Rob Safrata wants to go electric with his sightseeing tour bus company – so he started FUSE Power Management to turn bus fleets into virtual power plants. The buses are parked for extended periods of time and using them as virtual power plants to supply the grid with peaking power would bring new revenues to fleet owners.
The winners of the Decentralised Energy Canada – Medicine Hat Energy Innovation Challenge will pilot their solutions for the integration of electric vehicles, solar and wind power systems, batteries, and new electric appliances like heat pumps into the Medicine Hat, Alberta grid.
One of the big, often overlooked solutions to overhauling our electricity grid better to accommodate EVS, solar, wind and batteries is software, AI and smart grid technology. We talk to Sabine Erlinghagen, CEO of Siemens Grid Software about how we have to turn our thinking upside down to build the smart, reliable and resilient electricity grid that will have millions of distributed energy resources instead of just a few giant power plants.
Virtual Power Plants are created by aggregating tens, hundreds, or thousands of smaller energy generation projects such as solar with energy storage and this simple, efficient system can provide peaking power at 40% less cost than a peaking power plant. It’s all part of building a smart grid that can integrate various distributed technologies to provide reliable, affordable electricity.
The small City of Summerside PEI went from no electricity production to 62% renewable energy using a clever combination of smart grid technology, energy storing appliances, energy storage and renewable energy.
Energy storage and all of the technologies we need to get the grid to net-zero already exist to affordably transition the grid; government just needs to allow/facilitate their use through new tariffs and regulations says James Bererton.
Red Deer’s popular Renewable Energy Fairs put on by ReThink Red Deer was “deep-sixed” by COVID, but the good news is it’s being reincarnated as the Energy Innovation Fair and it’s back live on October 21 at Red Deer Polytechnic.
Alberta’s electricity was 81% coal-fired in 1981. By 2023 it will reach 0%. Now for the hard part – getting to net-zero. Green Energy Futures talks to economist Dr. Blake Shaffer about how to go the distance and reach net-zero emissions.
Like many young Albertans, Jason Beacock went straight out of school to work on the rigs in the oil and gas industry, drawn by the allure of big salaries. But Jason always had a passion for renewable energy. The company he worked for at the time also saw economic opportunity in the energy transition. They partnered with a battery company and just a few years later business is booming and they are installing battery energy storage systems all over North America.
The future is not solar, batteries, electric vehicles, or hydrogen – it’s all of the above and more. And this is why the University of British Columbia is building a Renewable Energy Hub, a city-block-sized living lab that seeks to optimize the use of renewable technologies to get to a zero-emissions future.
Li-Cycle is a Canadian company from Ontario that is taking the mounting heap of battery waste and turning 95 per cent of it into gold – battery-grade raw materials for new batteries. This is the very definition of a circular economy and a secure supply of batteries for electric vehicles.
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