Ontario. The report of this group’s work, Enabling Tomorrow’s Electricity System, recommends that distribution utilities undertake demonstration projects on smart grid technologies. With GridSmartCity™, Burlington Hydro is accelerating this process by partnering with technology developers and other interested firms to combine all the major elements of a smart grid into an integrated suite of projects that will demonstrate the full capabilities of a smart grid.
The projects that make up GridSmartCity™ include:
• Making Smart Meters Work for Consumers: Using smart meters, time of use rates and in-home displays, this project will help consumers track the price of electricity as it changes throughout the day and enable them to respond to these changes by adjusting their consumption. Adding home energy management systems and smart appliances, ultimately will allow consumers to automatically respond to price or other pre-set parameters.
• Obtaining Energy from the Sun, Wind & Earth: Based on a mix of new and existing renewable generation installations, this project will assess the impacts of roof-top solar photovoltaics, wind turbines and ground source geothermal installations on energy use and the distribution system in order to determine how best to incorporate these technologies and better understand how they will affect our customers.
• Enabling Distribution Automation: By installing additional smart switches and communications technology, this project will allow Burlington Hydro to expand its ability to automatically control the operation of its distribution system. This will help to improve reliability for all of Burlington Hydro’s customers, increase operational efficiency and lower operating costs.
• Seeing into the Distribution Grid: Through the use of sensors, monitors and communications equipment, this project will evaluate distribution feeder performance, pinpoint outages and enable more precise distribution planning.
• Incorporating Electric Vehicles: Burlington Hydro will introduce light duty plug-in hybrid vehicles to evaluate their performance and the potential impacts of vehicle charging on the distribution grid.
• Using Electricity Storage to Meet Peak Load: This project will demonstrate the use of battery storage to provide supplemental power to reduce peak load. The battery will be charged during the off-peak period to provide energy to meet peak load. Batteries can also be used to support variable renewable generation technologies, such as wind and solar, by increasing the ability of these technologies to meet peak load.
• Measuring Water & Electricity Together: Smart meter technology is being developed to measure water consumption, detect leaks and communicate the meter readings for billing purposes. This project investigates the potential for using the electric smart meter infrastructure to read smart water meters.
• Promoting Smart Conservation: By using the information supplied through smart meters and other smart grid devices to target conservation, distribution investment can be reduced or deferred. This program will investigate the use of focused and intensive conservation programs to assess their potential impact on Burlington Hydro’s distribution system.
• Developing Distributed Generation: The project will integrate biogas generation into the grid and will investigate the incorporation of micro turbines to reduce peak demand.
Burlington Hydro will partner with a number of leading companies to deliver GridSmartCity™. For example, Burlington Hydro has been working with S&C Electric Canada Ltd., a worldwide leader in electric power system technologies and services, to deploy its IntelliTEAM II® Automatic Feeder Recon_guration System. Currently, this system automates distribution switching and improves reliability to Joseph Brant Memorial Hospital, City Hall, the Canada Centre for Inland Waters and the city’s
downtown. GridSmartCity™ will build on this partnership to expand the use of IntelliTEAM II® and employ new technologies to reduce the extent and duration of service interruptions and speed service restoration for customers throughout Burlington.
By integrating these projects into a single initiative, GridSmartCity™ provides an innovative vehicle to simultaneously explore all of the major smart grid elements and the interactions among them. This will allow Burlington Hydro to develop the detailed understanding of the smart grid in operation that is necessary for full smart grid roll out and to provide the best options for customers. While many of these projects will evolve over time, with GridSmartCity™, Burlington Hydro is leading the way toward building tomorrow’s electricity system.
For more information, please contact:
Jennifer Smith
Director, Corporate Relations
Burlington Hydro Inc.
jsmith@burlingtonhydro.com
905-332-2340
Gary Holloway
Manager, Corporate Communications
Burlington Hydro Inc.
gholloway@burlingtonhydro.com
905-638-4226
