National Electricity Month: How we’re modernizing our grid

June is National Electricity Month. It’s a month dedicated to shining a light on the essential role that electricity plays in powering our work, our lives and our future. It’s also an opportunity to share all the ways our grid is changing—and what that means for you.

As we transition to 80 per cent renewable energy by 2030, and transform how your electricity is made and delivered, we also need to make sure that electricity is reliable—and always there when you need it.

It’s why we’re modernizing our grid. As more communities, homeowners and drivers choose to go electric, we’re preparing for the future. We’re exploring new technologies to manage increased demand for electricity, while we grow our renewable energy. And we’re offering new tools and programs that help our customers manage their energy use, giving you more options and insights into how you’re using electricity.

MyEnergy Insights: Helping customers save money and energy

MyEnergy Insights is a digital tool that shows you how much energy you’re using each day, broken down by appliance. It gives you more control over your energy use and your power bill.

Through this tool, you can set-up personal energy use and billing notifications to help control costs. You can also receive helpful energy-saving tips and timely insights, personalized to the energy use of your home or business. MyEnergy Insights helps you understand current energy costs and what’s projected for your next bill.

You can learn more about customers’ experience with MyEnergy Insights and how they’ve been benefiting from the tool in this article.

Time-of-Day Rates: Saving customers money by shifting their energy use

Now with smart meters installed across the province, we’ve been able to offer Time-of-Day Rates to residential customers who own an electric-based space heating system.

This pilot program provides an opportunity for Time-of-Day customers to save money on their power bills, by shifting their energy use to off-peak hours when the demand for electricity is lower.

The program runs until October 31, 2023, and learnings will be applied to future rollouts for the benefit of all our customers across Nova Scotia.

Smart Grid Program: Testing innovative technologies that can benefit Nova Scotians

The Smart Grid Nova Scotia project has been enabling us to test smart, innovative technologies that can help shape our energy future.

We’ve been testing solar, battery storage and electric vehicles. These programs are helping us better understand the benefits for our customers, as well as the electrical grid—to help us integrate more clean energy.

Some of those benefits include creating a more reliable, stable power grid, to meet the growing demand of our customers as they adopt new technologies—like in-home battery storage and electric vehicles.

• Our Intelligent Feeder Project in Elmsdale is helping us understand how grid-scale batteries can store and use renewable energy to power neighbourhoods, acting like micro grids. The project is also enabling us to test batteries in customers’ homes, to provide them with backup power during outages.
  
• Bidirectional Charging can allow drivers to charge their electric vehicles, as well as take energy from their EV battery to power their home or business during an outage, or even power the grid. In the future, this technology can also be used to store energy when it’s cheapest, like when wind generation is high, and use it at a time when it’s more costly. 
  
• The Smart Charging Program is allowing us to shift electric vehicle charging away from periods of peak demand for electricity to lower demand times—like at the end of the workday, when customers are home and plugging in their electric vehicles—to overnight. Customers who own an EV can save money on their bill, by collaborating with us to shift their charging. By reducing the overall demand on the electrical system, we can operate the grid more efficiently—which can help lower electricity costs for all Nova Scotians. Another advantage we’ve explored through this program is the ability to ‘follow the wind’—by shifting charging to periods when wind generation will be high, we can make EV charging even cleaner.

These new, innovative technologies and energy solutions are helping us offer you more convenience and choice in where your energy comes from. And as we continue to evolve our grid and grow our renewable energy, it will mean improved reliability for you, more access to exciting new green technologies, and the ability to lower your carbon footprint.

Whether you’re interested in renewable energy, electric vehicles, green buildings or smart technology, you’re helping make a difference. Together, we can create a cleaner future for our province.

---

You can visit nspower.ca/innovation to learn more about the work we continue doing every day to modernize our grid.

---

• 80% by 2030
• Batteries
• Bidirectional Charging
• Carbon Emissions
• Collaboration
• Electric Vehicles
• Electricity
• Energy Efficiency
• Energy Product
• Environment
• Innovation
• MyEnergy Insights
• Smart Charging
• Technology
• The Grid

Share This Post: