Proponents believe that the whole of Canada will eventually be powered by a smart grid.
In British Columbia, BC Hydro residents can go online and see how much electricity they use at home or in their businesses, not just on a monthly or weekly basis, but down to their daily and even hourly consumption levels.
Over the last 18 months, BC Hydro and its technology partners, Cisco Systems and Itron, have installed more than 1.8 million meters across the province, along with a leading-edge network infrastructure that supports multiple applications and services.
With a significant portion of the $930-million project now completed, smart grids in Canada have taken another step into the future.
"We've raised the bar for smart meter and smart grid deployments," says David De Yagher, senior manager, smart meter operations and deployment, at BC Hydro. "We've put in place a very scalable, secure and robust solution that provides people with information that can help them make better choices about how they use electricity, and at the same time provides operational benefits in terms of optimizing and automating our electric grid."
With electricity consumption expected to grow in Canada and around the world in the decades ahead, more and more regions and countries are turning their gaze towards smart grid technology. In Canada, two provinces – B.C. and Ontario – now boast smart meters, and Quebec is currently in the midst of deployment.
Globally, an estimated 150 jurisdictions, including 116 utilities in North America, are moving forward with plans to install smart meters and other smart grid technology.
Smart grids may hold the key to ensuring a reliable electricity supply for Canadians. Generation capacity isn't an issue in Canada, which ranks third globally in hydroelectricity generation, and overall produced almost five per cent more electricity in 2011 than in the previous year.
"I believe smart grids will help us manage the amount of energy we need at any point in time as well as provide another avenue for renewable energy generation," says Alex Bettencourt, managing director at SmartGrid, a national organization that promotes a more modern and efficient electricity grid for Canadians. "Eventually, all of Canada will be powered by a smart grid."
Smart grids, are essentially, electrical distribution grids that have incorporated high-tech applications to create efficiencies for operators and system users such as utilities and end-users. A smart grid may be equipped with applications for advanced metering, time of use rates, direct load control, wholesale demand response, planned islanding, or automated fault detection, isolation and restoration. Smart grids can automatically detect and fix system imbalances, such as when someone with a solar panel on their roof feeds excess power into the grid. It can also prevent energy theft and schedule power distribution more intelligently, says Mr. Bettencourt, who is also owner and managing director of Elletrica, a Toronto energy management consulting firm.
B.C.'s smart metering program certainly delivers a number of advanced applications to residents, businesses and to the province's utility. The new system detects when and where power outages occur and allows BC Hydro to control service connections and disconnections remotely, saving thousands of truck rolls.
"For areas with a lot of moveins and move-outs – such as a university town – BC Hydro is able to disconnect and connect the service over the network," explains Rick Geiger, executive director for utilities and smart grid, Americas business transformation, at Cisco Systems Inc., which provided the network technology that enables two-way communication between smart meters and the grid in B.C.
Advanced meters are only the tip of the iceberg, says Mr. Geiger. From power generation, transmission and distribution, smart grid technology will transform the electricity industry and ensure a reliable supply of energy. "Smart grids are definitely the way of the future," he says.
| BY THE NUMBERS |
3.1 % | Increase in total demand for electricity in Canada from 2011 to 2012
29.3 % | Increase in electricity demand by industrial consumers from 2011 to 2012
$294 Billion | Investment in electricity that Canada will require by 2030 based on Conference Board of Canada estimates
3 | Canada's global rank in hydroelectricity generation after China and Brazil
63.3 % | Share of Canada's electricity generated by hydro in 2012
15.3% | Share of Canada's electricity generated by nuclear energy in 2012