Canada is entering the age of customer-owned power generation
By Phil McKay, Senior Director, Distributed Energy Resources and Grid Integration, Canadian Renewable Energy Association
Welcome to the new age of customer-owned power generation! The promise of making your own electricity, at your own apartment, house or business, is within reach. On-site, or Behind-the-Meter (BTM) solar and energy storage, can power your appliances, heating, cooling, cars and anything else you can think of. This can provide emergency backup power and protect against energy cost fluctuations. Smart BMS (Building Management Systems) can provide usage data and controls to improve your lifestyle and your business profitability.
So who is holding the key to unlocking these benefits? Your electricity utility.
Right now, Canada’s utility professionals are protecting customers by keeping costs low and reliability high. While wrestling with a whole new world of energy needs: People need more electricity because they are electrifying things that never used to get plugged in; data centres are changing the game; industrial processes are shifting.
The dominant, central power-production model that has been used to push huge amounts of electricity along transmission and distribution lines has already been disrupted. Wind, solar and energy storage are scalable solutions, allowing power-generation projects to contribute energy and services to the grid in hundreds of locations distributed across Canada.
Now, electricity grids need more resilience in the face of a changing climate, and they must meet new demands from customers connecting fleets of electric vehicles and power-hungry data centers. People want cleaner power and a more equitable distribution of infrastructure to support their communities.
As a result, we’re seeing the next disruption. Canada is about to cross the milestone of 100,000 solar projects installed behind meters by customers like you and me.
Over the past three years as the Executive Director of CanREA’s Electricity Transition Hub, I have learned a lot about Canada’s electricity utilities and system operators. We recently concluded this three-year capacity building project, supported by NRCan’s SREPs funding.
I’ve had the chance to work with dozens of utilities and system operators, helping them make sense of the overwhelming volume of information on the clean-energy transition, and bridge the gap between global learnings and Canada’s specific regional needs.
Continuing with CanREA as Senior Director, Distributed Energy Resources and Grid Integration, I will expand our work with utilities, system operators, regulators, government agencies and other organizations, while also addressing the next big disrupter: behind-the-meter (BTM) distributed energy resources (DERs).
I will work with CanREA’s growing BTM membership of solar installers, suppliers and supporting organizations, to address the barriers to a full-scale transformation of neighbourhoods, cities, industrial parks and rural networks.
At this moment in Canada’s future energy story, the ability to produce and manage power on-site is not available to everyone. There are financial barriers to upgrade a legacy system, both at the utility level and within Canada’s existing building stock.
There are also connection barriers, with some utilities having prohibitive requirements, or processes based on legacy-protection schemes. Unlocking every electricity meter in the country demands a standardized connection approach and financial mechanisms that allow everyone to participate.
There has been a lot of progress in some areas of the country. In other places, customers just can’t get at the same opportunities. I think everyone should have the opportunity to build, buy and grow their clean-energy lifestyle or business in their own way, through strong policies, supportive regulations and standards that keep everyone safe and empowered.
Until Canada’s net-zero emissions economy is within reach, the knowledge-transfer from global learnings to Canadian contexts will not be complete. That’s why I’m excited to work on these two complimentary programs: our Utility GRID Integration Program focuses on finding answers to some of the utility sector’s toughest questions; our BTM Program focuses on hearing from the ‘boots on the ground’ (or on the roof).
Contact us for more information on either of these two exciting programs and to learn more about membership options that work for you.
As CanREA’s new Senior Director, Distributed Energy Resources and Grid Integration, I am really looking forward to leading these two programs and supporting the industry in the months and years ahead, as we bring in learnings from around the world and chart the course for Canada’s just, affordable, resilient and clean power system of the future.